The Phonetics Laboratory

Sound symbolism describes a non-arbitrary relationship between sounds and the particular meanings they express. It challenges the principle of the arbitrariness of the sign (Saussure, 1919), and it has remained a controversial topic in linguistic study until recently. Focusing on synesthetic sound symbolism, the present dissertation examines plosive consonants to uncover size symbolic patterns residing in four places of articulation (bilabial, alveolar, palatal, and velar) and voicing. Additionally, it explores whether the position of the plosive within the word affects the salience of size effects. Two questionnaires with nonce items were administered to two participant groups, (61 participants in total). The nonce items were disyllabic words (CVCV), containing either identical or alternating place of articulation and voicing in both plosives. Questionnaire 1 included a grading task, in which participants rated the items based on their perceived size. Questionnaire 2 placed the items in the relative context of a comparison, and participants were asked to choose the words evoking the larger image. The different contexts of each questionnaire lead to distinct results. Results suggested that plosive voicing contributed to larger size judgements in both questionnaires. Moreover, all voiceless plosives were judged as small, with the larger of those being the plosives [p] and [c], and the smallest, the plosives [t] and [k]. In the comparison task, palatal [c] was chosen as larger than all other plosives. Voicing in plosives occurring in initial syllables lead to more robust size effects compared to the second syllable. Lastly, the size of plosives of some places of articulation was differentiated when their position within the word was manipulated. Size symbolic patterns in Greek are indeed present and the variables of place of articulation, voicing, and position affect size judgements, as does the context in which words are presented.

The objectives of the present study are directed towards the exploration of palatalization in Standard Modern Greek, presented in the Athenian dialect, and dialectal speech, presented by the Cretan and Peloponnesian dialects. The first objective is to examine nasal and lateral realizations and their palatalized allophonic variations followed by all Greek vowel sounds. The F1, F2, F3 formants and the relative duration of the nasals and laterals will be examined in terms of whether they are affected by dialect, the vowel context following them, the stress condition of the syllable and the position in which they may occur in a word structure. The second aim is to test whether the non-palatalized sounds are affected in the same way when preceded and followed by the same vowel context. This study analyses data recorded from 9 female speakers (3 of each dialectal group) in spontaneous speech context. The analyzed data consisted of realizations of /n/ and /l/ as well as their palatalized allophones produced in everyday speech. The Cretan and Peloponnesian dialects presented more palatalized allophones than the Athenian dialect. The /n/ and /l/ realizations of Standard Modern Greek and those occurring in dialectal speech do not present the same values and are not affected by the same variables.

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a radical increase in the use of face masks as a protective measure against the virus all over the world. Facial concealment has been accused of obstructing the production of speech and, therefore, the perception by listeners, making, in this way, the communication more difficult. In this study, we explore the effect of the two main masks used against the spread of the pandemic (the surgical mask and the cloth mask) on the acoustic properties of Greek nasals and voiceless fricatives. We also examine whether there is a difference in the way the two face masks affect the speech production. The sounds are produced by eight speakers of both genders and are examined in three-syllable words in onset and medial position, stressed and unstressed condition and in different vowel environments. The results showed that the facewear had a greater effect on the non-sibilant fricatives and especially their intensity, while the nasals were barely affected. Between the two facemasks, it was proven that the cloth mask affected the production to a greater extent. In addition, besides the sound absorption, the increased vocal effort and the speakers’ behavior towards the face masks played a significant role in the results.

