The phenomenon of an ongoing sound change leads in some cases to the pronunciation of short ö becoming more like that of short u. This thesis examines the relationship between short ö and u in Uppland Swedish. The localities included in the investigation were Uppsala, Norrtälje, Östervåla and Gräsö. In particular, the thesis examines the effects of age, gender and social status on the acquisition of a pronunciation where the phonemes are produced in a similar way, and whether the change occurs earlier in some words than others. The informants on Gräsö appear to have the highest occurrence of the merger, while those in Norrtälje are best at keeping ö and u apart. In general, men have a smaller difference between ö and u than women. Three different age groups were analysed and the results show that the oldest informants have the largest difference between ö and u and the youngest informants have the smallest difference. There are no significant differences between the three social status groups, but there is a tendency for those with the lowest social status to be better at keeping the phonemes apart than those with the highest social status. 13 minimal (or near-minimal) pairs were analysed to investigate whether the phonetic context has an effect on the degree to which ö and u are becoming more similar. The study shows that the smallest phonetic difference is found for word pairs with r occurring in the preceding or following context. The largest phonetic distance was found in word pairs beginning with a vowel. The study also examined whether there is a relationship between production, perception and attitude to u-sounding ö in Uppsala. By combining the production test results with the informants’ categorisation of u and ö in the perception test, the study shows that the informants with a small phonetic distance in their own speech were better at categorising stimuli correctly than the speakers who had a larger phonetic distance between ö and u in their own speech.

Mon sujet de recherche traite sur la prononciation de l'espagnol comme langue étrangère chez les élèves québécois, sur leurs difficultés concrètes et lignes de correction qui peuvent leur être attribuées. Dans une première partie plus générale, nous traiterons sur l'enseignement de la prononciation, de la place qu'elle occupe dans l'enseignement d'une langue étrangère. Nous croyons que la prononciation est un aspect de la langue qui a été mis de côté pour mettre en valeur la communication. Si une "mauvaise" prononciation n'entrave pas à la compréhension ou à la communication, elle n'est pas corrigée ni travaillée. Nous pouvons donc nous retrouver avec des étudiants ayant un haut niveau d'espagnol mais dont la prononciation connaît certaines lacunes. Nous déterminerons également ce que nous entendons par "meilleure" ou "mauvaise" prononciation, nous nous interrogerons également sur la pertinence de l'enseignement de la phonétique. Nous nous poserons aussi la question sur la place de la prononciation selon la méthodologie didactique utilisée, et analyserons la quantité et qualité des exercices de prononciation présents ou pas dans les manuels scolaires, et s'ils correspondent aux exigences des documents officiels tels le Cadre commun européenne de référence, ou le Plan curricular de l'institut Cervantès. Dans une deuxième partie nous nous questionnons sur les facteurs qui conditionnent l'apprentissage d'une langue et le perfectionnement de la prononciation dans une langue étrangère, car nous croyons que peut importe l'âge de l'étudiant, il y a toujours place à l'amélioration dans la prononciation. Nous nous interrogeons ensuite sur les tendances générales des francophones lors de leur prononciation de l'espagnol, nous ferons une étude contrastive des phonèmes espagnols et français, puis nous étudierons plus en détail les tendances des élèves québécois, car nous croyons que ces derniers sont dotés de certains atouts en comparaison à d'autres francophones. Dans une troisième partie, nous proposons des exercices visant à améliorer la prononciation chez nos élèves, et afin de vérifier l'efficacité de ces exercices, nous enregistrerons des étudiants ayant bénéficié de ces exercices, et d'autres qui n'y auront pas eu droit. Cette étude comparative cherche à prouver que ces exercices aident réellement et qu'ils, ou d'autres exercices de ce genre, devraient être inclus dans l'enseignement. Le questionnaire dont il s'agit s'attarde principalement au phénomène du [r], que nous croyons être un, ou le son le plus difficile à prononcer en espagnol (autant la vibrante simple comme multiple). Bien entendu, une partie de ce chapitre sera consacrée à l'analyse de résultats. / My subject of study is about Spanish as a second language, in French Canadian students, about their difficulties and the correction aid. In a first part, more general, we discuss about teaching pronunciation, the place it has in teaching as a second language. We believe that pronunciation is an aspect in a language that has been left out to emphasize on communication. If a “bad” pronunciation does not interfere in the comprehension or communication, it is not corrected or worked on. We can then find ourselves with students having a very high level in Spanish, but their pronunciation is not as good. We also define what we intend by “better” or “bad” pronunciation, and we also ask ourselves about the pertinence of teaching phonetics. We also interrogate ourselves on the question of the place of pronunciation depending on the didactic methodology, and we analyze the quantity and quality of the pronunciation exercises we find, or not, in scholar manuals, and if they correspond to the demands of the official documents as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages or the Curricular Plan of Cervantes Institute. In a second part, we ask ourselves about the factors that condition the learning experience of a language, and that is because we believe that no matter the student’s age, there’s always place for amelioration in the pronunciation of a second language. We we’ll also see the French general tendencies in their Spanish pronunciation, and we’ll make a contrastive study on Spanish and French phenomena and then elaborate on French Canadian tendencies, and that is because we believe that they have some sort of vantages in comparison to other French speaking people. In a third and last part, we propose exercises that tend to help our student’s pronunciation, and to verify the efficiency of those exercises, we will record students that beneficiated of those exercises, and others who did not practice. That study wants to prove that those exercises really help, and that they should be included in the teaching and learning experience. The questionnaire we use is especially dedicated to the [r] phenomenon, because we believe it is a, or the most difficult sound to pronounce in Spanish (simple and multiple vibration forms). Of course, a part of this study will be dedicated to the results analysis.

