Our long-time friend and colleague, Arthur Abramson passed away on December 15, 2017. Arthur was a Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the University of Connecticut, where he was the founding chair. He has been a part of the research staff in multiple capacities at Haskins Laboratories since 1959, most recently Emeritus Senior Scientist and member of the Board of Directors. His research and scholarly contributions to experimental phonetics, the production and perception of speech, laryngeal control in consonants, and Southeast Asian languages are well known internationally. Arthur was a critical thinker, an exceptional colleague and mentor and a true gentleman. He will be sorely missed.

Education

Ph.D., Columbia University

Research Areas

Experimental Phonetics, Southeast Asian Languages

Publications

Abramson, A. S. (1962). The vowels and tones of Standard Thai: Acoustical measurements and experiments. Indiana University Research Center in Anthropology, Folklore, and Linguistics, as a monograph supplement to the International Journal of American Linguistics, V. 28, #2, Part II.

Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L. (1965). Voice onset time in stop consonants: Acoustic analysis and synthesis. Proceedings of the 5th International Congress of Acoustics, (Paper A51). Liege: Imp. G. Thone.

Abramson, A. S. (1972). Word-final stops in Thai. In J. G. Harris, & R. B. Noss (Eds.), Tai phonetics and phonology (pp. 1–7). Bangkok, Thailand: Central Institute of English Language.

Abramson, A. S. (1974). Experimental phonetics in phonology: Vowel duration in Thai. PASAA, 4, 71-89.

Abramson, A. S. (1979a). Lexical tone and sentence prosody in Thai. In E. Fischer-Jørgensen, J. Rischel & N. Thorsen (Eds.), Proceedings of the Ninth International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 380–387. Copenhagen: International Phonetic Association.

Abramson, A. S. (1979b). The coarticulation of tones: An acoustic study of Thai. In T. L. Thongkum, P. Kullavanijaya, V. Panupong, & K. Tingsabadh (Eds.), Studies in Tai and Mon-Khmer phonetics and phonology in honour of Eugenie J. A. Henderson, Bangkok: Indigenous Languages of Thailand Research Project.

Abramson, A. S. (1986). The perception of word-initial consonant length: Pattani Malay. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 16(1), 8–16. DOI: 10.1017/S0025100300003054.s

Abramson, A. S. (1988). The principles on which the IPA should be based. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 18, 66–68.

Abramson, A. S. (1991). Amplitude as a cue to word-initial consonant length: Pattani Malay. In Proceedings of the 12th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Volume 3, pp. 98–101). Aix-en-Provence, France: Université de Provence.

Abramson, A. S. (1995). Laryngeal timing in Karen obstruents. In F. Bell-Berti, & L. Raphael (Eds.), Producing speech: Contemporary issues. For Katherine Safford Harris (pp. 155–165). Woodbury, NY: American Institute of Physics Press.

Abramson, A. S. (1997). The Thai tonal space. In A. S. Abramson (Ed.), Southeast Asian linguistic studies in honour of Vichin Panupong (pp. 1–10). Bangkok, Thailand: Chulalongkorn University Press.

Abramson, A. S. (1999). Fundamental frequency as a cue to word-initial consonant length: Pattani Malay. In J. J. Ohala, Y. Hasegawa, M. Ohala, D. Granville, & A. C. Bailey (Eds.), Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (Volume 1, pp. 591–594). San Francisco, CA: University of California, Berkeley.

Abramson, A.S. (2000). Franklin Seaney Cooper - 1908-1999 Obituary. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 108(5), 970-1971.

Abramson, A. S. (2003). Acoustic cues to word-initial stop length in Pattani Malay. In Daniel Recasens, Maria-Josep Solé & Joachín Romero (eds.), Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 387–390. Barcelona: Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona.

Abramson, A.S. (2007). The role of phonetics in linguistics and other fields. In Wirote Aroonmanakun (Ed.), Unfolding linguistics, Bangkok: Centre for Research in Speech and Language Processing, Chulalongkorn University, pp. 1-8.

Abramson, A.S. (2013). Tones and voice registers. In H. Winskel, & P. Padakannaya (Eds.), South and Southeast Asian Psycholinguistics. (pp. 223-232). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L., (1965). Voice onset time in stop consonants: Acoustic analysis and synthesis. In Rapports du 5e Congres International d’Acoustique, Vol. 1a, A51.

Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L., (1970a). Discriminability along the voicing continuum: Cross-language tests. Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), Prague (1967), 569–73.

Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L. (1970b). Laryngeal behavior, the speech signal and phonological simplicity. Actes du Xe Congres International des Linguistes, 4, 123-129.

Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L., (1972). Voice timing in Korean stops. Proceedings of the 7th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Montreal (1971), 439–46.

Abramson, A., & Lisker, L. (1973). Voice timing perception in Spanish word-initial stops Journal of Phonetics, 1, 1-8.

Abramson, A. S., Luangthongkum, T., & Nye, P. W. (2004). Voice register in Suai (Kuai): An analysis of perceptual and acoustic data. Phonetica, 61(2–3), 147–171.

Abramson, A. S., Nye, P. W., Henderson, J. B., & Marshall, C. W. (1981). Vowel height and the perception of consonantal nasality. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Vol. 70, 329-339

Abramson, A. S., & Ren, N.-q. (1990). Distinctive vowel length: Duration vs. spectrum in Thai. Journal of Phonetics, 18, 79–92.

Abramson, A. S., Tiede, M. K., & Luangthongkum, T. (2013). Mon voice registers: Acoustics and laryngeal control. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 134(5), 4199.

Abramson, A. S., Tiede, M. K., & Luangthongkum, T. (2015). Voice register in Mon: Acoustics and electroglottography. Phonetica, 72(4), 237–256.

Abramson, A. S., & Whalen, D. H. (2017). Voice Onset Time (VOT) at 50: Theoretical and practical issues in measuring voicing distinctions. Journal of Phonetics, 63, 75–86.

Cooper, F. S., Sawashima, M., Abramson, A. S., & Lisker, L. (1971). Looking at the larynx during running speech. Annals of Otology, Rhinology and Laryngology, 80(5), 678–682. DOI: 10.1177/000348947108000509.

Erickson, D., Abramson, A.S. (2013). Fø, EMG and Tonogensis in Thai. Journal of Nagoya Gakuin University (Language and Culture), 24(2), 1-13.

Fry, D. B., Abramson, A. S., Eimas, P. D., & Liberman, A. M. (1962). The identification and discrimination of synthetic vowels. Language and Speech, 5, 171-189.

Garding, E. & Abramson, A. S. (1965). A study of the perception of some American English intonation contours. Studia Linguistica, XIX, 61-79.

Koenig, L., & Whalen, D. H. (2018). In memoriam: Arthur S. Abramson. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 48(2), 257-259.

Koenig, L. L., & Whalen, D. H. (2018). Obituary: Arthur S. Abramson. Acoustics Today, 14(2), 69.

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1964). A cross-language study of voicing in initial stops: Acoustical measurements. Word, 20(3), 384–422. DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1964.11659830. [PDF]

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1967). Some effects of context on voice onset time in English stops. Language and Speech, 10, 1–28. DOI: 10.1177/002383096701000101.

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1970). The voicing dimension: Some experiments in comparative phonetics. Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Prague: Academia, 563-567.

Lisker, L., & Abramson, A. S. (1971). Distinctive features and laryngeal control. Language, 47, 767–85. DOI: 10.2307/412155.

Lisker, L. , & Abramson, A. (1987). Phonetic Validation of Distinctive Features: A Test Case in French In R. Channon & L. Shockey (Eds.), In Honor of Ilse Lehiste, Dordrecht: Foris, pp. 183-190.

Lisker, L., Abramson, A. S., Cooper, F. S., & Schvey, M. H. (1969). Transillumination of the larynx in running speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 45(6), 1544–1546. DOI: 10.1121/1.1911636.

Lotz, J., Abramson, A. S., Gerstman, L. J., Ingemann, F., & Nemser, W. (1960). The perception of English stops by speakers of English, Spanish, Hungarian, and Thai: A tape-cutting experiment. Language and Speech, 3, 71-77.

Sawashima, M., Abramson, A. S., Cooper, F. S., & Lisker, L. (1970). Observing laryngeal adjustments during running speech by use of a fibreoptics system. Phonetica, 22(4), 193–201. DOI: 10.1159/000259320.

Tingsabadh, M. R. K., & Abramson, A. S. (1993). Thai. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 23(1), 24–28.

Whalen, D. H. (2019). Obituary: Arthur S. Abramson. Journal of Phonetics, Vol. 72, 83-84.

Whalen, D. H., Abramson, A. S., Lisker, L., & Mody, M. (1990). Gradient effects of fundamental frequency on stop consonant voicing judgments. Phonetica, 47, 36–49. DOI: 10.1159/000261851.

Whalen, D. H., & Koenig, L. L. (2018a). Arthur S. Abramson. Language, 94(4), 969-975.

Whalen, D. H., & Koenig, L. L. (2018b). Arthur S. Abramson. Language and Speech, 61(2), 334-336.

Obituary by Philip Rubin, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics, April 20, 2022

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