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Diphthong has been reported as the character of old Acehnese, which is now eroded in some words of modern Acehnese. However, some dialects, such as Daya and Pidie, still retain certain diphthongs in certain Acehnese words. Samatiga dialect is one of the dialects in Aceh Barat. People in Aceh Barat has commonly marked this dialect as producing certain vowel as diphthong similar to those in Teunom and Daya. Thus, the current study aims to explore the diphthongization of certain monophthong in Acehnese words by the people in Samatiga. Specifically, it aims to learn the monophthongs often diphthongized in this dialect, the position in which the diphthong occurs, and the movement trajectory of the diphthong. Two language consultants are consulted to explore their diphthongization, and two other Acehnes are discussed to determine their diphthongization. Their production is recorded using a high-quality recorder and analyzed in Praat to obtains its formants data. The findings indicate that not all monophthongs are produced as diphthongs in Samatiga dialect. Samatiga dialect replaces vowel /ɛ/and /ɔ/ with diphthong /ai/ and /au/. The diphthong /au/ seems to be unique to Samatiga dialect since previous studies did not mention Acehnese diphthong ending in /u/. The diphthongization only occurs when it comes in the word final and open syllable. The diphthong /au/trajectory movement is greater than /ai/, indicating the former, not the initial may experience transformation into monophthong like other major dialects in Aceh.

This research considers the pronunciation of the Standard Dutch vowel /œy/ in the Achterhoek region, where it is typically realised as a monophthong. Previous studies (eg. Kloeke, 1927; Van Reenen, 2005; 2006; Gerritsen and Jansen, 1979) have shown a variable use of [y] and [u] in this area of the Netherlands. However, this research follows on from previous studies by considering the links between rural and non-rural pronunciation, as well as a geographical split between the north and south of the region. During the summer of 2015, 34 Achterhoeks speakers (aged from 26-73) from different towns in the region were recorded completing a picture task and reading sentences designed to elicit marked dialectal pronunciations. F1 and F2 formant frequencies were analysed in Praat (Boersma and Weenink, 2014) and a formant editor developed by Soskuthy (2014), and then compared in order to arrive at the results. These were then compared with the findings from a 1979 corpus designed by Leendert van Prooije. A system of classifying Dutch vowels into lexical sets (cf. Wells, 1982) was developed in order to more concisely discuss pronunciation differences; under this system, the vowels in question would fall under what has been termed the HUIS vowel. The first result is that variations in the position of the vowel following some rhotics were observed in the speakers. Grouped into age, gender, and location, and measured through normalised formant frequencies, it was found that the more retracted vowel [u] was observed in rural speakers, whereas the fronted vowel [y] was seen in speakers from non-rural areas. Where the vowel appeared in any position other than following the rhotic consonant, it was realised as [y], without any observable differences between speakers. However, further analysis of the FAND II corpus revealed that this effect was not always consistent. In the case of the HUIS vowel, it would appear there is variation based on the status of participants’ locations. The vowel [y] in this area of the Netherlands resulted in a shift from the older [u] of West Germanic dialects (Kloeke, 1927; Van Reenen, 2006), so here the [u] pronunciation after /r/ could be considered a relic of the older dialect of the area. This result was then considered alongside the possibility of a /ru/ isogloss involving more locations within the area of the Achterhoek. Using data from the FAND II database, it was found that there was some evidence for the existence of such an isogloss as a possible alternative explanation. This study therefore presents the conclusion that, based on the HUIS vowel, the style of speakers residing in the north-eastern part of the Achterhoek is likely to be more representative of the traditional dialect. Further exploration of this conclusion could be set up in other aspects of speech, and thus we can consider the implications for the future of the dialect in the southern and western areas.

The article investigates temporal characteristics of Scouse dialect speech, or Liverpool English, which is spread in the county of Merseyside in the North West of England. Scouse originated in the 19th century when a large number of Irish immigrants, as well as a fair number of Welshmen, settled in this region of England. Scouse is characterized by the accentuation of speech, a wide range of tonal rises and falls and rising intonation in declarative sentences. In southern Liverpool, the dialect is softer and more lyrical. This difference is most significant in the pronunciation of vowels. The prominent vocal feature of the Scouse dialect is the absence of a diphthong [ɛə] and its replacement by a long monophthong [ɛ:]. The aim of the study is to determine the prosodic temporal features of the speech of the residents of Liverpool, taking into account their gender and age. The material of the study is audio recordings of spontaneous speech of 16 Liverpool residents. The total duration of audio recordings is 43 minutes. The study has been conducted taking into account gender and age factors. The interviewees have been divided into 2 gender and 2 age groups, namely: "20 – 40 years" and "over 40 years". The instrumental analysis has made it possible to determine such temporal parameters as speech rate and articulation rate, pausation coefficient and average duration of pauses, as well as the distribution of different types of pauses in the Scouse speech. It has been suggested that the temporal markers of Liverpool English are an increase in the articulation rate of female speech compared to male one, greater pause saturation of female speech in the age group "20 – 40 years" and male speech in the group "over 40 years", the prevalence of short pauses, pauses of medium duration and long pauses.

