Dissertations / Theses: 'English vowels and consonants'

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Foresti, Carlet Angélica. "L2 perception and production of English consonants and vowels by Catalan speakers: The effects of attention and training task in a cross-training study." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/403758.

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Este estudio compara el efecto de dos métodos de entrenamiento de alta variabilidad fonética o ‘high variability phonetic training’ (HVPT) sobre sonidos específicamente entrenados y sobre sonidos no entrenados pero implícitamente presentados. Con este fin, se implementan diversos regímenes de entrenamiento fonético cuyo objetivo es mejorar la percepción y la producción de 5 vocales del inglés británico (/i ɪ æ ʌ ɜː/) y de las consonantes oclusivas en posición inicial y final de palabra por hablantes bilingües de catalán y castellano. Así, este estudio investiga: (a) si el entrenamiento fonético recibido puede mejorar la percepción y la producción de segmentos entrenados y no entrenados, (b) si la mejora se generaliza a nuevos estímulos y hablantes, (c) si la mejora se mantiene un tiempo después, (d) qué método de entrenamiento, identificación (ID) o discriminación categórica (DIS) es más eficaz, y (e) cuáles son las impresiones de los participantes sobre el entrenamiento fonético como una herramienta de instrucción fonética. Cien estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera fueron divididos en cuatro grupos experimentales y un grupo de control. Los grupos entrenados diferían tanto en método de entrenamiento (ID, DIS) como en el enfoque del entrenamiento (consonantes, vocales) dando lugar a cuatro grupos diferentes. Crucialmente, los cuatro grupos fueron entrenados con los mismos estímulos CVC (por ejemplo, zat, zut, zad, zud), exponiendo a los participantes a los contrastes fonéticos entrenados y a los contrastes fonéticos no entrenados. Los resultados revelan que todos los grupos experimentales superaron significativamente al grupo de control en su identificación de sonidos entrenados (vocales y consonantes oclusivas en posición inicial), mostrando la eficacia de ambas metodologías de entrenamiento fonético (ID y AX DIS). Sin embargo, mientras que ambos grupos experimentales mejoran su percepción de las oclusivas iniciales de manera similar, los aprendices de ID superan a los aprendices de DIS en la percepción de vocales específicamente entrenadas después del entrenamiento fonético. Estos resultados sugieren que la modificación de la percepción de los diferentes tipos de segmentos (vocales, consonantes) puede requerir diferentes procedimientos y duraciones de entrenamiento distintas. Curiosamente, sólo los aprendices de DIS mostraron una mejora significativa en la percepción de los sonidos no específicamente entrenados, lo que indica que este método de entrenamiento puede proporcionar mejoras en la percepción de sonidos entrenados y sonidos no entrenados pero implícitamente presentados. En cuanto a la generalización y a la retención de los efectos del entrenamiento, los resultados con sonidos vocálicos apuntan a la superioridad de la tarea de ID sobre la tarea categórica de DIS. Además, ambos métodos son adecuados para entrenar consonantes iniciales de manera similar. Con respecto a la producción, sólo los aprendices de ID entrenados en vocales fueron capaces de mejorar significativamente su producción de los sonidos vocálicos. Por último, las opiniones de los estudiantes acerca del entrenamiento fonético como una herramienta de enseñanza de L2 fueron en general positivas, e ID fue más valorado que DIS como un método de formación. Globalmente, estos resultados sugieren que ambos métodos son efectivos para entrenar la percepción de una L2. Sin embargo, los métodos pueden promover mejoras, generalización y retención de los distintos segmentos en diferentes grados. Los mejores resultados obtenidos con el método ID, en particular con las vocales, y el hecho de que sólo el método DIS proporcione la mejora de sonidos no entrenados pueden estar relacionados con la naturaleza y el fin de cada metodología y/o con las propiedades acústicas de cada segmento. Las consecuencias teóricas y prácticas de estos resultados pueden ser de utilidad para futuros trabajos de investigación y aplicaciones prácticas de aprendizaje de la pronunciación.
This study compares the effect of two high variability phonetic training (HVPT) methods on specifically attended sounds and on implicitly exposed but unattended sounds. Several training regimes are implemented aimed at improving the perception and production of a subset of English vowels (/i ɪ æ ʌ ɜː/) and initial and final stops by Spanish/Catalan bilingual learners of English. Thus this study addresses the following questions: (a) whether training can improve the perception and production of trained as well as untrained segments, (b) whether improvement generalizes to novel stimuli and talkers, (c) if improvement is retained over time, (d) which training method (Identification (ID) or categorical Discrimination (DIS)) is more effective, and (e) what are the participants’ impressions of phonetic training as a L2 training tool. A total of 100 bilingual Catalan/Spanish learners of English were divided into four experimental groups and a control group and were tested on their identification of English sounds presented in CVC non-words before and after a five-week training period, and two months later. L2 production was assessed before and immediately after training through a picture naming task and analysed by means of native speaker judgments. The trained groups differed either in terms of training method (ID, DIS) or focus of training (consonants, vowels), resulting in four different groups. Crucially, all four groups were trained with the same sets of CVC non-words (e.g. zat, zut, zad, zud), exposing learners to attended contrasts within trials and to unattended contrasts across trials. The results reveal that all experimental groups significantly outperform the controls in their identification of trained sounds (vowels and initial stops), showing the efficacy of both phonetic training methodologies (ID and categorical AX DIS). However, while both experimental groups perform similarly when modifying initial stop perception, the ID trainees outperform the DIS trainees on trained vowel perception. These results suggest that modifying the perception of different types of segments might require different training procedures and amounts of training time. Interestingly, only the DIS trainees show a significant improvement in the perception of untrained/unattended L2 sounds, indicating that this training method may be more suited to enhance learners’ perception of attended as well as unattended target sounds. Regarding generalization and retention, the results point to the superiority of the ID task over a categorical DIS task when training vowel sounds. Moreover, the results indicate that both methods are well suited for training initial consonants to the same extent. With respect to production, only the vowel ID trainees are able to significantly improve their production of trained sounds, which shows that pronunciation improvement might take place as a result of an identification perceptual training regime, even in the absence of production training. Finally, students’ opinions of phonetic training as an EFL tool are overall positive and ID is favoured over DIS as a training method. Globally, these findings suggest that while both methods are effective for training L2 perception, ID and DIS methods may promote improvement, generalization and retention for vowels and for consonants to different degrees. The better results obtained with ID training, particularly for vowels, and the fact that only DIS promoted improvement with untrained sounds (cross-training effects) may be related to the nature and focus of the tasks and/or to the acoustic characteristics of the target sounds. These results may have implications for future research on phonetic training and practical applications in the teaching of L2 pronunciation.

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Islam, S. M. Arifull. "English Vowels: A World English Perspective." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-1241.

