Rhotics.New Data and Perspectives

This book provides an insight into the patterns of variation and change of rhotics in different languages and from a variety of perspectives. It sheds light on the phonetics, the phonology, the socio-linguistics and the acquisition of /r/-sounds in languages as diverse as Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Kuikuro, Malayalam, Romanian, Slovak, Tyrolean and Washili Shingazidja thus contributing to the discussion on the unity and uniqueness of this group of sounds

Articulation in time : Some word-initial segments in Swedish

Speech is both dynamic and distinctive at the same time. This implies a certain contradiction which has entertained researchers in phonetics and phonology for decades. The present dissertation assumes that articulation behaves as a function of time, and that we can find phonological structures in the dynamical systems. EMA is used to measure mechanical movements in Swedish speakers. The results show that tonal context affects articulatory coordination. Acceleration seems to divide the movements of the jaw and lips into intervals of postures and active movements. These intervals are affected differently by the tonal context. Furthermore, a bilabial consonant is shorter if the next consonant is also made with the lips. A hypothesis of a correlation between acoustic segment duration and acceleration is presented. The dissertation highlights the importance of time for how speech ultimately sounds. Particularly significant is the combination of articulatory timing and articulatory duration

Short grammar of Tiefo-N of Nyafogo (Gur, Burkina Faso)

short grammar of Tiefo-N, Tiefo of Nyafogo, Burkina FasoNational Science Foundation, Documenting Endangered Languages programhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139024/1/Heath Ouattara Hantgan Short Grammar Tiefo N reduced.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/139024/2/Heath Ouattara Hantgan Short Grammar Tiefo N reduced.docxDescription of Heath Ouattara Hantgan Short Grammar Tiefo N reduced.pdf : book in pdf formDescription of Heath Ouattara Hantgan Short Grammar Tiefo N reduced.docx : original .docx fil

Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications

The International Workshop on Models and Analysis of Vocal Emissions for Biomedical Applications (MAVEBA) came into being in 1999 from the particularly felt need of sharing know-how, objectives and results between areas that until then seemed quite distinct such as bioengineering, medicine and singing. MAVEBA deals with all aspects concerning the study of the human voice with applications ranging from the newborn to the adult and elderly. Over the years the initial issues have grown and spread also in other fields of research such as occupational voice disorders, neurology, rehabilitation, image and video analysis. MAVEBA takes place every two years in Firenze, Italy. This edition celebrates twenty-two years of uninterrupted and successful research in the field of voice analysis

The segmental phonology of Shangani

This dissertation is an analysis of the segmental phonology of the Shangani language as spoken in the South Eastern parts of Zimbabwe. It starts by presenting the language situation in Zimbabwe and comparing the language’s status in Zimbabwe with that of its sister varieties in South Africa where it is referred to as Tsonga and in Mozambique where it is referred to as XiChangana or Changana. The dissertation is based on data collected from the speakers of Shangani using a variety of research techniques. The dissertation identifies and characterizes the language’s distinctive phonemes using the minimal pair and set tests. It presents the language’s consonants, which include aspirated, breathy-voiced, pre-nasalized, labialized and palatalized consonants. It shows that in Shangani, voiceless consonants cannot be pre-nasalized and that there is an incompatibility between that labio-velar glide /w/ and most labial consonants excpt /m/. The phonemes are analysed using Chomsky and Halle’s (1968) distinctive feature theory. The study uses Clements and Keyser’s (1983) CV phonology of the syllable structure to analyse the language’s syllable structure. The language’s canonical syllable structure is CV. It is also shown that consonant clusters are gaining their way into the language through borrowing from English, Afrikaans and other languages that have consonant clusters in their inventories. Onsetless Vs are marginally attested word-initially. In agent nouns, VV sequences are in most cases retained. These sequences are not analysed as diphthongs since they occupy different V slots on the syllable tier. The second vowel in the sequence is the onsetless syllable. Affricates, NCs, Cws and Cjs are presented as unitary segments that occupy a single C slot of the CV tier. Phonological processes that are attested in the language are also presented. Secondary articulation, vowel deletion, feature spreading, vowel coalescence and nasalization are shown to be the most common phonological process in the language. Since Shangani has the CV syllable typology, most of the phonological processes are there to resolve hiatus that would have been induced by suffixation of vowel commencing stems or suffixes to vowel final prefixes or stems. The notion of domains is shown to be a diagnostic tool for identifying a process in a hiatus situation. The study shows that vowel deletion is the least preferred strategy when secondary articulation, feature spreading, vowel coalescence have been blocked by some constraints like syllable structure processes or the language’s phonotacticsAfrican LanguagesD. Litt. et Phil. (African Languages

