Voicing and Devoicing Assimilation of French /s/ and /z/

The present acoustic-phonetic study explores whether voicing and devoicing assimilations of French fricatives are equivalent in magnitude and whether they operate similarly (i.e., complete vs. gradient, obligatory vs. optional, regressive vs. progressive). It concurrently assesses the contribution of speakers' articulation rate to the proportion of voicing (i.e., voicing ratios) in /s/ and /z/ embedded in fricative#stop sequences. Data analyses show that voicing and devoicing assimilation are similar in many regards: the absolute amounts of voicing change are equivalent in magnitude (0.77, 0.78) for the two processes: changes in voicing ratios are accompanied by changes in fricative and preceding vowel durations. These concomitant alterations result in the increased acoustic-phonetic similarity between the assimilated and the non-assimilated forms, suggesting that the two processes might be complete. In addition, the two processes operate regressively and across word-boundary. However, data show that the voicing assimilation of /s/ is not rate dependent, which suggest that it might be obligatory, while the devoicing assimilation of /z/ is rate dependent, which suggest that it might be optional.     

The perception of /r/ and /l/ in syllable-initial and syllable-final position

American English liquids /r/ and /l/ have been considered intermediate between stop consonants and vowels acoustically, articulatorily, phonologically, and perceptually. Cutting (1947a) found position-dependent ear advantages for liquids in a dichotic listening task: syllable-initial liquids produced significant right ear advantages, while syllable-final liquids produced no reliable ear advantages. The present study employed identification and discrimination tasks to determine whether /r/and /l/ are perceived differently depending on syllable position when perception is tested by a different method. Fifteen subjects listened to two synthetically produced speech series—/li/ to /ri/ and /il/ to /ir/—in which stepwise variations of the third formant cued the difference in consonant identity. The results indicated that: (1) perception did not differ between syllable positions (in contrast to the dichotic listening results), (2) liquids in both syllable positions were perceived categorically, and (3) discrimination of a nonspeech control series did not account for the perception of the speech sounds.     

Kolb学习风格与中国大学生英语/i/-/I/发音的关系

以中国大学生为对象, 在对其英语/i/-/&;#618;/发音进行声学分析的基础上, 从Kolb经验学习模式入手, 结合其他相关学习者因素, 探讨学习风格与英语/i/-/&;#618;/发音的关系。结果显示, 中国学生发音表现个体差异较大, 其发音水平与学习风格紧密相关：吸收型和发散型学习者表现较好, 集中型学习者较差, 适应型学习者最差。另外, 中国学生发音表现与其英语使用和练习量也有显著正相关, 但与英语学习起始年龄和英语教育年限等其他因素都无直接联系。     

The discrimination learning of the liquids /r/ and /l/ by Japanese speakers

The discrimination learning of the /r/ and /l/ sounds in a single 1-h session by Japanese college students who had received little or no English conversation training was examined. About half of the subjects exhibited significant improvement after this brief amount of training. A three-state Markov model with the unconditioned, intermediate, and conditioned states was applied as a first approximation of the learning of the liquid pairs, learning which is characterized as two-stage all-or-none conditioning. Also found in the study was a significant correlation between the ability to perceive the liquids and the ability to read English as assessed by a cloze procedure. This correlation is interreted in light of general theory on phoneme awareness.     

/n/-/l/音位合并现象的神经机制：来自MMN的证据

采用ERP技术,比较音位合并者与非音位合并者辨别合并音位/n/-/l/的脑电和行为反应。结果发现,非音位合并者在注意前阶段展现了显著的MMN;而音位合并者没有展现MMN,但在晚期展现了一个显著的负波。行为实验发现,相比于音位合并者,非音位合并者在分辨/n/-/l/时正确率更高,反应时更短。这些结果表明：两组被试区分/n/-/l/的能力在早期自动加工阶段就已经有了显著的差异。方言经验可能降低了音位合并者在听觉感觉加工阶段检测合并音位差异的敏感度。     

Perception of /r/ and /l/ in a stop cluster: evidence of cross-modal context effects

Experiments were conducted investigating unimodal and cross-modal phonetic context effects on /r/ and /l/ identifications to test a hypothesis that context effects arise in early auditory speech processing. Experiment 1 demonstrated an influence of a preceding bilabial stop consonant on the acoustic realization of /r/ and /l/ produced within the stop clusters /ibri/ and /ibli/. In Experiment 2, members of an acoustic /iri/ to /ili/ continuum were paired with an acoustic /ibi/. These dichotic tokens were associated with an increase in "l" identification relative to the /iri/ to /ili/ continuum. In Experiment 3, the /iri/ to /ili/ tokens were dubbed onto a video of a talker saying /ibi/. This condition was associated with a reliable perceptual shift relative to an auditory-only condition in which the /iri/ to /ili/ tokens were presented by themselves, ruling out an account of these context effects as arising during early auditory processing.     

