Les résultats obtenus en psycholinguistique via des études perceptives sur le traitement de la consonne de liaison montrent que le traitement de ce phénomène complexe n’est qu’imparfaitement prédit par les différentes théories phonologiques dans lesquelles il a été intégré de manière explicite. C’est pourquoi nous proposons dans cette thèse, qui s’inscrit dans une perspective résolument nouvelle, d’envisager la liaison du point de vue de la production et de la formaliser dans le cadre de la Phonologie articulatoire de Browman et Goldstein (1986). Ce modèle présente l’avantage d’une organisation directe entre phonologie et phonétique en utilisant une seule unité qui sert à la fois de primitive phonologique et d’unité d’action motrice dans la production de la parole : le geste articulatoire. Nous supposons que le statut phonologique de « segment flottant » proposé pour la consonne de liaison dans le cadre de la phonologie autosegmentale (Clements & Keyser, 1985 ; Encrevé 1988) puisse trouver un corrélat au niveau articulatoire et puisse être observé et mesuré expérimentalement. L’analyse qui vient à l’appui de cette hypothèse compare la consonne de liaison avec la consonne initiale de mot dans des contextes vocaliques identiques au moyen de mesures électro-palatographiques. Nos résultats suggèrent que la consonne de liaison est soumise à une modification quantitative des caractéristiques dynamiques qui lui sont associés. Les mouvements des articulateurs ainsi que les relations entre les gestes consonantique et vocalique sont ré-échelonnés en fonction de la position qu’occupe la consonne de manière graduelle. / Perceptual studies in the field of psycholinguistics on the processing of the liaison consonant have shown that this complex phenomenon is not perfectly predicted by the different phonological theories in which it has been explicitly integrated. In this thesis, we propose to investigate liaison from a totally new perspective, that is from a production point of view, and to formalise this phenomenon in the framework of Browman and Goldstein (1986)’s Articulatory Phonology. This model is advantageous as it provides a direct connection between phonology and phonetics where only one unit is used both as a phonological primitive and as a unit of motor action in speech production, that is articulatory gesture. In the Framework of autosegmental phonology (Clements & Keyser, 1985 ; Encrevé 1988), the phonological status of the liaison consonant is considered to be a floating segment. In this thesis, we hypothesise that there is a correlate at the articulatory level that can be observed and experimentally measured. This hypothesis is tested by comparing the liaison consonant with the word-initial consonant in identical vowel contexts by using electro-palatographical measurements.Results suggest that the liaison consonant is subjected to a quantitative modification of the dynamic caracteristics which are associated with it. The articulator movements, as well as the relations between consonant and vowel gestures, are gradually re-scaled according to the consonant position.

