Volume 26, Issue 1

The paper describes two experiments in the perception of Serbocroatian tones, using stimuli generated by means of a speech synthesizer. The first experiment tested the perception of changing fundamental frequency. It was found that in listening to a rising falling fundamental frequency contour, listeners were unable to perceive the difference between end points of the contour; they seemed to base their judgment on the difference between the peak and the terminal fundamental frequency. The second experiment tested the perception of long rising and long falling accents, using 44 synthesized forms of the word radi. Listening tests showed that the fundamental frequency pattern on the first syllable was not sufficient for identifying the accent. The additional factor that had to be present before listeners agreed in their responses was the fundamental frequency of the second syllable. For a falling first syllable, the second syllable had to acquire a fairly low value before the judgments shifted from random to falling. For a level first syllable, the fundamental frequency of the second syllable had to be at least as high as the level of the first to evoke consistent rising responses. The same applied to stimuli with a rising first syllable. In most cases, the shift was not between consistent rising or falling responses, but between either a rising or falling and a random response. The fundamental frequency patterns thus distinguish not so much between two different accents as between the presence and absence of an identifiable accent.

This paper discusses techniques in the application of cinefluorography to the study of speech and presents sample data to illustrate such techniques. The data pertain to movements of the tongue, jaw, and hyoid bone in the midsagittal plane. In the case of the tongue, small radiopaque markers were attached to the midline of this structure; and the cineradiographs were used to record the planar displacement patterns of the markers. The primary objective of the analysis methods is the investigation of the intrastructural and interstructural relationships in lingual articulation.

Apart from the general characteristics described by Gendron in “Tendances phonétiques du français parlé au Canada” there are, in ‘the accent of Sudbury’, a few specifically Acadian features, such as the velarization of ch, j to H X, the lack of affrication in t, d before i or j , and the non-diphthongization of long vowels, ce of normal opening is found in a few speakers, but very open æ in others; père, mèrefrère, bière pronounced with closed e is one of the most significant features of this area. The feature combinations vary between individual speakers.