Les présentes études ont comme but d’examiner les relations entre l’accentuation et la perception des contrastes consonantiques lors de l’apprentissage de nouveaux mots chez les nourrissons unilingues anglophones et bilingues de 17 et 20 mois. La tâche de choix visuel est utilisée à travers deux études afin d’explorer cette question de recherche. La première étude s’intéresse aux nourrissons unilingues, tandis que la seconde étude explore la performance des nourrissons bilingues. Nous prédisons que la sensibilité aux détails phonologiques s’améliore avec l’âge, que le contraste phonologique est mieux perçu lorsqu’il est accentué, que les nourrissons unilingues distinguent mieux les contrastes en syllabe initiale, que les nourrissons bilingues distinguent les contrastes consonantiques aussi bien en syllabe initiale qu’en syllabe finale et que les nourrissons unilingues et bilingues réussissent la tâche d’apprentissage lexical. Les résultats de la première étude suggèrent que les nourrissons anglophones de 20 mois distinguent particulièrement mieux le contraste consonantique lorsque le changement est accentué et situé en position syllabique initiale, comme démontré par un temps de fixation de l’objet cible plus élevé lorsque le mot est prononcé correctement que lorsqu’il est prononcé incorrectement. L’accentuation semble aider les nourrissons de 17 et 20 mois à mettre en relief le changement consonantique en position syllabique initiale dans les premières 2 000 ms des essais. Les résultats de la deuxième étude indiquent que les nourrissons bilingues de17 et 20 mois distinguent les prononciations incorrectes des prononciations correctes. La position de l’accentuation semble influencer la perception du changement phonétique chez les nourrissons bilingues, avec une meilleure discrimination des détails phonétiques dans les mots iambiques. Toutefois, l’accentuation du contraste phonétique ne semble pas influencer leurs réponses. En somme, des différences développementales et linguistiques sont notées et discutées à travers nos études avec un avantage développemental chez les nourrissons bilingues.

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This is a psychoacoustic study investigating experimentally the role of intonation as indicative of the human phenomenon of emotion in both Arabic and English. Itstudies both the acoustic properties of emotion in speech and their impact on intonational contours.Utterances representing five emotions (anger, fear, happiness, sadness, and neutral) in both the declarative and interrogative modes were collected from the speech of eight professional actors (4 Arabic, and 4 English) as they performed roles in movies and drama series. Two types of judges were used: viewers and listeners. The former watched the clips carrying the utterances and identified their emotional content. Their responses determined which utterances were included in the acoustic analysis. The listeners listened only to the utterances chosen by the viewers, and their responses were used to determine the acoustic clues for emotions. The acoustic analysis involved measuring the parameters of fundamental frequency (FO), intensity, and duration of four units of analysis: utterance as a whole unit, the initial and the final syllables of the utterance, and the syllable with the highest FO value (the peak).The ANOVA statistical test was run on the acoustic data. The listeners' responses were used in the Kappa test to determine their emotion recognition accuracy.The results showed that no single parameter can be taken as the sole marker or clue to a certain emotion. Rather, the expression of emotion is viewed as a complicated process involving the three parameters combined. Profiles for each emotion involving the levels of the three parameters at both the utterance and syllable levels are provided. The data analysis did not show emotion to have an impact on international contours. The KAPPA test showed a high degree of emotion recognition accuracy in both languages. The comparison of Arabic and English showed differences in the three parameters between the two languages. The most remarkable feature distinguishing the people of the two languages speech is intensity, with Arabic speakers showing higher decibel levels. / Department of English

The main goal of this work is to research the accentuation in the “Grammar of the Lithuanian language” to analyse the words which contravene with the standards of modern accentuation. The attention is being paid as well to the morphonological principles of accentuation. There are not many detailed research works of this kind. Nevertheless, more language specialists appear now analysing the accentuation of the standard language based on the morphonological principles. The accentuation of the majority of nouns, given in the Grammar of the Lithuanian language is according to the rules of standard language. 257 words of different parts of speech are discussed in the work. The words for analysis were selected only those the accentuation of which controverse with accentutaion rules of the standard language or they have accent variations. Two accentuation tendencies of these words showed up: mostly (193 words) it was according to the accentuation of the period, given in the DŽ1, or it is based on the dialects (64 words), though it is not pointed out. The accentuation of some words can be proof‘s faults. The words given in the first volume of Grammar of the Lithuanian language are grouped into chapters according to word formation principles. Systematized and grouped material was described according to normative and morphonological aspects. The accentual power of the words collected is shown in formulas, schemes, discussed according to the morphonological principles of stressing... [to full text]

published_or_final_version / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1980. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND HUMANITIES. / Vita. / Bibliography: leaves 333-339. / by Bruce Philip Hayes. / Ph.D.

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Diss.--Köln--Philosophische Fakultät, 2002. / Bibliogr. p. 263-278.

The increasing number of proficient, non-native English speakers, both in U.S. academic institutions and around the globe, warrants considerable investigation into possible norms developing within non-native to non-native interactions. This report analyzes attitudes toward accent, a prominent indicator of foreignness, within non-native English speaker interactions. It presents relevant research on this topic, and it summarizes some of the major findings of an online survey that examined what attitudes, if any, non-native listeners may form on the basis of accent alone when listening to other non-native English speakers. The results suggest that listeners base attitude judgments more on native-likeness than on intelligibility. Also, speakers’ perceptions of their own non-native accent are more negative than how they actually rate themselves as compared to others. / text

In the past few decades, cognitive psychologists and linguists have shown increasing research interest in the phenomenon of implicit learning, a term generally defined as learning of regularities in the environment without intention and awareness. Some psychologists regard implicit learning as the primary mechanism for knowledge attainment and language acquisition (Reber, 1993), whereas others deny the possibility of learning even simple contingencies in an implicit manner (Lovibond and Shanks, 2002). In the context of language acquisition, while first language acquisition is essentially implicit, the extent to which implicit learning is relevant to second language acquisition remains unclear. Empirical evidence has been found on the implicit learning of grammar/syntactic rules (e.g., Rebuschat & Williams, 2012) and form-meaning connections (e.g., Leung & Williams, 2011) but little investigation of implicit learning has been conducted in the realm of phonology, particularly supra-segmental phonology. Besides, there is still no consensus on the extent to which implicit learning exhibits population variation. This dissertation reports three experiments which aim to 1) address the possibility of learning second language (L2) word stress patterns implicitly; 2) identify relevant individual differences in the implicit learning of L2 word stress rules; and 3) improve measurement of conscious knowledge by integrating both subjective and objective measures of awareness. Using an incidental learning task and a two-alternative forced-choice post-test, Experiment 1 found evidence of learning one-to-one stress-to-phoneme connections in an implicit fashion, and successfully applied the process dissociation procedure as a sensitive awareness measure. Experiment 2 found implicit learning effect for more complicated word stress rules which involved mappings between stress assignment and syllable types/types of phoneme, and integrated verbal reports, confidence ratings and inclusion-exclusion tasks as awareness measures. Experiment 3 explored potentially individual differences in the learning of L2 word stress rules. No correlation was found between learning of L2 word stress and working memory, processing speed and phonological short-term memory, supporting the belief that involvement of working memory in implicit learning is minimal, and the view that different stimuli/task-specific subsystems govern different implicit learning tasks. It is concluded that L2 word stress rules may be learnt implicitly with minimal individual variations. / published_or_final_version / English / Master / Master of Philosophy