The Omission of Letters and Its Impact on Guiding the Interpretive Meaning of Qurʾānic Readings

گویش‌سنجی، گرایشی نوین و برآمده از گویش‌شناسی کلاسیک است که در آن تفاوت‌ها و تمایزات گویش‌های یک ناحیه به صورت آماری محاسبه و با نقشه‌ها و اطلس‌های گویشی بازنمایی می‌شود. در پژوهش حاضر کوشیده‌ایم براساس روش تحلیل انبوهۀ داده‌های گویشی و با بهره‌گیری از بستۀ نرم‌افزاری گویش‌سنجی و نقشه‌نگاری RuG/L04، چشم‌اندازی از تنوعات آوایی زبان تالشی را ارائه دهیم. جامعۀ آماری این پژوهش ساکنان آبادی­های تالش­زبان 5 شهرستان تالش، رضوانشهر، ماسال، فومن و شفت است. از هر شهرستان 10 روستای بالای 100 خانوار انتخاب، و روستای تالش­زبان «عنبران» از شهرستان نمین استان اردبیل نیز اضافه شد و جمع روستاها به 51 رسید. از هر روستا سه گویشور در رده سنی نوجوان، میان­سال و سالمند انتخاب، و با آنها مصاحبۀ حضوری انجام شد. ابزار پژوهش، از پرسشنامه­های زبانی سوادش و لایپزیک بود که مشتمل بر 65 واژه در 10 مقولۀ واژگانی بود. نتایج پژوهش نشان داد که در تمام گونه‌های تالشی تشابهات و تنوعات آوایی وجود دارد که در حوزه­های تناوب آوایی و تنوعات در همخوان­ها و واکه­ها بررسی گردید.

Phonetic variability has long been considered a confounding factor for emotional speech processing, so phonetic features have been rarely explored. However, surprisingly some features with purely phonetic information have shown state-of-the-art performance for continuous prediction of emotions (e.g., arousal and valence), for which the underlying causes are unknown to date. In this article, we present in-depth investigations into phonetic features on three widely used corpora - RECOLA, SEMAINE and USC CreativeIT - to explore this from two perspectives: acoustic space partitioning information and phonetic content. First, comparisons of multiple different partitioning methods confirm the significance of partitioning information in speech, and reveal the new understanding that varying the number of partitions has a greater effect on valence than arousal prediction: a detailed representation of the acoustic space is needed for valence, whilst a general one is adequate for arousal. Second, phoneme-specific examination of phonetic features suggests that phonetic content is less emotionally informative than partitioning information, and is more important for arousal than for valence. Furthermore, we propose a novel set of phonetically-aware acoustic features, attaining significant improvements for valence (in particular) and arousal prediction across RECOLA, SEMAINE and CreativeIT respectively, compared with conventional reference acoustic features.

The article considers the etymology of the toponym Shigali. the spread of chuvash names of settlements as the chuvashes move from the lower reaches of the Volga to the Wild Field. Borrowed elements in the Chuvash language from Arabic, Mari languages are fixed. The identification of a number of historical data on the basis of archival sources allows us to consider the historical and etymological branch of the prevalence of the Shigali oikonym in different lexical variations and phonetic variants. Materials on toponymy of the Chuvash region from the point of view of different scientists are also considered. The key goal of the study, which is described in this article, is simple - to "read" the history of native land in the language of toponymy is very interesting. Everyone reads it as far as possible – who as a simple man, who as a scientific. To understand it correctly, a complex historical analysis and classification of toponyms is needed. The language of our native land is rich and eloquent and a person who can read toponymy, it can tell infinitely many interesting things.

