http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/services/Feed ${session.getAttribute("locale")} 5 http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:25348 24 pages(s) 2013-05-02T01:33:45.425Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:25151 We use ultrasound to explore the lingual articulation of /hVd/ and /hVl/ rhymes from an Australian English speaker, focusing on the coarticulatory interactions between the VC rhyme components. Results reveal vowel height as a major factor conditioning lateral undershoot. We also find that back vowel tongue contours overlap extensively with the coda lateral providing a conditioning environment for vocalization. Despite most vowels being resistant to coarticulatory influence from the coda /l/, high central vowels and diphthongs are extensively affected displaying considerable retraction in line with observations from acoustic studies. Results are discussed with reference to Australian English change in progress. 2013-04-11T11:22:41.794Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:23159 Two prominent dual-route computational models of reading aloud are the dual-route cascaded (DRC) model, and the connectionist dual-process plus (CDP+) model. While sharing similarly designed lexical routes, the two models differ greatly in their respective nonlexical route architecture, such that they often differ on nonword pronunciation. Neither model has been appropriately tested for nonword reading pronunciation accuracy to date. We argue that empirical data on the nonword reading pronunciation of people is the ideal benchmark for testing. Data were gathered from 45 Australian-English-speaking psychology undergraduates reading aloud 412 nonwords. To provide contrast between the models, the nonwords were chosen specifically because DRC and CDP+ disagree on their pronunciation. Both models failed to accurately match the experiment data, and both have deficiencies in nonword reading performance. However, the CDP+ model performed significantly worse than the DRC model. CDP+ +, the recent successor to CDP+, had improved performance over CDP+, but was also significantly worse than DRC. In addition to highlighting performance shortcomings in each model, the variety of nonword responses given by participants points to a need for models that can account for this variety. 2012-12-03T09:21:38.743Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:18319 This paper reports on an acoustic phonetic study of the VC rhyme in two Australian English dialects. The aim is to examine the timing features of the rhyme to determine the extent to which characteristics of Arabic predict differences between the two dialects. Eight speakers of Standard Australian English and seven of Lebanese Australian English were recorded using a standard word list task. Results show significant dialect specific timing differences which are dependent on vowel quantity and coda voicing. The results suggest that Lebanese Arabic prosodic constraints may have become ethnolinguistically functionalised in this new AusE dialect. 2012-03-26T16:00:38.528Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:17640 For nearly 50 years, Australian English has been described as a dialect exhibiting broadness variation reflective of sociodemographic speaker characteristics. However, observations suggesting the disintegration of the broadness continuum in the speech of young people today raise questions about its validity as a descriptive tool for current Australian English. In this paper we examine a set of vowels from 116 young Sydney females to explore whether vowel broadness does vary as a consequence of socioeconomic factors including school type, parents’ place of birth, region of upbringing and parents’ occupation. Results provide evidence against using traditional broadness categories to investigate sociolectal variation. 2012-02-17T21:27:09.184Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:17557 In this paper we present the results of a trend analysis comparing acoustic vowel data collected from Australian English speakers over the past 40 years. Results reveal the final stage of short front vowel raising and provide evidence for subsequent lowering as a change in progress. We argue that this result reflects the reversal of a series of vowel changes that have been in progress for over 100 years. These findings raise interesting theoretical questions about the nature of vowel shifts and challenge Bybee’s [1] assertion that sound change reversals cannot occur. 2012-02-13T00:00:08.049Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:17132 The study is concerned with a longitudinal acoustic analysis of two sets of recordings from the same four speakers over an interval of between 29 and 50 years. The aim was to determine whether there is any evidence for age-related acoustic changes. Our analysis showed that the same speakers have lower f0, a lower F1, a marginally lower F2, and an unchanging or sometimes higher F3 in their later recordings. There is some suggestion from these data that the change in F1-f0 in Bark from earlier to late recordings is proportional to the change in F3-F2 in Bark. This suggests that there is shift in the speaker space roughly along a diagonal in the phonetic height x backness plane with increasing age. 2012-01-24T05:30:14.666Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:16565 This study was designed to establish the specific communicative function of both low (L*) and high (H*) pitch accent onsets with high rising tunes (HRTs), earlier established as a feature of Australian English. The data consisted of the dialogues of four female and four male adolescent speakers who were recorded while participating in the Map task. The discourse analysis involved the application of Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg's compositional theory of tune meaning. The study appears to support key aspects of Pierrehumbert & Hirschberg's theory: the results show overwhelmingly that the speakers used high (H*) pitch accents with new information and low (L*) pitch accents with information that was already part of the speaker and hearer's mutual beliefs. The findings suggest that the individual tones in a HRT each contribute to the overall meaning of an intonation contour, and that a close examination of intonation features within a developing communication context is crucial to understanding intonational meaning. 