Variable Perception of White Noise in Ambiguous Phonetic Contexts: The Case of /p/ and /f/

The roles of spectro-temporal coherence, lexical status, and word position in the perception of speech in acoustic signals containing a mixture of speech and nonspeech sounds were investigated. Stimuli consisted of nine (non)words in which either white noise was inserted only into the silent interval preceding and/or following the onset of vocalic transitions ambiguous between /p/ and /f/, or in which white noise overlaid the entire utterance. Ten listeners perceived 85% /f/s when noise was inserted only into the silent interval signaling a stop closure, 47% /f/s when noise overlaid the entire (non)words, and 1% in the control condition that contained no noise. Effects of spectro-temporal coherence seemed to have dominated perceptual outcomes, although the lexical status and position of the critical phoneme also appeared to affect responses. The results are explained more adequately by the theory of Auditory Scene Analysis than by the Motor Theory of Speech Perception.     

The effect of listening experience on the discrimination of /ba/ and /pa/ in Hebrew-learning and Arabic-learning infants

Infant speech discrimination can follow multiple trajectories depending on the language and the specific phonemes involved. Two understudied languages in terms of the development of infants’ speech discrimination are Arabic and Hebrew.PurposeThe purpose of the present study was to examine the influence of listening experience with the native language on the discrimination of the voicing contrast /ba-pa/ in Arabic-learning infants whose native language includes only the phoneme /b/ and in Hebrew-learning infants whose native language includes both phonemes.Method128 Arabic-learning infants and Hebrew-learning infants, 4-to-6 and 10-to-12-month-old infants, were tested with the Visual Habituation Procedure.ResultsThe results showed that 4-to-6-month-old infants discriminated between /ba-pa/ regardless of their native language and order of presentation. However, only 10-to-12-month-old infants learning Hebrew retained this ability. 10-to-12-month-old infants learning Arabic did not discriminate the change from /ba/ to /pa/ but showed a tendency for discriminating the change from /pa/ to /ba/.ConclusionsThis is the first study to report on the reduced discrimination of /ba-pa/ in older infants learning Arabic. Our findings are consistent with the notion that experience with the native language changes discrimination abilities and alters sensitivity to non-native contrasts, thus providing evidence for ‘top-down’ processing in young infants. The directional asymmetry in older infants learning Arabic can be explained by assimilation of the non-native consonant /p/ to the native Arabic category /b/ as predicted by current speech perception models.     

The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners

The effects of variations in response categories, subjects’ perception of natural speech, and stimulus range on the identification of American English /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of Japanese were investigated. Three experiments using a synthesized /rait/-/lait/ series showed that all these variables affected identification and discrimination performance by Japanese-subjects. Furthermore, some of the perceptual characteristics of /r/ and /l/ for Japanese listeners were clarified: (1) Japanese listeners identified some of the stimuli of the series-as/w/.(2). Apositive correlation between the perception of synthesized stimuli and naturally-spoken stimuli was found. Japanese listeners who were able to easily identify naturally spoken stimuli perceived the synthetic series categorically but still perceived a /w/ category on the series. (3) The stimulus range showed a striking effect on identification consistency; identification of /r/ and /l/ was strongly affected by the stimulus range, the /w/ identification less so. This indicates that Japanese listeners tend to make relative judgments between /r/ and /l/.     

Gender/Body/Machine

This article considers the question of embodiment in relation to gender and whether there are models of artificial intelligence (AI) which can enrol a concept of gender in their design. A central concern for feminist epistemology is the role of the body in the making of knowledge. I consider how this may inform a critique of the AI project and the related area of artificial life (A–Life), the latter area being of most interest in this paper. I explore briefly the tensions between the treatment of the body in different branches of feminist theory, especially the tensions between the approaches of feminist sociology and feminist philosophy. I explore the ways in which writing from category theory and anthropological phenomenology offers rich suggestions as to how the body has been left out of objectivist accounts of epistemology, but struggles to offer an account of why . In its analysis of the links between women, knowledge and the body, feminist revisions of epistemology offer a more convincing why . This is explored briefly through a critique of symbolic AI, and more substantially through the problem of embodiment in artificial life.     