The aim of this paper is to account for the phonological adaptation of loanwords in Eastern Catalan. As the phonology of these new words deviates from that of the native Catalan vocabulary set (with a certain amount of variation among speakers), the new phonetic features would seem to be borrowed from Spanish. We suggest that a new phonology has emerged whose purpose is to identify loans among the lexicon, the most striking element of this phonology being a harmony effect on stressed mid vowels in the presence of post-tonic [+ATR] mid vowels. The existence of unstressed [+ATR] mid vowels [e, o] in Eastern Catalan has been previously interpreted as lexical exceptions to vowel reduction (Fabra 1912 and Mascaró 2002, among others). However, the phonetic variation in the new lexicon is analyzed here as being fully consistent with Catalan phonology within the theory of lexical strata (Itô & Mester 1999).

Response particles have been recognised as highly variable in terms of both form and function. It is particularly so for particle-rich languages like Mandarin Chinese, where multiple phonetic variants of a particle can be observed. A question that arises is whether phonetic variants are idiosyncratic uses or distinctive resources in the construction of listener responses. Two of the most frequently used response particles in Mandarin, o and a, are thus examined. Integrating the framework of conversation analysis and a corpus-based approach, this study reveals that the nasal variants, õ and ã, display more passive recipiency (such as plain information receipt and continuer) compared with the regular o and a. The glottal variants, oʔ and aʔ, intensify the change of state being implemented and project immediately following talk from the same speaker. Based on frequency and sequential analyses, this study suggests that phonetic features like nasalisation and glottalisation can be an important force shaping the interactional functions of response particles and contributing to the emerging process of new variant forms in interaction.

Research has shown that phonetic features can index social meaning, yet less is known about whether this phenomenon occurs in the same way in speech production and speech perception. In particular, one of the factors that most seems to affect variables’ capacity for social meaning-making is the notion of salience. This thesis addresses the question of how phonetic variation points to social meaning in speech production and perception and what role salience plays in influencing this process. I investigate these issues using a sociophonetic study of two phonetic variables currently undergoing change in the South of England – /t/-glottalling and GOOSE-fronting – as produced and perceived by adolescents at a state school and a private school in Hampshire, UK. While the former is reported to be highly salient with strong socio-indexical relations, the latter is said not to be very salient and to lack associations with speakers’ social characteristics. The production results show that /t/-glottalling displays macro-sociological variation in the community, while GOOSE-fronting varies between peer groups within the private school. Both features can be used to index stances in interaction, but this effect is much stronger for /t/-glottalling. In perception, listeners were easily able to notice glottal /t/ in auditory stimuli and consistently associated it with a set of related social meanings, yet this was not the case for fronted GOOSE. The findings have implications for our understanding of how the social meanings of phonetic variables are produced and perceived by the same individuals, especially in the contexts of adolescent peer groups at school and social stratification between different types of school. I argue that researchers employing the construct of salience in sociolinguistics should acknowledge the limitations and different dimensions of the concept and operationalise these in their study design.

Continuous prediction of dimensional emotions (e.g. arousal and valence) has attracted increasing research interest recently. When processing emotional speech signals, phonetic features have been rarely used due to the assumption that phonetic variability is a confounding factor that degrades emotion recognition/prediction performance. In this paper, instead of eliminating phonetic variability, we investigated whether Phone Log-Likelihood Ratio (PLLR) features could be used to index arousal and valence in a pairwise low/high framework. A multi-stage staircase regression (SR) framework which enables fusion at three different stages is also investigated. Results on the RECOLA database show that PLLR outperforms EGEMAPS features for arousal and valence. Interestingly, long-term averaged PLLR proved to be more robust and emotionally informative than local frame-level PLLR, which contains more phoneme-specific information. Within the multistage SR framework, PLLR yielded an 8.2% and 11.6% relative improvement in CCC for arousal and valence respectively, showing great promise for including phonetic features in emotion prediction systems.