The relative contributions of static and dynamic formant representations to speaker-specificity were investigated in conversational speech and in two vowels varyingin inherent spectral change. Using polynomial fits, the contribution of dynamicformant coefficients to speaker-specificity relative to that of the formant interceptwas investigated in the diphthongal vowel [ei] taken from English and Dutch conversationalspeech. The [ei] tokens were sampled from various linguistic contextsand analysed in an LR approach. Results show that formant dynamics containspeaker-specific information in conversational speech even though the high contextualvariation seems to reduce its effect relative to that reported by earlier work.Vowels differ in inherent dynamicity and therefore, the added value of dynamicformant information to speaker-specificity was also compared between vowels differingin inherent spectral change. Using Dutch data, the contribution of formantdynamics to speaker-specificity was compared between [ei] and [aː] tokens producedby the same speakers. Formant dynamics in conversational speech only contributedto speaker-specificity in the diphthong [ei], not in the monophthong [aː].

The article examines concepts related to the evolution of *о > і, analyzes scholars’ views on the reasons of differences between reflexes of *о in Ukrainian dialects, and describes the stages of *о transformation in the northern and the southern areas of the Ukrainian sprachraum. Attention is given to the nature of diphthong appearance according to two major theories – by Y. Sheveliov and by V. Moisiyenko. The author describes current reflexes of *о in newly closed stressed syllables, as documented in her own field records obtained in 120 towns and villages of Volyn Polissia. She establishes that typical for the Volyn-Polissia dialects sounds [и], [і] are simultaneously spread across all the area under research, while the monophthong [у] – only in its eastern parts. Alongside other reflexes, *о is sometimes (quite sporadically) preserved. While recording samples, the author has not come across diphthongs appertaining to *о, but recorded structures that are usually interpreted as the result of diphthongs breaking up: the consonant [в] + vowel, and the sound [е] < *о. The article includes a map.

The orthography of Östergötland’s 11th century runic inscriptions varies widely, in part due to the lack of spelling norms at the time. This thesis seeks to identify other causes for the observed variation, based on the frequency and distribution of aspects of inscription orthography. The Old Norse words ræisa and stæin in the phrase “raised the stone” were analyzed based on the main vowel and its status as a monograph or digraph. The presence or absence of þ in inflected ræisa was also included as an indicator of age. All runic inscriptions in Östergötland with definite key word orthography were included, 169 in total. The analysis reveals that most inscriptions are clustered in three regions, each with a dominant vowel. By region, these are ei (west), i (central) and ai (east), with vowel consistency between ræisa and stæin the norm. The consonant þ in inflected ræisa is most common in the west and east. The vowel orthography together with the distribution of þ implies a relative chronology for Östergötland’s runic inscriptions, where the ongoing monophthongization is reflected in digraphs and monographs. The detailed orthography distribution of these variables shows that the main clusters align with the known 11th century quarries at Borghamn (west) and Vreta (central). Stoneworking at a shared site resulted in a transfer of knowledge, including runestone design and orthography which became a local norm as it spread. The lack of a unifying quarry in eastern Östergötland resulted in a more diverse local orthography, and possibly hampered the building of the first stone churches during the early 12th century. Östergötlands runinskrifter från 1000-talet varierar stort i sin ortografi, delvis på grund av bristen på stavningsnormer när de ristades. Uppsatsen eftersträvar att identifiera andra orsaker för denna variation, baserat på frekvensen och distributionen av vissa aspekter i inskrifternas ortografi. De fornnordiska orden ræisa och stæin i inskriftsfrasen “reste sten” analyserades baserat på huvudvokalen samt om den var en monograf eller digraf. Användning av þ i böjda former av ræisa inkluderades som ett tecken på inskriftens ålder. Samtliga runinskrifter i Östergötland med en säker nyckelordsortografi analyserades, totalt 169 stycken. Resultaten visar att de flesta inskrifterna är grupperade i tre regioner som har varsin dominant vokal. Vanligast i väster är ei, i den centrala regionen råder i och i öster råder ai, med normen att samma vokal används i både ræisa och stæin. Konsonanten þ i böjd ræisa är vanligast i väster och i öster. Vokalortografin tillsammans med þ-distributionen indikerar en relativ kronologi för Östergötlands runinskrifter, där vokalernas monoftongering under 1000-talet återspeglas i digrafer och monografer. De analyserade variablernas distribution visar att huvudgrupperingarna sammanfaller med de kända stenbrotten från 1000-talet vid Borghamn (i väster) och Vreta (centrala regionen). Att stenarbetet skedde vid en gemensam site ledde till en omedveten kunskapsöverlämning mellan ristare. Inskriftsortografi kopierades och blev lokala normer allt efter att den spreds. Bristen på ett större stenbrott som informell, gemensam arbetsplats i östra Östergötland ledde till en mer varierad lokalortografi. Detta kan ha hindrat stenkyrkobygget lokalt under tidigt 1100-tal.

