It is possible to construct an unsupervised learning system for vowel harmony, which makes accessible general-isations. Furthermore, such a learning system can be constructed with little built-in knowledge, and, consequently, be applicable to data from a wide range of domains. This paper presents a learning system which fulllls these criteria, and examines the results of applying an implementat...

This study examined the impact of phonetic training on English lexical schwa vowel in primary school learners (aged 12) of English as a foreign language in Spain. Students’ perceptual awareness on the occurrence of schwa in unstressed position in English was tested in three groups: i) a group which underwent auditory discrimination and identification practice, ii) a group ...

To speak intelligibly is a goal in speaking to be understood oral communication with second language. Mistakes even simple sounds may deter the correct flow of meanings listeners. Thus, this study determined most critical vowel and consonant contrastive among Grade 7 learners Bontoc, Mountain Province. A Phonetic Diagnostic Test (PDT) was administered learners, then tests were checked, tabulate...

In this study we examined the interaction of fundamental frequency (Fo) differences and binaural separation cues on the identification accuracy and judgments of the relative pitches of concurrent vowel pairs. On each pitch ranking trial listeners were told which vowels were presented and were asked simply to indicate which vowel was on the higher pitch. The first vowel had an FO near 140 Hz and...

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...

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...