Smoking is known to affect voice health. Many studies have examined the voice quality of male and female adult smokers and non-smokers. Some studies have studied the acoustic parameters of the voice such as the fundamental frequency (F0), shimmer and jitter, HNR and NHR parameters, maximum phonation time, and F0 range. Moreover, some studies have employed the Voice Handicap Index and the Dysphonia Severity Index methodologies. Up until now, the studies exploring the aforementioned acoustic parameters and methodologies on Greek speakers are limited. The aim of the present thesis was to shed some light on smoking-related differences in Greek adults. Twenty-seven people, fourteen males and thirteen females with ages ranging from 25 to 38 were recruited for this study. Initially, the participants were asked to complete the adapted and standardized version of VHI in Greek. Then, data for selected acoustic parameters were obtained from six different phonatory tasks: (1) sustained vowel /a/ at a comfortable tone and loudness, (2) oral reading, (3) sustained vowel /a/ as quietly as possible, (4) spontaneous speech, (5) sustained vowel /a/ as loudly as possible, and (6) going up in scale using the vowel /a/ from their lowest pitch level until they reached their highest pitch level. The results of this research revealed a tendency for lower scores in total VHI for the smoker than non-smoker population, but not statistically significant. Significant differences were found in the F0 parameter in the female population as far as oral reading and spontaneous speech are concerned. Moreover, F0high was significantly higher in female non-smokers than in smokers. There were no statistically significant changes for the MPT, jitter and shimmer, HNR and NHR, and intensity parameters in smokers and non-smokers for both male and female populations. Yet, tendencies for shorter MPT scores in female smokers, higher jitter levels in smokers as far as oral reading is concerned, lower HNR values in the female smokers, and higher intensity levels in male smokers than male-non-smokers were found. Finally, insignificant were the DSI scores in smokers and non-smokers for both male and female participants. The findings suggest that tobacco use can have an impact on the voice of young adults. Further research is needed to review the effects of smoking and the applicability of VHI and DSI on evaluating certain acoustic parameters in the phonation of smokers.

Aging causes changes in several acoustic parameters such as fundamental frequency, jitter, shimmer, noise-to-harmonics ratio, maximum phonation time, F1, F2 frequencies, intensity as well as articulation and speaking rate. Up to now, there are no other studies that have investigated age-related differences in the acoustic characteristics of speech production. Within this framework, this study aimed at exploring whether there is an effect of age on these acoustic parameters. Fifteen women, native speakers of Greek, were recruited from three different age cohorts. The first group included 5 women aged 20 to 30 years old, the second consisted of 5 women aged 50-60 years old and the third included 5 women aged 70-80 years old. Only the middle-aged group included a smoker. For the calculation of articulation and speaking rate, a real passage, and a monologue were recorded. For all other acoustic measurements, the sustained phonation of /a/ was recorded. Vowel frequencies (F1, F2), duration and intensity were measured in disyllabic words containing the five Greek vowels. Between-groups comparisons of all acoustic parameters were conducted. Results showed that there was a significant difference between groups for F0, articulation and speaking rate as well as F1, F2 frequencies, vowel duration and intensity. However, there was not a statistically significant difference for mean shimmer, jitter, NHR and maximum phonation time between the groups. This study discusses results in relation to previous literature regarding age-related differences in speech production providing novel data for Greek.

In our study, we examine the acoustic characteristics of the Greek rhotic as it is pronounced by Primary school children and adults. The children cover the ages of 6;0-7;0 and 9;0-10;0 years of age. Our data was collected through recordings of utterances that included words with phrase-initial /r/, words with /Cr/ and /rC/ clusters, produced by 14 native speakers of Greek (5 adults and 9 children). Our results showed that adults and 9;0-10;0 year-olds produce /r/ as a tap while 6;0-7;0 year-olds produce it as an approximant in the aforementioned word positions. We also observed that the production of /r/ is accompanied by a vowel-like element (vocoid), the quality of whom is influenced by the vowel of the stressed syllable. Some errors that occurred in the group of 6;0-7;0 year-olds suggested that the acquisition of /r/ is probably achieved after the 7th year of age.

My dissertation regards the research carried out in a private language institution in order to collect data on the teaching of English intonation in wh- questions and sentence stress in a Greek EFL classroom. The research aimed to the comparison of two different methods of teaching, (Communicative Approach and Audiolingualism) in order to identify the most suitable. Three learner groups participated in the research, two experimental and one control group. The learners were recorded in the beginning prior to the teaching intervention and after two months of the teaching intervention. Their production was assessed by two native English speakers through a Likert scale 1-9 based on how accented their speech was (1 = no accent, 9 = extremely strong accent).