This paper addresses Labov’s principles of vowel chain shifting in Toronto and Hong Kong Cantonese based on sociolinguistic interviews from the Heritage Language Variation and Change in Toronto Project. The analysis is based on normalized F1 and F2 values of 33,179 vowel tokens from 11 monophthongs produced by 32 speakers (8 from Hong Kong, 24 from Toronto). In Toronto, results show retraction of [y] by generation but fronting of [i] by age. In Hong Kong, age is a significant predictor for the lowering of [ɪ], [ʊ], [ɔ], and for the fronting of [ɔ] and [i]. Overall, there is more vowel shifting in Hong Kong than in Toronto and the shifting is consistent with Labov’s Principles.

This paper examines the development of the Old Irish diphthongs */ai/, */oi/, */ui/ in later varieties of the Gaelic languages. These are generally accepted to have merged as a single phoneme by the end of the Old Irish period (c. 900). In all modern varieties the regular reflex of this phoneme is a long monophthong, represented orthographically as . There are three main developments: (a) in southern Irish has merged with /eː/ and/or /iː/; (b) in southern Scottish and Manx varieties remains a mid-central vowel, may be fairly fronted and may perhaps have weak rounding; and there is merger between /əː/ representing and reflexes of earlier */aɣ/; (c) in northern Scottish and northern Irish varieties is realized as a high back unrounded vowel /ɯː/, which is contrastive with mid back unrounded /ɤː/ representing earlier */aɣ/ (these may merge with /iː/ and /eː/ in Ulster). Building on suggestions of earlier scholars, it is argued that it is the developments of */əː/ are explained by its anomalous position in the phonological system of earlier varieties of Gaelic, and its interactions with the palatalization contrast of the consonant system.

Jamee language is one of the languages spoken in Aceh Province, in the super-diverse country, Indonesia. Previous studies have noted inconsistencies in the number of oral monophthong vowels produced by the Jamee speakers. Accordingly, this research aims to investigate the qualities of the oral monophthong vowels of the Jamee language that are still spoken today. Ten female speakers were chosen as the informants to provide data for this research. They were recorded to produce words that contained the target vowels. The recordings were then transferred to Praat software in spectrograms, and measurements on the midpoint of each vowel for their F1 and F2 in Hertz were conducted. In Excel, the measurements were converted in the Bark scale, and the average values of each vowel were plotted on an F1-F2 chart. The results further showed that there are currently seven monophthong vowels in this language, they are /i/, /e/, /ɛ/, /a/, /o/, /u/ and /ↄ/. This acoustic study has calculated the approximate measurements for the vowels based on their F1 and F2 from the spectrograms in Praat. The qualities of these vowels are /i/ with F1 = 463 Hz and F2 = 2484 Hz, /e/ with F1 = 550 Hz and F2 = 2493 Hz, /ɛ/ with F1 = 641 Hz and F2 = 2412 Hz, /o/ with F1 = 535 Hz and F2 = 1434 Hz, /ↄ/ with F1 = 713 Hz and F2 = 1312 Hz, /u/ with F1 = 489 Hz and F2 = 1165 Hz, and finally /a/with F1 = 887 Hz and F2 = 1898 Hz. The findings of this research are seen as pivotal in the field of phonology as it assists linguists in documenting and preserving a minority language in Aceh Province, Indonesia.

This study discovers the formants of Punjabi speakers living in western Punjab, Pakistan, and their relative position in a trapezium while articulating English cited words. English is a lingua franca while Punjabi is one of the local languages of India and Pakistan spoken in upper western Punjab, a province of Pakistan, and Eastern Punjab, a part of India. The F1 and F2 (Formant 1 & Formant 2) determine the position of a monophthong (vowel) in a trapezium. Data were collected from twenty (20) Male participants from Lahore and Faisalabad, two major cities of Pakistan, and were asked to articulate one hundred and twenty English cited words carrying all English monophthongs. The data was analyzed by measuring the Formant values (F1 and F2) of every single word articulated by twenty (20) Punjabi Male speakers. The Values in Hertz were changed into Bark Scale and the Euclidian method was used to measure the distance of monophthongs articulated by Male participants living in Lahore and Faisalabad to determine the difference between two dialects of Punjabi language. Both the groups were also compared through a co-relative t-test. The results showed that the t value is 0.58, df=11, and P>0.955 which is much higher than 0.05, so it can be concluded that these two cities' speakers utter the English cited words in the same way.

Speakers self-correct vowels with deviant formants: tokens whose onsets are farther from the average midpoint move toward that average, while nearer tokens move randomly (Niziolek et al., 2013). The method used to establish this finding typically groups tokens based on onset formants relative to midpoint formants, and the midpoint is taken as the target. But vowel inherent spectral change research has shown that vowels are best modeled as contours rather than midpoints. The present study asks whether speakers self-correct toward trajectories rather than static midpoints. Sixty-eight speakers provided 20 tokens of each stressed non-rhotic monophthong in English in [hVd] (heed, hid, etc.). Formants were sampled at 3% and 50% of vowel duration, and each speaker’s average formant position was calculated at both samples. Sample-matched Euclidean distances were calculated — each 3% token to the 3% average, each 50% token to the 50% average — rather than comparing to the midpoint sample in both cases. Tokens were grouped based on onset distance. Far tokens showed a larger decrease in distance by the midpoint than Near tokens, and regression to the mean was ruled out as the reason. This study suggests that speakers use dynamic spectral information for online self-correction.

This study addresses unsupervised subword modeling, i.e., learning acoustic feature representations that can distinguish between subword units of a language. We propose a two-stage learning framework that combines self-supervised learning and cross-lingual knowledge transfer. The framework consists of autoregressive predictive coding (APC) as the front-end and a cross-lingual deep neural network (DNN) as the back-end. Experiments on the ABX subword discriminability task conducted with the Libri-light and ZeroSpeech 2017 databases showed that our approach is competitive or superior to state-of-the-art studies. Comprehensive and systematic analyses at the phoneme- and articulatory feature (AF)-level showed that our approach was better at capturing diphthong than monophthong vowel information, while also differences in the amount of information captured for different types of consonants were observed. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between the effectiveness of the back-end in capturing a phoneme's information and the quality of the cross-lingual phone labels assigned to the phoneme. The AF-level analysis together with t-SNE visualization results showed that the proposed approach is better than MFCC and APC features in capturing manner and place of articulation information, vowel height, and backness information. Taken together, the analyses showed that the two stages in our approach are both effective in capturing phoneme and AF information. Nevertheless, monophthong vowel information is less well captured than consonant information, which suggests that future research should focus on improving capturing monophthong vowel information., Comment: 18 pages (including 1 page as supplementary material), 13 figures. Accepted for publication in IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (OJ-SP)

This study investigated the acoustic features of vowel production in Mandarin-speaking patients with post-stroke dysarthria (PSD). The subjects included 31 native Mandarin-speaking patients with PSD (age: 25–83 years old) and 38 neurologically normal adults in a similar age range (age: 21–76 years old). Each subject was recorded producing a list of Mandarin monosyllables that included six monophthong vowels (i.e., /a, i, u, ɤ, y, o/) embedded in the /CV/ context. The patients’ speech samples were evaluated by two native Mandarin speakers. The evaluation scores were then used to classify all patients into two levels of severity: mild or moderate-to-severe. Formants (F1 and F2) were extracted from each vowel token. Results showed that all vowel categories in the patients with PSD were produced with more variability than in the healthy speakers. Great overlaps between vowel categories and reduced vowel space were observed in the patients. The magnitude of the vowel dispersion and overlap between vowel categories increased as a function of the severity of the disorder. The deviations of the vowel acoustic features in the patients in comparison to the healthy speakers may provide guidance for clinical rehabilitation to improve the speech intelligibility of patients with PSD.

The formation of pronunciation abilities of the English back monophthong /u:/ is of great significance especially in case of linguistic transfer of the characteristics of the mother tongue into the English language. The audio-pronunciation habit is an inseparable part for developing the professional competence of the student. The subject-matter of the present investigation concerns the use of different methods for making distinctions and similiarities between the English monophthong /u:/ and the Romanian /u/. Communication in English is in need of pronunciation competence at a high level on the part of speakers.

With reference to the acoustic data of seven first-level vowels in Mandarin Chinese, this paper examines the vowel characteristics of the 16 dialects in Cangzhou, Hebei, and summarizes the local and overall characteristics of the Monophthongs in the Cangzhou dialect based on a large amount of acoustic data. Through comparative analysis of the distribution of Monophthongs of various dialects in Cangzhou and their differences and similarities with Mandarin, we hope to enrich the dialect phonetic database and provide a reference basis for data support for the promotion of Mandarin Chinese.

This paper aims to analyze the phonological phenomena that occurred on the acquisition of a Korean monophthong system of Myanmar learners. It is mainly examined in terms of the internal representation of vowels within the theoretical framework of the Element Theory. When Korean monophthong input is given, Myanmar learners reanalyze and adjust it based on the internal representation existing in the Myanmar vowel system, or on that of the target Korean. And this is pronounced by output. Positive and negative transitions appear in this process. The commonality of the internal structures of /i, a, u, o, e/ explains the positive transfer of those vowels by Myanmar speakers of Korean. On the other hand, substitution errors of [e] for /e/, [?] for /o/, and [u] for /i/ by negative transfer are found in Myanmar learners` pronunciation derived from adapting internal representation of Myanmar vowel to Korean. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

This study examines the pronunciation of announcers, who are articulatory experts, with the aim of pragmatically resolving the argument over the Korean monophthongal system, which has variously been proposed to consist of seven to ten vowels. If monophthongs are not observed to occur in the standard pronunciation of announcers, then what has traditionally been viewed as ‘standard pronunciation’ is nothing but a pronunciation system of the past that has disappeared. As for the pattern of articulation of /ㅚ/, /ㅟ/, it was found that no announcers articulated both of these vowels as monophthongs. Though there were two announcers who articulated /ㅚ/ as a monophthong, and two other announcers who articulated /ㅟ/ as a monophthong, there were not any announcers who articulated both vowels as monophthongs. These results reflect the difficulty of maintaining the argument for the monophthongal status of these vowels any longer. As for /ㅔ/, /ㅐ/, a process of confluence was conspicuously observed in the speech of announcers as indicated in previous studies. The difference appeared clearly only for announcers in their 50s or older who pronounced the vowels after concentrating on monophthongs in isolation. It was difficult to observe the difference clearly when announcers in their 50s spoke full words, or when announcers in their 40s or younger spoke. As for /ㅗ/, /ㅜ/, a phonetic characteristic was discovered that the tendency contrasted by the height of the tongue changed into a contrast in the backness of the tongue. Compared to the loss of auditory perceptive discrimination of /ㅔ/, /ㅐ/ due to their confluence, there was a shift in the position of articulation for /ㅗ/, /ㅜ/, but in that it maintains auditory perceptive discrimination, it can be predicted that the discriminative characteristics of /ㅗ/, /ㅜ/ may change the backness of the tongue in a phonetic manner.

