Biomedical subjects

I Maddieson

Publications and source records attributed to I Maddieson.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1992

Stops in the world's languages.

This account of the great variety of stops in the world's languages shows that, apart from their place of articulation, these sounds can be described principally in terms of the activities that occur at three phases: onset, closure, and release. Other potentially contrastive features discussed include length, and the use of the glottalic airstream mechanism (other airstream mechanisms are not considered here). Phonologically only two phases--closure and release--are exploited; independent distinctions of features such as phonation type or articulatory manner cannot be found in the onset phase. We examine the combinatorial possibilities of the features that are used and discuss implications for phonological feature systems.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗

PubMed1987

Digital inverse filtering for linguistic research.

To enable differences in modes of glottal vibration to be studied, glottal air volume velocity waveforms can be recovered from speech recordings by inverse filtering. Most previous published work in this area has made use of analog filters. Digital inverse filters offer many advantages, including the ability to change filter settings to match changing vocal tract filter functions. Although the theory and many of the methods necessary for digital inverse filtering have been described in the literature, a straightforward description of the entire process has been lacking. The digital inverse filtering process developed for linguistic research at the UCLA Phonetics Laboratory is described in detail in this paper, with the intention of facilitating such work at other institutions.

Analog-Digital Conversion↗

PubMed1985

Relationship between semivowels and vowels: cross-linguistic investigations of acoustic difference and coarticulation.

Formant frequencies of the semivowels /j/ and /w/ in Amharic, Yoruba and Zuni were measured in three vowel environments. Cross-language differences were found between what are described as the same semivowels, i.e. different languages have different acoustic targets for /j/ and /w/. These cross-language differences in semivowels correlate with cross-language differences in the respective cognate vowels /i/ and /u/. Nonetheless, the semivowels differ in systematic ways from the vowels in directions that make them more 'consonantal'. These languages also differ in their patterns of coarticulation between semivowels and adjacent vowels. This shows, inter alia, that palatal segments differ from language to language in their degree of resistance to coarticulation. Because of these language-specific coarticulatory patterns, cross-language differences in acoustic targets can only be established after careful consideration of the effect of context.

Cross-Cultural Comparison↗

PubMed1976

Measuring larynx movement in standard Thia using the cricothyrometer.

Vertical movement of the larynx during connected speech was investigated in Standard Thai - a language that has five phonologically contrastive tones. The effects of pitch, consonant phonation-type, vowel quality, tonal categories, and position in the utterance were determined. Utterance position was found to be the factor most clearly associated with variations in larynx movement. The occurrence of an overall rise-fall pattern of larynx movement distributed over utterances of varying pitch patterns leads to the conclusion that larynx height is not a principal factor regulating pitch in connected speech. Implications for models of pitch production, distinctive features for tone, theories on the historical development of tone and the role of larynx movements in the production of consonants and vowels are discussed.

Adult↗