The human developmental trajectory dictates the precedence of auditory maturation over linguistic growth. What has been established so far in the literature is the relation between phonological processing and reading development. We know that good mastery of phonological processing skills leads to sufficient reading development, whereas deficits in phonological processing result in defective reading skills. What remains controversial is whether deficits in phonological processing can be attributed to lower level auditory processing deficits in children with normal hearing sensitivity. There have been two sensory theories in the literature so far, both attributing children’s linguistic problems to deficits in lower level, non-verbal auditory processing: the Rapid Temporal Processing Hypothesis (Tallal, 1980) and the Temporal Sampling Hypothesis (Goswami, 2002). The Rapid Temporal Processing Hypothesis attributes children’s linguistic deficits to defective perception of rapidly changing incoming auditory stimuli, whereas the Temporal Sampling Hypothesis attributes deficits to faulty rhythm perception. The aim of the present study was to investigate whether auditory processing affects phonological processing in a randomized sample of twenty 5-7-year-old Greek speaking children with normal hearing sensitivity and with no or very limited reading experience and to investigate the role of age and cognition (memory, attention and non-verbal intelligence) in the aforementioned relationship. To do that, we evaluated the participants’ performance in a variety of auditory measures, phonological processing measures and cognitive measures. The predictions of the theories were tested for a novel population and language system, i.e. Greek speaking 5-7-year-old children. The results of the study did not fully support either of the two hypotheses. We argue, however, that a relation between auditory processing and phonological processing exists without its being significantly affected by age or any cognitive factor. In particular, we contend that early pitch pattern recognition ability strongly relates to a child’s phonological processing development. Our results offer support that non-speech auditory development – in particular, the ability to discriminate and identify pitch- affects phonological processing, encouraging the belief that music and language share common cognitive and/or perceptual auditory mechanisms.

Prosodic End-Weight refers to the tendency of prosodically heavier constituents to occupy a position closer to the end of a sentence, so as to coincide with nuclear stress (Ryan, 2019). Coordination in binomial structures is probably its most well-studied aspect. Maybe the most well-known analysis comes from Cooper and Ross (1975), who suggest that, among other factors, phonological properties that can be associated with the second slot in an irreversible binomial of the type A and B, are lowness and backness in vowels, greater word length (in terms of syllable count), as well as complexity of codas (Oakeshott-Taylor, 1984; Benor and Levy, 2006; Mollin 2012). The current study seeks to investigate the phonological aspects that can potentially determine word order in coordination in Standard Modern Greek under the principle of End-Weight. The language exemplifies certain tendencies that seem to coincide with manifestations related to Prosodic End-Weight. An observed potential effect of vowel quality is illustrated in patterns of ablaut structures like din-dan and platsa-plutsa, and a syllable-count one in fixed expressions like “ήζε θαη έζηκα” [?iζi ce ?eζima] „customs? Moreover, a stress-related tendency has been observed in Greek acronyms by Topintzi and Kainada (2012) and Revithiadou et al. (2015), according to which acronyms, the final syllables of which bear codas (especially illegal ones) are more likely to attract stress than open final syllables. The main aim is to experimentally explore the potential effects of vowel quality, syllable count, and final syllable coda status (null and singleton, in stressed and unstressed environments) in the ordering of constituents in Greek. Two forced choice tasks have been designed to test the potential legitimacy of these presumed tendencies, following a methodology similar to Bolinger (1962), Oakeshott-Taylor (1984), and Parker (2003); in both tasks, the participants read a Greek sentence ending in a binomial and are asked to indicate which order of the two constituents they prefer (A and B or B and A). In the first task, the constituent words are not parts of a frozen form, but random pairings. The second task follows the same methodology, but utilizes nonce words, after Pinker and Birdsong (1979), Parker (2003), and Ryan (2019), aiming at completely eliminating any semantic effects, and grasping better phonological control of word structure, through the creation of minimal pairs. The tendencies emerging from the results indicate that there are indeed effects of vowel backness for the nonce word task, while significant effects derive from both tasks for the word length and the coda parameter. These results in accord with Ryan?s (2019) predictions for prosodically heavier constituents, suggest that Greek words with back vowels, more syllables, or word-final codas are more preferred in positions of nuclear phrasal stress, a conclusion which is especially interesting for Greek, since it is a weight-insensitive system (Drachman and Malikouti-Drachman, 1999). Finally, the motivation behind this preference is examined considering issues such as frequency (Fenk-Oczlon, 1989) and markedness (Benor and Levy, 2006), but also the relevance of Greek to a weight-sensitive system of gradient nature (Duarte-Garcia 2017). This study concludes that neither theory can successfully describe the findings of this study, and that the status of the stress-weight interface currently remains undetermined for Greek.

