Three ten-step series of synthetic speech stimuli were constructed: /raem/ to laem/, /raem/ to /waem/, and /laem/ to /yaem/. Within each series, differences consisted of variations in onset frequency and slope of transition in the second or third formant. These stimuli were presented to 5- to 7-year-old children in identification…

The experiment reported here attempted to investigate the nature of both intrinsic, unlearned temporal parameters as well as learned, language-specific durational properties in the speech of young children. Developmental aspects of several temporal parameters were investigated in the speech of ten 2 1/2 to 3-year-old and ten 4 to 4 1/2-year-old…

This paper reports on a longitudinal study of the acquisition of the voicing contrast in English word-initial stop consonants, as measured by voice onset time. Four monolingual children were recorded at two week intervals, beginning when the children were about 1;6. Data provided evidence for three general stages: (1) the child has no contrast;…

Reviews research on prosody and segmental perception, segmentation and invariance, categorical perception of speech and nonspeech, feature detectors, scaling speech sounds to an auditory-articulatory space, acoustic-phonetic dependencies within the syllable, higher order (nonphonetic) factors in the comprehension of fluent speech, and cerebral…

Examines the relationship between phonetic substitution patterns in child speech and sound change patterns in dialects of adult language, basing an explanation of these phenomena on acoustic data and language universals. (AM)

The idea of semantic features has taken some force within psychology and a number of research workers have suggested that semantic acquisition is, in some manner, determined by semantic components. This notion has come to be called the "semantic feature hypothesis". An examination of the semantic feature hypothesis was made by testing 80…

Uses eight languages in five distinct linguistic areas to examine two hypotheses regarding text generation and analysis and to illustrate their reciprocity relative to narrative discourse. Demonstrates how these hypotheses yield salience schemes and constituent analysis which mutually corroborate and correct each other. (KEH)

THIS PAPER PRESENTS FIRST A SUMMARY OF RESEARCH INVESTIGATING THE EXTENT TO WHICH THE KINDERGARTEN CHILD HAS ABSTRACTED IMPLICIT REGULARITIES IN THE FORMATION OF PLURALS IN ENGLISH. PRODUCTION AND RECOGNITION TASKS WERE USED. THE CHILDREN MADE MORE ERRORS WITH SYLLABLES REQUIRING THE ADDITION OR DELETION OF THE /IZ/ ALLOMORPH THAN WITH SYLLABLES…

Of the approximately 40 languages in Uganda, some are very similar to one another and may be to some extent mutually intelligible. Because no one knows how to measure degrees of mutual intelligibility, the authors are attempting to establish reliable techniques which would be not only of practical value for the study of language problems in…

This study, the ninth in the series "Studies in the Phonology of Asian Languages," aims to analyze the phonological properties of the accentual system of Standard Colloquial Japanese on the basis of acoustic-phonetic data, especially data obtained through use of the sound spectrograph and pitch extractor. Chapters deal with functional distinctions…

A study investigated the speaking styles of black college students to determine whether selected stylistic features of speeches of students at a predominantly black university were different from those of black college students at a predominantly white university. Audiotapes were made of 25 students at the predominantly black university and 21…

At vowel onset following unvoiced consonants in /h-cvc/ utterances spoken by two talkers, Fo began high and fell about seven percent in the first five centiseconds. At closure of voiced oral obstruents, Fo suddenly dipped about ten percent, remained flat, suddenly rose about twenty five percent at opening of closure, and, after vowel onset,…

Recent studies of rising intonation contours in French, in particular the acoustical differences that serve to distinguish Yes/No questions from other rising intonations are reviewed. The preliminary results of a pilot study of rising intonations in French, in which average curves were obtained from spectrographic measurements of fundamental…

This is Part 1 of the first of three volumes presenting a structural description of Russian dialects. This book deals with the phonological patterns of the dialects and analyzes in detail the vocalic and consonantal systems, discussing distribution, environmental influences, prosodic features, and variations among the dialects. The description is…

This paper discusses various theories of the role of memory in vocabulary acquisition and storage. Several research models are described, and theoretical considerations and questions are presented. The lexicon is seen as an element of grammar; an understanding of lexicon organization is important in the understanding of vocabulary acquisition.…