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In spite of having a fixed standard of pronunciation, English is being used in various ways in parts of the world, particularly in its way of utterance. English vowel is playing one of the significant roles in making different varieties of English language. This essay tries to see into detail how some phonetic features (formant movement, frequency, pitch) of English vowels vary in relation to Bengali, Catalan, Italian, Spanish and Swedish speakers. It has been found that all these speakers vary a lot from each other in the utterance of English vowels.

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Hajek, John. "The interrelationship between vowels and nasal consonants : a case study in Northern Italian." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1992. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.334252.

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McMahon, April M. S. "Constraining lexical phonology : evidence from English vowels." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.236336.

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Nguyen, Thi Thu Thao. "Difficulties for Vietnamese when pronouncing English : Final Consonants." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2007. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-2915.

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Vietnamese people have many difficulties when pronouncing English. Among those, this paper will firstly deal with the hypothesis “English word-final consonants are not pronounced in a native-like way by Vietnamese speakers”. Theoretical phonological research about final consonants in the Vietnamese language and English has been carried out to characterize the difficulties. Data from Vietnamese informants were collected and analyzed, then synthesized to the most significant problems. Vietnamese effort to pronounce English word-final consonants will be towards omitting, adding schwa or replacing by sounds closer to those existing in their mother-tongue. Results of native speakers’ evaluation of Vietnamese-accented final consonants are also concluded to clarify how comprehensible informants’ pronunciation is. These findings will hopefully be useful for those who are interested in the topic and for further research.

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Bekker, Ian. "The vowels of South African English / Ian Bekker." Thesis, North-West University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/2003.

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This thesis provides a comparative analysis of vowel quality in South African English (SAE) using the following data: firstly, the existing impressionistic literature on SAE and other relevant accents of English, the former of which is subject to a critical review; secondly, acoustic data from a similar range of accents, including new SAE data, collected and instrumentally analyzed specifically for the purposes of this research. These various data are used to position, on both a descriptive and theoretical level, the SAE vowel system. In addition, and in the service of providing a careful reconstruction of the linguistic history of this variety, it offers a three-stage koin´eization model which helps, in many respects, to illuminate the respective roles played by endogenous and exogenous factors in SAE’s development. More generally, the analysis is focussed on rendering explicit the extent to which the synchronic status and diachronic development of SAE more generally, and SAE vowel quality more particularly, provides support for a number of descriptive and theoretical frameworks, including those provided in Labov (1994), Torgersen and Kerswill (2004), Trudgill (2004) and Schneider (2003; 2007). With respect to these frameworks, and based on the results of the analysis, it proposes an extension to Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model, shows Trudgill’s (2004) model of new-dialect formation to be inadequate in accounting for some of the SAE data, provides evidence that SAE is a possibly imminent but ‘conservative’ member of Torgersen and Kerswill’s (2004) SECS-Shift and uses SAE data to question the applicability of the SECS-Shift to FOOT-Fronting. Furthermore, this thesis provides evidence that SAE has undergone an indexicallydriven arrestment of the Diphthong and Southern Shifts and a subsequent and related diffusion of GenSAE values at the expense of BrSAE ones. Similarly, it shows that SAE’s possible participation in the SECS-Shift constitutes an effective chain-shift reversal ‘from above’. It stresses that, in order to understand such phenomena, recourse needs to be made to a theory of indexicality that takes into account the unique sociohistorical development of SAE and its speakers. Lastly, the adoption of the three-stage koin´eization model mentioned above highlights the merits of considering both endogenous and exogenous factors in the historical reconstruction of new-dialect formation and, for research into SAE in particular, strengthens the case for further investigation into the possible effects of 19th-century Afrikaans/Dutch, Yiddish and north-of-English dialects on the formation of modern SAE.
Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.

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Tunley, Alison. "Coarticulatory influences of liquids on vowels in English." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.423951.

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Park, Chi-youn 1981. "Recognition of English vowels using top-down method." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28538.

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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70).
Many recognizers use bottom-up methods for recognizing each phoneme or feature, and use the cues and the context to find the most appropriate words or sentences. But humans recognize words not just through bottom-up processing, but also top-down. In many cases of listening, one can usually predict what will come based on the preceding context, or one can determine what has been pronounced by listening to the following sounds. Therefore, if some cues to a word are given, it would be possible to refine the recognition by using the top-down method. This thesis deals with the improvement of the performance of recognition by using the top-down method. And most of the work will be concentrated on the problem of vowel recognition, when the adjacent consonants are known.
by Park Chi-youn.
S.M.

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Tollfree, Laura. "Modelling phonological variation and change : evidence from English consonants." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.309701.

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Srinivasan, Nandini. "Acoustic Analysis of English Vowels by Young Spanish-English Bilingual Language Learners." Thesis, The George Washington University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10815722.

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Several studies across various languages have shown that monolingual listeners perceive significant differences between the speech of monolinguals and bilinguals. However, these differences may not always affect the phoneme category as identified by the listener or the speaker; differences may often be found between tokens corresponding to unique phonological categories and, as such, be more easily detectable through acoustic analysis. We hypothesized that unshared English vowels produced by young Spanish-English bilinguals would have measurably different formant values and duration than the same vowels produced by young English monolinguals because of Spanish influence on English phonology. We did not find significant differences in formant values between the two groups, but we found that SpanishEnglish bilinguals produced certain vowels with longer duration than English monolinguals. Our findings add to the ever-growing body of literature on bilingual language acquisition and the perception of accentedness.

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Monte, Ordoño Julia 1989. "Neural mechanisms of abstract rule changes in speech : exploring phonologic and attentional constraints." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/664264.

