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Full-Text Articles in Phonetics and Phonology

Morphological Alternations At The Intonational Phrase Edge, Robert Henderson Aug 2012

Morphological Alternations At The Intonational Phrase Edge, Robert Henderson

English Faculty Research Publications

This article develops an analysis of a pair of morphological alternations in K'ichee' (Mayan) that are conditioned at the right edge of intonational phrase boundaries. I propose a syntax-prosody mapping algorithm that derives intonational phrase boundaries from the surface syntax, and then argue that each alternation can be understood in terms of output optimization. The important fact is that a prominence peak is always rightmost in the intonational phrase, and so the morphological alternations occur in order to ensure an optimal host for this prominence peak. Finally, I consider the wider implications of the analysis for the architecture of the …


Prosody-Based Query-By-Example Spoken Utterance Retrieval, Steven D. Werner, Nigel G. Ward Jul 2012

Prosody-Based Query-By-Example Spoken Utterance Retrieval, Steven D. Werner, Nigel G. Ward

COURI Symposium Abstracts, Summer 2012

Current spoken dialogue retrieval systems are almost entirely lexically based, using automatic transcription by imperfect speech recognition technology. Once audio is reduced to text, little more than existing text search methods are used to retrieve results. However, spoken dialogue contains rich latent prosodic information about dialogue activities - such as agreeing, arguing, deciding, planning, storytelling, showing surprise - and this extra information can often be relevant to the searchers aims. Searching for similar speech acts rather then similar words enables similar contextual results, returning points where the speaker had the same sentiment during a topic. Previous research yielded 76 dimensions …


Investigating The Prevalence Of Use By Japanese Speakers Of An Acceptable Alternative Articulation Of The Phoneme /S/ To That Commonly Taught In Esl And Efl Classrooms, Greg Raver-Lampman Apr 2012

Investigating The Prevalence Of Use By Japanese Speakers Of An Acceptable Alternative Articulation Of The Phoneme /S/ To That Commonly Taught In Esl And Efl Classrooms, Greg Raver-Lampman

English Theses & Dissertations

The International Phonetic Association (IPA) as well as textbooks on phonology and teaching English as a second language (ESL) or foreign language (EFL) characterize the /s/ as an "alveolar fricative," meaning that the tongue approaches the alveolar ridge to produce the sound. Japanese phonology texts characterize the Japanese /s/ as alveolar as well. This tongue position has become integral to teaching the sound to English-speaking children who have speech impediments and for teaching the sibilants to speakers of other languages, including first-language speakers of Japanese who often struggle with the English /s/ despite the fact that the sound occurs in …