This dissertation presents a study of African American and Hispanic speakers in East Austin, Texas, an area that has been historically segregated and is now experiencing rapid gentrification. The current literature is lacking research on minority participation in sound change. This dissertation contributes to redressing the deficit in this area by describing data from sociolinguistic interviews with African American and Hispanic speakers; the following questions are considered: How do social variables influence a linguistic system? How do the social pressures of gentrification influence linguistic variables? To what extent do minority speakers participate in sound changes present in the majority group's variety of English? Specifically, it considers GOOSE and GOAT fronting and the relative positions of LOT and THOUGHT. It has previously been suggested that only Anglo speakers participate in changes affecting these vowels. With regard to GOOSE and GOAT, in many varieties of Southern English, the back vowels become fronted in Anglo speech while they remain backed in African American and Hispanic speech (e.g., Thomas, 2001a). However, the findings discussed here show that African American and Hispanic speakers may front these vowels to achieve particular stylistic purposes. With regard to LOT and THOUGHT, these vowel classes have merged, or are undergoing merger, in many regions of the United States (Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006). In Texas, Anglo and Hispanic speakers exhibit the LOT~THOUGHT merger while African American speakers reportedly do not and in general resist the merger (Bailey, Wikle, & Sand, 1991; Bernstein, 1993; Labov et al., 2006; Thomas, 2001a). The findings presented here suggest a trend for LOT~THOUGHT moving towards merger among African American speakers in Central Texas. This is unexpected among African American speakers in Texas and in the U.S. at large. The findings presented illustrate the importance of ethnically diverse samples in describing speech. In Texas where there is a large population of Hispanic residents, we cannot claim to have a thorough knowledge of the regional variety of English without investigating minority speakers. The analysis presented here is a step towards describing a more diverse data set of regional American English. / text

Examined was whether the mismatch negativity (MMN) varied predictably in response to changes in the direction of frequency-modulated tone glides and equivalent second formant transitions in vowels (e.g., /ɪ/ as in “bit” and /e/ as in “bate”). A novel stimulus presentation paradigm was designed to distinguish the MMN from the N1 component. 10 normal-hearing adults with no neurological diseases were recruited and presented stimuli via insert earphones while they watched a silent, subtitled movie. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded from 128 scalp electrodes. The MMN was successfully distinguished from the N1, marking participants’ ability to discriminate vowel stimuli only. A significant early P2 component, which decreased in size with successive stimulus presentations, was also elicited for vowels only and is believed to reflect formant encoding. Discrepancies between vowel and tone results are discussed along with clinical implications and contributions to the fields of ERP and vowel research.

Research on prosodic structure, the underlying structure organising the prosodic grouping of spoken utterances, has shown that it consists of hierarchically organised prosodic constituents. The present thesis explores the nature of this constituency, in particular the question of whether prosodic structure is comprised of a given set of qualitatively distinct domains, or of a set of domains of the same type varying only gradiently in "strength", or a possible mixture of both types of relations across prosodic levels. This question is addressed by testing how prosodic constituency (mirrored on boundary strength manipulations) is signalled acoustically via pre- and post-boundary durations, intonation contours, and two sandhi processes, namely vowel hiatus resolution and post-nasal stop voicing in Modern Greek. Results show that the phonetic signalling of boundary strength provides support for a mixture of both differences of type and strength across prosodic levels, with some levels only differing in terms of their strength. Pre-boundary durations and resolution of vowel hiatus are gradiently affected by boundary strength with shorter to longer durations from lower to higher domains, and less instances of vowel deletion higher in the hierarchy. Post-nasal stop voicing is qualitatively affected by boundary strength with almost all voicing instances occurring in the lowest constituent of the structure in the way a qualitative view of prosodic constituency would predict, and in line with research on prosodic phonology. Finally, both the alignment and scaling of intonation contours at the edges of domains is found to distinguish qualitatively the lowest domain from the higher ones. All higher phrasal domains align with respect to the boundary and their peak scaling varies consistently gradiently across speakers. When combining those two findings, support is provided for the existence of differences of strength and type within the same process. Taken together the results from these four phenomena support the postulation of an underlying prosodic structure with a limited number of qualitatively distinct domains, within which at the same time some type of recursivity or structured variability must be allowed for. It is shown that there are structural properties of speech, like the length of the utterance, influencing the organisation of utterances in a principled gradient manner, supporting the existence of differences of strength within domain types. These findings bear significance for theories of prosodic structure that have assumed either the view of solely qualitative differences, or sole boundary strength differences, as well as for future proposals on prosodic constituency. Finally, the use of Modern Greek in this thesis adds to the existing literature on a language that has been extensively used by researchers working in views supporting the existence of qualitative distinctions of type across prosodic domains, and provides the first in depth experimental analysis of post-nasal stop voicing.