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L’extracció de regles de la parla és crucial per a l’adquisició del llenguatge. La present dissertació estudia el mecanisme d’aprenentatge de regles explorant com el cervell detecta regularitats rellevants dins del senyal lingüístic. Per tal de donar resposta a aquesta pregunta he seguit tres línies de recerca. En primer lloc m’he centrat en la detecció de canvis, tant superficials com estructurals, de les regles lingüístiques. Mitjançant l’estudi dels potencials evocats, aquesta primera línia explora les respostes neuronals desencadenades després d’una violació estructural. En segon lloc, he estudiat els efectes de la manipulació fonètica amb la intenció de descobrir si les respostes neuronals associades a l’aprenentatge de regles varien quan aquestes s’implementen sobre les vocals o sobre les consonants. És a dir, m’he centrat en avaluar com les diverses categories fonètiques poden donar lloc a respostes neuronals diverses. En tercer lloc, he explorat la detecció de regles en un context d’aprenentatge heterogeni per tal d’observar com poden ser descobertes les regles abstractes dins d’un senyal sorollós. En conjunt, els resultats obtinguts mostren que la manipulació d’ambdós factors, tant de les pistes fonològiques com del context d’aprenentatge, modula el procés d’extracció de regles. Més específicament, aquestes manipulacions podrien alterar les fonts d’informació que es prioritzen durant el processament de la parla. Finalment, la presència d’una pista diferenciadora del senyal (com les diferències en la freqüència d’aparició de diverses regles) podria facilitar el processament de múltiples sistemes estructurals dins d’un input lingüístic.
The extraction of abstract rules from speech is paramount for language acquisition. The present dissertation explores the processing of linguistic rules by studying how our brain discovers the relevant abstract regularities in the signal. In order to tackle this question I followed three lines of research. First I focused on the detection of surface and structural changes of speech rules that I explored using an ERP approach. The objective was to understand the neural responses that are triggered after abstract rule violations in speech. Second, I studied the effects of the phoneme manipulations. The aim was to discover whether the ERP signatures linked to rule learning differ when the target regularity is implemented over consonants or over vowels. That is, I focused on exploring how different phonetic categories might trigger different neural responses to rule violations. And third, I explored the detection of rules from a heterogeneous context studying how abstract rules might be discovered over a noisy signal. Overall, the results we observed suggest that the manipulation of both the phonologic cues and the context of learning modulate the rule extraction process. More specifically, the present dissertation shows that both the task presented to the listeners and the phonemic cues present in the signal affect the selection of relevant sources of information from the speech. Even more, the experiments reported here show that the presence of a clear differentiating cue in the signal (such as the frequency unbalance across rules), might enhance the processing of different rule systems from the speech input.

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Shames, Yonit A. "Perception of acoustically similar vowels from English and Hebrew." Tallahassee, Fla. : Florida State University, 2008. http://purl.fcla.edu/fsu/lib/digcoll/undergraduate/honors-theses/341800.

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Thesis (Honors paper)--Florida State University, 2008.
Advisor: Dr. Richard Morris, Florida State University, College of Communication, Dept. of Communication Disorders. Includes bibliographical references.

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Yeung, Ho-yan. "Vowels of Hong Kong English from an acoustic perspective /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKU Scholars Hub, 2007. http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B42006235.

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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007.
"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30). Also available in print.

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Gordon, Leslie S. "Factors affecting English speakers' perception of L2 Spanish vowels." Connect to Electronic Thesis (ProQuest) Connect to Electronic Thesis (CONTENTdm), 2008. http://worldcat.org/oclc/436442802/viewonline.

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Samoylova, Ekaterina. "The production and perception of whispered vowels in English." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.504007.

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Yu, Hye Jeong. "The development of obstruent consonants in bilingual Korean-English children." Thesis, State University of New York at Buffalo, 2016. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10163769.

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This dissertation investigates bilingual language acquisition among children between the ages of 4 and 7, who are raised in the home where both parents speak L1, but they have been exposed to L2 later on during their childhood with some regularity over and above their L1. The focus of this study is the developmental patterns in English and Korean produced by the young Korean-English bilingual children and how they gradually accommodate to two different obstruent systems.

Korean and English have different obstruent systems. Korean has an unusual three-way voiceless contrast. Korean has a three-way distinction in both stops and affricates: aspirated, lax, and tense, and a two-way distinction in fricatives: non-tense (aspirated or lax) and tense. All Korean obstruent consonants are voiceless. English has a two-way distinction in stops, affricates, and fricatives: voiceless (the stops are often aspirated) and ‘voiced’ (the stops are usually voiceless unaspirated).

The children who participated in this study were 24 Korean-English bilingual children (KEB children), ages 4-7 years old, and 24 monolingual English-speaking and Korean-speaking children (EM and KM children) in the same age range. The bilingual children learned Korean as their L1, but subsequently learned and started to speak English at some point in the age range of 1:6-4:0 years. Subjects looked at a set of pictures to prompt a set of words which contained the target segments in the word-initial position; they were taught what words they should say in English or Korean depending on which language was being tested. They were asked to say the correct word in response to each picture. VOT, stop closure, frication and aspiration durations, total duration, F0, and H1-H2 at the onset of the following vowel were measured. The results showed that the KEB children showed similar phonetic development patterns to the EM and KM children in each language, but they showed slower language acquisition in each language relatively later. The results also showed interactions between English and Korean in the KEB children. In order to distinguish English obstruents from Korean obstruents, the KEB children exaggerated phonetic values of Korean obstruents. Also, some distinct phonetic features of Korean obstruents were found in English obstruents produced by the KEB children, and the KEB children produced less pressed voice for Korean tense obstruents than did the KM children due to the influence of English.

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Chan, Siu-wing. "When the Cantonese "b" is the English /p/ stop-consonant voicing strategies across languages /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2009. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B42841458.

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Choi, Jaehyeok. "Theoretical historical phonology : a unified account of consonant lenition and vowel reduction in English within the framework of element and optimality theory." Thesis, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10443/2886.

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This thesis is intended to provide a unified and coherent theoretical analysis of phonological weakening processes of vowels and consonants in English within the framework of Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993). The analysis of weakening phenomena may vary according to the theory you adopt and the language you choose, but in this thesis, vowel reduction and consonant lenition in English will be explored in a constraint-based approach. In addition, most importantly, I seek to show which generalisations can equally be applied to both consonant lenition and vowel reduction in terms of a phonological theory. The key questions to be investigated in this thesis are as follows. 1) How do we represent phonological weakening phenomena in terms of segmental features or elements? 2) How can these representational elements be integrated into the constraint ranking and evaluation mechanisms in Optimality Theory? 3) Do the historical data such as the initial fricative voicing and vowel reduction in Old and Middle English give us any insight in this regard? There seems to be a similarity between consonant lenition and vowel reduction in terms of their phonological behaviour. For instance, both consonant lenition and vowel reduction can be treated as loss of some element or reduction of complexity in Element Theory (e.g. Harris 1994). This is an interesting point of my PhD project because this kind of representational approach to weakening phenomena has rarely been applied in Optimality Theoretic analysis. Therefore, what is intended to do in this thesis is that melodic representation will be used for modelling weakening phenomena within the framework of Optimality Theory. iv In this regard, I suggest a combined theoretic account of weakening phenomena involving the combination of two approaches namely Element Theory and Optimality Theory, which differentiates this account from previous analyses. I argue that the constraint *COMPLEX[Element], where ‘element’ refers to one of the primitives of Element Theory, plays a central role in analysing phonological weakening processes in this thesis. In addition, it will be shown throughout the thesis that these processes can be accounted for within the constraint interaction between positional faithfulness constraints such as IDENT[Element] and the integrated constraint *COMPLEX[Element] which I propose in this thesis.

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Rauber, Andréia Schurt. "Perception and production of english vowels by brazilian efl speakers." Florianópolis, SC, 2006. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/88701.

