The posi tion of the category boundary along a synthetic [J J-[ sJ noise continuum depends on the following vocalic segment: When the vowel is [u], more "s" responses are given than when the vowel is [aJ. In Experiment I, we showed that this context effect disappears when the vocal ic portion is synthesized so as to contain no formant transitions. To dissociate the contribution of formant trans...

The reduction of the six Bulgarian vowels (i, , a, , , u) to a fouror (in some dialects) three-vowel subsystem (i, ( ), , u) in unstressed syllables is generally accepted. But a number of studies disagree on the exact nature of the reduction process. Claims differ as to whether or not /a/ merges phonetically with / /, and / / with /u/, or whether the assumed neutralized oppositions take a phone...

In this paper, we put forward an information theoretic definition of the redundancy that is observed across the sound inventories of the world’s languages. Through rigorous statistical analysis, we find that this redundancy is an invariant property of the consonant inventories. The statistical analysis further unfolds that the vowel inventories do not exhibit any such property, which in turn po...

Investigations have been made on the perceptual and acoustic properties of individual phonemes in continuous speech for different speaking rate. Fifteen short sentences spoken by four male speakers have been used as the test material. Each speaker has been asked to pronounce the sentences with three different rates: normal, first and slow. For perceptual experiment, individual CV-syllables have...

Infant siblings of children with autism spectrum disorder display differences in early language and social communication skills beginning as early as the first year of life. While environmental influences on early language development are well documented in other infant populations, they have received relatively little attention inside of the infant sibling context. In this study, we analyzed h...

Since the seminal work of Lindblom (1963) a wealth of studies have investigated undershoot and the factors governing its occurrence and variability. However, although sex-specific differences in reduction patterns have been found in adults (Byrd 1994; Whiteside 1996), as well as in children (McCormack & Knighton 1996), possible sex-specific differences in formant transitions and in particular u...

Vowel duration has been an issue in the study of Civili. Although minimal pairs based on vowel duration can be established at both perceptual and physical level, vowel lengthening still occurs in the context of voiced consonants in the language. A comparison between a measured physical duration and an experimentally perceived duration confirms the phonemic distinctiveness of vowel length and in...

It is widely claimed that close vowels in Japanese are devoiced when they occur between voiceless consonants. In this paper, voiceless vowels are represented symbolically as [V-] and voiced vowels as [V+]. The patterns of linguopalatal contact during C[V-]C units and the corresponding C[V+]C units are examined using the method of electropalatography (EPG). Our results show that C[V-]C units and...

The well-studied phenomenon of vowel lengthening before tense sonorants in Modern Irish (Ó Siadhail 1989, Ó Siadhail and Wigger 1975, Ó Baoill 1979), exemplified in (1), is now well understood as a compensatory process (see for example Ní Chiosain 1991). Tense or long sonorants (L, L', R', N, N', m) trigger vowel lengthening and/or diphthongization. What is not clear about this phenomenon is th...