Studenter med ett icke-tonspråk som modersmål brukar ha svårigheter att lära sig de kinesiskatonerna när de börjar sina studier. Å ena sidan brukar kursböckerna på denna nivån användabara enstaviga ord och det har ansetts vara god pedagogik att läraren visar tonkonturerna medsina händer. Å andra sidan har forskningen om kinesiska länge varit koncentrerad på vilkavärden som grundtonen (F0) uppvisar i enstaviga ord. Det är många faktorer som tvärspråksforskningeninte har uppmärksammat, bl.a. det inflytande som konsonanterna har på F0 (vilketinfödda talare inte alltid är medvetna om).Det finns ingen samsyn när det gäller att förklara tonförväxlingsmönstren. Tidigare teorierinom ämnet andraspråksinlärning (Second Language Acquisition, SLA), som Perception AssimilationModel (PAM) och Speech Learning Model (SLM) har visat sig otillräckliga förstudiet av tonperception. På senare tid har PAM-Suprasegment försökt förklara hur den lärandesmodersmål antas närma sig kinesiskans tonsystem men modellen tar inte upp ordprosodin.Eftersom den moderna kinesiskans ordförråd till majoriteten består av tvåstaviga ord börforskningen lämna gamla spår för att finna andra kriterier – som duration och betoning – föratt förklara hur man lär sig höra kinesiskans toner, t.ex. vad som händer när två toner återfinnsi ett ord.Denna studie har som mål att ta reda på hur svenskar som studerar kinesiska som andraspråk/främmande språk uppfattar tonerna i kinesiska tvåstaviga ord. Experimentet bygger intepå tillrättalagda testord. Resultaten visar att tonerna först och främst påverkas av den initialakonsonanten och sedan av de omgivande tonerna. Vidare visas att det svenska systemet medaccent I och II i sin tur kan åstadkomma tonförväxlingar eftersom kinesiska tvåstaviga orddelvis uppvisar samma mönster.Resultaten illustrerar att tonidentifiering är en dynamisk och komplex process. Det krävsfortsatt forskning om tonerna för att få grepp om dem men det kan inte stanna där: interaktionenmellan ljud och ordprosodi behöver belysas bättre för att uppnå god behärskning avprosodin i språkundervisningen. / Foreign adult students with atonal language usually have, in the beginning of their Chinesestudy, difficulties to identify the Chinese tones. On one side, only monosyllabic tones arementioned in course books during this earlier stage and to illustrate the tone contours withhands has been treated as an effective pedagogy. On the other side, research on Chinese hasfor long been solely concentrated upon the values of the fundamental frequency (F0) of thevowels in monosyllabic words. In cross-linguistic studies many factors, among others the effectsof consonants on F0 that native speakers are not aware of, have still not been paidspecial attention to.There is no consensus regarding the explanation to tone confusion patterns. Earlier theoriesof Second Language Acquisition (SLA) like Perception Assimilation Model (PAM) andSpeech Learning Model (SLM) are no longer suited for tone perception. Recently, PAMSuprasegmenthas tried to approach that the intonation of the learners’ native language is assumedto be assimilated to the Chinese tone system. However, this model ignores the wordprosody. Nowadays, when the modern Chinese vocabulary consists of a majority of disyllabicwords, research has to be re-directed to find other criteria e.g. temporal and stress for explainingthe complexity of Chinese tone perception, i.e. how two tones behave when they arecombined in one word.The purpose of this essay is to explore how native Swedish speakers learning Chinese assecond/foreign language perceive the Chinese tones of disyllabic words. The experiment isnot based on elaborated test words. The results show that tones are first of all affected by theinitial consonants and sequentially influenced by the surrounding tones with accordance toChinese. It further reveals that Swedish accent I/II patterns might be a reasonable explanationfor the Chinese tone confusion patterns since partially acoustic properties of Chinese disyllabicwords overlap the Swedish accents.These results mean that tone perception is a dynamic and complex process. Further researchon tone perception should explore profoundly and widen interaction between sounds andword prosody, which paves the way for more effective prosodic practice in language education.

Acoustic analyses have recently been brought to bear on the phonological error pattern of final consonant omission. The results from such acoustic analyses have generally supported the correctness of the phonological analyses. The purpose of this report is to present seemingly conflicting results from a generative phonological analysis and an acoustic analysis of one misarticulating child who omitted word-final obstruents. The apparent conflict is resolved in terms of two possible explanations with differing treatment implications.

Older listeners, both with and without hearing loss, often complain of difficulty understanding conversational speech. One reason for such difficulty may be a decreased ability to process the rapid changes in intensity, frequency, or temporal information that serve to differentiate speech sounds. Two important cues for the identification of stop consonants are the duration of the interruption of airflow (i.e., closure duration) and rapid spectral changes following the release of closure. Many researchers have shown that age and hearing loss affect a listener's cue weighting strategies and trading relationship between spectral and temporal cues. The study of trading relationships between speech cues enables researchers to investigate how much various listeners rely on different speech cues. Different cue weighting strategies and trading relationships have been demonstrated for individuals with hearing loss, compared to listeners with normal hearing. These differences have been attributed to the decreased ability of the individuals with hearing loss to process spectral information. While it is established that processing of temporal information deteriorates with age, it is not known whether the speech processing difficulties of older listeners are due solely to the effects of hearing loss or to separate age-related effects as well. The present study addresses this question by comparing the performance on a series of psychoacoustic and speech identification tasks of three groups of listeners (young with normal-hearing, older with normal-hearing, and older with impaired hearing) using synthetic word pairs ("slit" and "split"), in which spectral and temporal cues are altered systematically. Results of the present study suggest different cue weighting strategies and trading relationships for all three groups of listeners, with older listeners with hearing loss showing the least effect of spectral cue changes and young listeners with normal hearing showing the greatest effect of spectral cue changes. Results are consistent with previous studies showing that older listeners with and without hearing loss seem to weight spectral information less heavily than young listeners with normal hearing. Each listener group showed a different pattern of cue weighting strategies when spectral and temporal cues varied.