Ο σκοπός της παρούσας μελέτης είναι η διερεύνηση της επίδρασης του αμφοτερόπλευρου STN DBS στην ομιλία ασθενών με ιδιοπαθή Πάρκινσον που έχουν δεχθεί θεραπεία αμφοτερόπλευρου STN DBS. Πιο συγκεκριμένα, η επίδρασή του στην παραγωγή φωνηέντων και στον φωνηεντικό χώρο. Μέθοδος: Η μελέτη αυτή αποτελεί μια μελέτη περίπτωσης μιας γυναίκας 65 χρονών. Για τον σκοπό της μελέτης, συμμετείχε και μια ομάδα ελέγχου για τη σύγκριση των αποτελεσμάτων της νοσούντος με τον τυπικό πληθυσμό. Η ασθενής αξιολογήθηκε σε δυο φάσεις. Αρχικά με την διέγερση να είναι ανοιχτή και εν συνεχεία με την διέγερση να είναι κλειστή. Η αξιολόγηση της δεύτερης φάσης πραγματοποιήθηκε μισή ώρα αφού απενεργοποιήθηκε η διέγερση, προκειμένου να συγκριθεί ο φωνηεντικός χώρος και η διάρκεια των φωνηέντων. Αποτελέσματα: Τα αποτελέσματα υποδεικνύουν πως η αμφοτερόπλευρη ηλεκτρική διέγερση του εγκεφάλου (STN DBS) βελτιώνει το εύρος της προσθιοπίσθιας μετατόπισης της γλώσσας. Συμπεράσματα: Το αμφοτερόπλευρο STN DBS βελτιώνει την άρθρωση των αντικειμενικών μεταβολών της κίνησης της γλώσσας κατά την παραγωγή ομιλίας.

 

The present dissertation concentrates on delving into the inflectional allomorphy of Albanian nouns both theoretically and computationally. After it provides a theoretical framework accounting for the notion of allomorphy across the linguistic literature, it attempts to put in the foreground some theoretical observations in order to describe the allomorphic situation in the language. Due to a number of inconsistencies in the data, the dissertation suggests that the best way to explain this particular type of allomorphy is by stepping on morphophonology and lexically- and/or historically driven factors, as Albanian has been a language that has experienced a variety of language contacts with many European people. After this, the dissertation explains the corpus-based means, LINGUISTICA, by which it analyses the allomorphy and the suffixes appearing in the wide corpus used. As a major fact, the thesis underscores the fact that the definite form of Albanian nouns is computationally more successful in terms of LINGUISTICA being more effective in finding its inflectional suffixes rather its counterpart, the indefinite form. In the end, the dissertation entertains the idea of further multidisciplinary investigations on Albanian allomorphy.

The research study is about the acoustic analysis of vowel reduction related to Greek vowels / i, ?, o, ?, u / produced by teenagers with cochlear implants (CI) compared to normal hearing (NH) speakers. The corpus included disyllabic words stressed in initial and final syllable, as well as sets of trisyllabic words with the same segmental composition of the form (C)VCVCV but different stress placement to test pre-stressed, stressed and post-stressed vowels. We measured the effect of stress, position, number of syllables and gender on the duration, formant frequencies (F1, F2), fundamental frequency (F0) and the intensity (I) of the Greek vowels produced by adolescents with profound hearing impairment and with normal hearing by using the Praat software (Boersma & Weenink, 2001).

The purpose of the dissertation was the understanding and analysis of a phonological phenomenon known as Schneider’s Law or Law of Double Consonants. The dissertation supports the application of the law to four languages; Inuktitut, Trukese, Japanese and Dogrib. After the presentation of the language data and their previous analyses, the dissertation’s thesis is introduced. Namely, previous analyses suggested that Schneider’s Law concerned the simplification of a geminate when it follows a syllable with another geminate. The present dissertation directs the analysis to the avoidance of one and only syllable having parts of distinct geminates to both its syllable margins. This avoidance is assumed to be mainly due to the excessive markedness of geminates. Moreover, there are given analyses of the four languages based on the Optimality Theory for further support of the claim. Finally, the dissertation discusses alternative theories concerning the analysis of Schneider’s Law.

