1. English, like a few other languages (Swedish, Persian, etc.), aspirates its voiceless stop consonants (p), (t), and (k) before stressed vowels unless an (s) precedes the consonant. This aspiration means an extra puff of air accompanying the production of these sounds that manifests as a moment of slight whisper after the consonant is produced. [To experience this, say (kid) and (skid) out loud, and note the extra puff of air in (kid); the presence of the (s) in (skid) prevents aspiration.] As with all things to do with human speech, the precise duration of this period of whisper varies by speaker, dialect, and even context. Overall, for the consonant (k) (as pronounced by native speakers of English), it has been calculated that aspiration duration can be modeled as a normal random variable with a mean of 80 milliseconds and a standard deviation of 12 milliseconds. (c) Navajo (a language spoken in Arizona and New Mexico) allows a much stronger aspiration for its (k) than English. Linguists reason that aspiration times in Navajo can be approximately represented by a normal distribution with a mean of 160 milliseconds and a standard deviation of 10 milliseconds. Tsela grew up bilingual in Navajo and English, and he was recorded pronouncing an instance of (k) in English with an aspiration duration of 105 milliseconds and 139 milliseconds in Navajo. Which one of the two pronunciations would you rate as being more extreme for its population distribution? [Don't forget to justify how you determine extremeness.]l

MATLAB: An Introduction with Applications

6th Edition

ISBN:9781119256830

Author:Amos Gilat

Publisher:Amos Gilat

Chapter1: Starting With Matlab

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 1P

See similar textbooks

Related questions

Question

1. English, like a few other languages (Swedish, Persian, etc.), aspirates its voiceless
stop consonants (p), (t), and (k) before stressed vowels unless an (s) precedes the
consonant. This aspiration means an extra puff of air accompanying the production of
these sounds that manifests as a moment of slight whisper after the consonant is
produced. [To experience this, say (kid) and (skid) out loud, and note the extra puff of
air in (kid); the presence of the (s) in (skid) prevents aspiration.]
As with all things to do with human speech, the precise duration of this period of
whisper varies by speaker, dialect, and even context. Overall, for the consonant (k) (as
pronounced by native speakers of English), it has been calculated that aspiration
duration can be modeled as a normal random variable with a mean of 80 milliseconds
and a standard deviation of 12 milliseconds.
(c) Navajo (a language spoken in Arizona and New Mexico) allows a much stronger
aspiration for its (k) than English. Linguists reason that aspiration times in Navajo can
be approximately represented by a normal distribution with a mean of 160 milliseconds
and a standard deviation of 10 milliseconds.
Tsela grew up bilingual in Navajo and English, and he was recorded pronouncing an
instance of (k) in English with an aspiration duration of 105 milliseconds and 139
milliseconds in Navajo. Which one of the two pronunciations would you rate as being
more extreme for its population distribution? [Don't forget to justify how you determine
extremeness.]l

Expert Solution

Step 1

It is given for English the aspiration time is normally distributed with mean $μ_{E} = 80 ms$ and standard deviation $σ_{E} = 12 ms$ . For Navajo the aspiration time has mean $μ_{N} = 160 ms$ and standard deviation $σ_{E} = 12 ms$ which is also normally distributed.

To check which language has more extreme aspiration score find the z score or distance between the score and mean in terms of standard deviation for each language according to its mean and standard deviation. The score for which the absolute value of z score is more will be at more distance from mean and thus will be more extreme for its population distribution.

Step 2

The z score is computed by $z = \frac{x - μ}{σ}$ . For English, the score is $x_{E} = 105 ms$ . Substitute the mean and standard deviation for English and find its corresponding z score.

$\begin{array}{rcl} z_{E} & = & \frac{105 - 80}{12} \\ = & \frac{25}{12} \\ \approx & 2.083 \end{array}$

Now using the same formula compute the z score for Navajo score $x_{N} = 139 ms$ .

$\begin{array}{rcl} z_{N} & = & \frac{139 - 160}{10} \\ = & \frac{- 21}{10} \\ = & - 2.1 \end{array}$

Step by step

Solved in 3 steps

Knowledge Booster

$Anova and Design of Experiments$

Learn more about

Need a deep-dive on the concept behind this application? Look no further. Learn more about this topic, statistics and related others by exploring similar questions and additional content below.

Similar questions