1,721,027 research outputs found
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Prosody in two genetic disorders: Williams and Down's syndrome
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Stress and prominence in the speech of Malay speakers of English
No full textThis chapter discusses the notion of stress and prominence in World Englishes, with a focus on Malay English (ME), a sub-variety of Malaysian English (MalE), and is based on a larger study (Mat Nayan, 2012) which examined the prosodic features of Malay Speakers of English (MSEs). In this chapter, three inter-related aspects of stress and prominence are discussed: (i) the fluidity of the tonic syllable (i.e., the main stressed syllable in a tone unit); (ii) the shift of the tonic syllable towards the final syllable in a tone unit; and (iii) the difficulty in identifying the tonic syllable using paradigms for other varieties of English. The motivation for this research is to consider the role of stress and prominence in intelligibility in World Englishes. Based on the findings, what can be seen in the MSE data is that the notion of stress in ME is different to that of Standard Southern British English (SSBE). In comparison to other Asian Englishes in the region, ME does share similar features, such as the shift towards the final syllable, but it also has more distinct features such as the fluidity of the tonic syllable. This implies that stress and prominence in ME may lead to difficulties in intelligibility for some speakers of English, but not necessarily for those using varieties spoken in the region. While some studies have suggested that the prosodic features of ME could be an influence from L1, i.e., the Malay language as it is spoken in Malaysia, more substantial and robust studies need to be conducted to prove this. What can be said though is that the notion of stress and prominence is an ambiguous and complex area that needs further investigation
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Speech Research in a Malaysian Context
No full textThis book is a collection of papers that represent research in Malaysia focusing on segmental and suprasegmental phonology. Most of the authors were presenters or participants at the one-day seminar on Speech Research in a Malaysian Context that was organized on 24 July 2017 at the Faculty of Modern Languages and Communication, Universiti Putra Malaysia.
The seminar was part of a series of events in the Intonation Workshop Series 2017, a training activity that was supported by the Newton Mobility Grant 2016 RD1 Fellowship for research and training: Intonation in Malay and in Malaysia (Project Code: NG160107) that was awarded by the British Academy to the editors of this volume. The project had three aims: to support the development of analytical skills in intonation among academics in Malaysia; to train them in the intonation in English, a well-documented language, as a framework for describing intonation in other languages; and to initiate a full-scale investigation of the intonation patterns of Bahasa Melayu with a view to publishing research in this area, thus contributing to what we know about intonation in languages around the world.
The seminar brought together academics researching different aspects of speech in a Malaysian context, and in different languages spoken in Malaysia. As Malaysia is home to a vibrant multilingual community whose speakers speak a combination of the world languages, this volume will be relevant to researchers in Malaysia as well as other parts of the world
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Voice quality, pitch, and gender discrimination
No full textThis chapter explores the relationship between the voice and gender discrimination in popular culture and academic research, focusing on voice quality, uptalk, and pitch. After considering the historical backdrop where cisgender, male voices were taken as default in research and pointing to media examples where the voice operates as a site for gender bias, this chapter considers the extent to which research in phonetics and adjacent fields reinforces popular misconceptions, and how useful it is for combatting voice-related gender prejudice. Pointing to promising examples of research on women’s voices as well as gay, gender non-conforming and transgender voices, the chapter concludes by presenting recommendations for future research, and suggesting that this research be communicated to wider audiences to inform professional practices and begin wider discussions to combat the voice being invoked to excuse gender bias and discrimination
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The Cambridge handbook of phonetics
No full textPhonetics - the study and classification of speech sounds - is a major sub-discipline of linguistics. Bringing together a team of internationally renowned phoneticians, this handbook provides comprehensive coverage of the most recent, cutting-edge work in the field, and focuses on the most widely-debated contemporary issues. Chapters are divided into five thematic areas: segmental production, prosodic production, measuring speech, audition and perception, and applications of phonetics. Each chapter presents an historical overview of the area, along with critical issues, current research and advice on the best practice for teaching phonetics to undergraduates. It brings together global perspectives, and includes examples from a wide range of languages, allowing readers to extend their knowledge beyond English. By providing both state-of-the-art research information, and an appreciation of how it can be shared with students, this handbook is essential both for academic phoneticians, and anyone with an interest in this exciting, rapidly developing field
Automatic Speech Recognition by Machines
No full textBuilding machines to converse with human beings through automatic speech recognition (ASR) and understanding (ASU) has long been a topic of great interest for scientists and engineers, and we have recently witnessed rapid technological advances in this area. Here, we first cast the ASR problem as a pattern-matching and channel-decoding paradigm. We then follow this with a discussion of the Hidden Markov Model (HMM), which is the most successful technique for modelling fundamental speech units, such as phones and words, in order to solve ASR as a search through a top-down decoding network. Recent advances using deep neural networks as parts of an ASR system are also highlighted. We then compare the conventional top-down decoding approach with the recently proposed automatic speech attribute transcription (ASAT) paradigm, which can better leverage knowledge sources in speech production, auditory perception and language theory through bottom-up integration. Finally we discuss how the processing-based speech engineering and knowledge-based speech science communities can work collaboratively to improve our understanding of speech and enhance ASR capabilities
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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