LAUSR

The aim of this study is to develop an allophonic description of English plosive consonants based on recordings of 600 specially selected words. Allophonic variations addressed in the study may have two sources: positional and contextual. The former one depends on the syllabic or prosodic position in which a particular phoneme occurs. Contextual allophony is conditioned by the local phonetic environment. Co-articulation overlapping in time demands a precise determination of allophonic pronunciation in the context of phonemic transcription. The presented study is focused on creation of speech recordings that may serve for the analysis of allophone variation. Two sets of recordings are prepared. The first one consists of words read by the non-native speakers. Tempo of reading is forced by a teleprompter. In the second case, every word is played back from the recordings of the phonology expert and then the speaker repeats a particular word. The last stage is the assessment of recordings by the same expert. S...