Semicontinuous data consist of a combination of a point-mass at zero and a positive skewed distribution. This type of non-negative data distribution is found in data from many fields, but presents unique challenges for analysis. Specifically, these data cannot be analyzed using positive distributions, but distributions that are unbounded are also likely a poor fit. Two-part models incorporate both the zero values from semicontinuous data and the positive continuous values. In this dissertation, we compare zero-inflated gamma (ZIG) and zero-inflated log-normal (ZILN) two-part models. For both of these models, the probability that an outcome is non-zero is modeled via logistic regression. Then the distribution of the non-zero outcomes is modeled via gamma regression with a log-link for ZIG regression and via log-normal regression for ZILN. In this dissertation we propose tests which combine the two parts of the ZIG and ZILN models in meaningful ways for performing a two group comparison. Then we compare these tests in terms of observed Type 1 error rates and power levels under both correctly specified and misspecified ZIG and ZILN models. Tests falling under two main hypotheses are examined. First, we look at two-part tests which come from a two-part hypothesis of no difference between the two groups in terms of the probability of non-zero values and in terms of the the mean of the non-zero values. The second type of tests are mean-based tests. These combine the two parts of the model in ways related to the overall group means of the semicontinuous variable. When not adjusting for covariates, two tests are developed based on a difference of means (DM) and a ratio of means (RM). When adjusting for covariates, tests using mean-based hypotheses are developed which marginalize over the values of the adjusting covariates. Under the adjusting framework, two ratio of means statistics are proposed and examined, an average of the subject specific ratio of means (RMSS) and a ratio of the marginal group means (RMMAR). Simulations are used to compare Type 1 error and power for these tests and standard two group comparison tests. Simulation results show that when ZIG and ZILN models are misspecified and the coefficient of variation (CoV) and/or sample size is large, there are differences in Type 1 error and power results between the misspecified and correctly specified models. Specifically, when ZILN data with high CoV or sample size are analyzed as ZIG, Type 1 error rates are prohibitively high. On the other hand, when ZIG data are analyzed as ZILN under these scenarios, power levels are much lower for ZILN analyses than for ZIG analyses. Examination of Q-Q plots show, however, that in these settings, distinguishing between ZIG and ZILN data can be relatively straightforward. When the coefficient of variation is small it is harder to distinguish between ZIG and ZILN models, but the differences between Type 1 error rates and power levels for misspecified or correctly specified models is also slight. Finally, we use the proposed methods to analyze a data set involving Parkinson's disease (PD) and driving. A number of these methods show that PD subjects exhibit poorer lane keeping ability than control subjects.

