This paper examines the acoustic characteristics that differentiate the four tones of Burmese: high, low, creaky and stopped. The majority of previous work on Burmese tone is impressionistic but recently has become experimental. There are conflicting analyses of how the tones are distinguished. In particular, there is disagreement about the f0 contour of the high and low tones, the consistency of creakiness in the creaky and stopped tones, the role of f0 in distinguishing the creaky and stopped tones, and the vowel quality of the stopped tone. Recordings were made of four native speakers of Burmese, aged 24-30, who read sentences containing a carrier word with one of the four tones and one of two vowels, /a/ and /i/. Seven variables were measured: f0 contour (onset, offset, peak f0, peak delay), duration, voice quality, and vowel quality. It was found that the high and low tones are differentiated from the creaky and stopped tones by onset f0, peak f0, relative peak delay, duration, and voice quality. The high and low tones are distinguished from one another by offset f0, peak f0, relative peak delay, and voice quality. The creaky and stopped tones appear to be differentiated from one another mainly by vowel quality. This paper adds necessary acoustic analysis to the literature on Burmese tone, with the finding that a variety of characteristics is used to distinguish each tone. The findings of this experiment also add to the current understanding of the interactions between tone and phonation, as well as phonation and vowel quality. / text

Sambandet mellan emotionella uttryck och tonhöjdsegenskaper i tal har tidigare undersökts, men få studier har gjorts av andra ljudegenskaper av emotionella uttryck. Denna studie undersöker volym och talhastighetens påverkan på människors förmåga att sortera emotionella uttryck, och om det finns andra variabler som används när denna information plockats bort. Hypotesen är att det blir svårare att sortera när denna information inte längre finns tillgänglig. Till studien rekryterades 62 deltagare, varav 56 av dessa användes i analysen. Deltagarna randomiserades till en kontrollgrupp och tre experimentgrupper, i vilka volym, talhastighet, samt volym och talhastighet normaliserats till respektive variabels medianvärde. De fick lyssna på och sortera ljudfiler där skådespelare gestaltade olika emotionella tillstånd. Multidimensionell skalning (MDS) användes för att skapa en karta över avståndet mellan emotioner och multipla regressioner utfördes för att hitta förklaringar till MDS-lösningarna. Resultatet tyder på att det är svårare att urskilja de emotionella uttrycken när volym och talhastighet normaliserats. Vad i ljudet som används istället undersöks med multipel regression. Resultaten kopplas till befintliga emotionsmodeller och slutsats dras om att volym och talhastighet verkar vara viktiga för sortering av emotionella ljud.

Syftet med denna studie är att undersöka den generella uppfattningen av svenska dialekters tonhöjd samt om det går att se någon förändring av tonhöjd när dialekterna imiteras. I uppsatsens diskussion undersöks även huruvida den generella uppfattningen av tonhöjd och förändringar vid imitation går att förklara utifrån tidigare forskning. Materialet består av inspelningar med 12 informanter som har fått härma sju svenska dialekter. Dessutom kompletteras materialet med intervjuer med samma informanter samt en utskickad enkät med frågor om upplevd tonhöjd hos dialekterna. Resultatet visar en generell tendens att höja rösten vid imitation av dialekter. Dalmål är den dialekt som generellt imiteras ljusast och norrländska mörkast. Detta stämmer även väl överens med resultaten från intervjuerna och enkäten. Där framgår att dalmål generellt uppfattas som ljusare än andra dialekter och norrländska uppfattas som mörkare. En möjlig förklaring till detta är att det är dialekternas ord- och satsmelodi som gör att de uppfattas som mörkare eller ljusare men det är sannolikt inte den enda bidragande faktorn.

<h4>Exotic hadrons are hadrons with constituent quark content different from the normal meson and baryon. The f₀(980) hadron is one of the exotic hadron candidates, which was first discovered in $\pi\pi$ scattering experiments in the 1970's. It could be a ordinary quarnk-antiquark meson, a tetraquark exotic state, a kaon-antikaon molecule, or a quark-antiquark-gluon hybrid state.</h4><p dir="ltr">Anisotropic flow (v_n) is a powerful tool to probe the dynamics of relativistic heavy ion collisions. The observed approximate scaling of v_n by the number of constituent quarks (NCQ) suggests the importance of partonic degree of freedom in these collisions. Large v_n and NCQ-scaling have also been observed in high-multiplicity proton-lead (pPb) collisions at the LHC, suggesting similar dynamics in pPb collisions. The empirically established NCQ-scaling can be exploited to probe the constituent quark content of the f₀(980) hadron.</p><p dir="ltr">We measure the elliptic flow (v₂) of f₀(980) in high-multiplicity pPb collisions at 8 TeV with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) detector at the LHC, through its main pion-pion ($\pi^+\pi^-$) decay channel. The invariant mass spectrum is obtained from opposite sign pion pairs, and the combinatorial background is estimated by same-sign pion pairs and subtracted. The f₀(980) signal and the remaining residual background are modeled by relativistic Breit-Wigner and polynomial functions, respectively. The yield of f₀(980) is extracted as a function of azimuthal angle relative to the event plane, and the f₀(980) v₂ is measured as function of $p_T$, corrected for the event-plane resolution. The non-flow component in f₀(980) v₂ has been estimated by that of K_s⁰. By comparing the measured v₂ of the f₀(980) to those of other hadrons, we infer the number of constituent quarks for the f₀(980) assuming NCQ scaling. The f₀(980) is found to be a 2-quark state in this work. We discuss the systematic uncertainties involved in our study, implications of our result, and possible future works in this endeavor.</p>

In this paper, we examine the determinants of outward FDI from four major OECD investors, namely, the US, Germany, France, and the Netherlands, to 129 developing countries classified under five regions over the period 1995-2008. Our goal is to distinguish whether the motivation for FDI differs among these investors in developing countries. Rather than relying on specific theories of FDI determinants, we examine them all simultaneously by employing Bayesian model averaging (BMA). This approach permits us to select the most appropriate model (or combination of models) that governs FDI allocation and to distinguish robust FDI determinants. We find that no single theory governs the decision of OECD FDI in developing countries but a combination of theories. In particular, OECD investors search for destinations with whom they have established intensive trade relations and that offer a qualified labor force. Low wages and attractive tax rates are robust investment criteria too, and a considerable share of FDI is still resource-driven. Overall, investors show fairly similar strategies in the five developing regions.

Juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis (JNCL, aka. juvenile Batten disease or CLN3 disease), a lethal pediatric neurodegenerative disease without cure, often presents with vision impairment and characteristic ophthalmoscopic features including focal areas of hyper-autofluorescence. In the associated research article “Loss of CLN3, the gene mutated in juvenile neuronal ceroid lipofuscinosis, leads to metabolic impairment and autophagy induction in retinal pigment epithelium” (Zhong et al., 2020) [1], we reported ophthalmoscopic observations of focal autofluorescent lesions or puncta in the Cln3Δex7/8 mouse retina at as young as 8 month old. In this data article, we performed differential interference contrast and confocal imaging analyses in all retinal layers to localize and characterize these autofluorescent lesions, including their spectral characteristics and morphology. We further studied colocalization of these autofluorescent lesions with the JNCL marker mitochondrial ATP synthase F0 sub-complex subunit C and various established retinal cell type markers.

no / The majority of studies have demonstrated a right hemisphere (RH) advantage for the perception of emotions. Other studies have found that the involvement of each hemisphere is valence specific, with the RH better at perceiving negative emotions and the LH better at perceiving positive emotions [Reuter-Lorenz, P., & Davidson, R.J. (1981) Differential contributions of the 2 cerebral hemispheres to the perception of happy and sad faces.Neuropsychologia, 19, 609¿613]. To account for valence laterality effects in emotion perception we propose an `expectancy¿ hypothesis which suggests that valence effects are obtained when the top-down expectancy to perceive an emotion outweighs the strength of bottom-up perceptual information enabling the discrimination of an emotion. A dichotic listening task was used to examine alternative explanations of valence effects in emotion perception. Emotional sentences (spoken in a happy or sad tone of voice), and morphed-happy and morphed-sad sentences (which blended a neutral version of the sentence with the pitch of the emotion sentence) were paired with neutral versions of each sentence and presented dichotically. A control condition was also used, consisting of two identical neutral sentences presented dichotically, with one channel arriving before the other by 7 ms. In support of the RH hypothesis there was a left ear advantage for the perception of sad and happy emotional sentences. However, morphed sentences showed no ear advantage, suggesting that the RH is specialised for the perception of genuine emotions and that a laterality effect may be a useful tool for the detection of fake emotion. Finally, for the control condition we obtained an interaction between the expected emotion and the effect of ear lead. Participants tended to select the ear that received the sentence first, when they expected a `sad¿ sentence, but not when they expected a `happy¿ sentence. The results are discussed in relation to the different theoretical explanations of valence laterality effects in emotion perception.

key words: Czech English, foreign accent, word stress, word accent, stressed syllable, duration, f0, acoustic cues. This study investigates the acoustic properties of word stress in Czech English. The notion of foreign accent is introduced and its drawbacks are presented. Further on the various influences on the perceived degree, or strength, of foreign accent are discussed. Faulty realization of word stress is identified as one of the factors that contribute to unintelligibility of non-native speech (Benrabah, 1997; Hahn, 2004; Cutler, 1984). In Chapter 2 we compare the results of studies that used speakers of a variety of languages and form a basic theory on the acquisition of acoustic cues to word stress. We are mostly interested in f0 and duration. This theory, based on the feature hypothesis (McAllister et al., 2002 in Lee, Guion & Harada, 2006), states that languages that have a similar stress system to that of English (Dutch, Arabic) use their native cues to signal word stress, while non-contrastive languages (Vietnamese, Czech) prefer cue/s that are phonologically active on segmental level in their native language. Speakers of Vietnamese, a tone language, were found to prefer f0 over duration (Nguyen, 2003), so for Czech, a language that uses phonological vowel duration, it is expected that...

This thesis investigates the intonation of Argentine Spanish in Queens, NYC, with the goal of verifying if the unique prosody of producing early peak alignments in the F0 of Argentine Spanish, specifically of Porteños (those from Buenos Aires), is maintained among the intense contact influences with other varieties of Spanish in the area. Previous studies have reported this early peak alignment phenomenon in the Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, and this paper strives to see if this still occurs among Argentine Spanish speakers in New York City. The Buenos Aires speakers were compared with other native Argentine Spanish speakers in New York City who originated from provinces other than Buenos Aires (primarily from Mendoza) to verify if the dialectal varieties of Argentine Spanish had remained the same under the intense language contact situation of living in Queens. The data in the current study are from interviews recorded during the summer of 2014 in the Queens, NYC neighborhood of Elmhurst. Acoustic information obtained includes total syllable duration, F0 measurements, and F0 patterns. Additional linguistic variables included vowel type and vowel syllable position within a word. Extralinguistic variables included speaker sex, age, origin in Argentina, educational level, number of years in NYC, and number of years in Argentina. Results indicate that early peak alignment does indeed occur among Argentine speakers in Queens, NYC; however, it is interesting to note that it not only occurs in the informants from Buenos Aires as predicted, but in the informants from outside Buenos Aires as well. This suggests that the Outside Buenos Aires speakers are undergoing prosodic dialectal leveling with their pitch accent patterns and an increase in stressed syllable duration as occur naturally among the Buenos Aires speakers.

