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1. Development of Prosodic Patterns in Mandarin-Learning Infants (EJ824980)
Author(s):
Chen, Li-Mei; Kent, Raymond D.
Source:
Journal of Child Language, v36 n1 p73-84 Jan 2009
Pub Date:
2009-01-00
Pub Type(s):
Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Peer-Reviewed:
Yes
Descriptors: Speech; Suprasegmentals; Caregivers; Infants; Mandarin Chinese; Caregiver Child Relationship; Language Patterns; Child Language; Language Acquisition; Language Rhythm; Intonation
Abstract: Early prosodic development (f[subscript 0] variation) was systematically measured in Mandarin-learning infants at the transition from babbling to producing first words. Spontaneous vocalizations of twenty-four infants aged 0;7 to 1;6 were recorded in 45-minute sessions. The speech production of twenty-four caregivers was also audio-recorded during caregiver-infant natural daily interactions at home. All recordings were transcribed using broad prosodic patterns. Analysis revealed four major findings: (1) falling f[subscript 0] contours were more prominently produced than level and rising contours; (2) high prosodic patterns occurred more frequently than mid and low prosodic patterns; (3) these distribution patterns of f[subscript 0] contours showed significant similarities in babbling and early words; and (4) these distribution patterns were also similar in infants' and their caregivers' data. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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2. Moving to the Speed of Sound: Context Modulation of the Effect of Acoustic Properties of Speech (EJ806450)
Shintel, Hadas; Nusbaum, Howard C.
Cognitive Science, v32 n6 p1063-1074 Sep 2008
2008-09-00
Descriptors: Listening Comprehension; Suprasegmentals; Acoustics; Syntax; Cognitive Mapping; Speech Communication; Poetry; Context Effect; Auditory Perception
Abstract: Suprasegmental acoustic patterns in speech can convey meaningful information and affect listeners' interpretation in various ways, including through systematic analog mapping of message-relevant information onto prosody. We examined whether the effect of analog acoustic variation is governed by the acoustic properties themselves. For example, fast speech may always prime the concept of speed or a faster response. Alternatively, the effect may be modulated by the context-dependent interpretation of those properties; the effect of rate may depend on how listeners construe its meaning in the immediate linguistic or communicative context. In two experiments, participants read short scenarios that implied, or did not imply, urgency. Scenarios were followed by recorded instructions, spoken at varying rates. The results show that speech rate had an effect on listeners' response speed; however, this effect was modulated by discourse context. Speech rate affected response speed following contexts that emphasized speed, but not without such contextual information. (Contains 1 table, 2 figures and 1 note.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
3. Communicating Emotion: Linking Affective Prosody and Word Meaning (EJ804713)
Nygaard, Lynne C.; Queen, Jennifer S.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, v34 n4 p1017-1030 Aug 2008
2008-08-00
Descriptors: Semantics; Psychological Patterns; Auditory Perception; Suprasegmentals; Speech Communication; Language Processing
Abstract: The present study investigated the role of emotional tone of voice in the perception of spoken words. Listeners were presented with words that had either a happy, sad, or neutral meaning. Each word was spoken in a tone of voice (happy, sad, or neutral) that was congruent, incongruent, or neutral with respect to affective meaning, and naming latencies were collected. Across experiments, tone of voice was either blocked or mixed with respect to emotional meaning. The results suggest that emotional tone of voice facilitated linguistic processing of emotional words in an emotion-congruent fashion. These findings suggest that information about emotional tone is used in the processing of linguistic content influencing the recognition and naming of spoken words in an emotion-congruent manner. (Contains 4 tables and 3 footnotes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
4. The Relationship between Form and Function Level Receptive Prosodic Abilities in Autism (EJ804224)
Jarvinen-Pasley, Anna; Peppe, Susan; King-Smith, Gavin; Heaton, Pamela
Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, v38 n7 p1328-1340 Aug 2008
Journal Articles; Reports - Descriptive
Descriptors: Autism; Children; Suprasegmentals; Language Skills; Speech Skills
Abstract: Prosody can be conceived as having form (auditory-perceptual characteristics) and function (pragmatic/linguistic meaning). No known studies have examined the relationship between form- and function-level prosodic skills in relation to the effects of stimulus length and/or complexity upon such abilities in autism. Research in this area is both insubstantial and inconclusive. Children with autism and controls completed the receptive tasks of the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems in Children (PEPS-C) test, which examines both form- and function-level skills, and a sentence-level task assessing the understanding of intonation. While children with autism were unimpaired in both form and function tasks at the single-word level, they showed significantly poorer performance in the corresponding sentence-level tasks than controls. Implications for future research are discussed. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
5. Phonological Phrase Boundaries Constrain the Online Syntactic Analysis of Spoken Sentences (EJ802594)
Millotte, Severine; Rene, Alice; Wales, Roger; Christophe, Anne
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, v34 n4 p874-885 Jul 2008
2008-07-00
Descriptors: Sentences; Form Classes (Languages); Figurative Language; Language Acquisition; Experiments; Verbs; French; Suprasegmentals; Intonation; Foreign Countries; Higher Education; Auditory Stimuli