No description available.

Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit einem datengetriebenen Verfahren zur Graphem-Phonem-Konvertierung für ein Sprachsynthesesystem. Die Aufgabe besteht darin, die Aussprache für beliebige Wörter zu bestimmen, auch für solche Wörter, die nicht im Lexikon des Systems enthalten sind. Die Architektur an sich ist sprachenunabhängig, von der Sprache abhängig sind lediglich die Wissensquellen, die zur Laufzeit des Systems geladen werden. Die Erstellung von Wissensquellen für weitere Sprachen soll weitgehend automatisch und ohne Einsatz von Expertenwissen möglich sein. Expertenwissen kann verwendet werden, um die Ergebnisse zu verbessern, darf aber keine Voraussetzung sein. Für die Bestimmung der Transkription werden zwei neuronale Netze verwendet. Das erste Netz generiert aus der Buchstabenfolge des Wortes die zu realisierenden Laute einschließlich der Silbengrenzen, und das zweite bestimmt im Anschluß daran die Position der Wortbetonung. Diese Trennung hat den Vorteil, daß man für die Bestimmung des Wortakzentes das Wissen über die gesamte Lautfolge einbeziehen kann. Andere Verfahren, die die Transkription in einem Schritt bestimmen, haben das Problem, bereits zu Beginn des Wortes über den Akzent entscheiden zu müssen, obwohl die Aussprache des Wortes noch gar nicht feststeht. Zudem bietet die Trennung die Möglichkeit, zwei speziell auf die Anforderung zugeschnittene Netze zu trainieren. Die Besonderheit der hier verwendeten neuronalen Netze ist die Einführung einer Skalierungsschicht zwischen der eigentlichen Eingabe und der versteckten Schicht. Eingabe und Skalierungsschicht werden über eine Diagonalmatrix verbunden, wobei auf die Gewichte dieser Verbindung ein Weight Decay (Gewichtezerfall) angewendet wird. Damit erreicht man eine Bewertung der Eingabeinformation während des Trainings. Eingabeknoten mit einem großen Informationsgehalt werden verstärkt, während weniger interessante Knoten abgeschwächt werden. Das kann sogar soweit gehen, daß einzelne Knoten vollständig abgetrennt werden. Der Zweck dieser Verbindung ist, den Einfluß des Rauschens in den Trainingsdaten zu reduzieren. Durch das Ausblenden der unwichtigen Eingabewerte ist das Netz besser in der Lage, sich auf die wichtigen Daten zu konzentrieren. Das beschleunigt das Training und verbessert die erzielten Ergebnisse. In Verbindung mit einem schrittweisen Ausdünnen der Gewichte (Pruning) werden zudem störende oder unwichtige Verbindungen innerhalb der Netzwerkarchitektur gelöscht. Damit wird die Generalisierungsfähigkeit noch einmal erhöht. Die Aufbereitung der Lexika zur Generierung der Trainingsmuster für die neuronalen Netze wird ebenfalls automatisch durchgeführt. Dafür wird mit Hilfe der dynamischen Zeitanpassung (DTW) der optimale Pfad in einer Ebene gesucht, die auf der einen Koordinate durch die Buchstaben des Wortes und auf der anderen Koordinate durch die Lautfolge aufgespannt wird. Somit erhält man eine Zuordnung der Laute zu den Buchstaben. Aus diesen Zuordnungen werden die Muster für das Training der Netze generiert. Um die Transkriptionsergebnisse weiter zu verbessern, wurde ein hybrides Verfahren unter Verwendung der Lexika und der Netze entwickelt. Unbekannte Wörter werden zuerst in Bestandteile aus dem Lexikon zerlegt und die Lautfolgen dieser Teilwörter zur Gesamttranskription zusammengesetzt. Dabei werden Lücken zwischen den Teilwörtern durch die neuronalen Netze aufgefüllt. Dies ist allerdings nicht ohne weiteres möglich, da es zu Fehlern an den Schnittstellen zwischen den Teiltranskriptionen kommen kann. Dieses Problem wird mit Hilfe des Lexikons gelöst, das für die Generierung der Trainingsmuster aufbereitet wurde. Hier ist eine eindeutige Zuordnung der Laute zu den sie generierenden Buchstaben enthalten. Somit können die Laute an den Schnittstellen neu bewertet und Transkriptionsfehler vermieden werden. Die Verlagsausgabe dieser Dissertation erschien 2005 im w.e.b.