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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.
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This study investigated the relationship between the perception and production of English vowels by 18 highly proficient Brazilian EFL speakers, most of them M.A. and doctoral students of the Graduate Program in English of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Two experiments were carried out: A production test to measure the first two formants of the learners' English and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowels, and an identification test with synthetic stimuli to investigate the L2 (second language) perception of English vowels. The production and perception results reveal that the Euclidean distance between the three English target pairs (/i/-/I/, /E/-/ae/, /U/-/u/) was significantly larger for the American English monolinguals than for the L2 learners, thus indicating that the Brazilians have difficulty in both producing and perceiving these vowels in a native-like fashion. Importantly, some relationship between vowel perception and production was found because the target pairs which were better perceived were also the ones produced more accurately by the L2 learners. These results provide further evidence for the fact that L2 perception outperforms L2 production.

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Samimi, Hamed. "Automatic Recognition of Speech-Evoked Brainstem Responses to English Vowels." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/32975.

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The objective of this study is to investigate automatic recognition of speech-evoked auditory brainstem responses (speech-evoked ABR) to the five English vowels (/a/, /ae/, /ao (ɔ)/, /i/ and /u/). We used different automatic speech recognition methods to discriminate between the responses to the vowels. The best recognition result was obtained by applying principal component analysis (PCA) on the amplitudes of the first ten harmonic components of the envelope following response (based on spectral components at fundamental frequency and its harmonics) and of the frequency following response (based on spectral components in first formant region) and combining these two feature sets. With this combined feature set used as input to an artificial neural network, a recognition accuracy of 83.8% was achieved. This study could be extended to more complex stimuli to improve assessment of the auditory system for speech communication in hearing impaired individuals, and potentially help in the objective fitting of hearing aids.

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Lam, Sin-ting Stephanie. "Spectral and temporal features of tense-lax vowel contrast produced by Cantonese speakers of English a comparative study /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKU Scholars Hub, 2007. http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B42005528.

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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007.
"A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-32). Also available in print.

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Silva, Filho Jair Luiz Alves da. "The production of english syllable-final consonants by brazilian efl learners /." Florianópolis, SC, 1998. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/77357.

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Dissertação (Mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão.
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Van, den Heever Cornelius Marthinus. "Tswana first language interference on English vowels / C.M. van den Heever." Thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/2283.

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Schultheiss, Lore Katharina Gerti. "Cross-Language Perception of German Vowels by Speakers of American English." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2406.pdf.

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Lopez, Lydda. "Vowels in the 305: A First Pass at Miami Latino English." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1797.

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In this paper, I present preliminary findings of the first-large scale, systematic study of English Latino vowels in Miami. Sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with 25 Miami-born participants: 10 Anglo Whites and 15 Latinos with varying degrees of Spanish fluency. Here I focus on the vowel quality (/i, ɪ, ai, æ, ɔ, u /) in the speech of the 2nd and 3rd generations to examine the nature of influence of Spanish on English in Miami over the past 60 years. I conduct an in-depth analysis of the vowel productions of two female speakers, Maria & Blaze, to show the range of vowel productions in Miami Latino English. The vocalic analysis is comprised of a minimum of 15 non-repeating tokens of each vowel. These vowels were extracted from interview data and analyzed for F1, F2, and F3 values using PRAAT. Two allophones of /æ/ were considered: pre-nasal and pre-non-nasal, since Latinos in other regions have shown to resist pre-nasal /æ/ raising (Thomas 2001).

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Hon, Elisabeth A. "An acoustic analysis of labialization of coronal nasal consonants in American English." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/34362.

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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).
A challenge for speech recognition models is to account for the variation between natural connected speech forms and the canonical forms of the lexicon. This study focuses on one particular sound change common in conversational speech, in which word-final coronal nasal consonants undergo place assimilation toward following word-initial labial consonants. Formant frequency measurements were taken from words ending with coronal nasal consonants in potentially assimilating sentence contexts, and identical words ending in labial nasal consonants, across vowel contexts. The frequency of the second formant at vowel offset and during nasal closure was found to be sufficient to discriminate between underlying forms. There was evidence that even strongly-assimilated coronal segments differ on the basis of these cues from their pure labial counterparts. It is hypothesized that listeners can use these acoustic cues to uncover the intended place of articulation of assimilated segments, without recourse to phonological inference or sentence context.
by Elisabeth A. Hon.
S.M.

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Pik-ha, Chan. "An investigation into the perception (and production) of English word-initial consonants by native speakers of Cantonese." Hong Kong : University of Hong Kong, 1999. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record.jsp?B21161082.

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Isono, Toru. "Japanese learners' interlanguage phonology : with special reference to English vowels and plosives." Thesis, University of Essex, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.252268.

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Sun, Rui. "Classification of Frequency Following Responses to English Vowels in a Biometric Application." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/40552.

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The objective of this thesis is to characterize and identify the representation of four short English vowels in the frequency following response (FFR) of 22 normal-hearing adult subjects. The results of two studies are presented, with some analysis. The result of the first study indicates how the FFR signal of four short vowels can be used to identity different subjects. Meanwhile, a rigorous test was conducted to test and verify the quality and consistency of responses from each subject between test and retest, in order to provide strong and representative features for subject identification. The second study utilized machine learning and deep learning classification algorithms to exploit features extracted from the FFRs, in both time and frequency domains, to accurately identify subjects from their responses. We used three kinds of classifiers with respect to three aspects of the features, yielding a highest classification accuracy of 86.36%. The results of the studies provide positive and important implications for establishing a biometric authentication system using speech-evoked FFRs.

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Chirrey, Deborah Ann. "An articulatory and acoustic phonetic study of selected consonants in accents of Scottish English." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 1995. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/4010/.

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This thesis begins by reviewing the literature pertaining to Scottish English pronunciation which has been produced since the late-eighteenth century. The world of authors, such as Sylvester Douglas, Melville Bell, James Murray, James Wilson, William Grant, Anne McAllister, Jack Aitken and David Abercrombie, is reviewed and its contribution to our understanding of the nature of Scottish English pronunciation is assessed. The methodology and findings of the present study are then presented. The data is gathered from speakers from Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen and it centres around their pronunciation of /r, l, w/ and /m/ and their voice onset times for voiceless plosives. Certain discrepancies are noted between the description of these features in the existing literature and the realisations produced by the speakers informing the present study. The articulatory nature and acoustic characteristics of all allophones of /r, l, w/ and /m/ are described. Moreover, their incidence in all phonotactic contexts is set out. Hitherto unattested realisations (such as [f] for /r/, and [w] for 1/1) are noted and discussed at length. The lexical incidence of /w/ and /m/ is investigated and a sound change is observed. Voice onset times of /p, t/ and /k/ are measured in #CV and #CCV position. Statistical analysis finds no demographic difference in VOT values, but consistent significant differences emerge between the phonemic environments. Finally, it is argued that the gulf that exists between the literature pertaining to Scottish English pronunciation and the results of the present study is indicative of the state of our knowledge of the phonetic characteristics of most English accents. Consequently, a case is made for the renaissance of phonetic investigation into all English accents.

