No estudo fonológico experimental descrito nesta dissertação, buscamos testar a capacidade dos falantes de português de reconhecerem as palavras a partir de fragmentos iniciais com informações baseadas no acento lexical. Para tanto, realizamos um teste em que palavras segmentadas da língua portuguesa eram apresentadas aos sujeitos os quais deveriam escolher entre palavras pertencentes a três padrões acentuais - tônica/átona, átona/tônica, átona/átona - a qual julgavam pertencer a seqüência de som ouvida. Os resultados do teste revelaram que os sujeitos são capazes de reconhecer uma palavra com base em seus segmentos iniciais e informações sobre o acento lexical. O padrão átona/átona, nomeado PP, apresentou o maior índice de julgamentos errados, 46%, dos quais, a maioria, favorece o padrão átona/tônica. Os parâmetros acústicos que marcam o português foram observados e não apresentaram justificativa para os erros de PP, o que nos leva a concluir que a escolha dos sujeitos seja norteada pelo padrão acentual do português, o paroxítono. / In the experimental phonological research described in this dissertation, we aimed at testing the Portuguese speakers\' ability to recognize words from its initial fragments with information based on the lexical stress. Considering this goal, we \"administered\" a test in which segmented words from Portuguese language were presented to the subjects who had to choose it among three initial stressed patterns - stressed/unstressed, unstressed/stressed, unstressed/unstressed. The choice was done according to the judgment of the sequence of sounds heard by the subjects. The test results revealed that the subjects are able to recognize a word on the basis of its initial segments and information about the lexical stress. The pattern unstressed/unstressed, named PP, presented a higher index of amiss judgment, 46%, the greatest part of the erroneous PP judgment favors the pattern unstressed/stressed. The acoustic parameters that represents Portuguese stress were observed and did not present justification for the errors of PP. Therefore, we could conclude that the choices made by the subjects were leaded by the Portuguese stressed pattern, the paroxítono.

Book Summary: SCIP gives you the most comprehensive collection of contrastive sound pairs so you can have a treatment tool right at your fingertips on your iPad. This evidence-based app consisted of thousands of hours of research, where nearly 100 expert SLPs in six national test sites participated compared traditional methods of creating materials to using SCIP. The results were astounding: the new SCIP app requires virtually no prep work, saving Speech-Language Pathologists vital time.

Book Summary: Phonemic awareness and phonetic skill are the backbones of phonological theory. In phonological acquisition, the presence or lack of the former crucially determines the outcome of the latter. This inescapably becomes a common thread that interweaves developmental phonology in both childhood and adulthood. Child and adult-learner speech in the course of development constitute separate linguistic systems in their own right: they are intermediate states whose endpoint is, or ought to be, mastery of targeted speech either in a first or a second language. These intermediate states form the theme of this volume which introduces the term protolanguage (to refer to child language in development) and juxtaposes it with interlanguage (to refer to language development in adulthood). Although major languages like English and Spanish are included, there is an emphasis in the book on under-reported languages: monolingual Hungarian and Swedish and bilingual combinations, like Greek-English and German-English. There is also a focus on under-represented studies in IL: L2 German from L1 French; L2 English from Catalan and Portuguese; and in dialectal acquisition of Ecuadorian Spanish from Andalusian speakers. This volume brings together different methodological approaches with a stress on both phonetic and phonological analysis. It includes both child and adult developmental perspectives, descriptive and/or theoretical results from a combination of methodological approaches (e.g. single-case, cross-sectional; spontaneous speech samples, narrative retells) and a consideration of speech acquisition in the general context of language. The volume aims to motivate a shift in the general tendency among researchers to specialize in language subfields (L1 acquisition; L2 acquisition, bilingualism; typical/atypical language) of what is actually one common linguistic domain, i.e. the study of speech sounds (phonology/phonetics).

Thesis (M. A. (African Languages)) --University of Limpopo, 2005 / Refer to document

While it has been recognized that L2 word learning is facilitated for cognates (De Groot & Keijzer 2000), approaches to cognate acquisition have focused on the similarity of L1- L2 forms, overlooking regular patterns in differences between items. For example, English phone [dʒ] regularly corresponds to the Spanish phone [x]: agent [eɪdʒɛnt]- agente [axente], voyage [vɔɪədʒ]- viaje [bjaxe]. The current studies test whether L1 English, L2 Spanish learners acquire and utilize regular cognate sound correspondences. Experiment 1 compared accuracy for cognate forms that include or do not include regular correspondences. Subjects learned the English names of 20 monsters. Afterward, they saw each monster's image and heard its name in English, then recalled and produced the monster's (cognate) name in Spanish. Results revealed higher accuracy for items containing regular cognate correspondences. Subjects with higher proficiency showed greater differences in accuracy between regular and irregular items. In Experiment 2, subjects heard a novel word in either English or Spanish and invented a plausible cognate in the other language. Their modifications to the word forms were analyzed. Analyses revealed that subjects’ modifications were not random, but rather demonstrated convergence on dominant modification strategies. Higher proficiency correlated with greater convergence on dominant strategies. Together, these results demonstrate that L1 English, L2 Spanish learners have knowledge of regular cognate correspondences and can utilize correspondences to learn or invent new cognate forms. Furthermore, because this knowledge is acquired gradually by the L2 learner, cognate processing is not consistent across proficiency levels or between individual learners.

