Discerning the sub-phonemic identity of pre-nasal /æ/ in British Columbia English

There are two features of /æ/ in British Columbia (BC) English that are widely attested in the literature: it is undergoing retraction and lowering and it is sensitive to the influence of certain following consonants. The present study aims to utilize both features to evaluate the phonological status of /æ/ before nasal consonants in BC English by examining the progression of sound change and the phonemic organization of /æ/ in different environments. Specifically, production and perception results are taken together to evaluate the phonetic position of pre-nasal /æ/ relative to other environments. These results are interpreted within a modular feedforward architecture of phonology to establish the phonological (allophonic) and phonetic (shallowphonic) rules that govern the internal relationships between the subphonemic elements of /æ/ in BC English. Further, the findings of this study provide evidence for the allophone being the target of sound change, rather than the phoneme.

Loss Determination in Microsphere Resonators by Phase-Shift Cavity Ring-Down Measurements

The optical loss of whispering gallery modes of resonantly excited microresonator spheres is determined by optical lifetime measurements. The phase-shift cavity ring-down technique is used to extract ring-down times and optical loss from the difference in amplitude modulation phase between the light entering the microresonator and light scattered from the microresonator. In addition, the phase lag of the light exiting the waveguide, which was used to couple light into the resonator, was measured. The intensity and phase measurements were fully described by a model that assumed interference of the cavity modes with the light propagating in the waveguide.