Abstract: Two experiments tested whether phonological phrase boundaries constrain online syntactic analysis in French. Pairs of homophones belonging to different syntactic categories (verb and adjective) were used to create sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity (e.g., [le petit chien "mort"], in English, the "dead" little dog, vs. [le petit chien] ["mord"], in English, the little dog "bites", where brackets indicate phonological phrase boundaries). An expert speaker recorded the sentences with either a maximally informative prosody or a minimally informative one. Participants correctly assigned the appropriate syntactic category to the target word, even without any access to the lexical disambiguating information, in both a completion task (Experiment 1) and an abstract word detection task (Experiment 2). The size of the experimental effect was modulated by the prosodic manipulation (maximally vs. minimally informative), guaranteeing that prosody played a crucial role in disambiguation. The authors discuss the implications of these results for models of online speech perception and language acquisition. (Contains 4 figures and 9 footnotes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
6. Interplay between Phonology and Syntax in French-Speaking Children with Specific Language Impairment (EJ799645)
Parisse, Christophe; Maillart, Christelle
International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, v43 n4 p448-472 Jul 2008
Descriptors: Speech Communication; Phonology; Semantics; Syntax; Language Impairments; French; Language Acquisition; Linguistic Theory; Grammar; Foreign Countries; Correlation; Suprasegmentals
Abstract: Background: This study investigated the relationship between phonological and syntactic disorders of French-speaking children with specific language impairment in production. Aims: To compare three theories (pure phonological theory, surface theory, and mapping theory) of language developmental disorders, all of which view phonological difficulties as the main reason for the children's problems. Methods & Procedures: The linguistic parameters (salience, phonological complexity, syntactic complexity, lexical/functional word, semantic/syntactic weight) that are fundamental to these theories were identified. The validity of these parameters was then tested against the phonological and syntactic results obtained by children with specific language impairment and control children. Nine syntactic categories were tested. Outcomes & Results: Phonological complexity was the only parameter whose importance was confirmed, and this was only for phonological performance. Syntactic complexity did not correlate significantly with children's difficulties. Phonological salience did not correlate with phonological performance but was related to syntactic performance for French-speaking children. Mixed results were obtained for the other parameters, including negative correlations, which may call for different explanations. Conclusions: No theory fully explained the observed outcomes. Pure phonological theory was the most parsimonious, but could not explain all the results, in particular not the results with respect to grammar. (Contains 7 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
7. Processing Dependencies between Segmental and Suprasegmental Features in Mandarin Chinese (EJ799599)
Tong, Yunxia; Francis, Alexander L.; Gandour, Jackson T.
Language and Cognitive Processes, v23 n5 p689-708 Aug 2008
Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
No
Descriptors: Suprasegmentals; Vowels; Word Recognition; Classification; Mandarin Chinese; Language Processing; Interference (Language); Intonation; Comparative Analysis; Oral Language; Language Research
Abstract: The aim of this study was to examine processing interactions between segmental (consonant, vowel) and suprasegmental (tone) dimensions of Mandarin Chinese. Using a speeded classification paradigm, processing interactions were examined between each pair of dimensions. Listeners were asked to attend to one dimension while ignoring the variation along another. Asymmetric interference effects were observed between segmental and suprasegmental dimensions, with segmental dimensions interfering more with tone classification than the reverse. Among the three dimensions, vowels exerted greater interference on consonants and tones than vice versa. Comparisons between each pair of dimensions revealed greater integrality between tone and vowel than between tone and consonant. Findings suggest that the direction and degree of interference between segmental and suprasegmental dimensions in spoken word recognition reflect differences in acoustic properties as well as other factors of an informational nature. (Contains 1 table and 4 figures.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
8. "THE BACON" Not "the Bacon": How Children and Adults Understand Accented and Unaccented Noun Phrases (EJ796518)
Arnold, Jennifer E.
Cognition, v108 n1 p69-99 Jul 2008
Descriptors: Nouns; Language Processing; Eye Movements; Adults; Young Children; Suprasegmentals; Context Effect; Bias; Age Differences
Abstract: Two eye-tracking experiments examine whether adults and 4- and 5-year-old children use the presence or absence of accenting to guide their interpretation of noun phrases (e.g., "the bacon") with respect to the discourse context. Unaccented nouns tend to refer to contextually accessible referents, while accented variants tend to be used for less accessible entities. Experiment 1 confirms that accenting is informative for adults, who show a bias toward previously-mentioned objects beginning 300 ms after the onset of unaccented nouns and pronouns. But contrary to findings in the literature, accented words produced no observable bias. In Experiment 2, 4 and 5 year olds were also biased toward previously-mentioned objects with unaccented nouns and pronouns. This builds on findings of limits on children's on-line reference comprehension [Arnold, J. E., Brown-Schmidt, S., & