In this paper we solve the problem of approximating a belief measure with a necessity measure or “consonant belief function” by minimizing appropriate distances from the consonant complex in the space of all belief functions. Partial approximations are first sought in each simplicial component of the consonant complex, while global solutions are obtained from the set of partial ones. The L1, L2...

This paper presents a Khmer typesetting system, based on TEX, METAFONT, and an ANSI-C filter. A 128-character of the -/-bit ASCII table for the Khmer script is proposed. Input of text is done phonically (using the spoken order consonantsubscript consonant-second subscript consonant-vowel-diacritic). The filter converts phonic description of consonantal clusters into a graphc T~Xnical descriptio...

Pronunciation plays a significant role in English teaching and learning around the world this particular field has received much attention from several scholars. The study was conducted to investigate common mistakes made by Vietnamese university learners while pronouncing consonant clusters. This is quantitative with participation of 39 as Foreign Language (EFL) learners. To collect data for s...

The vowel space reflects the right-angled shape of the vocal tract, and many consonants exploit the palatal wall. These two facts suggest the importance of the geometry of peripheral structure in speech production. In this study, the relationship between geometry and articulatory variation was examined using a database of English and Japanese speakers. The geometry of each speaker's vocal tract...

The classification of unvoiced stops in consonant–vowel (CV) syllables, segmented from continuous speech, is investigated by features related to speech production. As burst and vocalic transitions contribute to identification of stops in the CV context, features are computed from both regions. Although formants are the truly discriminating articulatory features, their estimation from the speech...

In Japanese, there is frequent alternation between CV morae and moraic geminate consonants. In this study, we analyzed the phonemic environments of consonant gemination (CG) using the “Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese (CSJ).” The results revealed that the environment in which gemination occurs is, to some extent, parallel to that of vowel devoicing. However, there are two crucial differences. One...

Accurate estimation of segmental durations is crucial for naturalsounding text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis. This paper presents a model of vowel duration used in the Bell Labs Japanese TTS system. We describe the constraints on vowel devoicing, and effects of factors such as phone identity, surrounding phone identities, accentuation, syllabic structure, and phrasal position on the duration of bot...

A perception experiment on stop consonant voicing in (C)V1CV2 was conducted to test the effects of the preceding vowel. Five types of /ki/ as CV1 differing in closure voicing, vowel duration and vowel devoicing were spliced with a da-ta VOT continuum as CV2. Subjects’ judgment between the spliced kita and kida along a VOT range was compared with that of ta and da in isolation. Strong effects of...

This paper discusses two well-known phonetic-phonological phenomena of Japanese, vowel devoicing and mora-timed rhythm. Regarding vowel devoicing as a process of vowels getting consonantal, it may change the mora-templated syllable structures of Japanese, resulting in the deviation from mora-timed rhythm. To investigate spontaneous Japanese with comparison to other languages, the label data of ...