Previous research has reported stress "deafness" for languages with predictable stress, like French, contrary to languages with non-predictable stress, like Spanish ([1], [2], [3], [4]). The contrastive nature of stress appears to inhibit stress "deafness", but segmental and/or suprasegmental cues may also enhance stress discrimination ([5], [6]). In this study we carried out two experiments ai...

In this article, the low back vowel /A/ in word-final positions in Eghlidian dialect, one of Persian dialects, is studied. This vowel is represented phonetically as [A], [o] and [@] in different phonetic environments. Therefore many words were collected via interviewing ten native speakers so that these different alternant forms can be accounted for appropriately. Since one of the authors of th...

This paper reports the results of an experimental study on non-native production of English vowels. Two groups of Persian EFL learners varying in language proficiency were tested on their ability to produce the nine plain vowels of American English. Vowel production accuracy was assessed by means of acoustic measurements. Ladefoged and Maddison’s (1996) F1 F2 measurements for American English v...

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...

Unstressed vowel reduction figures centrally in recent literature on the phonetics-phonology interface, in part owing to the possibility of a causal relationship between a phonetic process, duration-dependent undershoot, and the phonological neutralizations observed in systems of unstressed vocalism. Of particular interest in this light has been Russian, traditionally described as exhibiting tw...

This research seeks to establish an inventory of the suprasegmental acoustic cues that are relevant to the automatic typology and identification of the dialects of British English. Using evidence from traditional dialectology suggesting that the dialects of the British Isles exhibit differences at the suprasegmental level – and, in particular, in terms of rhythm – we apply procedures that have ...

Although vowel quality is an important cue to the perception of English lexical stress, few studies have examined the role this cue plays for non-native speakers. Previous research found that Mandarin speakers had problems using vowel reduction as a cue in English lexical stress production. Assuming native-like perception is a prerequisite to native-like production for non-native speech, this s...

Previous research has shown that listeners' identifications of synthetic fricative noises are influenced by both rounding on an adjacent vowel and by the sex of the speaker who produced the adjacent vowel. In each case, contextual information which indicates a longer vocal tract during the production of the fricative (vowel rounding, or male speaker) results in fewer "sh" responses to the items...