Dots and Acute Accent Shapes in the Dobrejšo Gospel

This paper examines the distribution of three types of sporadic and infrequent diacritics in the Dobrejšo Gospel and their functions: a dot or acute-accent shape over a liquid consonant letter in OCS trъt/trьt formations, and, more rarely, over other consonant letters in clusters; a single or multiple acute-accent shape over the letter л or н in certain words; and a titlo over unabbreviated words containing OCS trъt/trьt formations

Speech and music discrimination: Human detection of differences between music and speech based on rhythm

Rhythm in speech and singing forms one of its basic acoustic components. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the capability of subjects to distinguish between speech and singing when only the rhythm remains as an acoustic cue. For this study we developed a method to eliminate all linguistic components but rhythm from the speech and singing signals. The study was conducted online and participants could listen to the stimuli via loudspeakers or headphones. The analysis of the survey shows that people are able to significantly discriminate between speech and singing after they have been altered. Furthermore, our results reveal specific features, which supported participants in their decision, such as differences in regularity and tempo between singing and speech samples. The hypothesis that music trained people perform more successfully on the task was not proved. The results of the study are important for the understanding of the structure of and differences between speech and singing, for the use in further studies and for future application in the field of speech recognition

The Relationship Between English and Polish Rhythm Measures in Polish Learners of English

This paper investigates native and non-native speech rhythm in the speech of Polish learners of English at an intermediate/upper-intermediate level. More specifically, it attempts to explore the relationship between rhythm measures scores in L1 Polish and L2 English within individual speakers. Phonological vowel reduction in terms of duration is present in English and crucial for the perception and acoustic measurements of linguistic rhythm. Polish, on the other hand, has no phonological reduction of that kind. The acquisition of L2 vowel reduction is highly determined by the level of language proficiency and influences non-native rhythmic patterns. The study tests six speech rhythm measures: %V, ΔV, ΔC, VarcoV, VarcoC and nPVI-V in two tempos: normal and fast. The results show that most of these measures are positively and significantly correlated with each other between L1 Polish and L2 English across the subjects and for two tempos, although to a different degree. Highly significantly correlation has been noted for %V and ΔC in fast tempo. Moderate significant correlations between the two languages are observed for ΔV, ΔC (normal tempo), VarcoV and nPVI in fast tempo

Phonemic Quantity, Stress, and the Half-Long Vowel in Finnish

An experiment was conducted to compare the duration of the final vowels in Finnish disyllabic words which have short stressed initial syllables -CVCV(V)- with that in words with long stressed initial syllables -CVVCV(V), CVCCV(V), CVVCCV(V). It was found that in the first group the final short and long vowels were systematically longer than in the second group. This is taken to suggest that stress interacts with phonemic quantity: on the initial syllable in the CVCV(V)-words there is a conflict between the phonemic duration of the vowel and the use of duration as a stress cue. This is resolved by spreading the stress-induced duration to the second syllable. Thus even if the domain of stress is a syllable, its realization is not independent of the rest of the phonological structure but it operates in concert with it

Dutch Word Stress as Pronounced by Indonesian Students

This study focuses on the way in which the Dutch monophthongal vowels are pronounced by Indonesian students. To investigate whether Indonesian students realize the Dutch vowels correctly, especially when they are stressed, I analysed duration and quality of stressed and unstressed Dutch vowels. Measurements were done on the duration and the formant frequencies of the vowels spoken by Indonesian students and by native speakers of Dutch as well. Statistical analysis showed that in general the differences in duration between vowels spoken by the Indonesian students and by the native speakers were not significant. However, the effect of stress on the lengthening of the vowels was stronger for the Indonesian students than for the native speakers. In addition, statistical analysis of the formant frequencies confirmed that the non-native speakers realized the Dutch vowels slightly differently from the Dutch native speakers. The Indonesian students pronounced the stressed vowels more clearly than their unstressed counterparts; yet their vowel diagram is smaller than the vowel diagram of the native speakers

Hubungan dan penyebab kekerabatan bahasa Aceh dengan bahasa Melayu (Malaysia)

Tulisan peneliti bertujuan mendeksripsikan hubungan dan penyebab kekerabatan bahasa Aceh dengan bahasa Melayu (Malaysia). Penelitian ini menggunakan teori leksikostatistik. Instrumen penelitian yang digunakan adalah 200 kosakata dasar Swadesh