Speech production in Down Syndrome (DS) is characterized by a high incidence of articulation errors that often lead to unintelligible speech (Hamilton, 1993, Timmins et al, 2007, Bunton et al. 2007). Reviews on speech impairment in DS have indicated a number of possible factors, including physiological variations with effects on the size of the oral tract, hypotonia of the muscles, phonological delay/disorder and motor programming deficits (Hamilton, 1993, Bunton et al., 2007). Controversy on the issue of speech impairment in this population is likely to be attributed to the limited number of studies that make use of objective measurement tools to examine the articulation patterns of this population. The aim of the present thesis was to investigate the articulatory patterns for fricative sounds by a Greek adult speaker with DS (speaker MB) using electropalatography (EPG). Normative data was obtained from a Greek adult speaker (speaker KK). Acoustic and EPG data were simultaneously collected while the participants read a list of words containing the Greek fricative consonants /s/, /z/, /x/, /?/, [c]and [?]. Fricative /s/ was also examined as part of a two- or three-consonant clusters, specifically /st/, /ts/, /str/, /sp/, /ps/, /spr/ /sk/, /ks/ and /skr/. EPG analyses included examination of total amount of contact, center of gravity and centrality measure for the fricative sounds. Variation due to vowel context, lexical stress and word position was also examined. The two speakers also participated in a diadochokinetic assessment task (DDK), which tested their ability to rapidly alternate the articulatory movements for the production of syllables /p?/, /t?/, /k?/, as well as the sequences /t?-k?/ and /p?-t?-k?/. Results of the EPG analysis showed important differences between the two speakers in total amount of contact and place of articulation, with speaker MB consistently showing less amount of contact and a significantly more posterior place of articulation for singletons /s/, /z/, [c]and [?] and the /s/ in clusters. No differences were found for fricatives /x/, /?/. In the DDK task, speaker MB showed slower DDK rates than speaker KK, especially in relation to the sequence /p?-t?-k?/. The Greek adult with Down Syndrome showed signs of both dysarthric and dyspraxic speech, indicating that speech impairment in Down Syndrome results from difficulties at different levels of the speech production process. Incomplete contact found in the majority of the fricative singletons points to an articulatory impairment which could result from hypotonia. Hypotonia of the tongue, which has been connected to Down Syndrome, is typically a feature of dysarthric speech and implies problems in carrying out the appropriate tongue movements for the target sound (Hardcastle et al., 1985). Slower DDK rates is a feature that has been reported to studies of people with speech disfluencies (Forster and Hardcastle ,1998, Wood ,1995) and indicates a breakdown in motor programming during the production of speech. The findings of the present study are also discussed taking into consideration the speech disfluencies that our participant exhibited during the recordings

The present study constitutes an attempt to trace the lines of contact between morphology and phonology by providing a thorough examination of cases of phonologically conditioned allomorphy in Modern Greek. Instances of affix allomorphy and stem allomorphy in the Greek inflectional and derivational systems are going to be analysed in an attempt to determine whether such allomorphic alterations are governed by the phonological and prosodic properties of their environment, such as syllable structure or stress placement. The allomorphic variations are going to be discussed under the scope of two different models that have been developed in the literature, the first being the Globalist, constraint-based account of Optimality Theory and the second one being the Localist, morphosyntactic approach of Distributed Morphology. In this way it is going to be attested whether these models can be implemented in the Greek morphophonology and whether they can sufficiently account for the selection of particular allomorphs in Greek word formation.

The present study investigates the effect of differential exposure to authentic materials on the pronunciation of Greek EFL students while trying to shed light to previous studies’ findings on the acquisition of EFL pronunciation and to fill the bibliography gap in pronunciation research in the EFL context. Seventy-six subjects took part in the study that formed four groups. The first group participated in a weekly authentic material enhanced lesson as an additional part of the regular school English lessons and was exposed to additional after school authentic audiovisual materials in the form of animated films. The second group participated only in the weekly authentic material enhanced lessons while the third group was only exposed to additional after school authentic audiovisual materials. The fourth group was the control group, which only attended the regular English classroom lessons. All of the participants were recorded at the beginning and at the end of the twenty-week intervention and evaluated by twelve native speakers based on their native-likeness. The results show that both exposure to authentic English materials during the lesson and after school contribute to the attainment of a closer to native like pronunciation, confirming their positive effect indicated by previous L2 bibliography. Crucially, the combination of exposure to input at a formal and a less formal context achieved the highest progress while the control group presented a lack of improvement

