13,531 research outputs found

    A Study of the Assimilative Behavior of the Voiced Labio-Dental Fricative in American English

    Get PDF
    Gradation is one of the main features of colloquial speech. It implies the presence of certain phonological processes that ease the transition between phonemes with different articulatory features. For English, one of these implied processes is assimilation, which is when the articulation of a segment is modified into another one already existing in the system. Our study takes Gimson (1994)’s suggestion that /v/ assimilates into /m/ when it is followed by the bilabial nasal. After observing and describing different cases of assimilation, we suggest more possible explanations to this phenomenon and more assimilative behaviors of /v/. Therefore, we conduct an experiment with six American- English L1s where they evaluate sentences whose articulation includes our suggested proposals. The results show Gimson’s theory not to be as accurate as expected. Furthermore, we prove that /v/ can assimilate into /b/, /ɂ/ and /d/ when it is followed by bilabial, velar and alveolar phonemes.La gradación es una de las características más significativas del lenguaje coloquial. Esta implica la presencia de ciertos procesos fonológicos que facilitan la transición entre fonemas con distintas articulaciones. En el caso del inglés, uno de estos procesos es la asimilación, que consiste en cambiar la articulación de un segmento por la de otro existente en el sistema. Este estudio se basa en la propuesta de Gimson (1994), por la que /v/ se asimila a /m/ cuando le sigue la bilabial nasal. Tras observar y describir más casos de asimilación, nos planteamos distintos comportamientos asimilativos de /v/ en este y otros contextos, que fueron evaluados por medio de un experimento realizado a seis nativos de inglés-americano. Los resultados muestran que la teoría de Gimson no es tan apropiada como se esperaba. Además, concluimos que /v/ puede asimilar a /b/, /ɂ/ y /d/ cuando le siguen ciertos sonidos bilabiales, velares y alveolares.Grado en Estudios Inglese

    Native Speaker Perceptions of Accented Speech: The English Pronunciation of Macedonian EFL Learners

    Get PDF
    The paper reports on the results of a study that aimed to describe the vocalic and consonantal features of the English pronunciation of Macedonian EFL learners as perceived by native speakers of English and to find out whether native speakers who speak different standard variants of English perceive the same segments as non-native. A specially designed computer web application was employed to gather two types of data: a) quantitative (frequency of segment variables and global foreign accent ratings on a 5-point scale), and b) qualitative (open-ended questions). The result analysis points out to three most frequent markers of foreign accent in the English speech of Macedonian EFL learners: final obstruent devoicing, vowel shortening and substitution of English dental fricatives with Macedonian dental plosives. It also reflects additional phonetic aspects poorly explained in the available reference literature such as allophonic distributional differences between the two languages and intonational mismatch

    Cross-linguistic study of vocal pathology: perceptual features of spasmodic dysphonia in French-speaking subjects

    Get PDF
    Clinical characterisation of Spasmodic Dysphonia of the adductor type (SD) in French speakers by Klap and colleagues (1993) appears to differ from that of SD in English. This perceptual analysis aims to describe the phonetic features of French SD. A video of 6 French speakers with SD supplied by Klap and colleagues was analysed for frequency of phonatory breaks, pitch breaks, harshness, creak, breathiness and falsetto voice, rate of production, and quantity of speech output. In contrast to English SD, the French speaking SD patients demonstrated no evidence pitch breaks, but phonatory breaks, harshness and breathiness were prominent features. This verifies the French authors’ (1993) clinical description. These findings suggest that phonetic properties of a specific language may affect the manifestation of pathology in neurogenic voice disorders

    Using Beatboxing for Creative Rehabilitation After Laryngectomy:Experiences From a Public Engagement Project

    Get PDF
    Laryngectomy is the surgical removal of the larynx (voice box), usually performed in patients with advanced stages of throat cancer. The psychosocial impact of losing the voice is significant, affecting a person’s professional and social life in a devastating way, and a proportion of this patient group subsequently must overcome depression (22–30%) and social isolation (40%). The profound changes to anatomical structures involved in voicing and articulation, as a result of surgery, radiotherapy or chemotherapy (separately or in combination with one another), introduce challenges faced in speech rehabilitation and voice production that complicate social reintegration and quality of life. After laryngectomy, breathing, voicing, articulation and tongue movement are major components in restoring communication. Regular exercise of the chest, neck and oropharyngeal muscles, in particular, is important in controlling these components and keeping the involved structures supple. It is, however, a difficult task for a speech therapist to keep the patient engaged and motivated to practice these exercises. We have adopted a multidisciplinary approach to explore the use of basic beatboxing techniques to create a wide variety of exercises that are seen as fun and interactive and that maximize the use of the structures important in alaryngeal phonation. We herein report on our empirical work in developing patients’ skills, particularly relating to voiced and unvoiced consonants to improve intelligibility. In collaboration with a professional beatboxing performer, we produced instructional online video materials to support patients working on their own and/or with support from speech therapists. Although the present paper is focused predominantly on introducing the structure of the conducted workshops, the rationale for their design and the final public engagement performance, we also include feedback from participants to commence the critical discourse about whether this type of activity could lead to systematic underlying research and robustly assessed interventions in the future. Based on this exploratory work, we conclude that the innovative approach that we employed was found to be engaging, useful, informative and motivating. We conclude by offering our views regarding the limitations of our work and the implications for future empirical research

    A silent speech system based on permanent magnet articulography and direct synthesis

