Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University.

Thesis (M.Eng.(Computer Engineering)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Summaries in Afrikaans and English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 112-123).

Bibliography: p. [217]-221.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Speech and Hearing Sciences / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

A homework set for learning the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both reading and writing the IPA are used. Note that these .doc files use the old SILDoulos IPA93 font. The set includes the problem set and answer key. / This collection consists of learning objects developed for use in courses offered by the Department of Linguistics. Learning objects include lectures, presentations, quizzes, activities, and more. Access to this collection is restricted to authorized faculty and instructors. For access to this collection, please contact Dr. Amy Fountain, Department of Linguistics, avf@email.arizona.edu.

This thesis investigates the genesis and evolution of the regional variety of French spoken in Béarn, southwestern France, by considering phonetic and phonological changes taking place in two different contact situations: language contact between French and Béarnais, and dialect contact with other contemporary varieties of French. Through an examination of linguistic transfer, in a situation of bilingualism, and of levelling and diffusion during dialect contact, the thesis challenges two long-standing assumptions about regional French: that it results from ‘substrate residue’ and that this ‘residue’ is ephemeral and will therefore be lost over time. The methodology is sociophonetic, combining traditional Labovian data collection techniques with detailed acoustic phonetic analysis. The acoustic analyses focus on the mid-vowel and nasal unit systems of Béarnais and French, first examining L1-to-L2 transfer and subsequently investigating apparent-time changes taking place in regional French as a result of dialect contact. The findings show that, while this variety of regional French contains clear cases of ‘substrate residue’ from Béarnais, its formation during language contact is better accounted for by a combination of linguistic transfer, divergence and innovation, with structural correspondences between the surface phonologies of the languages influencing the outcomes of contact in each case, as predicted by Flege’s Speech Learning Model. The assumption that regional French features are transitory is refuted: the results of the apparent-time study show that young speakers in Béarn are not simply involved in the wholesale adoption of the northern French norm over time. Contemporary regional French in Béarn is shown to constitute a distinctive combination of local, supralocal and innovative features resulting primarily from the various mechanisms which constitute Kerswill’s model of Regional Dialect Levelling.

ABSTRACT This study describes selected aspects of the phonetic and phonological structure of the G|ui language, a poorly documented endangered Khoe (Central Khoisan) language spoken in Botwana. It conducts instrumental phonetic investigations, namely analyses of palatograms, linguograms, aerodynamic recordings, sound spectrograms, spectra, waveforms, and pitch measurements, in order to provide an objective basis for the detailed description of phonetic features of consonants, vowels, and tones. The description includes phonetic and phonological topics, involving consonants, vowels, and tones, and in addition, it deals with relevant morphological phenomena, such as the compound verb, verbal reduplication and verbal suffixes. This research also explores some theoretical issues, such as the unitary nature of clicks and their accompaniments, the integration of the clicks and non-clicks within a single set of features, the correct interpretation of tonal structure. Two types of historical sound shifts are also dealt with: namely, palatalization which is involved in the nonclick consonant system, and the click replacement which is involved in the click consonant system. In addition to the phonetic and phonological topics, selected aspects of the sociolinguistic profile of this endangered language are also documented.

Lexical tone plays an important role in tonal languages. Acoustically, pitch is determined by the periodicity of speech, which is measured as the fundamental frequency (F0) of acoustic signals. In each tonal language, there are a certain number of lexical tones that are described by distinctive pitch contours. Cantonese and Mandarin have four and six tones, respectively. / People with sensorineural hearing loss have difficulty in utilizing spectral information for speech recognition and rely heavily on temporal information. The temporal information of speech is divided into three parts, based on the rate of amplitude fluctuation: temporal envelope (below 50 Hz), periodicity (50-500 Hz), and fine structure (above 500 Hz). / Previous studies show that hearing-impaired people have difficulties in perceiving tones, even though they are aided with cochlear implants (CIs). In this thesis, two approaches are investigated to improve Chinese tone recognition. In the first approach, TEPCs go through a process of non-linear expansion in order to increase the modulation depth of periodicity-related amplitude fluctuation. Results of listening tests show that TEPC expansion leads to a noticeable improvement on tone identification accuracy. In the second approach, the effectiveness of enhancing temporal periodicity cues in noise is investigated. Temporal periodicity cues are simplified into a sinusoidal wave with frequency equivalent to the F0 of speech. This leads to a consistent and significant improvement on tone identification performance at different noise levels. This part of research is expected to be helpful in designing CI processing strategy for effective speech perception of tonal languages. / The goals of this thesis are to investigate what are the effective temporal cues for lexical tone perception of Chinese and how to manipulate or enhance these cues for better performance of tone perception. We adopt the research method of acoustic simulation with normal-hearing subjects. A four-channel noise-excited vocoder is used to generate test stimuli for tone identification. / We compare the contributions of temporal envelope and periodicity components (TEPCs) from different frequency regions to tone recognition in Cantonese and Mandarin. It is observed that TEPCs from high-frequency region (1-4 kHz) are more important than those from low-frequency region (< 1 kHz). In noise condition, tone recognition performance with temporal cues degrades and more spectral information is needed. / Yuan, Meng. / Adviser: Tan Lee. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 71-01, Section: B, page: 0565. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 131-146). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, MI : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese.