The purpose of this study was to describe the phonetic repertoire of late 8 phonemes among adolescents and young adults with Down syndrome and then determine the relationship between age and presence of the latest developing phonemes as well as their impact on intelligibility. This study also described the stimulability profile for those late 8 phonemes that were produced in error. The Arizona Articulation and Phonology Scale was administered to individuals with Down syndrome between the ages of 12 – 21;11 to obtain a phonetic profile. Among those participants included in the study, on average, 87.5% of the late 8 phonemes were present. Seven of eight participants were stimulable for all phonemes that were misarticulated. Results did not indicate a significant correlation between either age or intelligibility and the presence of late 8 phonemes.

Although tone plays an important role in Chinese speech perception, many issues regarding tone processing remained debatable. Among these issues, whether tone and segment are integrally or independently processed is the one that motivated this study. To investigate the integration vs. independence view of tone and segment (i.e., rime in this study) processing during Mandarin sentence comprehension, the present experiment adopted the violation paradigm and event- related potential (ERP) recording. Participants heard a series of sentences and judged whether each sentence made sense or not after its offset. The sentences included congruous sentences that embodied the original word (e.g., "观众"/guan1-zhong4/; "audience") and incongruous sentences that were created by mismatching tone (e.g., "观肿"/guan1-zhong3/), rime (e.g., " 观赚"/guan1-zhuan4/) or tone-plus-rime (e.g., "观转"/guan1-zhuan3/) of the second syllable of the original words in the congruous sentences. Larger N400 (250-400 ms) and P600 (500-700 ms) were evoked by the incongruous sentences than congruous sentences. Among the incongruous sentences, the N400 elicited by double violation (i.e., tone-plus-rime violation) was larger than rime violation, which was in turn larger than tone violation. The P600 evoked by tone violation was larger than rime violation in 500-600 ms, but they were comparable in 600-700 ms. In addition, the P600 evoked by tone and rime violation were both larger than double violation. The different ERP effects among the three violation conditions supported the independence view of tone and rime processing. Based on the results, a dynamic model of spoken word processing was proposed, in which the functional dissociation of tone and segment across different stages was taken into consideration.

Black English (BE) is a rule-governed linguistic system with its own phonology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. BE is a dialect, not a disordered variation of standard English (SE). When compared to SE, BE phonology has been described in terms of omissions, substitutions, and additions. This study looked at normal BE speakers in Portland, Oregon and described their dialectal differences in terms of phonological processes.

In the clinical management of voice clients, it is important to measure accurate pitch ranges in order to determine if a client has a normal range or is speaking at an optimum pitch. It is not clear from the literature which vowel should be used in determining these pitch ranges. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the phonational frequency ranges in adults with no vocal training when phonating the cardinal vowels of /i/, /u/, and /a/. The investigation sought to answer the following question: Does the phonational frequency range in vocally untrained adults vary significantly when phonating the cardinal vowels of /i/, /u/, and /a/?

No description available.

No description available.

This study examines the effects of speech style, syllable stress, and proficiency level on the production of the second-language (L2) Spanish vowels /e/ and /o/. The study addresses traditional descriptions of L2 Spanish (e.g. Stockwell & Bowen, 1965), which claim that English-speaking learners, unlike native speakers (NSs), reduce vowels in unstressed syllables and diphthongize /e/ and /o/ in stressed syllables. Additionally, it adds to previous research by investigating how speech style affects L2 Spanish vowels, how these effects change by course level, and how they compare to NS style-shifting. Data was gathered from 55 adult learners of Spanish (SLs) at three course levels, as well as 10 NSs of Spanish using two elicitation tasks at different levels of formality. A total of 7,740 word-medial tokens of /e/ and /o/ was extracted, and vowels' F1, F2, duration, and diphthongization were measured using Praat. ANOVA tests were run to determine the main and interaction effects of participant group, elicitation task, and syllable stress on these four response variables for each vowel. Significant main effects as well as interaction effects were found for group, task, and stress on the F1 and F2 of /e/ and /o/, as well as interaction effects, providing evidence that the SLs and NSs centralized their unstressed vowels, that /e/ and /o/ became more raised and peripheral as course level increased, and that the SLs at all levels peripheralized their vowels in formal speech. / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

This study is a very basic handbook of Farsi phonetics and syntax for use by English as a Second Language (ESL) instructors who have had little or no contact with the structure of the Persian language. Emphasis is placed on presenting an inventory of selected phonological and syntactic items which are problems for native Farsi speakers who want to learn English.