Prosody in Sign Languages

This chapter addresses the debate concerning the status of nonmanuals (head, face, body) as prosodic or not by exploring in detail how prosody is structured in speech and what might be parallels and differences in sign. Prosody is divided into two parts, rhythmic phrasing (timing, syllables, stress), and intonation. To maximize accessibility, in each part, an introduction to what is known for speech is presented, followed by what is known and/or claimed for sign languages. With the exception of the internal structure of syllables, sign languages are very similar to spoken languages in the rhythmic domain. In the intonational domain, the parallels are less strong, in part because analogies of nonmanual functions to spoken intonation tend to be based on older/simpler models of intonation. There needs to be much more detailed research on sign languages to catch up with the recent research on spoken intonation

European Approaches to Japanese Language and Linguistics

In this volume European specialists of Japanese language present new and original research into Japanese over a wide spectrum of topics which include descriptive, sociolinguistic, pragmatic and didactic accounts. The articles share a focus on contemporary issues and adopt new approaches to the study of Japanese that often are specific to European traditions of language study. The articles address an audience that includes both Japanese Studies and Linguistics. They are representative of the wide range of topics that are currently studied in European universities, and they address scholars and students alike

Investigating 3D Visual Speech Animation Using 2D Videos

Lip motion accuracy is of paramount importance for speech intelligibility, especially for users who are hard of hearing or foreign language learners. Furthermore, generating a high level of realism in lip movements is required for the game and film production industries. This thesis focuses on the mapping of tracked lip motions of front-view 2D videos of a real speaker to a synthetic 3D head. A data-driven approach is used based on a 3D morphable model (3DMM) built using 3D synthetic head poses. The 3DMMs have been widely used for different tasks such as face recognition, detect facial expressions and lip motions in 2D videos. However, investigating factors such as the required facial landmarks for the mapping process, the amount of data for constructing the 3DMM, and differences in facial features between real faces and 3D faces that may influence the resulting animation have not been considered yet. Therefore, this research centers around investigating the impact of these factors on the final 3D lip motions. The thesis explores how different sets of facial features used in the mapping process influence the resulting 3D motions. Five sets of the facial features are used for mapping the real faces to the corresponding 3D faces. The results show that the inclusion of eyebrows, eyes, nose, and lips improves the 3D lip motions, while face contour features (i.e. the outside boundary of the front view of the face) restrict the face’s mesh, distorting the resulting animation. This thesis investigates how using different amounts of data when constructing the 3DMM affects the 3D lip motions. The results show that using a wider range of synthetic head poses for different phoneme intensities to create a 3DMM, as well as a combination of front- and side-view photographs of real speakers to produce initial neutral 3D synthetic head poses, provides better animation results compared to ground truth data consisting of front- and side-view 2D videos of real speakers. The thesis also investigates the impact of differences and similarities in facial features between real speakers and the 3DMMs on the resulting 3D lip motions by mapping between non-similar faces based on differences and similarities in vertical mouth height and mouth width. The objective and user test results show that mapping 2D videos of real speakers with low vertical mouth heights to 3D heads that correspond to real speakers with high vertical mouth heights, or vice versa, generates less good 3D lip motions. It is thus important that this is considered when using a 2D recording of a real actor’s lip movements to control a 3D synthetic character