Ejectives in Scottish English: a social perspective

This paper presents the results of an analysis of the realization of word-final /k/ in a sample of read and casual speech by 28 female pupils from a single-sex Glaswegian high school. Girls differed in age, socioeconomic background, and ethnicity. Ejectives were the most usual variant for /k/ in both speech styles, occurring in the speech of every pupil in our sample. Our narrow auditory analysis revealed a continuum of ejective production, from weak to intense stops. Results from multinomial logistic regression show that ejective production is promoted by phonetic, linguistic and interactional factors: ejectives were used more in read speech, when /k/ occurred in the /-ŋk/ cluster (e.g. tank), and when the relevant word was either at the end of a clause or sentence, or in turn-final position. At the same time, significant interactions between style, and position in turn, and the social factors of age and ethnicity, show that the use of ejectives by these girls is subject to a fine degree of sociolinguistic control, alongside interactional factors. Finally, cautious comparison of these data with recordings made in 1997 suggests that these results may also reflect a sound change in progress, given the very substantial real-time increase in ejective realizations of /k/ in Glasgow over the past fourteen years

Methodological Issues in a Real-Time Study of Glaswegian Vowels: Automation and Comparability

No abstract available

Making mathematics meaningful: Using student-initiated problems to situate mathematics

Mathematics is everywhere-from the minute we open our eyes to check the alarm clock and calculate how many minutes extra we can afford to lie in bed, to measuring out our cereal for breakfast and estimating if we have enough petrol to make the 18 kilometre journey to work. As teachers of mathematics. we must ask ourselves if the way we teach reflects the real-life problem-solving situations our students will experience within their everyday world

The role of gesture delay in coda /r/ weakening: an articulatory, auditory and acoustic study

The cross-linguistic tendency of coda consonants to weaken, vocalize, or be deleted is shown to have a phonetic basis, resulting from gesture reduction, or variation in gesture timing. This study investigates the effects of the timing of the anterior tongue gesture for coda /r/ on acoustics and perceived strength of rhoticity, making use of two sociolects of Central Scotland (working- and middle-class) where coda /r/ is weakening and strengthening, respectively. Previous articulatory analysis revealed a strong tendency for these sociolects to use different coda /r/ tongue configurations—working- and middle-class speakers tend to use tip/front raised and bunched variants, respectively; however, this finding does not explain working-class /r/ weakening. A correlational analysis in the current study showed a robust relationship between anterior lingual gesture timing, F3, and percept of rhoticity. A linear mixed effects regression analysis showed that both speaker social class and linguistic factors (word structure and the checked/unchecked status of the prerhotic vowel) had significant effects on tongue gesture timing and formant values. This study provides further evidence that gesture delay can be a phonetic mechanism for coda rhotic weakening and apparent loss, but social class emerges as the dominant factor driving lingual gesture timing variation

Utilising Hidden Markov Modelling for the Assessment of Accommodation in Conversational Speech

The work presented here suggests a method for assessing speech accommodation in a holistic acoustic manner by utilising Hidden Markov Models (HMMs). The rationale for implementation of this method is presented along with an explanation of how HMMs work. Here, a heavily simplified HMM is used (single state; mixture of gaussians) in order to assess the applicability of more sophisticated HMMs. Results are presented from a small-scale study of six pairs of female Scottish-English speakers, showing measurement of significant trends and changes in holistic acoustic features of speakers during conversational interaction. Our findings suggest that methods integrating HMMs with current holistic acoustic measures of speech may be a useful tool in accounting for acoustic change due to speaker interaction

Measuring Mimicry in Task-Oriented Conversations: The More the Task is Difficult, The More we Mimick our Interlocutors

The tendency to unconsciously imitate others in conversations is referred to as mimicry, accommodation, interpersonal adap- tation, etc. During the last years, the computing community has made significant efforts towards the automatic detection of the phenomenon, but a widely accepted approach is still miss- ing. Given that mimicry is the unconscious tendency to imitate others, this article proposes the adoption of speaker verification methodologies that were originally conceived to spot people trying to forge the voice of others. Preliminary experiments suggest that mimicry can be detected by measuring how much speakers converge or diverge with respect to one another in terms of acoustic evidence. As a validation of the approach, the experiments show that convergence (the speakers become more similar in terms of acoustic properties) tends to appear more frequently when a task is difficult and, therefore, requires more time to be addressed

The feasibility of delivering Group Family Nurse Partnership

PURPOSE: To evaluate the feasibility of delivering the Group Family Nurse Partnership (gFNP) programme, combining elements of the Family Nurse Partnership programme and Centering Pregnancy and offered from early pregnancy to 12 months postpartum to mothers under 25. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY: A mixed method descriptive feasibility study. Quantitative data from anonymised forms completed by nurses from November 2009 to May 2011 (pilot 1) and January 2012 to August 2013 (pilot 2) reporting referrals, attendance and client characteristics. Qualitative data collected between March 2010 and April 2011 (pilot 1) and November 2012 and November 2013 (pilot 2) from semi-structured interviews or focus groups with clients and practitioners. FINDINGS: There were challenges to reaching eligible clients. Uptake of gFNP was 57% to 74%, attendance ranged from 39% to 55% of sessions and attrition ranged from 30% to 50%. Clients never employed attended fewest sessions overall compared to those working full time. The group format and the programme’s content were positively received by clients but many struggled to attend regularly. FNP practitioners were positive overall but involving community practitioners (pilot 2) placed more stress on them. RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS: Further feasibility and then cost and effectiveness research is necessary to determine the optimal staffing model. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: The content and style of support of the home-based FNP programme, available only to first time mothers under 20, could be offered to women over 20 and to those who already have a child. Social implications A range of interventions is needed to support potentially vulnerable families. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: This new complex intervention lacks evidence. This paper documents feasibility, the first step in a thorough evaluation process. Keywords: Group support, pregnancy, early infancy, nurses, parent-child relationship

The Role of Tapping in Improving Connected Speech Comprehension of a Non-Native Variety of English

No abstract available

When is it Justifiable to Ascribe Mental States to Non-Human Systems?

In this thesis I shall attempt to show when it is, and when it is not, justifiable to ascribe mental states, of the type that we associate with the complex cognitive behaviour of human beings, to non-human systems. To do this I will first attempt to give a fundamental explication of some of the problems that underlie our ascription of mental states to other human beings, non-human animals and machines, after which I will tackle the problem of whether or not any ascription of mentality can ever be completely vindicated. Then I will look at the issues of complexity and the distinctions that hold between the capabilities of various systems, both natural and artificial. The result of this will be a more comprehensive understanding of what characteristics are necessary for the possession of such capabilities. I will go on to argue that a positive relation exists between a system's architecture and its capability to behave or act in ways that can be classed as one of a number of mental states such as 'knowing', 'understanding' or 'believing'. I shall look at the ways in which machine states and mental states have been examined using hierarchical stratifications for these can offer us some indication of the correlation that exists between simple systems and the low level actions of which they are capable, and the more sophisticated actions of which only progressively more complex systems are capable. However, I shall put forward arguments to demonstrate that this is a feasible strategy when dealing with the innards of a machine but not for dealing with the innards of the mind. Throughout the thesis I shall try to clarify the inexplicit or clouded notions of subjectivity and intentionality, for one of my aims is to demonstrate that the notions of subjectivity and awareness are more important than intentionality in the distinction between human and non-human systems