-Universitätsverlag Dresden (ISBN 3-937672-76-1). / The topic of this thesis is a system which is able to perform a grapheme-to-phoneme conversion for several languages without changes in its architecture. This is achieved by separation of the language dependent knowledge bases from the run-time system. Main focus is an automated adaptation to new languages by generation of new knowledge bases without manual effort with a minimal requirement for additional information. The only source is a lexicon containing all the words together with their appropriate phonetic transcription. Additional knowledge can be used to improve or accelerate the adaptation process, but it must not be a prerequisite. Another requirement is a fully automatic process without manual interference or post-editing. This allows for the adaptation to a new language without even having a command of that language. The only precondition is the pronunciation dictionary which should be enough for the data-driven approach to learn a new language. The automatic adaptation process is divided into two parts. In the first step the lexicon is pre-processed to determine which grapheme sequence belongs to which phoneme. This is the basis for the generation of the training patterns for the data-driven learning algorithm. In the second part mapping rules are derived automatically which are finally used to create the phonetic transcription of any word, even if it not contained in the dictionary. Task is to have a generalisation process that can handle all words in a text that has to be read out by a text-to-speech system.

Syftet med studien är att undersöka erfarna lärare i svenska som andraspråks uppfattningar i arbetet med momentet uttal. Detta syfte avser jag uppfylla genom att besvara följande frågor: 1.      Vilka faktorer påverkar enligt lärarna elevers uttal i svenskan? 2.      Vilka arbetssätt väljer lärarna att använda? 3.      Vilka arbetsmetoder använder lärarna i sin undervisning? Det teoretiska ramverket i denna studie bygger dels på behaviorismen och dess kontrastiva hypotes dels på den sociokulturella teorin. I denna kvalitativa studie har fem behöriga lärare i svenska som andraspråk, som arbetar i årskurserna 4-6 och har lång erfarenhet intervjuats. Intervjuerna har kategoriserats med en kvalitativ innehållsanalys för att identifiera och ta fram teman för innehållet. Sammanfattningsvis kan konstateras att hos samtliga respondenter genomsyrar undervisningen i svenskt uttal de flesta momenten i ämnet svenska som andraspråk. Elevernas ankomstålder, modersmål och studieteknik är de faktorer som mest påverkar deras förmåga att tillägna sig ett korrekt svenskt uttal. För att nå detta mål söker lärarna att hitta elevernas proximala utvecklingszon, för att med den som utgångspunkt bestämma vilka arbetssätt (innehållet i undervisningen) som ska prioriteras. De vanligaste arbetsmetoderna är högläsning och imitation, där man tränar uttal av olika kontraster av fonem, kvantitet, betoning och prosodi. / The purpose of the study is to investigate experienced teachers´ perceptions about teaching pronunciation in swedish as a second language. This purpose I intend to fulfill by answering the following questions:   1. What factors do teachers consider important when working to develop pronunciation? 2. In which way do teachers choose to work? 3. What teaching methods do teachers use and how are they applied?   The theoretical framework in this study is based on behaviorism and its contrastive hypothesis and partly on socio-cultural theory. In this qualitative study, five qualified and experienced teachers in Swedish as second language, who work in grades 4-6 have been interviewed. The interviews have been categorized with a qualitative content analysis as a method to identify and develop themes for the content.   In conclusion, it can be noted that all interviewees consider that teaching of swedish pronunciation permeates most of the topics in the subject Swedish as other language. The students' age of arrival to Sweden, mother tongue and study technique are the factors that most affect their ability to acquire a correct Swedish pronunciation. To achieve this goal, the teachers seek to find the students' zone of proximal development as starting point in determining which way to work (the content of teaching) to be prioritized. The most common working methods are aloud reading and imitation, where pupils practice the pronunciation of different contrasts of phoneme, quantity, accent, and prosody.