Η παρούσα ερευνητική εργασία πραγματοποιήθηκε με σκοπό την διερεύνηση ορισμένων δεδομένων τα οποία είναι ελλιπή στην ελληνική βιβλιογραφία. Ειδικότερα, επιχειρείται να απαντηθούν ερωτήματα σχετικά με τις διαφορές στις διάρκειες των φωνηεντικών και συμφωνικών ήχων της ελληνικής γλώσσας, όταν αυτά παράγονται από υποκείμενο με λεκτική δυσπραξία ηλικίας 5 ετών συγκριτικά με ομάδα ελέγχου της ίδιας ηλικίας στην οποία παρατηρείται φυσιολογική ανάπτυξη του λόγου και της ομιλίας. Επιπλέον, παρατηρούνται και οι δύο πρώτοι διαμορφωτές των φωνηεντικών ήχων, καθώς και πως μεταβάλλονται στο υποκείμενο με διαταραχή του συντονισμού των αρθρωτών. Για την διεκπεραίωση του συγκεκριμένου σκοπού, δημιουργήθηκαν λίστες λέξεων οι οποίες αποσκοπούσαν στην εκμαίευση συγκεκριμένων φωνηεντικών και συμφωνικών ήχων. Ηχογραφήθηκε το υποκείμενο προς μελέτη καθώς και άλλα πέντε υποκείμενα που αποτέλεσαν την ομάδα ελέγχου. Οι συγκρίσεις έγιναν μεταξύ της ομάδας ελέγχου και της υπάρχουσας βιβλιογραφίας και εν συνεχεία συγκρίθηκαν τα ευρήματα του ατόμου με δυσπραξία τόσο με την ομάδα ελέγχου όσο και με την υπάρχουσα βιβλιογραφία. Οι συγκρίσεις έγιναν με τους μέσους όρους των τιμών, αλλά και με στατιστικές αναλύσεις μέσω του προγράμματος spss. Μέσω των αναλύσεων βρέθηκε πως η διάρκεια των φωνηέντων διαφοροποιείται μεταξύ του υποκειμένου με δυσπραξία και της ομάδας ελέγχου, ενώ για τα σύμφωνα δεν συμβαίνει πάντοτε το ίδιο. Ακόμα, από τους μέσους όρους γίνεται εμφανές πως η διάρκεια του χρόνου έναρξης φώνησης για τα έκκροτα είναι αρκετά μεγαλύτερη στο άτομο με δυσπραξία συγκριτικά με την ομάδα ελέγχου. Επιπλέον, παρατηρήθηκε πως το συμφωνικό περιβάλλον στο οποίο βρίσκεται το εκάστοτε φωνήεν δεν διαφοροποιεί την διάρκεια παραγωγής του. Τέλος, από τις αναλύσεις φάνηκε πως η διάρκεια των φωνηέντων διαφοροποιείται ανάλογα με το αν είναι τονισμένα ή άτονα.

 

Despite evidence that schizophrenia has an effect on speech at both the suprasegmental and segmental levels, there is currently very limited research in this area. The primary goal of the current study is to examine possible acoustic differences in vowel production between Greek speakers with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders and healthy controls. A second aim is το investigate a possible association between negative symptoms and selected acoustic measurements. Eighteen Greek speakers with schizophrenia (nine male and nine female) and ten healthy controls (five male and five female) participated in the study. The speech material consisted of /'CVCV/and /CV'CV/ disyllabic, mainly symmetrical, words, (V=all five Greek vowels /i,e,a,o,u/). Acoustic measurements included the duration and the first two formant frequencies (F1 and F2) of the stressed and unstressed vowels in V1 position. In addition, the vowel space area of the two groups was calculated separately for each group and gender. The results showed significant differences between the two groups in their total vowel space area, in F1 and F2 but not in duration. Overall, speakers with schizophrenia displayed a reduced vowel space. This related to a reduction in tongue height (as manifested by F1) by 6% and in anterior/posterior displacement (as manifested by F2) by 17%. Our findings also showed that the negative symptoms of speakers with schizophrenia correlated with formant frequency measures, and especially with the total vowel space area. Overall the data indicated that although there was no significant difference in vowel duration between the two groups, there was significant variation in vowel formant frequencies and a significant reduction of the overall vowel space of the patients.

