Other Research
The phonetics and phonology of H*, L+H*, and L*+H in English
- Researcher: Gina Garding and Amalia Arvaniti
- This project investigated the three-way contrast between H*, L*+H and L+H* in English by examining production data in which speakers used the accents in different contexts and with increasing emphasis. The aim was to examine the acoustics of these accents while separating the effects of emphasis from the contextual use of the accents. The results confirmed this three-way contrast in English by showing that the three accents are phonetically and pragmatically distinct. The data also showed dialectal variation, thereby adding to a recent body of research which shows that linguistic variation can no longer be ignored in intonation research. ADD LINK TO PAPER - you can use the papers
- Publications and presentations
- * Arvaniti, Amalia and Gina Garding (to appear) Dialectal variation in the rising accents of American English. In J. Cole and J. H. Hualde (eds), Papers in Laboratory Phonology 9: Change in Phonology. Mouton de Gruyter.
"High-rise-terminals" in London and Southern California English
- Researcher: Angie Barry (with Amalia Arvaniti)
- Angie Barry, a visiting graduate student from the University of Sheffield (UK) is doing her dissertation on the phonetics, phonology, and sociolinguistics of "high-rise-terminals" in London and Southern California English.
- * Barry, Angie and Amalia Arvaniti. "Uptalk" in Southern Californian and London English. British Association of Academic Phoneticians conference (BAAP 2006), poster session, 10th-12th April 2006, Edinburgh.
Intrusive vowels in Cruceño Spanish
Researchers:Cynthia Kilpatrick, James Kirby (U Chicago), and Kathryn McGee.
- Intrusive vowels are short vowels appearing within consonant clusters that are not treated phonologically like full vowels. Though reported in many languages, few quantititative studies have examined these vowels. Here, an acoustic study of intrusive vowels in obstruent+tap clusters in the Spanish of Santa Cruz, Bolivia is reported. The results support earlier studies in that the intrusive vowel quality resembles that of the following nucleic vowel, rather than a neutral vowel, and intrusive vowels are significantly longer in clusters with voiced obstruents than in those with voiceless ones. However, results do not fully support all previous phonetic descriptions and related theoretical assumptions. In particular, a significant difference is not found in intrusive vowel length based on variables such as place of articulation of the obstruent, quality of the nucleic vowel, or placement of stress in relation to the cluster. In addition, where previous work finds no significance for position in the word, the present work finds that intrusive vowels are significantly longer in word-medial clusters than in word-initial clusters. The data further suggest that the articulation of obstruent+tap does not require an intrusive vowel, as has previously been claimed, as not all obstruent+tap clusters include an intrusive vowel.
- Publications and presentations
- * Kilpatrick, Cynthia, James Kirby, and Kathryn McGee (2006). Intrusive vowels in Cruceño Spanish. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 3373. (Poster presented at the 4th joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of Japan and the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu, HI, 28 November-2 December, 2006.)
Locating F0 elbows
- Researchers: Ryan Shosted, Alex del Giudice, and Amalia Arvaniti
- In the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational phonology,
intonation consists of a series of tones that are phonetically realized as tonal targets, that is points in the F0 contour which consistently align with specific segmental landmarks. Given the theoretical consequences of the phonetics of tonal targets locating them accurately and in a theory-neutral way is crucial for intonation research. In this project we compare human annotation to a number of algorithms that have been used to automatically locate the position of elbows which are perhaps the most difficult targets to locate. Our aim is to test whether human annotators are as unreliable as they have sometimes be said to be and to find a procedure that will allow us to reliably annotate elbows in intonation research.
- Publications and presentations
- * Shosted, Ryan, Alex del Giudice, and Amalia Arvaniti (2006) Comparing methods for measuring pitch "elbows". J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 120, 3091. (Poster presented at the 4th joint meeting of the Acoustical Society of Japan and the Acoustical Society of America, Honolulu, HI, 28 November-2 December, 2006.)