O presente trabalho é o produto de minha pesquisa acerca dos aspectos históricos e linguísticos que subjazem o conceito do fonema. Nossa ideia originou-se a partir de dois extratos diferentes escritos pelo linguista russo Roman Jakobson: 1) sobre a gênese do fonema: “A procura pelos constituintes diferenciais discretos mais elementares da linguagem nos faz remontar à doutrina do sphoṭa dos gramáticos do sânscrito e a concepção do στοιχεῖον de Platão, mas o verdadeiro estudo linguístico desses invariantes iniciou-se apenas em 1870” (Jakobson, 1962:467); e 2) acerca dos fundadores da Fonologia: “Os primeiros alicerces da Fonologia foram assentados por Baudouin de Courtenay, Ferdinand de Saussure e seus discípulos” (Jakobson, 1962:232). Desta forma, tentamos realizar uma “reconstrução” desta trajetória histórica e linguística, dos nomes, fatos e teorias que formam o conceito da unidade fonológica no estudo científico da língua. Iniciamos com o estudo da ciência da linguagem na Índia antiga (em particular, o estudo da gramática do sânscrito), seguido pelo estudo do alfabeto grego (incluindo aí os problemas relativos à língua grega, assim como à Gramática e à Filosofia). Finalmente, tentamos fazer “um recorte” preciso do momento na história das ideias linguísticas quando o conceito científico do fonema foi delineado, definido e incorporado à terminologia da epistemologia linguística. Os grandes teóricos da escola incipiente da Linguística Geral, da Fonologia e do fonema, são, como disse Jakobson, o linguista e filólogo suíço Saussure, e o filólogo e foneticista polonês Courtenay; mas a história do fonema não é nada simples. Recentemente, um trabalho meticuloso por parte dos pesquisadores tem resgatado grande parte desta história já há muito esquecida, no que tange as teorias antigas dos gramáticos filósofos hindus e gregos, e os manuscritos de Saussure recentemente publicados, assim como os artigos de Courtenay e seus alunos (entre eles o polonês Mikołaj Kruszewski), escritos que, em sua maioria, permanecem sem tradução ao português. Nossa tarefa, então, foi trazer à luz esta história, seus desenvolvimentos no campo da Linguística em geral, e da Fonologia em particular. Realizamos nossa análise por meio de um cuidadoso estudo do fonema, um conceito no qual vários séculos de história e de ideias linguísticas estão sedimentados. / The present work is the product of my research into the historical and linguistic aspects that underlie the concept of the phoneme. Our main idea originated from two different extracts by the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson: 1) on the genesis of the phoneme: “the search for the ultimate discrete differential constituents of language can be traced back to the sphoṭa doctrine of the Sanskrit grammarians and to Plato’s conception of στοιχεῖον, but the actual linguistic study of these invariants started only in the 1870s” (Jakobson, 1962:467); and 2) on the founders of Phonology: “The first foundations of Phonology were laid by Baudouin de Courtenay, Ferdinand de Saussure and their disciples” (Jakobson, 1962:232). Thus, we attempted a historical and linguistic “reconstruction” of names, facts and theories that comprise the concept of a phonological unit and that of the phonological structure of language. We started with the study of the Science of Language in ancient India (in particular the grammar of Sanskrit), followed by the study of the Greek alphabet (including its implications concerning the Greek language, as well as Grammar and Philosophy). Finally, we attempted a precise “cut”, so to speak, on the moment in the history of Linguistic ideas when the scientific concept of the phoneme was outlined, defined and incorporated into the terminology of modern linguistic epistemology. The great theoreticians of the incipient school of General Linguistics, of Phonology and of the phoneme are, as Jakobson stated, the Swiss linguist and philologist Saussure, and the Polish philologist and phonetician Courtenay; yet the story inside the phoneme is anything but a simple one. Recently, meticulous scholarship has rescued a great part of this long forgotten history, in what concerns the ancient theories of both the Hindu and the Greek grammarian-philosophers, and the unpublished manuscript works of Saussure and the works of Courtenay and his students (among them the Polish professor Mikołaj Kruszewski), works that so far have remained without translation into Portuguese. Our task, then, has been to bring this history to light, its developments in the field of Linguistics in general, and Phonology in particular. We carried out this analysis by means of a careful study of the phoneme, a concept in which several hundred years of history and linguistic ideas have crystallized.