Apparent time analysis has revealed that the Tyneside face vowel is the site of two intersecting trends: levelling towards the supra-northern monophthong as well as the gradual incursion of the southern standard closing diphthong. This article investigates the participation of individual speakers across their life-span in these ongoing changes in the face vowel. We report on a small-scale panel sample of six speakers who were recorded in 1971 and again, 42 years later, in 2013. The analysis probes the stability of individual speakers’ grammars, relying on longitudinal ethnographic analysis in the community as well as insights gleaned from sociolinguistic interviews about the speakers’ socio-demographic trajectory and their presentations of self. The article contributes to the growing body of panel research that aims to determine the scope and the limits of linguistic malleability across speakers’ life histories.

The aim of the present study was finding acoustic characteristics of the Latvian diphthongs irrespective of the speaker’s gender. The method designed by the author allowed to compare diphthongs of different duration, thus revealing common tendencies both in the formant structures and in the diphthong paths on the vowel plane. A comparison of the diphthong paths with the location of the long monophthongs on psychophysical F2′ vs. F1 plane showed that the paths begin in the vicinity of the corresponding monophthong but end with an undershoot, i.e., not completely reaching the target frequencies. Dynamics of the formant trajectories of the Latvian diphthongs produced in the zero context in most cases display a two-phase pattern with a relatively short steady state of the first component (the longest in [ie] and [uo]: about 1/3 of the total duration) and a long transitionary phase with no steady state of the second component. The duration of the Latvian diphthongs (W) is between that of the short (V) and the long (Vː) monophthongs. The durational ratio of the short monophthongs to the diphthongs and the long monophthongs is V : W : Vː = 1 : 1.5 : 2.

The paper discusses phonological competences of students of the first and fourth year of the Department of English Language and Literature at Faculty of Philosophy in Kosovska Mitrovica. Students ability to identify relevant elements of the English vowel system (namely, monophthongs) is tested through qualitative and quantitative oppositions of monophtongs [ɪ]-[iː], [e]-[ae], [ʌ]-[ɑː], [ɒ]-[ɔː], and [ʊ]-[uː], with the aim to determine how the two-year period of studies affected the overall competence of students of the final year. The research comprised thirty respondents, who were divided into two groups. Each group consisted of ten female and five male subjects. Upon completion of the research, we started to analyze the obtained results, which were further discussed from the perspectives of the respondents, separate groups, and in the context of phonetic/phonological theories from literature.

The clear and intelligible pronunciation is one of the keys of ef!icient communication in English. The phonetico-phonological analysis of the elements of the English language guarantees the process of teaching and learning it. The use of the English back monophthong /ᴧ/ is of great importance for the glotodidactical aspect for delimiting its common and distinctive features with the Romanian /ɑ/. The investigation of this problem from the acoustic and articulatory points of view has been done to avoid making mistakes in the articulation and pronunciation of these two monophthongs, English /ᴧ/ and Romanian /ɑ/

Filipino and Indonesian belong to the Austronesian language family and this explains why they exhibit many linguistic similarities and numerous cognates. This study aims to further compare the two languages and establish their connection through phonology. The researchers use the cognates to compare the Filipino and Indonesian monophthong vowels. Qualitative method is utilized. The result shows that Filipino and Indonesian have a very similar vowel system with the exception of Indonesian having /ə/ phoneme. It was also found out that most of the changes in monophthongs between the two languages appear in medial position. Moreover, most changes are from the mid back rounded vowel /o/ in Filipino to high back rounded vowel /u/ in Indonesian. Lastly, the changes in the unrounded vowels in Filipino usually appear in the initial and medial position whereas in the rounded vowels in Filipino, changes only appear in either the medial or final position.

