Search results for "Phonetics"
showing 10 items of 142 documents
Learning nonadjacent dependencies : No need for algebraic-like computations.
2004
Is it possible to learn the relation between 2 nonadjacent events? M. Pena, L. L. Bonatti, M. Nespor, and J. Mehler (2002) claimed this to be possible, but only in conditions suggesting the involvement of algebraic-like computations. The present article reports simulation studies and experimental data showing that the observations on which Pena et al. grounded their reasoning were flawed by deep methodological inadequacies. When the invalid data are set aside, the available evidence fits exactly with the predictions of a theory relying on ubiquitous associative mechanisms. Because nonadjacent dependencies are frequent in natural language, this reappraisal has far-reaching implications for t…
Are coffee and toffee served in a cup? Ortho-phonologically mediated associative priming.
2008
We report three masked associative priming experiments with the lexical decision task that explore whether the initial activation flow of a visually presented word activates the semantic representations of that word's orthographic/phonological neighbours. The predictions of cascades and serial/modular models of lexical processing differ widely in this respect. Using a masked priming paradigm (stimulus onset asynchrony, SOA = 50 ms), words preceded by ortho-phonologically mediated associated “neighbours” ( oveja–MIEL, the Spanish for sheep–HONEY; note that oveja is a phonological neighbour of abeja, the Spanish for bee) were recognized more rapidly than words preceded by an unrelated word p…
Application of EαNets to Feature Recognition of Articulation Manner in Knowledge-Based Automatic Speech Recognition
2006
Speech recognition has become common in many application domains. Incorporating acoustic-phonetic knowledge into Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems design has been proven a viable approach to rise ASR accuracy. Manner of articulation attributes such as vowel, stop, fricative, approximant, nasal, and silence are examples of such knowledge. Neural networks have already been used successfully as detectors for manner of articulation attributes starting from representations of speech signal frames. In this paper, a set of six detectors for the above mentioned attributes is designed based on the E-αNet model of neural networks. This model was chosen for its capability to learn hidden acti…
La questione delle «esplosive palatali» nelle inchieste dell’Atlante Linguistico del Mediterraneo (ALM): l’area italiana centromeridionale
2019
Tra i “Problemi redazionali” emersi in fase di controllo e organizzazione dei materiali giunti dalla campagna di rilevamenti dell’Atlante Linguistico del Mediterraneo (ALM), Berruto (1971-1973) rileva la proliferazione e l’eterogeneità di alcune scelte grafemiche operate da diversi raccoglitori che, impegnati in una trascrizione più o meno puntuale delle risposte ottenute, avevano interpretato e risolto variamente alcune delle indicazioni previste nel sistema di trascrizione fonetica che accompagnava il Questionario. Particolarmente complesso era emerso il quadro relativo alla trascrizione di alcune consonanti del settore “palatale”, per le quali i grafemi (e i foni a essi corrispondenti) p…
La Sicilia nell’Italia dialettale di Giulio Bertoni. I tratti fonetici
2016
In 1916, Bertoni published his essay Italia dialettale in addition to the fundamental studies of Diez, Meyer-Lübke, D’Ovidio and, of course, Ascoli, on which Bertoni builds his geolinguistic reference framework. In that year a series of essays, specifically dedicated to some phonetic aspects of the Sicilian dialect, had already been written by German linguists on one hand and Sicilian folklorists on the other. The only Sicilian linguist at that time was Giacomo De Gregorio whose Saggio di fonetica siciliana (1890) appears among the bibliographic references of Bertoni’s work along with that of Heinrich Schneegans (Laute und Lautentwickelung des sicilianischen Dialects) published in 1888. Thi…
IL "SICULO-ARABIC" E GLI ARABISMI MEDIEVALI E MODERNI DI SICLIA
2013
IL «SICULO ARABIC» E GLI ARABISMI SICILIANI MEDIEVALI E MODERNI Nell’ambito degli studi sulla vicenda storico-linguistica del periodo arabo-normanno in Sicilia, il saggio di Agius (1996), dal titolo Siculo Arabic, richiama l’attenzione sul Trattato di Ibn Makkī detto “il Mazarese”, rientrante nel filone dei “laḥn works”. Si tratta di opere volte a segnalare e correggere gli errori ricorrenti tra gli utenti delle diverse varietà di arabo, errori intesi come devianze dal modello classico. La possibilità di disporre di una discreta quantità di dati presumibilmente “siciliani” (dati “interferiti” e “sgrammaticati” possibilmente riconducibili a una “varietà ponte” tra l’arabo e gli arabismi dial…
Innalzamento delle vocali medie toniche in contesto di /a/ finale in un’area della Sicilia centrale
2022
Le varietà della Sicilia centrale sono notoriamente caratterizzate dalla presenza di alcuni fenomeni vocalici (tra questi, la metafonia e l’abbassamento di i/u toniche in parole che presentano le stesse vocali in posizione finale), sui quali esiste ormai un’ampia letteratura. Quasi ignoto è, invece, il fenomeno più particolarmente preso in esame in questo saggio: l'innalzamento delle vocali medie toniche e/o in contesto di a finale che interessa una piccola e compatta area della provincia di Caltanissetta e che interviene a complicare ulteriormente il quadro delle dinamiche vocaliche nella Sicilia centrale. Sulla base dei dati emersi dalla misurazione delle frequenze in Hz delle formanti (F…
Short article: Eye movements when reading text messaging (txt msgng)
2009
The growing popularity of mobile-phone technology has led to changes in the way people—particularly younger people—communicate. A clear example of this is the advent of Short Message Service (SMS) language, which includes orthographic abbreviations (e.g., omitting vowels, as in wk, week) and phonetic respelling (e.g., using u instead of you). In the present study, we examined the pattern of eye movements during reading of SMS sentences (e.g., my hols wr gr8), relative to normally written sentences, in a sample of skilled “texters”. SMS sentences were created by using (mostly) orthographic or phonological abbreviations. Results showed that there is a reading cost—both at a local level and at…
An integrated dialect analysis tool using phonetics and acoustics
2019
This study aimed to verify a computational phonetic and acoustic analysis tool created in the MATLAB environment. A dataset was obtained containing 3 broad American dialects (Northern, Western and New England) from the TIMIT database using words that also appeared in the Swadesh list. Each dialect consisted of 20 speakers uttering 10 sentences. Verification using phonetic comparisons between dialects was made by calculating the Levenshtein distance in Gabmap and the proposed software tool. Agreement between the linguistic distances using each analysis method was found. Each tool showed increasing linguistic distance as a function of increasing geographic distance, in a similar shape to Segu…
PRODUCTION OF THE SPANISH VOWEL SYSTEM BY CHINESE SPEAKERS
2018
RESUMEN En este trabajo se comparan los sistemas vocálicos del español y del chino pronunciados por hablantes nativos con el objetivo de presentar a continuación las peculiaridades del sistema vocálico español de un grupo de estudiantes de China con un nivel intermedio de español. El estudio de las similitudes y las diferencias entre los sistemas nativos nos ha permitido prever en qué áreas pueden diferir las vocales pronunciadas por aprendices chinos de las vocales españolas. Los resultados indican que el sistema vocálico español de los estudiantes chinos es estructuralmente similar al sistema nativo, pero con algunas diferencias fonéticas: en primer lugar, tiene una extensión mayor por lo…