On the Tail of the Scottish Vowel Length Rule in Glasgow

One of the most famous sound features of Scottish English is the short/long timing alternation of /i u ai/vowels, which depends on the morpho-phonemic environment, and is known of as the Scottish Vowel Length Rule (SVLR). These alternations make the status of vowel quantity in Scottish English (quasi-)phonemic but are also susceptible to change, particularly in situations of intense sustained dialect contact with Anglo-English. Does the SVLR change in Glasgow where dialect contact at the community level is comparably low? The present study sets out to tackle this question, and tests two hypotheses involving (1) external influences due to dialect-contact and (2) internal, prosodically-induced factors of sound change. Durational analyses of /i u a/ were conducted on a corpus of spontaneous Glaswegian speech from the 1970s and 2000s, and four speaker groups were compared, two of middle-aged men, and two of adolescent boys. Our hypothesis that the development of the SVLR over time may be internally constrained and interact with prosody was largely confirmed. We observed weakening effects in its implementation which were localised in phrase-medial unaccented positions in all speaker groups, and in phrase-final positions in the speakers born after the Second World War. But unlike some other varieties of Scottish or Northern English which show weakening of the Rule under a prolonged contact with Anglo-English, dialect contact seems to be having less impact on the durational patterns in Glaswegian vernacular, probably because of the overall reduced potential for a regular, everyday contact in the West given the different demographies

Monkeys and Humans Share a Common Computation for Face/Voice Integration

Speech production involves the movement of the mouth and other regions of the face resulting in visual motion cues. These visual cues enhance intelligibility and detection of auditory speech. As such, face-to-face speech is fundamentally a multisensory phenomenon. If speech is fundamentally multisensory, it should be reflected in the evolution of vocal communication: similar behavioral effects should be observed in other primates. Old World monkeys share with humans vocal production biomechanics and communicate face-to-face with vocalizations. It is unknown, however, if they, too, combine faces and voices to enhance their perception of vocalizations. We show that they do: monkeys combine faces and voices in noisy environments to enhance their detection of vocalizations. Their behavior parallels that of humans performing an identical task. We explored what common computational mechanism(s) could explain the pattern of results we observed across species. Standard explanations or models such as the principle of inverse effectiveness and a “race” model failed to account for their behavior patterns. Conversely, a “superposition model”, positing the linear summation of activity patterns in response to visual and auditory components of vocalizations, served as a straightforward but powerful explanatory mechanism for the observed behaviors in both species. As such, it represents a putative homologous mechanism for integrating faces and voices across primates

The Fundamentals : a testimony to the truth Vol. 12

Rev. A.C. Dixon edited the first five volumes of \u27The Fundamentals . The next five books were taken in hand by the late Louis Meyer. Rev. R.A. Torrey edited volumes 11 and 12. The following are the names of the original committee to whom was committed full supervision of the movement: Rev. A.C. Dixon, Rev. R.A. Torrey, Rev. Louis Meyer, Mr. Henry P. Crowell, Mr. Thomas S. Smith, Mr. D.W. Potter, and Rev. Elmore Harris... Since the movement began, some 2000,000 letters have been received, including many requests for the continuance of this testimony in some form. In compliance with these requests it is planned to undertake its continuance through The King\u27s Business , which is published by the Bible Institute of Los Angeles...(https://digitalcommons.biola.edu/kings-business/) This volume is largely devoted to evangelism at home and abroad. Doctrines that must be emphasized in successful evangelism / L.W. Munhall Pastoral and personal evangelism, or winning men to Christ one by one / Rev. John Timothy Stone The Sunday School\u27s true evangelism / Charles Gallaudet Trumbull Foreign missions of world-wide evangelism / Robert E. Speer What missionary motives should prevail? / Rev. Henry W. Frost The place of prayer in evangelism / Rev. R.A. Torrey The church and socialism / Prof. Charles R. Erdman The fifteen books most indispensable for the minister or Christian worker Index of articles in the twelve volumes of The Fundamentalshttps://digitalcommons.biola.edu/the-fundamentals/1011/thumbnail.jp

Talkers alter vowel production in response to real-time formant perturbation even when instructed not to compensate

Talkers show sensitivity to a range of perturbations of auditory feedback (e.g., manipulation of vocal amplitude, fundamental frequency and formant frequency). Here, 50 subjects spoke a monosyllable (“head”), and the formants in their speech were shifted in real time using a custom signal processing system that provided feedback over headphones. First and second formants were altered so that the auditory feedback matched subjects’ production of “had.” Three different instructions were tested: (1) control, in which subjects were naïve about the feedback manipulation, (2) ignore headphones, in which subjects were told that their voice might sound different and to ignore what they heard in the headphones, and (3) avoid compensation, in which subjects were informed in detail about the manipulation and were told not to compensate. Despite explicit instruction to ignore the feedback changes, subjects produced a robust compensation in all conditions. There were no differences in the magnitudes of the first or second formant changes between groups. In general, subjects altered their vowel formant values in a direction opposite to the perturbation, as if to cancel its effects. These results suggest that compensation in the face of formant perturbation is relatively automatic, and the response is not easily modified by conscious strategy