• Phonetics and Speech Sciences
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.59-73
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• 2012

This study attempts to investigate the contribution of prosody to the foreign accent in Chinese speakers' English production by examining the synthesized speech of crossing native and non-native talkers' prosody and segments. For the stimuli of the foreign accent ratings, we transplanted gender-matched native speakers' prosody onto non-native talkers' segments and vice versa, utilizing the TD-PSOLA algorithm. Eight English native listeners participated in judging foreign accent and comprehensibility of the transplanted stimuli. Results showed that the synthesized stimuli were perceived as stronger foreign accent regardless of speakers' proficiency when English speakers' prosody was crossed with Chinese speakers' segments. This suggests that segments contribute more than prosody to native listeners' evaluation of foreign accent. When transplanted with English speakers' segments, Chinese speakers' prosody showed a difference in duration rather than pitch between high and low proficiency such that stronger foreign accent was detected when low proficient Chinese speakers' duration was crossed with English speakers' segments. This indicated that prosody, more specifically duration, plays a role though the prosodic role is not overall as significant as segments. According to the post acoustic analysis, the temporal features contributing to making the duration parameter prominent as opposed to pitch were found out to be speaking rate, pause duration and pause frequency. Finally, foreign accent and comprehensibility showed no significant correlation such that native listeners had no difficulty listening to highly foreign accented speech.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.641-645
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• 1995

This study was conducted to develop a method for production of nuclear transplant bovine embryos using in vitro-matured (IVM) oocytes and to examine the effect of different conditions of electrofusion on fusion rate and developmental capacity of donor nucleus transplanted to enucleated oocytes. Eight- to sixteen-cell embryos derived from oocytes matured and fertilized in vitro used as donor blastomeres and IVM oocytes were used as recipient oocytes. Oocytes were enucleated immediately after 23-24 h IVM and then reconstituted with a donor blastomere in two different micromanipulation media. Fusion rate and subsequent development of the reconstituted oocytes was compared under the different electric stimuli and recipient oocyte ages. Success rate of enucleation was significantly higher in TCM-199 medium containing FCS than in DPBS. The high fusion rate(75-94%) and development (6.4-14.8%) to morulae and blastocyst (M + B) were obtained from 0.6-0.75 kV/cm DC voltage, although total cleavage was not different among the electric pulses. Most optimal condition of electric stimulation for fusion and development was 1 DC voltage of 0.75 kV/cm, in which 80.5% of oocytes were fused, 80.0% and 31.7% of which was cleaved and developed to M + B, respectively. No M + B was obtained from 1.2 kV/cm DC voltage regardless of pulse frequency. Recipint oocyte age at electrofusion greatly affected the cleavage and subsequent development to M + B, showing high rate at 40-41 h oocyte maturation. These results suggest that a suitable condition of electrofusion for donor nuclei derived from IVF may be 1-2 DC pulses of 0.7 kV/cm for $70{\mu}sec$ and that processing of a transplanted nucleus in IVM oocytes may be affected by maturation age of recipient oocytes.