Speakers with Down Syndrome apart from intellectual disability, have physical malformations that exert a major influence on their articulation. Evidence from foreign language research has delved into the nature of the articulation problems speakers with Down Syndrome face. For the Greek language, however, at least to our knowledge, there is no research regarding the production of vowels and consonants in the speech of adult speakers with Down Syndrome. As a result, the aim of the present master’s thesis was the documentation of the speech of the particular target group. The first experimental group consisted of three adult female participants with Down Syndrome in Thessaloniki and the second group consisted of three adult male speakers with Down Syndrome in Crete, Southern Greece; there were moreover two control groups that were matched accordingly. First, an acoustic analysis of the five Greek vowels was conducted in stressed and unstressed word position, in order to examine the duration and the vowel space of the participants. In addition, there was a qualitative analysis of the Greek consonants as singletons along with certain consonantal clusters, in first, stressed and in second, unstressed word position. After collecting and analyzing the data, we proceeded with a documentation of the phonological processes evident in the productions of the speakers with Down Syndrome. The research findings indicated longer durations for the vowels produced by speakers with Down Syndrome compared with the control groups. It was moreover found that vowel spaces for male and female speakers with Down Syndrome, were smaller than the respective spaces of the typical population. With regards to the qualitative analysis of consonants as singletons and in clusters, a variety of errors among the participants was observed. Participants with Down Syndrome apart from common phonological processes, displayed different frequency in the use of various phonological processes. There were additionally idiosyncratic errors in the speech of adults with Down Syndrome. Important was the variability across the trials of each participant for each target-phoneme, suggesting thus a high inconsistency in speech production, an issue that has been raised in bibliography. Finally, it is worth mentioning that a part of the findings regarded dialectology and more specifically, whether elements of the Cretan dialect were preserved in the speech of the speakers with Down Syndrome. Comparing the findings of this research with bibliography about the typical phonological development of children in Greece, it was observed that the speakers with Down Syndrome exhibited elements of not only a delayed, but also a deviant phonological system.

The objectives of the present study are manifold all directed towards a comparison and contrast of adult and child speech. The first aim is to examine selected acoustic features of nasals and liquids for the Greek language in initial position; their F1, F2, F3 values, and the duration of /l/, /m/, /n/ and /r/. The second aim is to provide the vowel space of children of both genders and to contrast it to that of adults of both genders. The third aim is to identify the effect of stress, gender and age on the way the vowel space of the participants is structured. For the purposes of the study data from twenty adults (ten men and ten women, aged 18 to 50) and twenty children (ten boys and ten girls, aged 8 to 11) were analysed. The corpus consisted of carrier phrases in which sets of words of the 'CVCV and CV'CV type were embedded. Only the first consonant (which was a nasal or a liquid) and the first vowel of each word were measured. The results showed that in unstressed conditions there was an upward movement of the vowel space, while the effect of stress was evident in the increase in size of the vowel space and in longer durations of the segments. Women and girls produced higher F1, F2 values and longer vowel durations than their male counterparts, while children in general produced the highest values of all. The effect of gender on the speech of children has not yet started to be so pronounced as in the speech of adults, and the effect of age was stronger in comparing the speech of male participants than that of female ones. Children also produced longer nasals and liquids, whose duration was affected by the stress condition the following vowel was in, except for /r/. Moreover, the formant frequencies of the nasals and the lateral were also subject to whether the following vowel was stressed or not, to the gender of the speaker producing it, the age group in which he/ she belonged and the quality of the following vowel.

The present study examines the acquisition of Greek liquids /r/ and /l/ by Greek children as well as the phonological processes children go through in order to acquire these two liquids. Another topic of the research is the presence, the number and the average durations of voiced and voiceless vocoids in both liquids. The experiment described in the present paper was conducted using data collected from recordings of 56 children (aged 2 to 9) native speakers of Greek. The results showed that both /r/ and /l/ are acquired around the age of 5. However, complete mastery of both phonemes is not achieved until later on. Children produce correctly the words that contain /l/ earlier than the words that contain /r/. The words that contain both liquids are produced later and words that contain three liquids are produced even later. In the study we found six types of /r/ and two types of /l/. The most common types of /r/ were the approximants and the taps with presence of a stop-like burst. Trills were also frequent around the age of 5. The most common type of lateral was the /l/ without presence of a release on the acoustic signal. The younger groups of children usually had the longest average durations due to slower speech. As for the phonological processes, the most common ones were deletion, stopping, metathesis, epenthesis and different types of substitution. The results of the present study offer new insights concerning the age at which children are considered to have reached complete mastery of the two liquids in their native language.

