An acoustic analysis of labialization of coronal nasal consonants in American English
Name
70079051-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
6.37 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
099ba1602272d400e71a9babd0f1653f
Author(s)
Hon, Elisabeth A
Advisor(s)
Kenneth N. Stevens.
Date Issued
2005
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
A challenge for speech recognition models is to account for the variation between natural connected speech forms and the canonical forms of the lexicon. This study focuses on one particular sound change common in conversational speech, in which word-final coronal nasal consonants undergo place assimilation toward following word-initial labial consonants. Formant frequency measurements were taken from words ending with coronal nasal consonants in potentially assimilating sentence contexts, and identical words ending in labial nasal consonants, across vowel contexts. The frequency of the second formant at vowel offset and during nasal closure was found to be sufficient to discriminate between underlying forms. There was evidence that even strongly-assimilated coronal segments differ on the basis of these cues from their pure labial counterparts. It is hypothesized that listeners can use these acoustic cues to uncover the intended place of articulation of assimilated segments, without recourse to phonological inference or sentence context.
Description
Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 51-54).
Subjects
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Terms of Use
M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