O presente trabalho é o produto de minha pesquisa acerca dos aspectos históricos e linguísticos que subjazem o conceito do fonema. Nossa ideia originou-se a partir de dois extratos diferentes escritos pelo linguista russo Roman Jakobson: 1) sobre a gênese do fonema: “A procura pelos constituintes diferenciais discretos mais elementares da linguagem nos faz remontar à doutrina do sphoṭa dos gramáticos do sânscrito e a concepção do στοιχεῖον de Platão, mas o verdadeiro estudo linguístico desses invariantes iniciou-se apenas em 1870” (Jakobson, 1962:467); e 2) acerca dos fundadores da Fonologia: “Os primeiros alicerces da Fonologia foram assentados por Baudouin de Courtenay, Ferdinand de Saussure e seus discípulos” (Jakobson, 1962:232). Desta forma, tentamos realizar uma “reconstrução” desta trajetória histórica e linguística, dos nomes, fatos e teorias que formam o conceito da unidade fonológica no estudo científico da língua. Iniciamos com o estudo da ciência da linguagem na Índia antiga (em particular, o estudo da gramática do sânscrito), seguido pelo estudo do alfabeto grego (incluindo aí os problemas relativos à língua grega, assim como à Gramática e à Filosofia). Finalmente, tentamos fazer “um recorte” preciso do momento na história das ideias linguísticas quando o conceito científico do fonema foi delineado, definido e incorporado à terminologia da epistemologia linguística. Os grandes teóricos da escola incipiente da Linguística Geral, da Fonologia e do fonema, são, como disse Jakobson, o linguista e filólogo suíço Saussure, e o filólogo e foneticista polonês Courtenay; mas a história do fonema não é nada simples. Recentemente, um trabalho meticuloso por parte dos pesquisadores tem resgatado grande parte desta história já há muito esquecida, no que tange as teorias antigas dos gramáticos filósofos hindus e gregos, e os manuscritos de Saussure recentemente publicados, assim como os artigos de Courtenay e seus alunos (entre eles o polonês Mikołaj Kruszewski), escritos que, em sua maioria, permanecem sem tradução ao português. Nossa tarefa, então, foi trazer à luz esta história, seus desenvolvimentos no campo da Linguística em geral, e da Fonologia em particular. Realizamos nossa análise por meio de um cuidadoso estudo do fonema, um conceito no qual vários séculos de história e de ideias linguísticas estão sedimentados. / The present work is the product of my research into the historical and linguistic aspects that underlie the concept of the phoneme. Our main idea originated from two different extracts by the Russian linguist Roman Jakobson: 1) on the genesis of the phoneme: “the search for the ultimate discrete differential constituents of language can be traced back to the sphoṭa doctrine of the Sanskrit grammarians and to Plato’s conception of στοιχεῖον, but the actual linguistic study of these invariants started only in the 1870s” (Jakobson, 1962:467); and 2) on the founders of Phonology: “The first foundations of Phonology were laid by Baudouin de Courtenay, Ferdinand de Saussure and their disciples” (Jakobson, 1962:232). Thus, we attempted a historical and linguistic “reconstruction” of names, facts and theories that comprise the concept of a phonological unit and that of the phonological structure of language. We started with the study of the Science of Language in ancient India (in particular the grammar of Sanskrit), followed by the study of the Greek alphabet (including its implications concerning the Greek language, as well as Grammar and Philosophy). Finally, we attempted a precise “cut”, so to speak, on the moment in the history of Linguistic ideas when the scientific concept of the phoneme was outlined, defined and incorporated into the terminology of modern linguistic epistemology. The great theoreticians of the incipient school of General Linguistics, of Phonology and of the phoneme are, as Jakobson stated, the Swiss linguist and philologist Saussure, and the Polish philologist and phonetician Courtenay; yet the story inside the phoneme is anything but a simple one. Recently, meticulous scholarship has rescued a great part of this long forgotten history, in what concerns the ancient theories of both the Hindu and the Greek grammarian-philosophers, and the unpublished manuscript works of Saussure and the works of Courtenay and his students (among them the Polish professor Mikołaj Kruszewski), works that so far have remained without translation into Portuguese. Our task, then, has been to bring this history to light, its developments in the field of Linguistics in general, and Phonology in particular. We carried out this analysis by means of a careful study of the phoneme, a concept in which several hundred years of history and linguistic ideas have crystallized.

