Wise Coyne (micestraw3)

Broadband data were effectively classified to species while simulated multi-frequency narrowband data were categorized at rates near chance, supporting the presumption that greater bandwidth increases the information available for the characterization and classification of biological targets.This study examined acoustic characteristics of vowels produced by speakers from Louisiana, one of the states in the Southern English dialect region. First, how Louisiana vowels differ from or are similar to the reported patterns of Southern dialect were examined. Then, within-dialect differences across regions in Louisiana were examined. Thirty-four female adult monolingual speakers of American English from Louisiana, ranging in age from 18 to 23, produced English monosyllabic words containing 11 vowels /i, ɪ, e, ɛ, æ, ʌ, u, ʊ, o, ɔ, ɑ/. The first two formant frequencies at the midpoint of the vowel nucleus, direction, and amount of formant changes across three different time points (20, 50, and 80%), and vowel duration were compared to previously reported data on Southern vowels. Overall, Louisiana vowels showed patterns consistent with previously reported characteristics of Southern vowels that reflect ongoing changes in the Southern dialect (no evidence of acoustic reversal of tense-lax pairs, more specifically no peripheralization of front vowels). Some dialect-specific patterns were also observed (a relatively lesser degree of formant changes and slightly shorter vowel duration). These patterns were consistent across different regions within Louisiana.An acoustic beamforming concept is presented that alleviates some misrepresentation caused by deconvolution algorithms that can oversimplify distributed sources as a series of point sources. In the Array Pairing Method (APM) an initial array beamforms the acoustic source, then an iterative randomized array is calculated whereby the square-rooted product of the beamformer output possesses a minimum product of Maximum Sidelobe Level (MSL) and Main Lobe Width (MLW). A single and distributed source simulation and a single and dual speaker experiment using the APM reveal significant improvements in MSL and MLW and resolution in the distributed source region.New Orleans English (NOE) has always stood out amongst Southern Englishes, since NOE speakers do not participate in the Southern vowel shift, and instead display features more commonly associated with New York City English. While these traditional features of NOE are on the decline, this study establishes the adoption of a new feature in the dialect that is similarly distinctive within the Gulf South the pre-voiceless raising of the nucleus of /au/. Based on statistical analyses and consideration of the social context in post-Katrina New Orleans, this paper argues that this feature is a change in progress which appears to pre-date the demographic shifts following Hurricane Katrina, and which arose independently rather than due to contact with /au/-raising speakers. The social and phonetic findings in this paper converge to support arguments for the naturalness of raising in pre-voiceless environments, and for the likelihood of this feature being more widely adopted within the region. Moreover, the presence of Canadian raising of /au/ in NOE represents an additional way that the local dialect continues to diverge from patterns in the vowel systems found in nearby Southern dialects, and retain its uniqueness within the American South.Voiced stops tend to be preceded by longer vowels and produced with a more advanced tongue root than voiceless stops. The duration of a vowel is affected by the voicing of the stop that follows, and in many languages vowels are longer when followed by voiced stops. Tongue root advancement is known to be an articulatory mechanism, which ensures the right pressure conditions for the maintenance of voicing during closure as dictated by the aerodynamic voicing constraint. In this paper, it is argued that vowel du