This article analyses the speech of Cheryl Fernandez-Versini (nee Tweedy, formerly Cole), henceforth “Cheryl” , who experienced rapid geographical and socioeconomic mobility between 2002 and 2014. In 2002, Cheryl was a working-class 19-year-old from Newcastle Upon Tyne, north-east England. Since then, she has risen to fame on the talent show Popstars: The Rivals , in the girl band Girls Aloud , through her marriage to footballer Ashley Cole, and through her work as a judge on The X Factor , among other things. This paper seeks to analyse the effect this has had on her accent. Four recordings between 2002 and the present day are analysed to discuss changes to her original Tyneside English (TE) accent, specifically through the changing phonetics of the FACE and the GOAT vowels. These changes are discussed in terms of both the TE speech community and Cheryl’s personal experiences. The two vowels have traditional diphthongs in TE which are different from the diphthongs in Received Pronunciation (RP). However, these vowels have been found to be undergoing dialect levelling, with many TE speakers producing them as the monophthongs found in the rest of the North (Watt 2000, 2002). The paper therefore investigates whether Cheryl follows the pattern of other TE speakers or moves towards RP. The recordings used are taken from online videos of interviews. The first time point studied is 2002, when Cheryl first rose to fame through Popstars: The Rivals , in which her GOAT and FACE vowels are shown to be the Northern monophthongs which have resulted from dialect levelling in TE. The intermediate time points studied are 2006 and 2011. In 2006, Cheryl was engaged to Ashley Cole and had been living and working in the south of England for 4 years. Both vowels move closer to RP in position but remain monophthongal. The 2011 recording is an interview in the US, during Cheryl’s brief career on American X Factor. The data for this time point are particularly interesting as the position of the vowels varies more, and the average position of both vowels does not fit the pattern of change, indicating style-shifting. The 2014 recording was the most recent interview of substantial length which could be found at the time of data collection. The analysis shows that Cheryl’s GOAT vowel is significantly closer to RP than it was in 2002, despite remaining a monophthong, while her FACE vowel appears to have become a diphthong as in RP. The results show that Cheryl does undergo lifespan change in these two vowels, being closer to RP at the time of writing than in 2002. However, the two intermediate time points studied show that these vowels do not change in parallel, as predicted by Watt (2000). The intermediate time points, in particular the 2011 data, give support to the conclusions of Rickford and Price (2013) and Bowie (2009) that in order to fully understand data on lifespan change, intermediate time points and factors other than age must be taken into account.

This study examined acoustic variation of vowels within speakers across speech tasks. The overarching goal of the study was to understand within-speaker variation as one index of the range of normal speech motor behavior for American English vowels. Ten male speakers of American English performed four speech tasks including citation form sentence reading with a clear-speech style (clear-speech), citation form sentence reading (citation), passage reading (reading), and conversational speech (conversation). Eight monophthong vowels in a variety of consonant contexts were studied. Clear-speech was operationally defined as the reference point for describing variation. Acoustic measures associated with the conventions of vowel targets were obtained and examined. These included temporal midpoint formant frequencies for the first three formants (F1, F2, and F3) and the derived Euclidean distances in the F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes. Results indicated that reduction toward the center of the F1-F2 and F2-F3 planes increased in magnitude across the tasks in the order of clear-speech, citation, reading, and conversation. The cross-task variation was comparable for all speakers despite fine-grained individual differences. The characteristics of systematic within-speaker acoustic variation across tasks have potential implications for the understanding of the mechanisms of speech motor control and motor speech disorders.

Doktorska disertacija „Fonetsko-fonološka percepcija i produkcija engleskih monoftonga na tercijarnom nivou” bazirana je na dva istraživanja-istraživanju percepcije i istraživanju produkcije engleskih monoftonga kod studenata prve i četvrte godine na Filozofskom fakultetu u Kosovskoj Mitrovici. Test percepcije sastojao se od fonemske identifikacije u izolovanim rečima izgovorenim od strane izvornih govornika, dok je zadatak na testu produkcije bio izgovor obrasca rečenice sa 24 lekseme koje su ispitanici naizmenično čitali. U istraživanju je učestvovalo ukupno 30 ispitanika, tj. po 15 ispitanika sa prve i završne godine studija. Obe grupe od 15 studenata sastojale su se od po 10 ženskih i 5 muških ispitanika, tako da je analiza i uporedno ispitivanje rađeno i na nivou pola studenata. Sačinjeni audio snimci analizirani su u programu za akustičku analizu govora, a dobijeni rezultati upoređivani sa podacima iz literature i podacima izvornih govornika. Cilj istraživanja bio je utvrđivanje tačnosti percepcije monoftonga engleskog jezika i kvalitativnih i kvantitativnih distinkcija među njima kod ispitanika, odnosno upoređivanje sličnosti i razlika percepcije i produkcije kod studenata početne i studenata završne godine studija. Dobijeni rezultati istraživanja ukazuju uglavnom na zajedničke osobine obe grupe studenata. Najpre, kod obe grupe ispitanika postoji prilično visok stepen jezičke kompetencije, koji se sa većom ili manjom uspešnošću ispoljio na testovima percepcije i produkcije. Na testu percepcije je tako procenat uspešne fonemske identifikacije bio prilično visok, dok je ispitivanje rezultata testa produkcije pokazalo određene slabosti studenata u artikulaciji pojedinih monoftonga. Podaci dobijeni na oba testa bolji su u onim elementima vokalskog sistema koje ispitanici nemaju u maternjem jeziku i gde je nivo interferencije samim tim niži. Rezultati istraživanja ukazuju i na zajedničku težnju svih studenata, a to je zanemarivanje kvalitativnih spram kvantitativnih karakteristika vokala. Monoftonzi kod kojih je dužina trajanja izraženija procentualno su davali bolje rezultate na testovima. Na kraju, možemo zaključiti da među studentima ne postoji jasno izdefinisan fonološki razvoj tokom godina studija, već da se pre svega može govoriti o pojavama karakterističnim za obe grupe ispitanika. The disertation "Phonetic/phonological perception and production of English monophthongs at tertiary level" is based on two research: study of perception and study of production of English monophthongs in freshmen and senior students at Faculty of Philosophy in Kosovska Mitrovica. Perception test consisted of phonemic identification in isolated words uttered by native speakers, while the task in the test of production was pronunciation of a pattern (carrier) sentence with 24 different lexemes which subjects interchangeably read. The research comprised a total of of 30 participants divided into two groups of 15 participants -15 freshmen, and 15 seniors. Both groups of 15 students included 10 female and 5 male participants. Thus, the analysis and study of comparative testing was also carried out at the level of sex of the students. The audio recordings made were analyzed in the program for acoustic analysis of speech, and the results further compared to data from literature and data of native speakers. The aim of this study was to determine the accuracy of perception and production of English monophthongs and qualitative and quantitative distinctions among them, ie. to compare the similarities and differences of perception and production between the two groups of students. The study results mainly pointed to the common characteristics of both groups of students. First, both groups showed a fairly high level of language competence, which was, with more or less success, manifested on tests of perception and production. Thus, the percentage of successful phonemic identification in the test of perception was quite high, while the test results of the production test showed some weaknesses in the students’ articulation of certain monophthongs. The data obtained in both tests proved to be better in the elements of the vowel system that participants do not have in their mother tongue and where the level of interference is low. The research results also indicate the common tendency of all students to neglect qualitative towards quantitative characteristics of vowels. Monophtongs in which the duration was more pronounced gave better results in the tests. In the end, we can conclude that there is no clearly defined phonological progress among the students during the years of study, but it is mainly to speak of phenomena typical for both groups.

