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In order to study the acoustic features of stress in Tati language, one minimal pair has been selected where in one the stress was on the last syllable and in another on the first syllable. These minimal pairs were embedded in declarative and interrogative carrier sentences. Eight educated native speakers were participated in this experiment reading these in a silent room. Using PRAAT, a textgrid has been made for each in which the vowel boundaries determined, then by a script we measured duration, F1, F2, Fundamental frequency and intensity. The results show that the difference of duration, F0 and intensity between stressed and unstressed vowels is significant while the F1 and F2 are not important cues. So the most important cues distinguishing the place of stress in Tati are F0, Duration and intensity. A final observation concerns the utterance-final syllable interrogative contours Which is H% while declarative utterances end in L%.

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This research generally aimed to gain a better understanding of the stop voicing contrast in Khuzestani Arabic (KhA) by focusing on VOT and vowel onset f0. The potential effects of voicing status, place of articulation, vocalic context, and gender on the word-initial VOT and f0 measurements were investigated. 15 females and 15 males were asked to repeat 31 authentic words three times out of context with no marked intonation pattern. The results showed significant differences between VOT and f0 values as a function of voicing status, among others. In addition word-initially, the statistical analysis indicated significant place-dependent and vocalic-related VOT variations in the context of VOICELESS stops, whereas for f0 the effects of gender, place of articulation, and vocalic context were significant both at the VOICED and VOICELESS levels. Word-initially, in KhA /b, d, ɡ/ are produced with voicing lead, while their VOICELESS counterparts /p, t, k/ have long lag, and the two stops with no VOICED cognate /tˁ, q/ make use of short lag. Overall, KhA exhibits a two-way laryngeal contrast system, and similar to Swedish the two opposite ends of VOT continuum are utilized. Logistic regression models were executed separately for both genders to predict the levels of voicing status and emphaticness. The results revealed that in voicing contrast more weight was given to VOT compared to f0. Lastly, Pearson’s correlation showed a significantly positive linear relationship between the two acoustic parameters in marking the voicing feature of VOICELESS plosives.     
 

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Rrectangular plates-based resonant micro-sensors utilize the resonance frequency of electrically pre-deformed clamped micro-plates for sensing. Free vibration analysis of such systems in order to find their resonance frequency is the objective of present paper. For this aim, the modified couple stress theory (MCST) together with the Kirchhoff plate model is considered and the size-dependent equation of motion which accounts for the effect of axial residual stresses as well as the non-linear and distributed electrostatic force is derived using the Hamilton's principle. The lowest frequency of the system as the resonance frequency of these micro-plates is extracted using a single mode Galerkin based reduced order model (ROM). It is found that the fundamental frequency of the system is decreased with an increase of applied voltage and becomes zero when the input voltage reaches the pull-in voltage of the system. The findings of present paper are compared and validated by available results in the literature and an excellent agreement between them is observed. Also it is found that using the MCST in pull-in analysis of clamped rectangular micro-plates can remove the existing gap between the results of classical theory (CT) and available empirical observations. Furthermore, it is observed that accounting for the size-effect on free vibration analysis of electrostatically pre-deformed micro-plates is more essential than flat ones.