The subject of vowel duration has been the focus of numerous studies in the field of phonetics and phonology, often examined with regard to effects of the immediate consonantal environment and stress. The present study adopts a developmental view of the effect consonantal voicing and stress have on vowel duration, as well as vowel duration as a function of position, word length and type of speech material, based on an analysis of both adult and child speech. The experiment described in the present paper was conducted using data collected from recordings of one hundred native speakers (aged 3 to 12 and adults) of Modern Greek which were examined in terms of the effect of postvocalic voicing, stress, and age. The results of the experiment showed that /o/ is the longest in duration vowel, and /i/ the shortest, while the average duration of vowels seems to be longer for younger children, decreasing alongside with age, with adults producing the shortest vowels. As for the effects of following consonantal voicing and stress, it was observed that they both lead to lengthening of all vowels, in all age groups. Concerning the effect of word length, it was found that vowels in bisyllabic are considerably longer than those in trisyllabic words. Moreover, the analysis of the data showed that unstressed vowels in pretonical position tend to be longer than those following a stressed syllable, and, finally, that vowels are overall longer when produced in carrier phrase than in spontaneous speech, although especially for younger children this was not the case. The results of the present study confirm for the most part previous findings on the effect of consonantal voicing, stress, word length, and age on vowel duration, but offer new insights concerning the age at which children are considered to have reached complete mastery of their native language’s vowel system.

Η παρούσα εργασία ασχολείται γενικότερα με το χώρο της φωνητικής και φωνολογίας και ειδικότερα με την κατάκτηση αυθεντικής προφοράς των τεμαχιακών στοιχείων (συμφώνων και επιλεγμένων δισυμφωνικών συμπλεγμάτων) από ενήλικες μαθητές της ελληνικής γλώσσας. Παρόλο που, ήδη από την εποχή του Διαφωτισμού, ο Αδαμάντιος Κοραής είχε μιλήσει πρώτος για ακουστική ποιότητα και άρθρωση των φωνών, χωρίς όμως να δοθεί τότε φωνητικό και φωνολογικό περιεχόμενο στους όρους, και είχαν εμφανιστεί εγχειρίδια της νέας ελληνικής ως ξένης την περίοδο πριν τη σύσταση του νέου ελληνικού κράτους (Kurelec-Cvjetkovic,2000), εντούτοις ο τομέας της προφοράς μέχρι σήμερα δεν έχει τύχει της απαιτούμενης προσοχής. Επιπλέον δεν προβλέπεται συστηματική διδασκαλία της ελληνικής γλώσσας σε σχέση με την προφορά στα υπάρχοντα εγχειρίδια για την εκμάθηση της γλώσσας (Nicolaidis etal., 2009), ενώ όπου παρέχονται κάποιες πληροφορίες είναι συνήθως ελλιπείς και συγκεχυμένες. Απώτερος στόχος της συγκεκριμένης μελέτης είναι να αποδείξει ότι η ρητή διδασκαλία των τεμαχιακών στοιχείων μέσα σε ένα επικοινωνιακό λαίσιο απευθυνόμενη ακόμη και σε κοινό ενηλίκων δύναται να επιφέρει θετικά αποτελέσματα και να οδηγήσει στην αυθεντική προφορά τους. Η μεθοδολογία που υιοθετήθηκε περιλαμβάνει αντιπαραθετική ανάλυση των φωνητικών συστημάτων αφενός της ελληνικής κι αφετέρου των μητρικών γλωσσών των συμμετεχόντων, πίνακες αναμενόμενων δυσκολιών καθώς και ερωτηματολόγια, ηχογραφήσεις και διδασκαλίες της προφοράς των ήχων και συμπλεγμάτων-στόχων. Τα αποτελέσματα έδειξαν ότι η ρητή διδασκαλία έστω και σε αυτό το σύντομο χρονικό διάστημα οδήγησε σε βελτίωση της προφοράς των αλλόγλωσσων μαθητών με μεγαλύτερη βελτίωση στα ουρανικά σύμφωνα.