461 research outputs found
English Centering Diphthong Production By Polish Learners of English
The paper shows how British English centering diphthongs are adapted to the vowel space of Polish learners of English. The goal is to focus on complex vowels and the interaction of qualitative and quantitative features. Acoustic analysis revealed various processes used to overcome pronunciation difficulties: /j/ and /w/ breaking, /r/ insertion, substitutions of other vocalic qualities, changes in diphthong duration and diphthong phases duration, and changes in the rate of frequency change
Durational correlates of Japanese phonemic quantity contrasts by Cantonese-speaking L2 learners
This paper reports a production study of Japanese phonemic quantity contrasts by native speakers, beginner learners, and advanced learners speaking Cantonese as L1. The three groups were compared using various standard durational measures. It was found that both learner groups successfully distinguished all the quantity conditions, although they did so differently from their Japanese peers. Specifically, whereas the short vs. long contrasts were enhanced in slow speech by native speakers, such enhancement was absent in both learner groups. The pedagogical and typological implications of these data are discussed.published_or_final_versio
Spontaneous Voice Gender Imitation Abilities in Adult Speakers
Background
The frequency components of the human voice play a major role in signalling the gender of the speaker. A voice imitation study was conducted to investigate individuals' ability to make behavioural adjustments to fundamental frequency (F0), and formants (Fi) in order to manipulate their expression of voice gender.
Methodology/Principal Findings
Thirty-two native British-English adult speakers were asked to read out loud different types of text (words, sentence, passage) using their normal voice and then while sounding as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ as possible. Overall, the results show that both men and women raised their F0 and Fi when feminising their voice, and lowered their F0 and Fi when masculinising their voice.
Conclusions/Significance
These observations suggest that adult speakers are capable of spontaneous glottal and vocal tract length adjustments to express masculinity and femininity in their voice. These results point to a “gender code”, where speakers make a conventionalized use of the existing sex dimorphism to vary the expression of their gender and gender-related attributes
Ultra-high-speed imaging of bubbles interacting with cells and tissue
Ultrasound contrast microbubbles are exploited in molecular imaging, where bubbles are directed to target cells and where their high-scattering cross section to ultrasound allows for the detection of pathologies at a molecular level. In therapeutic applications vibrating bubbles close to cells may alter the permeability of cell membranes, and these systems are therefore highly interesting for drug and gene delivery applications using ultrasound. In a more extreme regime bubbles are driven through shock waves to sonoporate or kill cells through intense stresses or jets following inertial bubble collapse. Here, we elucidate some of the underlying mechanisms using the 25-Mfps camera Brandaris128, resolving the bubble dynamics and its interactions with cells. We quantify acoustic microstreaming around oscillating bubbles close to rigid walls and evaluate the shear stresses on nonadherent cells. In a study on the fluid dynamical interaction of cavitation bubbles with adherent cells, we find that the nonspherical collapse of bubbles is responsible for cell detachment. We also visualized the dynamics of vibrating microbubbles in contact with endothelial cells followed by fluorescent imaging of the transport of propidium iodide, used as a membrane integrity probe, into these cells showing a direct correlation between cell deformation and cell membrane permeability
Acquisition of Japanese quantity contrasts by L1 Cantonese speakers
This paper explores the acquisition of Japanese vowel and consonant quantity contrasts by Cantonese learners. Our goal is to examine whether transfer from L1 is possible when L1 experience is phonemic but restricted to a small set of sounds (short vs. long vowels) and when the experience is non-phonemic, derived only at morpheme boundaries (short vs. long consonants). We recruited 20 Cantonese learners (beginner and advanced learners) and 5 native speakers of Japanese, who produced target stimuli varying in consonant and vowel quantity framed in a carrier sentence. The resultant data were converted into several durational ratios for analyses. Results showed that both the beginners and advanced learners were able to distinguish between short vs. long vowels and consonants in Japanese, but only the native speakers enhanced the contrasts in slower speech. It was also found that in most cases the learners were able to lengthen the vowel before a geminate (i.e. long consonant), a secondary cue to Japanese consonant quantity known to be rare across languages. These results are discussed in terms of current theories of second language acquisition.postprin
Mechanisms of vowel devoicing in Japanese
The processes of vowel devoicing in Standard Japanese were examined with respect
to the phonetic and phonological environments and the syllable structure of Japanese, in
comparison with vowel reduction processes in other languages, in most of which vowel
reduction occurs optionally in fast or casual speech. This thesis examined whether
Japanese vowel devoicing was a phonetic phenomenon caused by glottal assimilation
between a high vowel and its adjacent voiceless consonants, or it was a more
phonologically controlled compulsory process.
Experimental results showed that Japanese high vowel devoicing must be analysed
separately in two devoicing conditions, namely single and consecutive devoicing
environments. Devoicing was almost compulsory regardless of the presence of
proposed blocking factors such as type of preceding consonant, accentuation, position
in an utterance, as long as there was no devoiceable vowel in adjacent morae (single
devoicing condition). However, under consecutive devoicing conditions, blocking
factors became effective and prevented some devoiceable vowels from becoming
voiceless.
The effect of speaking rate was also generally minimal in the single devoicing
condition, but in the consecutive devoicing condition, the vowels were devoiced more
at faster tempi than slower tempi, which created many examples of consecutively
devoiced vowels over two morae.
Durational observations found that vowel devoicing involves not only phonatory
change, but also slight durational reduction. However, the shorter duration of devoiced
syllables were adjusted at the word level, so that the whole duration of a word with
devoiced vowels remained similar to the word without devoiced vowels, regardless of
the number of devoiced vowels in the word.
It must be noted that there was no clear-cut distinction between voiced and
devoiced vowels, and the phonetic realisation of a devoiced vowel could vary from
fully voiced to completely voiceless. A high vowel may be voiced in a typical
devoicing environment, but its intensity is significantly weaker than those of vowels in
a non-devoicing environment, at all speaking tempi. The mean differences of vowel
intensities between these environments were generally higher at faster tempi.
The results implied that even when the vowel was voiced, its production process
moved in favour of devoicing. However, in consecutive devoicing conditions, this
process did not always apply. When some of the devoiceable vowels were devoiced in
the consecutive devoicing environment, the intensities of devoiceable vowels were not
significantly lower than those of other vowels.
The results of intensity measurements of voiced vowels in the devoicing and nondevoicing
environments suggested that Japanese vowel devoicing was part of the
overall process of complex vowel weakening, and that a completely devoiced vowel
was the final state of the weakening process. Japanese vowel devoicing is primarily a
process of glottal assimilation, but the results in the consecutive devoicing condition
showed that this process was constrained by Japanese syllable structure
Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications
The MAVEBA Workshop proceedings, held on a biannual basis, collect the scientific papers presented both as oral and poster contributions, during the conference. The main subjects are: development of theoretical and mechanical models as an aid to the study of main phonatory dysfunctions, as well as the biomedical engineering methods for the analysis of voice signals and images, as a support to clinical diagnosis and classification of vocal pathologies
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