This dissertation investigates how distributional information in the speech stream can assist infants in the initial stages of acquisition of their native language phonology. An exploratory statistical analysis derives this information from the adult speech data in the corpus of conversations between adults and young children in Russian. Because…

Research supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation. (DD)

Research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, The National Institutes of Health, The American Philosophical Society, and The Fulbright Commission. (DD)

Research supported by a grant from the National Institute of Health. (DD)

Research supported by the Science Research Council. (DD)

Supports the theory of level ordering by demonstrating, on the basis of productive morphology and phonology, that Turkish has four lexical levels. The first is the principle of Level Economy, which accounts for systematic exceptionality. The second is Level Prespecification, which exempts a root entirely from early lexical levels. Both of these…

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…

The evaluation of 'deviant articulation' (that of young children, speech defective persons, aphasics, second-language learners) has usually consisted of two activities: transcription of the speech being evaluated, and comparison of the transcription against some 'standard' set of 'target' sounds. Any transcription is a description of a speaker's…

Illustrates how Radial Basis Function (RBF) network techniques can be used to explore questions concerning authorship of historic documents. Demonstrates the utility and potential for using quantitative techniques to assist in the decision-making process in relatively subjective disciplines. Compares RBF neural network techniques with more…

Assuming that a child uses a "reduced version" of the adult phonological system, as opposed to an "imperfect" version, a phonological analysis of a five-year-old child's language is conducted. Research procedures are thoroughly described; tables and diagrams are included. (DD)

Local increases in fundamental frequency (Fo) and large integrals of energy in the syllabic nucleus are known to be among the best acoustical correlates of stress. Major syntactic constituents have been shown to have archetype rapid-rise-then-gradual-fall Fo contours, with the rise into the maximum Fo often associated with the first stressed…