<p>This study investigates the realisation of phonological quantity in the dialects of Modern Swedish, based on a corpus containing recordings from 86 locations in Sweden and the Swedishspeaking parts of Finland. The corpus was recorded as part of the national SweDia project.</p><p>The study is explorative in character. Quantity structures in Swedish dialects and their geographical distribution, as described in the dialectological literature, are compared to the results of a data-driven categorisation (cluster analysis). The results reveal an overall good correspondence of the data driven and the traditional categorisation, although with some deviations in the detail.</p><p>The study is divided into two parts. The first part lays the foundation for the data-driven categorisation, which is then described in the second part. First, the phonology and phonetics of quantity in Swedish are described in terms of durational distinctions and vocalic quality differences that typically accompany the durational differences. Preaspiration, which appears to be a normative feature in some dialects, is covered as well. An overview of the historical development of the Swedish quantity system is provided, with special emphasis on a phonological interpretation of quantity changes. Thereafter, dialectological evidence is combined with phonological and typological considerations to develop a categorisation of Swedish dialects.</p><p>The second part explains the methodology of cluster analysis and applies this method to vowel and consonant durations from one contrastive word pair, in order to obtain an alternative dialect categorisation. Analyses of vowel quality and preaspiration are performed in addition to the durational analyses. Hypotheses derived from the cluster analysis are then tested on one additional word pair recorded in 75 locations and on three additional word pairs recorded in four locations.</p><p>The general pattern emerging from the cluster analysis is a categorisation of the dialects into three main types, a Finland-Swedish, a Northern and a Southern type. This categorisation shows a good geographical agreement with the categorisation that is derived from the analysis of the dialectological literature. Therefore, the durational patterns of the three types are interpreted as reflections of three different phonological systems: 4-way systems with vocalic and consonantal quantity, 3-way systems with vocalic quantity and with consonantal quantity only after short vowels, and 2-way systems with complementary quantity. From the historical perspective, the 4-way system constitutes the most conservative and the 2-way system the most recently developed system.</p><p>Finally, it is argued that the historical development is one of the factors behind occasional mismatches between the data-driven and the dialectological categorisation. Data from one of the dialects, which has recently abandoned a 4-way system but has obviously retained the durational properties of the older system, is used as an example to illustrate this historical hypothesis.</p>

This study investigates the realisation of phonological quantity in the dialects of Modern Swedish, based on a corpus containing recordings from 86 locations in Sweden and the Swedishspeaking parts of Finland. The corpus was recorded as part of the national SweDia project. The study is explorative in character. Quantity structures in Swedish dialects and their geographical distribution, as described in the dialectological literature, are compared to the results of a data-driven categorisation (cluster analysis). The results reveal an overall good correspondence of the data driven and the traditional categorisation, although with some deviations in the detail. The study is divided into two parts. The first part lays the foundation for the data-driven categorisation, which is then described in the second part. First, the phonology and phonetics of quantity in Swedish are described in terms of durational distinctions and vocalic quality differences that typically accompany the durational differences. Preaspiration, which appears to be a normative feature in some dialects, is covered as well. An overview of the historical development of the Swedish quantity system is provided, with special emphasis on a phonological interpretation of quantity changes. Thereafter, dialectological evidence is combined with phonological and typological considerations to develop a categorisation of Swedish dialects. The second part explains the methodology of cluster analysis and applies this method to vowel and consonant durations from one contrastive word pair, in order to obtain an alternative dialect categorisation. Analyses of vowel quality and preaspiration are performed in addition to the durational analyses. Hypotheses derived from the cluster analysis are then tested on one additional word pair recorded in 75 locations and on three additional word pairs recorded in four locations. The general pattern emerging from the cluster analysis is a categorisation of the dialects into three main types, a Finland-Swedish, a Northern and a Southern type. This categorisation shows a good geographical agreement with the categorisation that is derived from the analysis of the dialectological literature. Therefore, the durational patterns of the three types are interpreted as reflections of three different phonological systems: 4-way systems with vocalic and consonantal quantity, 3-way systems with vocalic quantity and with consonantal quantity only after short vowels, and 2-way systems with complementary quantity. From the historical perspective, the 4-way system constitutes the most conservative and the 2-way system the most recently developed system. Finally, it is argued that the historical development is one of the factors behind occasional mismatches between the data-driven and the dialectological categorisation. Data from one of the dialects, which has recently abandoned a 4-way system but has obviously retained the durational properties of the older system, is used as an example to illustrate this historical hypothesis.

<p>Abstract</p><p>This study investigates variable past tense marking patterns in an emerging variety of N.C. Hispanic English (n=44) spoken by language learners at three Length of Residency (LOR) groups in three schools in Durham, NC in terms of 1. lexical semantics (Andersen & Shirai 1996, Bayley 1999), 2. frequency (Guy & Erker 2012) 3. discourse structure (Bardovi-Harlig 1998) and 4. verb class and phonological environment (Wolfram 1985, Bayley 1994). Statistical results show significant effects of verb class, lexical aspect, and frequency and interacting effects of verb class and frequency (specifically, suppletives like copula are simultaneously highly frequent and highly phonetically salient). A subsample coded for the discourse factor shows some evidence for the correlation of copula and backgrounding function. A separate analysis of consonant cluster reduction patterns (CCR) demonstrates dialect acquisition of variable constraints (e.g. in terms of N.C. AAVE), namely phonological environment (_C > _V) and morphemic status (monomorpheme > bimorpheme). Pedagogical applications are discussed, including accurately identifying English Language Learners (ELLs) in the context of local/regional accommodation.</p> / Dissertation

