TY - JOUR A1 - Zerbian, Sabine T1 - Prosodic marking of narrow focus across varieties of South African English JF - English world-wide : a journal of varieties of English N2 - This paper reports on an elicited production study which investigates prosodic marking of narrow focus in modified noun phrases in varieties of South African English. The acoustic analysis of fundamental frequency, intensity, and duration in narrow focus is presented and discussed. The results suggest that these three acoustic parameters are manipulated differently in narrow focus in the varieties of English as a Second Language as compared to General South African English. The article compares the results to what is known about prosodic marking of information structure in other varieties of English as a Second Language and underlines the necessity of carefully controlled data in the investigation of phonological and phonetic variation in varieties of English. KW - South African English KW - Black South African English KW - English as a Second Language (ESL) KW - prosody KW - focus KW - fundamental frequency KW - intensity KW - duration KW - contact variety Y1 - 2013 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1075/eww.34.1.02zer SN - 0172-8865 VL - 34 IS - 1 SP - 26 EP - 47 PB - Benjamins CY - Amsterdam ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Fuchs, Susanne A1 - Koenig, Laura L. A1 - Gerstenberg, Annette T1 - A longitudinal study of speech acoustics in older French females BT - analysis of the filler particle euh across utterance positions JF - Languages : open access journal N2 - Aging in speech production is a multidimensional process. Biological, cognitive, social, and communicative factors can change over time, stay relatively stable, or may even compensate for each other. In this longitudinal work, we focus on stability and change at the laryngeal and supralaryngeal levels in the discourse particle euh produced by 10 older French-speaking females at two times, 10 years apart. Recognizing the multiple discourse roles of euh, we divided out occurrences according to utterance position. We quantified the frequency of euh, and evaluated acoustic changes in formants, fundamental frequency, and voice quality across time and utterance position. Results showed that euh frequency was stable with age. The only acoustic measure that revealed an age effect was harmonics-to-noise ratio, showing less noise at older ages. Other measures mostly varied with utterance position, sometimes in interaction with age. Some voice quality changes could reflect laryngeal adjustments that provide for airflow conservation utterance-finally. The data suggest that aging effects may be evident in some prosodic positions (e.g., utterance-final position), but not others (utterance-initial position). Thus, it is essential to consider the interactions among these factors in future work and not assume that vocal aging is evident throughout the signal. KW - aging KW - prosody KW - voice quality KW - fundamental frequency KW - formants KW - filler KW - particles Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.3390/languages6040211 SN - 2226-471X VL - 6 IS - 4 PB - MDPI CY - Basel ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Dietze, Michael A1 - Krautblatter, Michael A1 - Illien, Luc A1 - Hovius, Niels T1 - Seismic constraints on rock damaging related to a failing mountain peak BT - The Hochvogel, Allgäu JF - Earth surface processes and landforms N2 - Large rock slope failures play a pivotal role in long-term landscape evolution and are a major concern in land use planning and hazard aspects. While the failure phase and the time immediately prior to failure are increasingly well studied, the nature of the preparation phase remains enigmatic. This knowledge gap is due, to a large degree, to difficulties associated with instrumenting high mountain terrain and the local nature of classic monitoring methods, which does not allow integral observation of large rock volumes. Here, we analyse data from a small network of up to seven seismic sensors installed during July-October 2018 (with 43 days of data loss) at the summit of the Hochvogel, a 2592 m high Alpine peak. We develop proxy time series indicative of cyclic and progressive changes of the summit. Modal analysis, horizontal-to-vertical spectral ratio data and end-member modelling analysis reveal diurnal cycles of increasing and decreasing coupling stiffness of a 260,000 m(3) large, instable rock volume, due to thermal forcing. Relative seismic wave velocity changes also indicate diurnal accumulation and release of stress within the rock mass. At longer time scales, there is a systematic superimposed pattern of stress increased over multiple days and episodic stress release within a few days, expressed in an increased emission of short seismic pulses indicative of rock cracking. Our data provide essential first order information on the development of large-scale slope instabilities towards catastrophic failure. (c) 2020 The Authors. Earth Surface Processes and Landforms published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd KW - environmental seismology KW - fatigue KW - fundamental frequency KW - HVSR KW - mass KW - wasting KW - mountain geomorphology KW - natural hazard KW - noise cross KW - correlation KW - seismic monitoring KW - slope failure Y1 - 2021 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.5034 SN - 0197-9337 SN - 1096-9837 VL - 46 IS - 2 SP - 417 EP - 429 PB - Wiley CY - Hoboken ER -