Contrast reduction among coronals is conditioned by the following vowel

There is evidence that coronal contrasts involving retroflexes are less clearly distinguished after a high front vowel /i/ [2, 9]. However, no detailed acoustic studies have been conducted to investigate whether following front vowels affect the contrastiveness of dentals, retroflexes and palatals. We examined the acoustic characteristics of three Punjabi coronal onsets /t̪ ʈ tʃ/ produced before five vowels /i e a u o/ by 12 Punjabi speakers. The results showed that only VOT and spectral variance of the release burst reliably distinguished Punjabi coronal stops in all vocalic contexts. Centre of gravity, skewness and kurtosis of release bursts did not differentiate the coronals in the /i/ context, but did distinguish them before /e a u o/. These findings shed more light on the phonetic basis of coronal contrasts in Indo-Aryan languages, and the ways that they interact with different following vowels.4 page(s

Change and Variation in the Trondheim Dialect

This thesis explores the status and production of four characteristics traditionally observed in the Trondheim dialect as ongoing trends observed in the dialect suggests that the dialect is undergoing a process of levelling with Standard Eastern Norwegian. The characteristics investigated are wh-words, diphthongs, apocope, and palatalisation. The data was collected by use of an experiment, and finally the data collected from ten of the twelve who participated in the study was included in the analysis of the data. The production of the traditional k-form on wh-words was compared to the production of hv-forms associated with Bokmål orthography and Eastern Norwegian dialects; diphthongs were analysed through production of optional diphthongs and the perceived quality of these; apocope was analysed by observing what words (and the amount of observations of these words) underwent the process; and finally, palatalisation was analysed by use of Centre of Gravity (COG), in which non-palatalised and possibly palatalised consonants were compared, and perception of the produced palatalised consonants