Synthesis of Arabic from short sound clusters

Ezheri's Kitāb Maʿānī al-Qirāʾāt is a significant work that examines the impact of dialectal variations among Arab tribes on Qur'anic readings (qirāʾāt). The linguistic diversity observed in the Qur'anic recitations is analyzed in relation to the dialects of Arab tribes. Within this framework, the influence of pronunciation and semantic differences, shaped by the variations among tribes and regions, on the qirāʾāt is explored. Ezheri highlights how these linguistic variations play a critical role in the interpretation and understanding of the Qur'an. The analyses presented in the work reflect the richness of Arabic dialects and demonstrate that the variations in qirāʾāt are rooted in the historical and geographical diversity of the language. Ezheri argues that the differences in qirāʾāt arise not only from phonetic or lexical variations but also from the cultural and historical diversity of Arab societies. In addition to being a significant resource for the study of the science of qirāʾāt, this work provides valuable insights into understanding the dialectal richness of the Arabic language.

Text-independent speaker verification imposes no constraints on the spoken content and usually needs long observations to make reliable prediction. In this paper, we propose two speaker embedding approaches by integrating the phonetic information into the attention-based residual convolutional neural network (CNN). Phonetic features are extracted from the bottleneck layer of a pretrained acoustic model. In implicit phonetic attention (IPA), the phonetic features are projected by a transformation network into multi-channel feature maps, and then combined with the raw acoustic features as the input of the CNN network. In explicit phonetic attention (EPA), the phonetic features are directly connected to the attentive pooling layer through a separate 1-dim CNN to generate the attention weights. With the incorporation of spoken content and attention mechanism, the system can not only distill the speaker-discriminant frames but also actively normalize the phonetic variations. Multi-head attention and discriminative objectives are further studied to improve the system. Experiments on the VoxCeleb corpus show our proposed system could outperform the state-of-the-art by around 43% relative.

Introduction. In the modern Ukrainian language, some proper names have been borrowed, the spelling of which differs significantly from the original language. Country nominations adapted in a particular language are called exonyms and are opposed to the self-names of the corresponding countries – endonyms. Such names, for example, include Gruziia – Sakartvelo, Bombay – Mumbai, Pekin – Beijin, Lipsk – Leipzig, Shweitsaria – Shwaitsaria, Jeuropa – Europa, etc. Exotoponyms might have lexical, word-forming, and phonetic variations, depending on the source of borrowing and further transformations in the recipient language. Wide variability is also characteristic of the names of the Iberian Peninsula’s largest country, which have long appeared in historical chronicles and polemical treatises, and in the twentieth century. became the object of coverage of the world, including Ukrainian newspapers. Methods. A comparative method was used to identify the specifics of the transfer of toponyms to designate the Iberian Peninsula’s famous country in different European languages. To analyze the identified units in the Ukrainian language, a descriptive method was used, and contextual analysis made it possible to trace the correlation of linguistic and extra-linguistic factors. Results. Based on the analysis of the history of the south European country’s nominations, several variants of the exotoponym and its derivatives have been identified: 1) Yshpaniia (Ishspaniia), Ispaniia; 2) Hishpaniia (Hyshpaniia); 3) Espania. The longest history among these exonyms was the Polonism “Hishpaniia”, which dominated the Ukrainian literary language from the end of the XVI to the beginning of the XVII century. and until the start of the XX century, when, with the probable mediation of the Roman languages, the distribution and codification in the Ukrainian Orthography (Pravopys) of 1929 acquired the form “Espania” and its derivatives – the most accurate corresponding to the endonym “España”. The exotoponym “Ispaniia” (Yshpaniia) was borrowed directly from Greek but had limited use until its codification in modern lexicographic sources and orthography. Conclusions. Studies of the history of using borrowed words make it possible to establish their origin, source of borrowing, and, consequently, the phonetic and graphic specifics in the recipient language. To analyze such names, it is important to consider the context of use, as well as extra-verbal factors that affect the dynamics of the use of such nominations, their connotation, and referential relation. An equally important factor that does not leave modern speakers indifferent is the authenticity of Ukrainian words, even borrowed ones. Considering all the arguments in the complex, we can make recommendations on word usage in modern literary language.