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Kim, Dae-Won. "Some phonetic aspects of intervocalic oral stop consonants in British English and Korean." Thesis, University of Reading, 1987. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.603443.

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The research presented in this thesis uses various instrumental techniques to determine the main phonetic characteristics of the Intervocalic stops in both British English and Korean. Pilot experiments were carried out using structured /VCV/ nonsense isolated items (chapter 2 and 3), and the results of the pilot experiments were confirmed with real speech items in connected speech In the main experiment (chapter 4). The results show that in intervocalic positions, the lax (phonologically voiced in BrEng and unaspirated lax in Korean) and tense (voiceless in BrEng and aspirated tense in Korean) stops are significantly differentiated by the duration of the preceding vowel, the duration of oral closure and maximum lingual contact and that the Korean phonologically unaspirated tense and lax stops are significantly differentiated by these measures also. The results also show that in intervocalic position, the so-called lax stops (phonologically voiced in BrEng and unaspirated lax in Korean) are rarely voiced throughout the closure phase but have a substantial period of devoicing and a measurable VOT. Also full voicing does not automatically occur as the duration of oral closure of a stop is reduced. The underlying physiological mechanism for voicing and devoicing during intervocalic stops in the two languages was discussed in the light of data on glottal area from a photo-electric glottograph. Some physiological explanations for the effect on the phonetic variables of the place of articulation, stress placement and tempo variation are discussed.

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Le, Roux Maria. "An acoustic investigation of English vowels as produced by English L1 and Setswana L1 foundation phase learners." Thesis, University of Pretoria, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/60376.

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This thesis provides a literature review on various topics related to the aims of the research project. In the process of sketching the rationale of this study, the language-in-education policy (LiEP) of South Africa is examined. The reasons why this policy is not successful, is discussed. Emanating from this discussion, the low literacy scores amongst young learners in South Africa are described and possible reasons for this occurrence are cited (Howie, Van Staden, Tshele, Dowse, & Zimmerman, 2012). The hypothesis that perceptual and articulation training of the vowels of English would enhance young English second language (Setswana first language-speaking) learners? awareness of English vowels, is posited and defended by referring to previous research (Moats, 2007; Trehearne, 2011; Seeff-Gabriel, 2003). In addition, it is stated that increased knowledge of the vowel system of English will improve English second language (EL2) learners? literacy skills (Moats, 2007). In order to explain and discuss the results of the investigations into the literacy skills of the EL2 learners participating in this study, the notions of literacy acquisition, phonological awareness skills, and language acquisition and language learning are examined. The main aim of this study is to assess the effects of intervention on the auditory perception and articulatory skills of English second language-speaking (EL2) (Setswana L1-speaking) learners in Grade 3, in the production of the monophthongs and diphthongs of the standard variety of South African English, namely White South African English (WSAfE) (Bekker, 2009). The effects are determined by acoustically comparing the vowel spaces of the participants before and after intervention. Therefore, a discussion of acoustic concepts such as the vowel space and the parameters thereof are provided. In addition, the vowels of WSAfE, those of Black South African English (BSAE), and the vowels of Setswana are discussed and compared according to their acoustic features. The results of this quasi-experimental, comparative study indicate that the vowel spaces of the EL1 and EL2 participants differ markedly before intervention, especially when comparing those of the short and long monophthongs of English. After intervention, the vowel spaces of especially the Experimental group are seen to approximate those of the EL1 participants in the Norm group. Interesting findings concerning the central schwa vowels and the diphthongs were made. These indicate that young EL2 (Setswana L1-speaking) learners do not use BSAE, but use a new? variety of English that is closer to WSAfE (Mesthrie, 2008). Pertaining to the measurable sub-aims of this study, the phonological awareness skills and literacy skills of the participants are assessed and compared, before and after intervention. The improvement of the phonological awareness skills and literacy skills of the Experimental group, as well as the changes in the vowel spaces that are noted for this group, prove the hypothesis that intervention in the form of additional input concerning the English vowels will enhance second language learners? perception and articulation. This strengthens the opinion that second language learners need quality teaching of the sound system of the language of learning and teaching.
Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2016.
African Languages
DPhil
Unrestricted

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Gibson, Andy. "Production and perception of vowels in New Zealand popular music." AUT University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/962.

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An acoustic comparison of sung and spoken vowels for three New Zealand singers investigates the phonetics of pronunciation in popular music. The singers recited the lyrics to their songs and recordings of their sung vocals were also obtained, creating a dataset of paired sung and recited words. Interviews with the singers were conducted so that the pronunciation used in reciting could be compared with a more conversational style. Eight vowels were analysed in these three conditions: DRESS, TRAP, THOUGHT, LOT, START, GOOSE, GOAT and PRICE. As well as providing data for phonetic analysis, the interviews elicited information about the singers’ musical influences, and investigated the singers’ stances towards the use of New Zealand English (NZE) in singing. The results of the comparison of singing and speech reflect the singers’ various stances to some extent. Overall, however, there are strikingly few cases where pairs of sung and spoken vowels have similar pronunciations. The predominance of ‘American’ vowels in the singing of all three participants, despite stated intentions to use New Zealand forms, suggests that the American-influenced singing style is the default in this context. This finding contrasts with early research on singing pronunciation in popular music, which described the use of American pronunciation in pop music as an act of identity which involved effort and awareness (Trudgill, 1983). The results presented here support the claims of more recent studies which suggest, conversely, that it is the use of non-American accent features which requires a wilful act of identity (Beal, 2009; O'Hanlon, 2006). An important consideration in the interpretation of vowel differences between singing and speech is the role played by the act of singing itself. It has been argued that there may be a general preference for increased sonority in singing (Morrissey, 2008) which would lead to the use of more open vowel sounds. This issue is explored and some evidence is found for a sonority-related effect. However, singing inherent effects like this can only explain a portion of the variability between singing and speaking. Most of the differences between singing and speech appear to be caused by social and stylistic motivations. To investigate why American-influenced pronunciation might be the default in the singing of pop music, a perception experiment was conducted to examine the phenomenon from the perspective of the listener. Participants were played words from a continuum that ranged between bed and bad, and they responded by circling whichever word they heard on a response sheet. The perception of ambiguous tokens was found to differ significantly according to whether or not the words were expected to be spoken or sung. These results are discussed with reference to exemplar theories of speech perception, arguing that the differences between singing and speech arise due to context-specific activation of phonetically detailed memories. This perspective can also be applied to the processes which underlie the production of vowels in sung contexts. Singers draw on their memories of popular music when they sing. Their use of American pronunciation in singing is therefore the result of the fact that a majority of their memories of pop singing involve American-influenced phonetic forms.