The main objective of this thesis is to investigate acoustic cues for the voicing contrast in stops in Russian for effects of speaking rate and phonetic environment. Although the laryngeal contrast in Russian is assumed to be a [voice] contrast, very few experimental studies have looked at the acoustic properties of Russian voiced and voiceless stops. Most claims about acoustic properties of stops and phonological processes that affect them (voice assimilation and final devoicing) have been made based on impressionistic transcriptions. The present study provides evidence that (1) voicing in voiced stops is affected by speaking rate manipulation, (2) stops in Russian retain underlying voicing contrast in presonorant position and voice assimilation occurs only in obstruent clusters, and (3) phonological processes of voice assimilation and final devoicing do not result in complete neutralization. The target of the investigation is voiced and voiceless intervocalic stops, stops in clusters, and final stops in different prosodic positions within a word and at the phrase level. The acoustic cues to voicing (duration of voicing, stop closure duration, vowel duration, f0, and F1) were measured from the production data of 14 monolingual speakers of Russian recorded in Russia. Speakers produced words and phrases with target stops in three speaking rate conditions: list reading, slow rate and fast rate. The data were analyzed in 5 blocks focusing on (1) word-internal stops, (2) voice assimilation in stops in prepositions, (3) cases of so-called "sonorant transparency", (4) voice assimilation in stops before /v/, and (5) voicing processes across a word boundary. The results of the study present a challenge to the widely-held assumption that phonological processes precede phonetic processes at the phonology-phonetics interface. It is shown that the underlying contrast leaves traces on assimilated and devoiced stops. To account for the findings, a phonology-phonetics interface that allows interaction between the modules is required. In addition, the results show that temporal cues are affected by speaking rate manipulation, but the effect of rate on voicing is found only in voiced stops. Duration of voicing and VOT in voiceless stops are not affected by speaking rate. The results also show that no effect of C2 is obtained on voicing in C1 stops in in obstruent-sonorant-obstruent clusters, thus no "phonological sonorant transparency to voice assimilation" is found in Russian. Rather, the study provides evidence that there is variation in production of voicing in stops in prepositions, and that voice assimilation in stops before /v/ followed by a voiced obstruent is optional for some speakers.

This diachronic study tracks Louisiana French syllable structure and sound patterns over several decades, offering an in-depth, quantitative evaluation of language death and hybridization. Most scholarly inquiry involving this severely endangered language has revolved around morphosyntactic issues. The present work instead considers how a century of contact with English may be influencing Louisiana French phonology. Recordings made in 1977 and 2010 provide speech data from 19 male and 17 female native speakers born between 1888 and 1953. All speakers come from the same town, and none read or write in French. The study evaluates 260 minutes of phonemically transcribed speech, comprising over 70,000 sound segments. The quantitative analysis shows that sociolinguistic variables (age, sex, timeperiod, community identity) still account for variation in pronunciation patterns, and complex, marked segments such as front rounded vowels are not dying out in favor of segments common to both French and English. However, diachronic consonant cluster trends appear to mirror language acquisition patterns. The Optimality Theory analysis takes on questions of phonological hybridity, scrutinizing the behavior of Louisiana French phonemic and phonetic nasal vowels, along with liaison, to understand how French- and English-based processes come together. The analysis highlights the opposing forces of phonetic and phonemic vowel nasality, experiencing challenges precisely where these systems come into conflict. In order to capture the attested surface variation, the formal analysis develops a method of assigning first () and second () place to output candidates. The study concludes that Louisiana French phonology has stayed remarkably resilient over time, and that a first- and second-place evaluation method allows Optimality Theory to better reflect actual language patterns. It underscores the hybrid and complex nature of Louisiana French, which instead of moving to a simplified system of vowel nasality, contains and works to harmonize both phonetic and phonemic nasal vowel patterns. The 2010 interviews and transcriptions also represent the first available Louisiana research point in the international Phonology of Contemporary French project (Phonologie du Français Contemporain, PFC). This diachronic investigation of language death thus makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of language contact and variation. / acase@tulane.edu

