Speech rate as a secondary prosodic characteristic of polarity questions in three languages

Vorm en functie van prosodie in niet-westerse tale

Acquisition of Scottish English Phonology: an overview

This series consists of unpublished working- papers. They are not final versions and may be superseded by publication in journal or book form, which should be cited in preference. All rights remain with the author(s) at this stage, and circulation of a work in progress in this series does not prejudice its later publication. Comments to authors are welcome.Scottish English is usually characterized as a language continuum from Broad Scots to Scottish Standard English- (Corbett, McClure & Stuart-Smith, 2003, p.2). A 1996 survey preparatory to the 2001 census by the General Register Office (Scotland) estimated that about 30% of the Scottish population use (Broad) Scots to some extent, rising to 90% in the North East. The linguistic situation on the ground is complicated somewhat by population movement and dialect contact (as well as uncertainty about what constitutes Scots or Scottish Standard English (SSE) in the first place). Scots derives from the Anglian variety of Old English spoken in the 6th century, and varies regionally, whereas SSE is far more homogenous geographically. Scots speakers still tend only to be exposed in childhood to a Scottish English continuum which is rooted in their own local variety of Scots and so are not influenced much by other geographically delimited broad varieties. This continuum is of course just one aspect of sociolinguistic variation and is itself always undergoing language change: large differences should be expected between older more conservative speakers and the young as well as regionally and socio-economically. In the urban setting, local housing variation means that adjacent neighbourhoods may have markedly different linguistic profiles. Even the two ends of the Scots-SSE continuum are largely mutually intelligible, though mastery of SSE will not prepare someone new to Scotland (or indeed nave Scots themselves) for the difficulties they will face in understanding a broad speaker from an unfamiliar area. In general, the closely-related varieties of Scottish English can be thought of as being parallel with - but independent from - the other Englishes of the UK, but with their own national focus, however vague that is. The size, proximity and influence of England, as well as population movements mean, however, that historically and synchronically, the Scottish English continuum is attracted towards its English neighbour.caslunpub149unpu

Prosodic differences among dialects of American English

Linguistic stress or emphasis can be conveyed by at least four different acoustic cues: change in fundamental frequency (f0), increased duration, greater intensity, and spectral expansion (e.g., Fry, 1955). However, relatively little is known about the prosodic differences among American English dialects, for example, whether and how speakers of different dialects use variation in linguistic stress and how they express emphasis or emotions. The current study is a parametric examination of the extent, range and rate of change of fundamental frequency (f0) along with duration and intensity in English vowels produced in the Midland (central Ohio), the Inland South (western North Carolina), and in the North (southeastern Wisconsin). We will analyze recordings taken from controlled, read sentences from 24 women aged 50-64 years who have spent the majority of their lives in one of the three regions in the United States (Ohio, North Carolina, and Wisconsin). Five vowels were produced in sentences in two consonantal contexts (before a voiced coda and before a voiceless coda) in both stressed and unstressed syllables controlling for syntactic, lexical, and phonetic context. To examine the differences between the dialects, several programs were used to complete the analysis of f0, duration, and intensity. Analysis included tracking f0 over the course of the vowel (using a specially written Matlab program). Following extraction of these f0 tracks, another Matlab program aided the user in correcting f0 tracking errors. Changes in f0 will be displayed in terms of both raw Hz values and semitone excursions from onset values. This study supports the claim that dialects can differ systematically in their use of prosodic cues.Arts and Sciences Undergraduate Research AwardSocial and Behavioral Sciences Research AwardBuckeye Language Network (BLN) Undergraduate Research AwardNo embargoAcademic Major: Speech and Hearing Scienc

Tam o' Shanter: A Nordic Tinge

Tam o’ Shanter, a great narrative poem written by Roberts Burns, is written in Scots and as such is difficult to access by standard English speakers and non-natives alike. This monograph offers an account of the language of Tam as characterised by a significant number of distinctive lexical and phonological items related to Old Norse. It is claimed that Old Norse constitutes an essential and highly descriptive element of the poem in terms of dramatic impact, soundscape, timing, and pace. As the beating heart of Tam, this element is identified and described as constituting the core of the poem’s linguistic fusion, and it is related to present-day Icelandic and Swedish. A new translation of the poem is also proposed in order to increase accessibility to a wider audience

Dae ye ken me ? Speech synthesis in the Gorbals region of Glasgow

This report attempts to determine whether improving the phonetic match between a lexicon used in speech synthesis and the speech of the speaker who provides the source for a synthetic voice improves the quality and authenticity of the synthetic voice. In order to explore this question, a survey is made of the literature describing the accent of urban Glasgow, and these data serve as the basis for the accent’s implementation in the Unisyn accent-independent lexicon system. After implementation, two voices are built from the accent, one using an automatic labelling procedure and one using a corrected labelling. The voices are assessed subjectively for quality and compared in forced-choice listening tests to reference voices built using the Edinburgh accent of the Unisyn lexicon. The results are inconclusive, but the method is generalizable and potentially powerful