This paper describes in detail several explicit computational methods for approaching such questions in phonology as the vowel/consonant distinction, the nature of vowel harmony systems, and syllable structure, appealing solely to distributional information. Beginning with the vowel/consonant distinction, we consider a method for its discovery by the Russian linguist Sukhotin, and compare it to...

in order to simplify the pronunciation ofthe adult's words,children use phonological processes inthe initial years oftheir speech growth.the present study aims at considering phonological processes ina group oftwo tofour-year old farsi speaking children.the results indicate that itisnot possible to correctly and precisely account forthe occurrences ofsuch processes in children’s pronunciat...

In child language, consonants often assimilate in primary place of articulation across intervening vowels. In adult language, primary place assimilation occurs only between adjacent consonants. In both cases, the first consonant usually assimilates to the second. The standard analysis of directionality of local assimilation in Optimality Theory uses positional faithfulness to protect the second...

Hansson (2001), Rose & Walker (2004), and Walker (2000a, 2000b) have recently proposed that long-distance consonant assimilation is accomplished via segmental correspondence rather than autosegmental linking. The phonology of the feature [anterior] in Chumash supports this idea: linking of the feature [anterior] is forbidden across morpheme boundaries, but long-distance [anterior] harmony is al...

In this paper we propose a new set of harmony features for automatic emotion recognition from speech signals. They are based on the psychoacoustic harmony perception known from music theory. Starting from the estimated pitch contour of an utterance, we calculate the circular autocorrelation of the pitch histogram on the logarithmic semitone scale. It measures the occurrence of different two-pit...

Abstract Although Erzya harmony is discussed as a kind of vowel traditionally, suffix alternations show that there close interaction between consonants and vowels, therefore we should speak about consonant-vowel harmony. This paper demonstrates the palatalizedness frontness vowels are also strongly connected inside stems: first syllable front quite rare after word-initial non-palatalized dental...

In Western music, a musical interval defined by the frequency ratio of two notes is generally considered consonant when the ratio is composed of small integers. Perfect harmony or an "ideal just scale," which has no exact solution, would require the division of an octave into 12 notes, each of which would be used to create six other consonant intervals. The purpose of this study is to analyze f...