acase@tulane.edu

The two glides w and j exist in both English and Korean. In English, these two glides form syllable-initial glide-vowel (GV) sequences with any of the following twelve vowels (i, ɪ, eɪ, ɛ, ʌ, ə, œ, u, ʊ, oʊ, ɔ, a). In Korean, assuming seven monophthongs (i, e, ə, ɨ, u, o, a), fourteen GV sequences are logically possible, but only nine occur; the following five GV sequences are absent: *ji, *jɨ, *wu, *wɨ, *wo. Researchers who have proposed phonological explanations for this gap unanimously point to the homorganicity between the two segments in these absent sequences. In English, however, homorganicity seems to be disregarded; five GV sequences--GV[HO] sequences--consist of homorganic segments: wu, ji, wʊ, jɪ, wo. This difference in phonotactics between the two languages constitutes the source of difficulty for Korean ESL learners in mastering the L2 glides and GV[HO] sequences. In this study, I first provide detailed phonological and phonetic characterizations of glides. I review phonological representations of glides, as well as corresponding high vowels. Then, I perform a series of acoustic analyses of a set of production data collected from Korean and English monolingual speakers. The acoustic parameters under analysis include the first three formants (F1-F3) and the duration of the glide steady state and the glide-to-vowel transition. These analyses reveal that the F2 of English [w] is consistently lower than that of any of the twelve vowels, while the F2 of Korean [w] depends significantly on the quality of the following vowel. Also, English glides exhibit considerably longer steady state durations compared to Korean glides. Next, I analyze the learners' production data, collected from twenty-two Korean ESL learners. The L2 data reveal that the learners resorted to a few major repair strategies for target GV[HO] sequences, while the vast majority of the non-homorganic GV sequences (GV[N-HO]) are produced target-appropriately. Among these repair strategies, 79% were glide deletion (wound → [und]/[ʔund]), 20% vowel shift (wound → [wənd]), and 1% glide shift (yip → [wɪp]). Interestingly, however, in their L2 glides, many of the learners showed a departure from monolingual Korean glides in the F2 of [w] and the duration of the steady state. Lastly, an Optimality Theoretic account is proposed for the learners' L2 data. Under the assumption that GV[HO] sequences are marked relative to GV[N-HO] sequences (Kawasaki 1982), I argue that learning English GV[HO] sequences by Korean ESL learners involves constraint reranking, crucially, demotion of a set of markedness constraints below a set of competing faithfulness constraints.

This dissertation focuses on vowel harmony in Maasai, an Eastern Nilotic language spoken in Kenya and Tanzania. The main goal of this dissertation is to determine whether an adequate account of the Maasai pattern of Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) harmony can be formulated in Optimality Theory. Ultimately it is seen that it can, relying on directional Maximal Licensing constraints Walker (2011). Maasai is a language with dominant-recessive harmony. There are two sets of vowels--ATR and non-ATR. A word can only include members of one vowel set; if there is an AT R vowel anywhere in a word, all vowels will be ATR in the output. The only exception to this is the non-ATR low vowel, which lacks an ATR counterpart. It is opaque--it does not harmonize and it blocks the spread of harmony if it is followed by an ATR vowel, but it harmonizes to [o] when preceded by an ATR vowel. All earlier analyses have been based on mainly one source, Tucker and Mpaayei (1955). To avoid using inaccurate or inaccurate data, the data analyzed in this thesis were collected from native speakers in Arusha, Tanzania. Earlier accounts have been based on impressionistic transcriptions. Acoustic analysis of the data were performed to explore the properties of the vowels. The height of the first formant was found to be the most robust acoustical cue to differentiate ATR and non-ATR vowels, though the height of the second formant has some use as a secondary cue. Like many previous studies of languages with an ATR contrast, in this study, it was found that the ATR vowels in Maasai have lower F1s than their non-ATR counterparts (Ladefoged 1964, Lindau et al. 1972, Lindau 1976, Jacobson 1980, Hess 1992, Maddieson and Gordon 1996, Fulop et al. 1998, Anderson 1999, 2007, Przezdziecki 2005, Gick et al. 2006, Starwalk 2008, Kang and Ko 2012). Guion (2004)'s acoustic analysis of Maasai, which showed that ATR and non-ATR vowels in minimal pairs or near minimal pairs differ in F1 was confirmed. Unlike previous research, vowels that have undergone harmony were also investigated. It was observed that not only does Maasai show an ATR/ non-ATR distinction, but that the harmony process is neutralizing. An ATR suffix will force a non-ATR root to harmonize, and an ATR root will force a non-ATR prefix to harmonize. The vowel that has undergone harmony to become ATR is not distinguishable from one is always ATR. It was also found that distance from the trigger (the ATR vowel that causes harmony) does not affect the harmony process. Maasai has been described as having one lexically ATR prefix which causes only less peripheral prefixes to harmonize (Tucker and Mpaayei 1955, Mol 1995, 1996). This claim was investigated, but no acoustic evidence was found to support the claim that there is an ATR prefix. Instead, it is suggested that the perception of the prefix as ATR arises from coarticulatory effects that are the result of the unique environment of the prefix. Acoustic analysis of prefixes preceding the putative ATR prefix were found to be non-ATR. Although previous OT analyses of Maasai have been either unduly complex, incapable of accounting for all the data or have dismissed elements of the harmony as morphological, the harmony system can be accounted for rather simply with two directional harmony constraints. Walker (2011) suggests that languages which appear to demonstrate one bidirectional harmony process might actually be the result of two unidirectional harmony processes. The analysis of Maasai presented her supports this suggestion. There are two directional Maximal Licensing constraints which are high-ranked there is another constraint that must be ranked between them to account for the asymmetric behavior of the low vowel.