Submitted by BRUNA FARIA CAMPOS DE FREITAS (brunafcf1@hotmail.com) on 2018-03-23T11:09:55Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Final - Bruna Faria.pdf: 715422 bytes, checksum: cd579068881cc64b5b76b11ce7d9b43d (MD5) Rejected by Milena Maria Rodrigues null (milena@fclar.unesp.br), reason: Bom dia Bruna, Para aprovação no Repositório Institucional da UNESP, serão necessárias algumas correções na sua Dissertação. Solicitamos que realize uma nova submissão seguindo as orientações abaixo: - O trabalho deverá conter ficha catalográfica: http://www.fclar.unesp.br/#!/biblioteca/servicos/elaboracao-de-fichas-catalograficas/ Em caso de maiores dúvidas, entrar em contato com as bibliotecárias da Seção de Referência (Camila ou Elaine). Agradecemos a compreensão. on 2018-03-23T11:52:58Z (GMT) Submitted by BRUNA FARIA CAMPOS DE FREITAS (brunafcf1@hotmail.com) on 2018-03-23T13:27:49Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertação Final - Bruna Faria.pdf: 758170 bytes, checksum: 0867a8ad7972025d473c5ee2313c59d2 (MD5) Approved for entry into archive by Milena Maria Rodrigues null (milena@fclar.unesp.br) on 2018-03-23T14:31:34Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 freitas_bfc_me_arafcl.pdf: 758170 bytes, checksum: 0867a8ad7972025d473c5ee2313c59d2 (MD5) Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-23T14:31:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 freitas_bfc_me_arafcl.pdf: 758170 bytes, checksum: 0867a8ad7972025d473c5ee2313c59d2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-07-31 Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) Esta dissertação tem como objetivo identificar quais os contextos linguísticos e extralinguísticos que propiciam a ocorrência da monotongação dos ditongos orais decrescentes na fala de moradores da cidade de Uberaba- MG. Entende-se por “monotongação” o processo de redução do ditongo, que perde sua semivogal e passa a uma vogal simples, como ocorre em “c[ay]xa” > “c[a]xa” (HORA; RIBEIRO, 2006). Sendo assim, sabendo que a língua portuguesa sofreu e sofre variações e mudanças à medida que é utilizada por seus falantes, faz-se necessário que se realizem pesquisas na área de Variação Linguística objetivando uma abordagem científica do tema. Para isso, organizamos um corpus de língua falada, representativo da comunidade urbana de Uberaba – MG, por meio de entrevistas, que foram embasadas no modelo laboviano. Foram entrevistados 24 informantes de escolarização e sexo diferentes. Após essa etapa, as entrevistas foram transcritas ortograficamente e, posteriormente, foram selecionadas as ocorrências de palavras com ditongo decrescente e com a monotongação do ditongo decrescente, estas, por sua vez, foram transcritas foneticamente também. As ocorrências foram quantitativamente analisadas, com a ajuda do programa estatístico GOLDVARB X, segundo fatores linguísticos e extralinguísticos, levando em consideração a variável dependente: monotongação ou não dos ditongos decrescentes. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que, na fala do uberabense, há a preferência pela forma monotongada dos ditongos /aj/, /ej/ e /ow/ e que tal preferência é condicionada, principalmente, por fatores linguísticos, tais como o contexto fonológico seguinte, a extensão da palavra e a tonicidade. Em relação aos fatores considerados extralinguísticos, como sexo, idade e escolaridade, no que diz respeito ao fenômeno da monotongação no português mineiro de Uberaba, eles pouco influem, ou até mesmo nada influem sobre sua realização. This dissertation aims to identify the linguistic and extralinguistic contexts that allow the occurrence of the monotongation of the descending oral diphthongs in the speech of residents of the city of Uberaba - MG. Monotongation is the process of reducing the diphthong that loses its semivowel and changes into a simple vowel, as in "c[ay] xa" > "c [a] xa" (HORA; RIBEIRO, 2006). Thus, knowing that the Portuguese language has had variations and changes as it is used by its speakers, it is necessary to carry out a research in the area of Linguistic Variation with a scientific approach onto the theme of this work. Thereon, we organized a corpus of spoken language through interviews with the representative urban community of Uberaba - MG, which was based on the Labovian model. Twenty-four (24) informants of different schooling and sex were interviewed. After this step, the interviews were orthographically transcribed and, later, the occurrence of words with descending diphthongs and the monotongation of the descending diphthongs were selected, which, in turn, were also transcribed phonetically. The occurrences were quantitatively analyzed with the help of the GOLDVARB X statistical program according to linguistic and extralinguistic factors, taking into account the dependent variable: monotongation or not of the descending diphthongs. The results obtained showed that in the Uberabense speech there is a preference for the monotong form of the diphthongs /aj/, /ej/ and /ow/ and that such preference is mainly conditioned by linguistic factors such as the following phonological context, the extension of the word and the tone. In relation to factors considered extralinguistic, such as sex, age and schooling, with respect to the phenomenon of monotongation in the Portuguese of Uberaba, they have little or no influence on their achievement.