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Almotairi, Adel Mater. "THE PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH TENSE AND LAX VOWELS BY SAUDI SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS." OpenSIUC, 2015. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1693.

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The present study examined the perception of English tense-lax vowel pairs by adult Saudi English as a second language (ESL) learners. More specifically, it looked at the effect of experience and length of exposure to the target language on the perception of these vowels. Thirty-eight male Saudi participants were recruited for the purpose of this study and were divided into two groups based on their level of proficiency and length of residence in the US, referred to as the experienced group and the inexperienced group, respectively. The research instrument contained four tense-lax vowel pairs, including /i/-/ɪ/, /e/-/ɛ/, /u/-/ʊ/, and /o/-/ɔ/. In order to control for the effect of the environment, all of the vowels were embedded in /hVd/ contexts as illustrated by the following examples: heed (/i/), hid (/ɪ/), hayed (/e/), head (/ɛ/), hawed (/ɔ/), hoed (/o/), hood (/ʊ/), and who'd (/u/). Native-speaker recordings of each vowel token were used to test participants’ perception accuracy. The recordings included both male and female voices. According to the statistics provided by the t-tests, there were significant differences in the perception of five out of the eight vowels that were examined in this study. In all five cases, the experienced group had a significantly better perception accuracy. The vowel that showed the highest magnitude of difference between the experienced and inexperienced students was the tense mid front vowel /e/ with an effect size of 1.5. It was followed by the lax high back vowel /ʊ/ with an effect size of 1.08. The third in magnitude of difference was the lax mid front vowel /ɛ/ (effect size = 1.02), followed by the lax mid back vowel /ɔ/ (effect size = 0.79), and finally the tense mid back vowel /o/ (effect size = 0.72). On the other hand, vowels that did not show significant differences between the two groups were the tense and lax high front vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ and the tense high back vowel /u/. However, although the experienced group showed a significantly higher level of perception accuracy in five out of the eight tense-lax vowel contrasts, the participants in this group reached the 80% accuracy level with only two vowels: /i/ and /e/. On the other hand, the inexperienced group did not show mastery of any of the eight vowels as their perception accuracy scores were below 80%. In terms of related theories, some of the results supported the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1994), the Speech Learning Model (Flege, 1995), and the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman, 1977), whereas other findings provided contradictory evidence. Overall, this study concluded that experience and exposure had a positive effect on Saudi ESL speakers’ perceptions of the tense-lax vowel contrasts in English. Even though this effect was not the same for all vowel contrasts, it carried the implication that perception accuracy can be facilitated through systematic training and practice.

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Brown, Justin. "Focusing and diffusion in 'Cape Flats English': a sociophonetic study of three vowels." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12078.

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Includes abstract.
Includes bibliographical references.
This research contributes to the wider fields of sociophonetics and the social dialectology of English in South Africa. The study looks at three vowel sets; GOOSE, BATH and KIT taken from Wells (1982). The study was designed to identify and attempt to explain potential differences in pronunciation amongst speakers in an English-speaking community living in Cape Town and classified as 'Coloured' during apartheid. The community in question has used English as their first language for several generations and has enjoyed some of the economic advantages attached to this while at the same time being the victims (historically) of discrimination and marginalization. The study looks at the speech of twenty speakers. Using the methods of variationist sociolinguistics, it aims to investigate what correlations can be drawn between these speakers. It examines whether the speech of the informants can be correlated along lines of social class, education, personal background and occupation. In addition, the study looks (albeit briefly) at issues of language usage and social identity with regard to these twenty speakers.

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Huang, Yu-Chun. "The Influence of Speech Shadowing on English Word-initial Consonants Produced by Speakers of English as a Foreign Language." Thesis, California State University, Long Beach, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10785321.

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The purpose of this research is to determine whether speech shadowing influences the values of voice onset time (VOT) of word-initial consonants, /b/, /p/, /t/, /d/, and /k/ in reading and speaking conditions after a four-week training period. Twenty participants separated into two groups from a learning center in Taipei, Taiwan were recruited for this experiment. Mann-Whitney U tests were conducted to compare the values of VOT of five word-initial consonants in reading and speaking conditions, and narrative analyses were conducted to distinguish the differences among reading, speaking, and shadowing conditions. The results indicate that after the training period, the pronunciations of the consonants /b/, /p/, and /d/ had changed in reading and speaking conditions. The teaching of English pronunciation in Taiwan elementary schools was discussed and speech shadowing was recommended as one pedagogical method for improving the acquisition of English pronunciation.

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MacLeod, Andrea Asenath Nora. "Production and perceptions of VOT and high vowels by bilingual and monolingual speakers of Canadian English and Canadian French /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8248.

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Pecue, Caleb J. "Utilizing Audiovisual Stimuli in the Classroom to Facilitate Pronunciation of French Stop Consonants." Thesis, Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, 2015. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1589836.

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Kendall, Richard Ryan. "The Perception and Production of Portuguese Mid-Vowels by Native Speakers of American English." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2004. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5.

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This thesis examines the difficulties that beginning and advanced American learners of Portuguese have correctly perceiving and producing the Portuguese mid-vowels {o} and {e}. The beginning learners were enrolled in their second semester of Portuguese and had rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese. The advanced learners had all lived in Brazil for nearly two years and were enrolled in a more advanced Portuguese course. To test for production, informants were asked to read a group of sentences that contained one hundred occurrences of the Portuguese mid-vowels. Each production occurrence was evaluated as being correct or incorrect by linguistically trained native Brazilians. To test for perception, informants were evaluated on their ability to distinguish between tokens (individual vowel sounds) spoken in context by native Brazilian speakers. These tokens used to test perception were recorded in a professional recording studio in Brazil. The study found that beginning and advanced learners had difficulty perceiving and correctly producing the Portuguese mid-vowels. In the perception study, beginners scored 70% on the {o} section and 68% on the {e} section, for a combined score of 69%. The advanced learners scored 78% on the {o} section and 78% on {e} section, for an average score of 78%. In the production study, the advanced learners scored an average of 42% on the open vowels and 84% on the closed vowels. The beginners scored 23% on the open vowels and 97% on the closed vowels. The most striking finding in the study was that advanced learners scored lower on the closed vowel production section than did the beginners. This was due to a hypercorrection phenomenon in the advanced learners. The advanced learners, once they learned that open vowels exist in Portuguese, seemed to produce them sporadically in their speech. They tended to open many vowels that should have been closed. Beginners, however, rarely used any open vowels in their speech. Beginners showed a strong correlation between perception and production capabilities. Advanced learners, however, did not demonstrate a strong perception-production correlation. The author of this thesis can be contacted at richard@medlar.com

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Pritchard, Sonia. "A Cross-language Study of the Production and Perception of Palatalized Consonants." Thèse, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/22882.