Listeners' reactions to mild misarticulation of /l/

Adult listeners heard a 98-word recording of a speaker producing either normal speech, speech containing a single instance of a w/l substitution, or speech containing 10 instances of a w/l substitution. They rated the speaker on 13 bipolar scales, representing three dimensions of judgment. Findings suggest that even a single misarticulation of /l/ was sufficient to generate a negative impression on the dimension of evaluation. Speech with only a single misarticulation was rated as no different from normal speech on dimensions of activity and potency.     

The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners.

The effects of variations in response categories, subjects' perception of natural speech, and stimulus range on the identification of American English /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of Japanese were investigated. Three experiments using a synthesized /rait/-/lait/ series showed that all these variables affected identification and discrimination performance by Japanese subjects. Furthermore, some of the perceptual characteristics of /r/ and /l/ for Japanese listeners were clarified: (1) Japanese listeners identified some of the stimuli of the series as /w/. (2) A positive correlation between the perception of synthesized stimuli and naturally spoken stimuli was found. Japanese listeners who were able to easily identify naturally spoken stimuli perceived the synthetic series categorically but still perceived a /w/ category on the series. (3) The stimulus range showed a striking effect on identification consistency; identification of /r/ and /l/ was strongly affected by the stimulus range, the /w/ identification less so. This indicates that Japanese listeners tend to make relative judgments between /r/ and /l/.     

The relationship between perception and production of /w/, /r/, and /l/ by three-year-old children

Twenty-one normally developing 3-year-old children were tested on two approximant consonant contrasts, rake-lake and wake-rake, and a control contrast, wake-bake. Perception was assessed in a two-choice picture identification paradigm; stimuli were (1) natural and computer synthesized “clear cases” of the minimal pairs, and (2) synthetic stimulus series which interpolated on acoustic dimensions that differentiate the minimal pairs. As a group, the children showed very accurate perception of the minimal pairs. Performance on the synthetic series yielded consistent identification of the endpoint stimuli and monotonic functions with abrupt crossovers at the phoneme boundary. Children who did not yet articulate /r/ and /l/ appropriately showed somewhat less consistent perception than children who produced all phonemes correctly.     

Characterization of Al/n-ZnO/p-Si/Al structure with low-cost solution-grown ZnO layer

We report the fabrication of Al/n-ZnO/p-Si/Al diode structures with a flower-like ZnO layer. The average grain size, microstrain and dislocation density in the ZnO layer were determined as 25?nm, 1.55?×?10^?3 and 3.23?×?10¹³?cm^?2, respectively. From absorption spectra, the optical band gap was found to be ～3.17?eV. A red shift was attributed to non-stoichiometry arising from Zn⁺² ions substituting for oxygen vacancies. The ideality factor was determined as 1.55. The barrier height was calculated as 0.71?eV from I–V characteristics and 0.73?eV using the Norde plots.     

Electropalatographic and spectrographic descriptions of allophonic variants of /1/

Prevocalic and postvocalic /1/ were investigated in three adult subjects utilizing a combination of electropalatographic and acoustic techniques. Results indicated that prevocalic /1/ was characterized by both alveolar and lateral lingua-palatal contact, while postvocalic /1/ was primarily alveolar contact only. Acoustically, prevocalic /1/ had a lower first formant and higher second formant than postvocalic /1/. In addition, the second and third formants were often weak or absent for prevocalic but not postvocalic /1/. Vowel context had a greater effect on the electropalatographic and acoustic characteristics of prevocalic than postvocalic /1/. Models that relate physiological and acoustical aspects of speech were utilized to account for the observed results.     

Obsessions/counter-obsessions: a construction/reconstruction of meaning

In this article, obsessions and phobic responses are examined in relation to the maintenance and development of a cross-generational coalition organized by a premise about exclusivity, as well as the specific, idiosyncratic "signature premises" characteristic to each case. It is suggested that the obsession develops when a developmental or situational crisis conflicts with the exclusive relationship definition (that is, coalition). Two forms of intervention for disrupting obsessions--the "conversation" and the "counter-obsession"--are discussed and illustrated. Both interventions conceptualize the obsession as an oscillation between remaining in the coalition and not remaining in the coalition, and both interventions challenge the signature premise that defines the coalition.