Este trabajo analiza la representación gráfica de algunos grupos consonánticos “cultos” del español colonial mexicano en documentos, cartillas y ortografías de los siglos XVI y XVII. A partir de este estudio se ha podido registrar varios tipos de representación gráfica de las consonantes en posición implosiva, muchas de las cuales son similares a las que se registran en el habla popular de esta zona. La presente investigación advierte, por una parte, que el estudio gráfico de documentos novohispanos ofrece pistas sobre la “realización” de los grupos cultos de la época en cuestión. Por otra parte, concluimos que muchos de estos fenómenos que ocurren en los contornos de la sílaba, en concreto en la coda, son bastante parecidos a los analizados en el habla popular de los mexicanos del siglo XXI. / This paper examines the graphic representation of some consonant groups considered educated in the colonial Mexican Spanish in documents, charts and orthographies from XVI and XVII centuries. As of this work, it has been possible the registration of some different types of graphic representations for the consonants in implosive position, they are similar to the ones registered in the popular language of this zone. This research offers two striking points. On one side, it demonstrates that the graphic study of novo-Hispanic documents provides clues about the “realization” of the educated groups from the period under scrutiny. On the other hand, I conclude that many of these phenomena occur in the outlines of the syllable, specifically in the coda, and that they are very similar to those found in the popular speech of Mexicans from the XXI.

La recherche d'invariants phonétiques ou phonologiques dans un corpus tel que les nursery rhymes nous a amené à les collecter, à les contraster et à les analyser. La collecte finale se fit grâce au dictionnaire des nursery rhymes, compilé par les folkloristes anglais, Peter et Iona Opie, une anthologie étymologique de référence. Ils passèrent de nombreuses années à répertorier toutes sortes de nursery rhymes, anciennes et récentes, populaires et inconnues. Le but de la collecte de ce corpus était de la faire de façon globale et neutre sans apport initial d'enfants. La deuxième étape fut une réflexion sur leur identité et leur forme ce qui aboutit au constat qu'une comptine n'en était une que si elle continuait à exister. Faisant partie de la tradition orale, la nursery rhyme doit être récitée, scandée régulièrement par un public précis pour qu'elle se transmette et continue son parcours intergénérationnel . Un sondage fut mis en place auprès d'une centaine d'enfants anglophones qui contrastèrent le corpus global en deux entités. Le résultat fit apparaître un corpus de comptine toujours connues et récitables par les sondés et un autre corpus de comptines oubliées. A partir de ces deux nouveaux corpus, une analyse phonétique fut entreprise pour dégager un ou des invariants inhérents à la condition de nursery rhyme. En couplant le premier et le dernier son-consonne accentué de chaque vers de chaque comptine et en prenant la place de l'articulation comme mesure de référence, il se dégage deux mouvements majoritaires dans leur énonciation, un mouvement d'arrière en avant pour les comptines populaires et un mouvement d'avant en arrière pour celles qui sont oubliées. / The search for phonetic or phonological invariants in nursery rhymes made us collect them globally, contrast them through a survey and analyse them. The Opies, British folklorists, published an Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes which became our primary source of material as their precious collection of rhymes had the advantage of being global and objective. Once the corpus established, it became obvious that these nursery rhymes had different statuses as to their popularity among children. The need to contrast them was necessary. A survey was set up and presented to more than a hundred English-speaking children. It resulted in 2 sub-corpuses, popular nursery rhymes (PNR) and forgotten ones (FNR). The question was what made them belong to one or the other? A phonetic analysis was ploughed through the corpuses. By pairing the first and the last stressed consonant-sound of every verse of every nursery rhyme and taking the place of articulation as reference, 2 major opposite enunciative movements arose, a back-to-front movement (B2F) for popular nursery rhymes and a front-to-back movement (F2B) for the forgotten ones.