Aim The aim of this study was to determine how deterioration of voice quality, such as breathiness, may impact on the intelligibility of speech. Method Acoustic analysis was conducted on sustained vowel phonation (/i/ and /a/) and sentences produced by voice disordered speakers. Measures included: frequency and amplitude of the first two formants (F1, F2), singing power ratio (SPR), the amplitude difference between the first two harmonics (H1-H2), voice onset time (VOT), and energy ratio between consonant and vowel (CV energy ratio). A series of two-way (glottal closure by vowel) mixed design between and within-subjects Analysis of Variances conducted on these acoustic measures showed a significant glottal closure (complete and incomplete) or glottal closure by vowel interaction effect on the F2 frequency, H1-H2 amplitude difference, and singing power ratio. Based on findings in literature that reported a dominant first harmonic as a useful predictor of breathiness, the measure of H1-H2 amplitude difference was selected as a factor for investigation of the impact of voice quality on the perception of vowel intelligibility and clarity. Fixed-length vowel segments at five levels of H1-H2 amplitude difference were presented to 10 male and 10 female inexperienced listeners between the ages of 19 and 34 years. Results It was expected that the tokens with a dominant first harmonic, indicative of a more breathy voice, would be associated with a lower rate of correct vowel identification and of being perceived as “clearer”. Although no linear relationship between breathiness and intelligibility was revealed, results indicated the presence of thresholds of intelligibility for particular vowels whereby once a level of breathiness was reached intelligibility would decline. Conclusion The finding of a change of the perceptual ratings as a function of the H1-H2 amplitude difference, identified in previous studies as a measure of breathiness, revealed thresholds of intelligibility for particular vowels below which breathiness would be tolerated with little impact on intelligibility but beyond which intelligibility ratings suffered markedly.

The change a speaker makes in response to background noise is known as the Lombard Effect (LE). This study investigated the acoustic changes that are undergone in the presence of broadband noise and two-talker babble. Of particular interest were vocal fundamental frequency (F0) and formant frequency vowel space measures across sex. Forty participants (20 male, 20 female) were recruited and asked to read phrases in quiet and in the presence of two-talker babble and broadband noise. These masker conditions were presented at 50 and 70 dB HL. The phrases were recorded and acoustically analysed. The results showed a significant sex difference for both F0 and vowel space. A masking condition effect was not displayed for either F0 or vowel space. A significant effect was however shown for F0 according to intensity level, suggesting a LE. While the sex difference in F0 values can be explained on the basis of differences in vocal anatomy, the sex difference in vowel space was indicative of a sociophonetic influence on speech production.

The vowel systems of five selected Iranian Balochi dialects are investigated in this study, which is the first work to apply empirical acoustic analysis to a large body of recorded data on the vowel inventories of different Balochi dialects spoken in Iran. The selected dialects are spoken in the five regions of Sistan (SI), Saravan (SA), Khash (KH), Iranshahr (IR), and Chabahar (CH) located in the province Sistan and Baluchestan in southeast Iran. The aim of the present fieldwork-based survey is to study how similar the vowel systems of these dialects are to the Common Balochi vowel system (i, iː, u, uː, a, aː, eː, oː), which is represented as the vowel inventory for the Balochi dialects in general, as well as how similar these dialects are to one another.  The investigation shows that length is contrastive in these dialects, although the durational dif-ferences between the long and short counterparts are quite small in some dialects. The study also reveals that there are some differences between the vowel systems of these dialects and the Com-mon Balochi sound inventory. The Common Balochi short /i/ vowel is modified to short /e/ in these dialects, and a strong tendency for the long /eː/ and /oː/ to become the diphthongs ie and ue, respec-tively, is observed in some of the investigated dialects, specifically in KH, which shows heavier diphthongization than the other dialects. It is also observed, especially in SI, SA, and CH, that the short /u/ shows strong tendencies to shift towards a lower position of an [o] vowel. In SI and SA, this shift seems to be a correlate of syllable structure, with lowering occurring mostly in closed syllables. It is possible that Persian, as the dominant language in the area, has had an influence on these dialects and caused a lowering tendency among the higher vowels.  The vowel systems in these dialects differ slightly from each other. Phonemically, the pairs e/eː, a/aː, u/uː, and the long vowels /iː/ and /oː/ are suggested for IR; the pairs a/aː, u/uː, the short /e/ and the long /iː/ as well as the diphthongs /ie/ and /ue/ substituted for the long /eː/ and /oː/, respectively, are suggested for KH; and finally the pairs e/eː, a/aː, o/oː, and the long vowels /iː/ and /uː/, which make a more symmetrical inventory, are suggested for the SI, SA, and CH dialects. In general, the vowels in these dialects show a range of phonetic variations. In addition, processes of fronting, which is most common in coronal contexts, and nasalization, which mostly occurs in nasal envi-ronments, are observed in the data researched.