by Choy Chi Yan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-115). / Text in English; abstract also in Chinese. / by Choy Chi Yan. / ABSTRACT --- p.I / ACKNOWLEDGMENTS --- p.III / TABLE OF CONTENTS --- p.IV / LIST OF FIGURES --- p.VII / LIST OF TABLES --- p.VIII / Chapter 1. --- INTRODUCTION --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Speech Recognition --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Development of Speech Recognisers --- p.4 / Chapter 1.3 --- Speech Recognition for Chinese Language --- p.5 / Chapter 1.4 --- Objectives of the thesis --- p.6 / Chapter 1.5 --- Thesis Structure --- p.7 / Chapter 2. --- PHONOLOGICAL AND ACOUSTICAL PROPERTIES OF MANDARIN CHINESE --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1 --- Characteristics of Mandarin Chinese --- p.9 / Chapter 2.1.1 --- Syllabic Structures --- p.10 / Chapter 2.1.2 --- Lexical Tones --- p.11 / Chapter 2.2 --- Basic Phonetic Units for Mandarin Chinese --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.1 --- Tonal Syllables and Base Syllables --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.2 --- Initial-Finals --- p.14 / Chapter 2.2.3 --- Phones --- p.16 / Chapter 2.2.4 --- Preme-Core-Finals and Preme-Tonemes --- p.17 / Chapter 2.2.5 --- Summary-The phonological hierarchy of Mandarin Syllables --- p.19 / Chapter 3. --- HIDDEN MARKOV MODELS --- p.20 / Chapter 3.1 --- Introduction --- p.20 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Speech Data --- p.20 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Fundamental of HMMs --- p.21 / Chapter 3.2 --- Using Hidden Markov Models for Speech Recognition --- p.22 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Likelihood of the state sequence of speech observations --- p.22 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- The Recognition Problem --- p.24 / Chapter 3.3 --- Output Probability Distributions --- p.25 / Chapter 3.4 --- Model Training --- p.26 / Chapter 3.4.1 --- State Sequence Estimation --- p.26 / Chapter 3.4.2 --- Gaussian Mixture Models --- p.29 / Chapter 3.4.3 --- Parameter Estimation --- p.30 / Chapter 3.5 --- Speech Recognition and Viterbi Decoding --- p.31 / Chapter 3.6 --- Summary --- p.32 / Chapter 4. --- LARGE VOCABULARY CONTINUOUS SPEECH RECOGNITION FOR MANDARIN CHINESE --- p.33 / Chapter 4.1 --- Introduction --- p.33 / Chapter 4.2 --- Large Vocabulary Mandarin Chinese Recognition System --- p.34 / Chapter 4.2.1 --- Overall Architecture for the Speech Recogniser --- p.34 / Chapter 4.2.2 --- Signal Representation and Features --- p.36 / Chapter 4.2.3 --- Subword Unit Models Based on HMMs --- p.39 / Chapter 4.2.4 --- Training of Subword Units --- p.42 / Chapter 4.2.5 --- Language Model (LM) --- p.43 / Chapter 4.2.6 --- "Transcriptions, Word Networks and Dictionaries for LVCSR System" --- p.44 / Chapter 4.2.7 --- Viterbi Decoding --- p.47 / Chapter 4.2.8 --- Performance Analysis --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3 --- Experiments --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Tasks --- p.48 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Speech Database --- p.49 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Baseline Experimental Results --- p.51 / Chapter 4.4 --- Context Dependency in Speech --- p.52 / Chapter 4.4.1 --- Introduction --- p.52 / Chapter 4.4.2 --- Context Dependent Phonetic Models --- p.53 / Chapter 4.4.3 --- Word Boundaries and Word network for context-dependent HMMs --- p.54 / Chapter 4.4.4 --- Recognition Results Using Cross-Syllable Context-Dependent Units --- p.56 / Chapter 4.5 --- Tree-Based Clustering --- p.58 / Chapter 4.5.1 --- Introduction --- p.58 / Chapter 4.5.2 --- Decision Tree Based Clustering --- p.59 / Chapter 4.5.3 --- The Question Sets --- p.61 / Chapter 4.5.4 --- Convergence Condition --- p.61 / Chapter 4.4.5 --- The Final Results --- p.63 / Chapter 4.6 --- Conclusions --- p.65 / Chapter 5. --- APPLICATION1 ISOLATED WORD RECOGNITION FOR MANDARIN CHINESE --- p.67 / Chapter 5.1 --- Introduction --- p.67 / Chapter 5.2 --- Isolated Word Recogniser --- p.68 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- System Description --- p.68 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Experimental Results --- p.70 / Chapter 5.3 --- Discussions and Conclusions --- p.71 / Chapter 6. --- APPLICATION2 SUBWORD UNITS FOR A MANDARIN KEYWORD SPOTTING SYSTEM --- p.74 / Chapter 6.1 --- INTRODUCTION --- p.74 / Chapter 6.2 --- RECOGNITION SYSTEM DESCRIPTION --- p.75 / Chapter 6.2.1 --- Overall Architecture and Recognition Network for the keyword Spotters --- p.75 / Chapter 6.2.2 --- Signal Representation and Features --- p.76 / Chapter 6.2.3 --- Keyword Models --- p.76 / Chapter 6.2.4 --- Filler Models --- p.77 / Chapter 6.2.5 --- Language Modeling and Search --- p.78 / Chapter 6.3 --- EXPERIMENTS --- p.78 / Chapter 6.3.1 --- Tasks --- p.78 / Chapter 6.3.2 --- Speech Database --- p.79 / Chapter 6.3.3 --- Performance Measures --- p.80 / Chapter 6.3.4 --- Details of Different Word-spotters --- p.80 / Chapter 6.3.5 --- General Filler Models --- p.81 / Chapter 6.4 --- EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS --- p.83 / Chapter 6.5 --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.84 / Chapter 7. --- CONCLUSIONS --- p.87 / Chapter 7.1 --- Review of the Work --- p.87 / Chapter 7.1.1 --- Large Vocabulary Continuous Speech Recognition for Mandarin Chinese --- p.87 / Chapter 7.1.2 --- Isolated Word Recognition for a Stock Inquiry Application --- p.88 / Chapter 7.1.3 --- Keyword Spotting for Mandarin Chinese --- p.89 / Chapter 7.2 --- Suggestions for Further Work --- p.89 / Chapter 7.3 --- Conclusion --- p.91 / APPENDIX --- p.92 / BIBLIOGRAPHY --- p.111