This study aims at investigating the suitability of the Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis and the Speech Learning Model in describing young Swedish learners’ L2 phonology difficulties. It also explores what L1 sounds they replace L2 sounds with, and whether spelling has any influence on pronunciation. 15 Swedish students aged 9-10 were interviewed and recorded reading a word list containing minimal pairs, a text passage, and free speech. The focus was on initial and final / ʃ / and / tʃ /, initial and medial / s / and / z /, and initial / ð / and / θ /. The recordings were analysed with spectrograms and compared to a native speaker. The results were that the SLM has an advantage over the CAH. The results show that / z / was replaced by / s / 100% of the time, / tʃ / was mostly replaced by / ʃ /, but also by / k /; and that / θ / and / ð / were replaced by many different sounds that were not anticipated. The results also showed that orthography affects pronunciation for / θ /, / ð / and / tʃ /, but not for / z /. Some students had nearly established new categories for some of the new sounds, but their daily encounters with English through TV, music, and school does not seem to have had a significant part in this.

The purpose of the study was to investigate the influence of THRASS (Teaching Handwriting, Reading and Spelling Skills) on the word level accuracy skills of a group of grade 2 learners. Word level accuracy is one sub skill in learning to read and is an indicator of the word recognition abilities of the child. THRASS is a program that has been designed to systematically teach phonics and, thus, teaches the basic building blocks of word sounds and structure so as to improve the child’s decoding ability and word recognition ability. The research took place within the positivist paradigm and the methodology is quantitative in nature. The data collection method took the form of a one group pretest-posttest design, where a standardised reading test was administered prior to exposing the participants to the THRASS Program and then readministered one year later on the same group of learners. Data analysis took the form of statistical analysis to investigate any statistical significant difference in the word level accuracy skills of those Grade 2 learners. The result showed that over the period of a year the average reading accuracy age for the target population increased by four months. However, after statistical analysis the difference was not statistically significant. The Null Hypothesis that; exposing a group of Grade 2 learners to the THRASS Program for a period of one year will have no statistically significant influence on their word level accuracy skills cannot be rejected . However, the changes both in average reading accuracy as well as error patterns have inspired recommendations for further research. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Educational Psychology / unrestricted

Higher-level features are considered to be a potential remedy against transmission line and cross-channel degradations, currently some of the biggest problems associated with speaker verification. Phoneme durations in particular are not altered by these factors; thus a robust duration model will be a particularly useful addition to traditional cepstral based speaker verification systems. In this dissertation we investigate the feasibility of phoneme durations as a feature for speaker verification. Simple speaker specific triphone duration models are created to statistically represent the phoneme durations. Durations are obtained from an automatic hidden Markov model (HMM) based automatic speech recognition system and are modeled using single mixture Gaussian distributions. These models are applied in a speaker verification system (trained and tested on the YOHO corpus) and found to be a useful feature, even when used in isolation. When fused with acoustic features, verification performance increases significantly. A novel speech rate normalization technique is developed in order to remove some of the inherent intra-speaker variability (due to differing speech rates). Speech rate variability has a negative impact on both speaker verification and automatic speech recognition. Although the duration modelling seems to benefit only slightly from this procedure, the fused system performance improvement is substantial. Other factors known to influence the duration of phonemes are incorporated into the duration model. Utterance final lengthening is known be a consistent effect and thus “position in sentence” is modeled. “Position in word” is also modeled since triphones do not provide enough contextual information. This is found to improve performance since some vowels’ duration are particularly sensitive to its position in the word. Data scarcity becomes a problem when building speaker specific duration models. By using information from available data, unknown durations can be predicted in an attempt to overcome the data scarcity problem. To this end we develop a novel approach to predict unknown phoneme durations from the values of known phoneme durations for a particular speaker, based on the maximum likelihood criterion. This model is based on the observation that phonemes from the same broad phonetic class tend to co-vary strongly, but that there is also significant cross-class correlations. This approach is tested on the TIMIT corpus and found to be more accurate than using back-off techniques. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted