This study examines the effects of lexical stress on vowel quality in Iberian Spanish and Central Catalan and the relationship between phonetic variation caused by stress and speech rate. For Catalan, both absence of stress and fast speech rate result in a shrunken vowel space. For Spanish, the effects of speech rate are in line with those found for Catalan. Yet, unstressed vowels are character...

Problem statement: Pyrosequencing has the potential to rapidly and reliably sequence DNA taking advantages over traditional Sanger di-deoxy sequencing approach. Approach: A comprehensive review of the literature on the principles, applications, challenges and prospects of pyrosequencing was performed. Results: Pyrosequencing was a DNA sequencing technology based on the sequencing-by-synthesis p...

In this paper we prove that if $X $ is a Banach space, then for every lower semi-continuous bounded below function $f, $ there exists a $left(varphi_1, varphi_2right)$-convex function $g, $ with arbitrarily small norm,  such that $f + g $ attains its strong minimum on $X. $ This result extends some of the  well-known varitional principles as that of Ekeland [On the variational principle,  J. Ma...

Naba, also known as Bilala, is a Nilo-Saharan (Sara-Bagirmi) language of Chad with about 410,000 speakers from three ethnic groups. This paper gives basic description the Naba phonological system, using segmental phonology and lexical approaches. Topics covered include phonemic inventory, syllable structure phonotactic restrictions, tone system its interaction other processes, main post-lexical...

1. Introduction Early accounts of epenthesis in Optimality Theory focused on epenthesis that results from constraints on prosodic structure, that is, from syllable structure constraints or minimal prosodic category (e.g. minimal word) requirements. McCarthy & Prince (1993a) account for word-internal consonant epenthesis at V-V junctures in Axininca Campa, for example, by ranking ONSET (Syllable...

Several recent investigations of the development of left-edge clusters in West Germanic languages have demonstrated that the relative sonority of adjacent consonants plays a key role in children’s reduction patterns (e.g. Fikkert 1994, Gilbers & Den Ouden 1994, Chin 1996, Barlow 1997, Bernhardt & Stemberger 1998, Gierut 1999, Ohala 1999, Gnanadesikan this volume). These authors have argued that...

this research aims to explore the observance of syllable contact law (scl) in persian simple words. to achieve this aim, 4661 contacts were extracted from 9553 simple polysyllabic words. results show that in 45% of the syllable boundaries the sonority drops from the coda of the first syllable to the onset of the next one. also in 68% of the consonant contacts in pure persian words scl is observ...

b a ckground: zoonotic cutaneous leishmaniasis (zcl) is endemic in many parts of iran. recently its incidence isconsiderable in different parts of jahrom district, in fars province, southern iran. the aims of our study were to in- vestigate the prevalence of leishmania infection, and identify and characterize the   leishmania species present, among the rodents by molecular methods in a new ende...

In a recent trend, phonologists are becoming increasingly aware of the fact that many phonological processes are variable (Labov 1972, 1994), gradient (Hayes 2000, Frisch et al. 2004), and full of exceptions (Zimmer 1969, Zuraw 2000). This is not only because variability, gradience, and exceptions have been shown to be par for the course for many lexical patterns in phonology, but also because ...