In our modern and digital world, learning English at the upper-intermediate and the advanced levels is inevitable necessity for everybody to learn in terms of every skill, such as, speaking, listening, reading, and writing. Pronunciation, in particular, has been neglected in English teaching at the primary, secondary, and high state schools in Turkey. Neither teachers who teach English nor students who are willing to learn English give more importance to pronunciation owing to different articulations that are unavailable in Turkish language. This issue predominantly arises from the completely different language families to which Turkish and English languages are members. The main articulation problems that Turkish learners encounter are diphthongs, the voiced, and the unvoiced “th” sounds. In the syntax structure of Turkish language, two vowels are hardly ever in juxtaposition. So, Turkish learners are used to articulating the word forming monophthong sound because of the structure of Turkish language. The pronunciation problems for Turkish learners are not entirely limited to either the diphthongs or the voiced and unvoiced “th” sounds. In addition to those, the great majority of Turkish teachers teaching English at the state secondary, and high schools are beyond giving importance to the listening ability in which the consonant assimilation plays a significant role for learners to comprehend the sounds that they encounter in listening activities. As for one of the examples of how we can overcome the issue of some diphthongs’ articulation, we can put our sign finger to the front of our lips before we start the articulation of the diphthongs such as “go” or “home”, the lips should push the finger forward during the articulation of “go” or “home”. Otherwise, it means that it is not the accurate articulation for the sounds of “go” and “home”, as two examples of the diphthongs. I am going to put forward the issues of diphthongs in English for Turkish learners and present the ways, and techniques for the students in my classroom that they put the techniques and the ways that are taught into practice to overcome the articulation problems of the diphthongs by the power point presentation.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between perception and production of English vowels by Korean EFL learners. To this end, 21 Korean students participated in perception and production tests in order to probe the extent to which the perception and production accuracies conform to each other. Overall, the participants had difficulty perceiving and producing English vowels since the mean accuracies of perception and production only amounted to 60%. The results showed that perception accuracy was not always higher than production accuracy, which runs counter to the traditional assumption that perception precedes production. Moreover, it was revealed that no significant correlation between perception and production was found, thus suggesting that perception and production may not be related and that perception and production capabilities may be developing independently depending on vowels and individuals. As for the results of the perception test, monophthong and short vowels were more difficult to perceive in relation to their counterpart diphthong and long vowels. Regarding the results of the production test, the participants were better at producing tense vowels than lax vowels. In addition, confusion matrixes for perception and production were presented and confusion patterns as well as the direction of confusability are discussed in detail.

Formant is one of the essential vocal features for research of voice production, recognition and synthesis. Numerous studies were established on foreign languages including English vowels. However, studies related to Korean were done with a limited number of voice data. In this study, we compare four formants according to age and gender using a large number of Korean monophthongs. A total of 2614 Korean speakers participated in our experiments. We summarize statistical results by mean and standard deviation for each formant of five monophthongs. The results show a notable difference in each age and gender group. A quantitative study based on a large dataset is suggested for future studies on Korean speech sounds.

The present article describes the spectral characteristics of the Latvian sonorants /m/, /n/ ([n] and [ŋ]), /ɲ/, /l/, /ʎ/ and /r/ as investigated in a pilot-study. The initial sonorant of the symmetric CVC syllables, as well as the formant transitions (CV) underwent spectral analysis. The obtained data suggest that the Latvian laterals are distinguished from the other sounds of Latvian and among themselves mainly on the basis of their formant structure. The principal cues for the Latvian nasals are provided by formant (mainly F2) transitions and the characteristic nasal murmur. It seems that the Latvian trill /r/ is characterized mainly by very brief partial or complete closures (weakening or omission of spectral energy) during the moments when the tongue tip touches the alveolar ridge. The formant structure of /r/ in the open phase is similar to that of the central vowels and depends on the quality of the following monophthong.