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The goal of this dissertation was to investigate experimentally the phonetic qualities of the palatalized consonants of Standard Bulgarian. The term ‘palatalized’ refers to consonants (e.g., [tʲ, dʲ]) which are articulated with a secondary palatal gesture superimposed on the primary gesture associated with their plain counterparts (e.g., [t, d]). An acoustic study investigated the claim (Horálek, 1950; Choi, 1998; Ignateva-Tsoneva, 2008) that the palatalized consonants of Standard Bulgarian have undergone depalatalization, which was defined as the decomposition of a secondary palatal [ ʲ ] gesture into a palatal glide [j]. A cross-language comparison was performed. Russian (e.g., [tʲulʲ], ‘silk net’) and British English (e.g., [tju:lip], ‘tulip’) data served as a baseline against which the Bulgarian data (e.g., [tʲul], ‘silk net’) was evaluated. Subjects’ productions of words were recorded for acoustic analyses. The F1, F2 and F3 frequencies of the critical segments were analyzed with a Smoothing Spline ANOVA (Gu, 2002). The analyses indicated that Bulgarian palatalized consonants were identical to those of the Russian palatalized consonants, but different from the consonant-palatal glide sequences of British English. It was concluded that Bulgarian palatalized consonants have not undergone depalatalization. A perception study employed two variations of the gating task (Grosjean, 1980): audio-only and audio-visual. The results of the audio-only experiment indicated that Bulgarian and Russian listeners needed only the information associated with the palatalization portion of the consonant to identify it as palatalized. Bulgarian subjects did not need the transitions with the following vowel (Tilkov, 1983) to identify a consonant as palatalized. The Russian subjects of Richey’s (2000) experiment did not need the formant transitions either to identify the secondary palatal gesture. These findings provide further evidence that the palatalized consonants of the Standard Bulgarian have not undergone depalatalization. The purpose of the audio-visual experiment was to investigate if Bulgarian and Russian listeners use visual information to identify palatalized consonants. The results from this experiment were not as clear cut as those from the audio-only experiment. Factors such as insufficient visual information at earlier gates, as well as attentional load are being considered as possible confounds. In addition, an improved methodology for an audio-visual perception study is outlined. Experimental evidence from the acoustic and perception studies points to similarities in the phonetic shape of the palatalized consonants of Bulgarian and Russian. However, the phonological distribution of these segments is very different in the respective languages. I argue against a one-to-one mapping between the phonetic and phonological representations of the Bulgarian palatalized consonants. Based on distributional evidence, I propose that at the level of phonology they consist of a sequence of /CjV/.

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Silveira, Rosane. "The influence of pronunciation instruction on the perception and production of english word-final consonants." Florianópolis, SC, 2004. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/87379.

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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.
Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-21T19:08:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 203639.pdf: 9561309 bytes, checksum: 90747c4aef4297723504334cd23af8f1 (MD5)
Esta pesquisa investiga o papel desempenhado pelo ensino da pronúncia na aquisição de consoantes do inglês em posição de final de palavra por alunos brasileiros, em estágio inicial na aprendizagem da língua inglesa. Também são investigados vários fatores que a área da interfonologia aponta como sendo relevantes para a aquisição do sistema fonológico: (a) os diferentes padrões silábicos da L1 e da L2, (b) relações de marcação (e.g., vozeamento, sonoridade, ponto de articulação), (c) ortografia e (d) ambiente fonológico. Além disso, o presente estudo considera o papel da freqüência vocabular, do efeito da ordem de testagem e de algumas variáveis relacionadas a diferenças individuais, bem como os efeitos do ensino da pronúncia na aprendizagem dos demais componentes do curso de inglês. Dois grupos de alunos brasileiros matriculados nos cursos Extracurriculares de Inglês (nível 1) da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina participaram da pesquisa. Um grupo de 10 alunos (grupo de controle) e outro de 12 (grupo experimental) foram selecionados. O grupo experimental recebeu instrução baseada no manual de pronúncia desenvolvido para a presente pesquisa, enquanto o grupo de controle não recebeu qualquer tipo de instrução relacionada ao conteúdo focalizado pela pesquisa. As aulas para os grupos experimental e de controle foram lecionadas pela pesquisadora. A pesquisa inclui pré-testes, um período de instrução e pós-testes. Para o período de instrução, desenvolveu-se um manual de pronúncia contendo atividades que têm como objetivo minimizar a produção de uma vogal epentética na produção de consoantes em final de palavra. Para o desenvolvimento do manual de pronúncia, foi utilizado o esquema proposto por Celce-Murcia, Goodwin and Brinton (1996). Os pré e pós-testes consistiram de (a) um teste de produção no qual os participantes gravaram frases curtas contendo uma palavra-alvo e (b) um teste de discriminação categórica no qual os participantes tinham de distinguir entre os padrões silábicos CV e CVC. Os demais instrumentos usados para coletar os dados foram (c) um questionário utilizado para fazer um levantamento de dados biográficos e da experiência com a aprendizagem do Inglês; (d) o manual de pronúncia; (e) um questionário para a avaliação do material e dos procedimentos para o ensino da pronúncia e (f) duas provas escritas, usadas como instrumento de avaliação do desempenho dos alunos no curso de inglês. Os resultados indicam que o ensino da pronúncia auxiliou significativamente a aquisição das consoantes em final de palavras do inglês no que diz respeito à produção das mesmas, mas não à sua percepção. Testes estatísticos também mostraram que as variáveis ortografia, freqüência vocabular e ambiente fonológico influenciaram a aquisição das consoantes testadas. Por outro lado, o ensino de pronúncia não interferiu na aprendizagem dos conteúdos do curso de inglês, como mostra a análise das provas escritas dos participantes dos grupos experimental e de controle.

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Pereira, Reyes Y. I. "Perception and production of English vowels by Chilean learners of English : effect of auditory and visual modalities on phonetic training." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1417190/.