This paper investigates hearers' use of response tokens (back-channels), in maintaining and differentiating their actions. Initial observations suggest that hearers produce a sequence of phonetically similar responses to disengage from the current topic, and dissimilar responses to engage with the current topic. This is studied systematically by combining detailed interactional and phonetic analysis in a collection of naturally-occurring talk in Norwegian. The interactional analysis forms the basis for labeling actions as maintained ('doing the same') and differentiated ('NOT doing the same'), which is then used as a basis for phonetic analysis. The phonetic analysis shows that certain phonetic characteristics, including pitch, loudness, voice quality and articulatory characteristics, are associated with 'doing the same', as different from 'NOT doing the same'. Interactional analysis gives further evidence of how this differentiation is of systematic relevance in the negotiations of a next turn. This paper addresses phonetic variation and variability by focusing on the relationship between sequence and phonetics in the turn-by-turn development of meaning. This has important implications for linguistic/phonetic research, and for the study of back-channels.

Phonetic Variation and Acoustic Distinctive Features

This paper analyzes the phonetic and lexical features of Hymenoptera insect names within the Altai language. Lexical data from dictionaries, fiction, folklore, and Altai language texts, including dialectal variations, were analyzed using comparative and structural-morphological methods, as well as component and motivational analysis techniques. The analysis revealed the following results. Lexical structures were categorized as either synthetic (single-component) or analytic (dual-component). Phonetic and lexical alterations among identified lexeme variants proved to be insignificant. A prevalent formation method involved the analytical derivation from common Turkic lexemes, namely a:ryg and kumyr-ska, as well as the ancient Turkic lexeme čӧmäli. The lexeme adaru in the literary Altai language also goes back to the common Turkic lexeme a:ryg. The dialect variants of the lexeme in the auslaut position reveal transitions from the frontal sound y to the rounded u, as well as a reduction in duration. Two lexemes with phonetic variations were identified in the Altai literary language and its dialects: chymaly and kymyskaiak (Alt.), kymyskaiak (Teleng.), shuvali, chivali, sary chivali; kara chivali; kantutu chivali, komyrska/komurska (Tub.); chubalgy, shubalga (Kum.); shyvalgy/shvalgy, kara shyvalgy, sary shyvalgy, tyazy shyvalgy (Chalk.). A foundational set of semantic features for the nominations was identified, including “habitat” (jer aru), “color” (sary adaru, kara chymaly), “ability to produce an action and a product” (mӧttӱ adaru, chagaan aru), “form” (üzükpel), and “age and sex characteristics” (ene adaru). It is noteworthy that within the Altai linguistic and cultural context, Hymenoptera (bees, wasps, and ants) are recognized for their environmental benefits.

Kitâbü't-Taʿbîr, belonging to Ahmed-i Dâî, is a book of dream interpretations written at the end of the Old Anatolian Turkish period. The original of the work is Arabic and it was translated into Persian, and it was translated from Persian into Turkish by Ahmed-i Dâî. Due to its content, the book reflects a rich vocabulary. In the vocabulary of the work, the names of animals also draw care in terms of diversity. There are 69 different animals in the work with 121 different names, some of which are phonetic variants. Thus, we examined the animal names in Kitâbü't-Taʿbîr in the present study. In this study, animal names in the work, as well as their source languages, phonetic and semantic features were discussed. Also compared it with the sources of Old Turkish and searched and discussed the ones that are not used in today's Turkish in Turkey in the Compilation Dictionary. Turks have had intense relations with animals such as hunting and animal husbandry since the earliest times. The reflection of these relations on the language has been determined in various publications since the Old Turkish period. In this article, the dimensions of this effect in terms of animal names were also investigated. According to our findings, this effect has been quite considerable, and many animal names with Turkish equivalents in Old Turkish have been used in the work with words of foreign origin, especially Arabic and Persian.