    Get PDF
    In this paper we present a silent speech interface (SSI) system aimed at restoring speech communication for individuals who have lost their voice due to laryngectomy or diseases affecting the vocal folds. In the proposed system, articulatory data captured from the lips and tongue using permanent magnet articulography (PMA) are converted into audible speech using a speaker-dependent transformation learned from simultaneous recordings of PMA and audio signals acquired before laryngectomy. The transformation is represented using a mixture of factor analysers, which is a generative model that allows us to efficiently model non-linear behaviour and perform dimensionality reduction at the same time. The learned transformation is then deployed during normal usage of the SSI to restore the acoustic speech signal associated with the captured PMA data. The proposed system is evaluated using objective quality measures and listening tests on two databases containing PMA and audio recordings for normal speakers. Results show that it is possible to reconstruct speech from articulator movements captured by an unobtrusive technique without an intermediate recognition step. The SSI is capable of producing speech of sufficient intelligibility and naturalness that the speaker is clearly identifiable, but problems remain in scaling up the process to function consistently for phonetically rich vocabularies

    The Effect of Phonetic Training on the Perception and the Production of L1-Related Difficult Sounds in ESL

    Get PDF
    A considerable amount of research has been conducted on the influence of first languages’ phonological features in pronunciation of a second language. While it has been accepted that pronunciation is one of the most significant aspects in the acquisition of a second language, many studies have not considered whether explicit phonetic training in pronunciation would help English as Second language Learners to improve their pronunciation on particular English sounds that can be confused due to L1 influence. The present study will explore whether Korean ESL learners are able to perceive the particular pairs of the different phonetic sounds (i.e., /p/-/f/, /b/-/v/, /s/-/ ʃ/ , and /r/-/l/) and whether giving Korean ESL learners explicit phonetic training in pronunciation would lead to more accurate perception and production on the targets sounds. A group of twelve Korean ESL learners took a pre/post-test to evaluate the effectiveness of the treatment, an explicit phonetic training. The phonetics class taught the phonological features of the particular pairs of L1-related difficult sounds of English for two hours by emphasizing the characteristics of each sound in terms of place of articulation, manner of articulation, and voicing. The results showed that there is no significant difference between pre-test and post-test. Thus, the explicit phonetic training was not an effective means of improving pronunciation of ESL learners

    Phonological Interaction in Spanish-English Bilinguals: Effects of Cognate Usage on Voice Onset Time of Voiced Stops

    Get PDF
    This study compared Spanish-English bilinguals’ and English monolinguals’ VOT values for voiced stops /b, d, g/ in cognates and non-cognates. The data support cross-linguistic interaction in bilinguals\u27 phonologies, and indicate that cognates can interfere with bilinguals’ phonemic distinctions, realized in their phonetic productions. For voiced stops, English VOT norms generally average 0 to +35 ms, while Spanish VOT norms average -235 to -45 ms. Twenty-six participants (twelve English monolinguals and fourteen early Spanish-English bilinguals) were administered a picture-naming task, balanced for cognate and non-cognate forms. The VOT values of 30 target words per participant and per language were measured. In English, bilinguals’ VOTs exhibited significantly greater lead voicing (M = -31.53 ms) than monolinguals’ (M = 8.86 ms), and, for all participants, /b/ had longer lead voicing (M = -17.44 ms) than /d/ (-10.74 ms) and /g/ (-5.83 ms). Comparing bilinguals’ VOTs for Spanish versus English revealed significant differences by language (English shorter), differences between /b/ and /g/, and between cognates and non-cognates, with shorter lead voicing in cognates (M = -45.49 ms) than in non-cognates (M = -53.26 ms). More detailed results showed that in bilinguals’ Spanish productions with word-initial /d/ and English productions with word-initial /b/, cognates exhibited shorter lead voicing (more English-like) than non-cognates. The conclusion is that the bilinguals’ VOT values exhibited some cross-linguistic influence in relation to cognate usage, in the direction towards their dominant language (English). These results are discussed in terms of the factors that can facilitate bilingual phonological system interaction

    Visual and Auditory Characteristics of Talkers in Multimodal Integration

    Get PDF
    3rd place at 2009 Denman Undergraduate Research ForumIn perceiving speech, there are three different elements of the interaction that can affect how the signal is interpreted: the talker, the signal (both the visual and auditory) and the listener. Each of these elements inherently contains substantial variability, which will, in turn, affect the audio-visual speech percept. Since the work of McGurk in the 1960s, which showed that speech perception is a multimodal process that incorporates both auditory and visual cues, there have been numerous investigations on the impact of these elements on multimodal integration of speech. The impact of talker characteristics on audio-visual integration has received the least amount of attention to date. A recent study by Andrews (2007) provided an initial look at talker characteristics. In her study, audiovisual integration produced by 14 talkers was examined, and substantial differences across talkers were found in both auditory and audiovisual intelligibility. However, talker characteristics that promoted audiovisual integration were not specifically identified. The present study began to address this question by analyzing audiovisual integration performance using two types of reduced-information speech syllables produced by five talkers. In one reduction, fine-structure information was replaced with band-limited noise but the temporal envelope was retained, and in the other, the syllables were reduced to a set of three sine waves that followed the formant structure of the syllable (sine-wave speech). Syllables were presented under audio-visual conditions to 10 listeners. Results indicated substantial across-talker differences, with the pattern of talker differences not affected by the type of reduction of the auditory signal. Analysis of confusion matrices provided directions for further analysis of specific auditory and visual speech tokens.College of the Arts and Sciences Undergraduate ScholarshipSocial and Behavioral Sciences Undergraduate Research ScholarshipNo embarg
    corecore