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The aim of this thesis was to examine the perception of English vowels by L2 learners of English with Spanish as L1 (Chilean-Spanish), and more specifically the degree to which they are able to take advantage of visual cues to vowel distinctions. Two main studies were conducted for this thesis. In study 1, data was collected from L2 beginners, L2 advanced learners and native speakers of Southern British English (ENS). Participants were tested on their perception of 11 English vowels in audio (A), audiovisual (AV) and video-alone (V) mode. ENS participants were tested to investigate whether visual cues are available to distinguish English vowels, while L2 participants were tested to see how sensitive they were to acoustic and visual cues for English vowels. Study 2 reports the outcome of a vowel training study. To compare the effect of different training modalities, three groups of L2 learners (beginner level) were given five sessions of high-variability vowel training in either A, AV or V mode. Perception and production of English vowels in isolated words and sentences was tested pre/post training, and the participants’ auditory frequency discrimination and visual bias was also evaluated. To examine the impact of perceptual training on L2 learners’ vowel production, recordings of key words embedded in read sentences were made pre and post-training. Acoustic-phonetic analyses were carried out on the vowels in the keywords. Additionally, the vowels were presented to native listeners in a rating test to judge whether the perceptual training resulted in significant improvement in intelligibility. In summary, the study with native English listeners showed that there was visual information available to distinguish at least certain English vowel contrasts. L2 learners showed low sensitivity to visual information. Their vowel perception improved after training, regardless of the training mode used, and perceptual training also led to improved vowel production. However, no improvement was found in their overall sensitivity to visual information.

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Chan, Pik-ha, and 陳碧霞. "An investigation into the perception (and production) of English word-initial consonants by native speakers of Cantonese." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 1999. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3194498X.

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Wang, Xinchun. "The acquisition of English vowels by Mandarin ESL learners, a study of production and perception." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq24263.pdf.

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Oliveira, Denize Nobre. "The effect of perceptual training on the learning of english vowels by brazilian portuguese speakers." Florianópolis, SC, 2007. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/90286.

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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.
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Pesquisas recentes mostram que o treinamento perceptual é uma ferramenta eficaz para melhorar a habilidade de perceber certos sons não-nativos de aprendizes de uma L2, especialmente quando esse treinamento é feito com a manipulação das pistas acústico-perceptuais. O presente estudo investigou o efeito do treinamento perceptual no aprendizado das vogais do inglês /i/, /I/, /E/, /Q/, /U/ e /u/, cuja percepção deficiente pode causar problemas de compreensão. Os objetivos específicos incluem investigar (i) o efeito do treinamento com estímulo artificial, (ii) a generalização do novo conhecimento para novos contextos e novos falantes, (iii) a transferência da melhora na percepção auditiva para produção oral e (iv) os efeitos de longo prazo. O treinamento das vogais foi ministrado durante o período de três semanas para 29 aprendizes brasileiros distribuídos em dois grupos: 15 treinaram com estímulo natural (grupo NatS) e 14 com estímulo sintetizado (grupo SynS). O estímulo sintetizado consistiu em elocuções com pistas espectrais enfatizadas e sem variação de duração e foram geradas por computador, enquanto que o estímulo natural foi gravado por falantes nativos de inglês americano. Os resultados apontam para uma melhora significativa dos grupos experimentais após o treinamento, sendo que houve uma melhora maior no grupo SynS do que no grupo NatS. Considerando que o treinamento ministrado para o grupo SynS consistiu apenas de estímulos sintetizados e que os testes incluíam apenas estímulos naturais, esse resultado também sugere que houve uma transferência do conhecimento adquirido com estímulo artificial para estímulos produzidos naturalmente. A melhora na performance dos alunos também foi mantida durante um mês após o final do treinamento. Estes resultados mostram que o treinamento perceptual pode servir como uma ferramenta eficaz para professores auxiliarem seus alunos a superar dificuldades perceptuais, evitando possíveis mal entendidos. Recent research has shown perceptual training to be an effective tool for improving L2 learners# ability to perceive certain non-native sounds, especially when done with enhanced acoustic-perceptual cues. This study investigates the effect of perceptual training on the learning of the English vowels /i/, /I/, /E/, /Q/, /U/ and /u/, whose misperception can potentially cause comprehension problems. Secondary objectives include (i) the effect of training with enhanced stimuli, (ii) generalization of the acquired knowledge to new contexts and speakers, (iii) transfer of the perceptual improvement to the production domain, and (iv) long-term effects. The training on these vowels was given over a three-week period to twenty-nine Brazilian EFL learners, who were distributed within two groups: fifteen trained with natural stimuli (NatS group) and fourteen with synthesized stimuli (SynS group). The synthesized stimuli consisted of computer-generated utterances with enhanced spectral cues and no variation in duration, whereas the natural stimuli were recorded normally by native speakers of American English. Results show that the experimental groups improved significantly after training, and there was more improvement in the SynS group than in the NatS group. Considering that the training given the SynS group involved only synthesized stimuli and the tests involved only natural stimuli, this finding suggests also that the knowledge acquired with artificially enhanced stimuli is transferred to stimuli produced naturally. The improvement was also maintained one month after the training was over. These findings support the claim that perceptual training may serve as an effective tool for teachers to help learners overcome potential perceptual difficulties, and thus prevent potential miscomprehension.

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Radhakrishnan, Sreedivya. "Perception of synthetic vowels by monolingual and bilingual Malayalam speakers." [Kent, Ohio] : Kent State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=kent1258953613.

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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2009.
Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 17, 2010). Advisor: John Hawks. Keywords: Speech perception; Vowels; Malayalam; Second Language. Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-216).

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Chan, Siu-wing, and 陳兆榮. "When the Cantonese "b" is the English /p: stop-consonant voicing strategies across languages." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2009. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B42841458.

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Shin, D. J. "Training Korean speakers on English vowels and prosody : individual differences in perception, production and vowel epenthesis." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1425728/.

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This paper investigates whether intangibles might explain the UK productivity puzzle. We note that since the recession: (a) firms have upskilled faster than before; (b) intangible investment in R&D and software has risen whereas tangible investment has fallen; and (c) intangible and telecoms equipment investment slowed in advance of the recession. We have therefore tested to see if: (a) what looks like labour hoarding is actually firms keeping workers who are employed in creating intangible assets; (b) the current slowdown in TFP growth is due to the spillover effects of the past slowdown in R&D and telecoms equipment investment. Our main findings are: (a) measured market sector real value added growth since the start of 2008 is understated by 1.6% due to the omission of intangibles; (b) 0.75pppa of the TFP growth slowdown can be accounted for by the slowdown in intangible and telecoms investment in the early 2000s. Taken together intangible investment can therefore account for around 5 percentage points of the 16% productivity puzzle.

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Park, Heewon. "The effect of gender and length of English study on the pronunciation of certain English consonants : a case study of Korean EFL learners /." Available to subscribers only, 2008. http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?did=1597629591&sid=4&Fmt=2&clientId=1509&RQT=309&VName=PQD.

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Thesis (M.A.)--Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2008.
"Department of Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages." Includes bibliographical references (p. 85-91). Also available online.

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Tsao, Feng-Ming. "The effects of language experience on the perception of affricate and fricative consonants in English-speaking and Mandarin-speaking adults and young infants /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8202.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'English vowels and consonants'

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