Research has shown that fine-grained consonantal phonetic information can be gradiently integrated during spoken word recognition in the L1. However, the way listeners categorize vocalic phonetic information has not been investigated as thoroughly. Furthermore, second language (L2) listeners’ processing of fine-grained information is not as well known as L1 processing. L1 Canadian French (CF) listeners and L2 listeners (native English) were tested in an eye tracking paradigm with words containing partially nasalized (CVN) and fully nasal (CṼ) vowels. Stimuli were designed to have variable nasalization duration on the vowel, and sometimes include a short nasal consonant word-finally. The main goals were to determine how nasalization duration influences word recognition in an L1 and an L2, and if variations in phonetic details are gradiently or categorically integrated. Results show that L1 listeners gradiently were able to identify the stimuli when they contained mismatching phonetic cues, while L2 listeners display more categorical patterns of recognition. When stimuli do not have conflicting phonetic cues, L1 listeners mostly identify words as CṼ, except when the vowel is not nasalized. For L2 listeners, the pattern was similar, but the rate of stimuli identification as phonological nasal (CṼ) was lower due to L1 transfer. These results support the hypothesis that L1 listeners have phonological representations that include fine-grained phonetic information and that they consider it when recognizing words. On the other hand, L2 listeners who have less experience in the L2 display more categorical recognition patterns, probably because their representations include coarser phonetic information or because they cannot access fine-grained representations, given the cognitive demands of L2 processing. When words do not contain conflicting phonetic cues, patterns of recognition of both L1 and L2 listeners seem more categorical, even though L2 listeners displayed lower rates of identification than L1 listeners overall. This uncertainty can also be due to less detailed phonological representations or to their inability to access all the necessary information to recognize words. Overall, these results suggest that fine-grained phonetic information gradiently impacts word recognition, that it is part of phono-lexical representations, and that L2 processing is qualitatively and quantitatively different from L1 processing.

La representación teórica dew1 objeto o de un proceso constituye la hipó­tesis del investigador sobre qué es tal objeto o cómo se lleva a cabo dicho proceso. La fonología es un área privilegiada en la que se puede observar esto con facilidad: la ontología fonológica -el conjunto de objetos que confor­man los procesos o fenómenos fonológicos-no está dada a priori ; debe ser construida teóricamente por el lingüista con el fin de dar cuenta de los daros de que dispone. En esta presentación, muestro distintas maneras de representar el conocido fenómeno fonológico de descenso o apertura de las vocales del quechua, desde la concepción de Trubetzkoy hasta la teoría de laoptimalidad.

abstract: The activation of the primary motor cortex (M1) is common in speech perception tasks that involve difficult listening conditions. Although the challenge of recognizing and discriminating non-native speech sounds appears to be an instantiation of listening under difficult circumstances, it is still unknown if M1 recruitment is facilitatory of second language speech perception. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of M1 associated with speech motor centers in processing acoustic inputs in the native (L1) and second language (L2), using repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) to selectively alter neural activity in M1. Thirty-six healthy English/Spanish bilingual subjects participated in the experiment. The performance on a listening word-to-picture matching task was measured before and after real- and sham-rTMS to the orbicularis oris (lip muscle) associated M1. Vowel Space Area (VSA) obtained from recordings of participants reading a passage in L2 before and after real-rTMS, was calculated to determine its utility as an rTMS aftereffect measure. There was high variability in the aftereffect of the rTMS protocol to the lip muscle among the participants. Approximately 50% of participants showed an inhibitory effect of rTMS, evidenced by smaller motor evoked potentials (MEPs) area, whereas the other 50% had a facilitatory effect, with larger MEPs. This suggests that rTMS has a complex influence on M1 excitability, and relying on grand-average results can obscure important individual differences in rTMS physiological and functional outcomes. Evidence of motor support to word recognition in the L2 was found. Participants showing an inhibitory aftereffect of rTMS on M1 produced slower and less accurate responses in the L2 task, whereas those showing a facilitatory aftereffect of rTMS on M1 produced more accurate responses in L2. In contrast, no effect of rTMS was found on the L1, where accuracy and speed were very similar after sham- and real-rTMS. The L2 VSA measure was indicative of the aftereffect of rTMS to M1 associated with speech production, supporting its utility as an rTMS aftereffect measure. This result revealed an interesting and novel relation between cerebral motor cortex activation and speech measures. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Speech and Hearing Science 2018

The main content of my diploma thesis is Pronunciation of middle school children. The theoretical part deals with the aims of pronunciation teaching. This part concerns the question to what measure the pronunciation is important and whether it is possible to influence it by teaching process. Furthermore, I attended to pronunciation differences between English and Czech sounds and typical mistakes made by Czech pupils. The practical part searches and analyses mistakes in Engish pronunciation made by pupils who have just come to middle school by research scanning. Consequently I suggested several exercises to eliminate some of the ascertained mistakes. At the end, I also practically verified them in school practise and summed them up in my final reflection.