2012-01-04T00:23:10.126Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:5075 The effect of diminished auditory feedback on monophthong and diphthong production was examined in postlingually deafened Australian-English speaking adults. The participants were 4 female and 3 male speakers with severe to profound hearing loss, who were compared to 11 age- and accent-matched normally hearing speakers. The test materials were 5 repetitions of hVd words containing 18 vowels. Acoustic measures that were studied included F1, F2, discrete cosine transform coefficients (DCTs), and vowel duration information. The durational analyses revealed increased total vowel durations with a maintenance of the tense/lax vowel distinctions in the deafened speakers. The deafened speakers preserved a differentiated vowel space, although there were some gender-specific differences seen. For example, there was a retraction of F2 in the front vowels for the female speakers that did not occur in the males. However, all deafened speakers showed a close correspondence between the monophthong and diphthong formant movements that did occur. Gaussian classification highlighted vowel confusions resulting from changes in the deafened vowel space. The results support the view that postlingually deafened speakers maintain reasonably good speech intelligibility, in part by employing production strategies designed to bolster auditory feedback. 2011-05-26T00:16:34.729Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:11936 The Emu Speech Database system is a set of software tools developed to support research in acoustic phonetics and other corpus based speech research. This paper describes recent updates that have been made to the latest release of the software. 2011-02-24T00:10:14.954Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:8910 2010-07-12T11:01:04.657Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:864 28 page(s) 2010-01-27T23:23:07.191Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:1934 14 page(s) 2010-01-27T23:10:21.835Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:2365 This chapter reflects the study of the changes that have taken place in the last 50 years to one variety of English, Received Pronunciation (RP), the so-called standard accent of Britain. It is also about defining some of the pronunciation characteristics of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. 2010-01-27T23:05:22.767Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:5556 The purpose of this paper is to provide a description of the main features of Standard Australian English (SAusE). 2010-01-27T22:29:23.920Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:6059 Lebanese Australian English (LAusE) can be described as a new dialect of Australian English (AusE). It is the form adopted by many Australian born speakers of Lebanese descent however the specific demographic and sociocultural characteristics of its users are yet to be determined. This new dialect operates in conjunction with Standard (AusE) in the community and appears to exhibit continuum of variation from the most highly vernacular variety through to a form most closely resembling Standard General AusE. This paper reports on a preliminary study of some acoustic phonetic characteristics in the speech of young adult male Lebanese Australian university students. These speakers have strong ties to the Lebanese community in Sydney, have English as their first language and also use vernacular Arabic. The speakers were recorded using standard word list and sentence tasks as well as less formal interactional elicitation techniques. Speech data was annotated using the EMU database system for the examination of the segmental and prosodic aspects of speech corpora (Cassidy & Harrington, 2001). For this paper, word list data was selected to examine vowel formant frequency and durational parameters as well as some consonantal timing characteristics. Results of comparisons with Standard AusE suggest only minor vowel gesture differences but significant voicing and associated timing effects. The results will be discussed with reference to metrical structure and the phonetic implementation of voicing. 2010-01-27T22:22:47.357Z ]]> http://www.researchonline.mq.edu.au/vital/access/manager/Repository/mq:6060 Lebanese Australian English (LAusE) is a relatively recent addition to the dialects of English available to people who are born and raised in Australia. It has been created to fulfil the social needs of a particular minority group and is not foreign accented English. It operates in conjunction with Standard Australian English (SAusE) in the community and appears to comprise a continuum from highly vernacular forms through to SAusE. This paper reports on a preliminary study of some acoustic phonetic characteristics in the speech of five young adult male university students who were born in Australia to Lebanese parents. All speakers have English as their first language. The speakers were recorded using standard word list and sentence tasks. In this initial analysis, the acoustic characteristics of vowels and coda consonants are examined. Results of comparisons with SAusE suggest vowel gesture differences and consonantal timing effects. The results also lend support to the idea of a continuum of variation from the standard Australian English form through to more highly vernacular LAusE. The paper also poses the question of how this new dialect may be represented in our conceptualisation of Australian English varieties. 2010-01-27T22:22:47.146Z ]]>