<p dir="ltr">Upon acquiring or learning another language, cross-linguistic influence (CLI) is an inevitable phenomenon with which a bilingual speaker lives. One key aspect of CLI is its bidirectionality, flowing between both the first (L1) and second languages (L2) mutually affecting each other. However, investigations of L1 CLI on L2 have dominated previous bilingual studies, and despite the increasing amount of research on L2 CLI on L1, the phonetic and phonological domains remain relatively underexplored. The primary goal of the present study is to expand our understanding of the underlying mechanisms governing L2 CLI on L1 phonetics and phonology.</p><p dir="ltr">The present study investigates L2 CLI on L1 phonetics and phonology by examining both the speech perception and production of L1 sound categories among two different groups of bilinguals, Korean heritage speakers (HSs, <i>n</i> = 30) and long-term immigrants (LTIs, <i>n</i> = 27) group participants in the US, in comparison to L1(Korean)-immersed (L1-i) native speakers residing in South Korea (<i>n</i> = 30). Participants completed a series of three experimental tasks: (1) a three-alternative forced-choice (3AFC) identification task, (2) an AX discrimination task, and (3) a controlled reading paradigm task.</p><p dir="ltr">Experiment 1 (3AFC task) was conducted to investigate the extent and direction of L2 CLI in perceptual cue weighting to L1 speech categories. In this task, participants listened to a Korean word in each trial, potentially differing in the word-initial stop, and decided which word they heard from a real-word Korean minimal triplet /pul/ ‘fire,’ /p^hul/ ‘grass,’ and /p^*ul/ ‘horn.’ Specifically, the word-initial stop consisted of an eight-by-eight orthogonal voice onset time (VOT)–onset f0 continuum, created through a speech resynthesis technique. Based on the similarities and differences in the use of the two acoustic parameters between Korean (either onset f0 or VOT is a primary cue) and English stops (VOT is the primary cue), bilingual participants were expected to exhibit different cue-weighting patterns, as compared to L1-i speakers. The results from the mixed-effects logistic regression model analyses indicated that while HSs were less sensitive to the Korean primary cue, onset f0, compared to L1-i speakers—suggesting assimilation to L2 in the perceptual domain—LTIs exhibited greater sensitivity to this cue, indicating dissimilation from L2. It was also found that bilingual participants’ Korean dominance significantly influenced their cue weighting in the perception of Korean stops.</p><p dir="ltr">Experiment 2 (AX discrimination task) was administered to assess participants’ perceptual accuracy for L1 stop categories and the potential impact of L1 cue weighting, as estimated in Experiment 1, on their discrimination performance. Notably, the VOT in the stop stimuli used in the AX task were resynthesized to have a consistent VOT of 70 ms across all stimuli. This setup created a condition where participants had no choice but to rely solely on the onset f0 cue—the primary cue to the Korean lenis-aspirated stop contrast, rendering VOT, the primary cue for the voicing contrast in English stops, uninformative. The results from mixed-effects logistic regression models showed that HSs were significantly less accurate in discriminating their L1 stop categories without the VOT cue, while LTIs outperformed the L1-i speakers. That is, the LTI group, the most balanced group in terms of language dominance, had the highest accuracy in discriminating L1 contrasts among the participant groups. Furthermore, individual sensitivity to the onset f0 cue was found to be positively correlated with discrimination performance.</p><p dir="ltr">Experiment 3 (Controlled reading paradigm) aimed to examine L2 CLI on the implementation of acoustic parameters for L1 Korean stops, as well as the potential impact of proficiency and dominance on these parameters. Participants read aloud a list of minimal triplet stimuli differing in the word-initial stop within a carrier phrase. A machine-learning-based audio signal detection system was used to analyze the acoustic parameters, and Bayesian mixed-effects linear regression models, along with quadratic polynomial regression models, were implemented for statistical analysis of the processed data. The results of the production task mirrored the perception task (Experiment 1): HSs demonstrated assimilation to L2 via onset f0, while LTIs showed dissimilation, as compared to L1-i speakers. The analysis also revealed that the degree of bilingual balance in dominance and proficiency significantly influenced the implementation of onset f0, with more balanced bilinguals exhibiting greater category contrasts than less balanced bilinguals, regardless of whether they were Korean-dominant or English-dominant.</p><p dir="ltr">The findings from these experiments provide concrete evidence of L2 CLI in L1 phonetics and phonology. Importantly, the results demonstrate that not only the timing of L2 acquisition and the quantity and quality of L2 input but also the quality and quantity of L1 acquisition and bilingual balance contribute to the direction and the degree of L2 CLI in L1 speech. These findings align with the predictions of the revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r, Flege & Bohn, 2021) and expand its scope of application to include both HSs and LTIs. In particular, the evidence of category assimilation and dissimilation lends support to the bidirectional CLI hypothesis proposed by SLM-r. To conclude, the present dissertation expands our understanding of the nature of L2 CLI in L1 phonetics and phonology in bilingual speakers.</p>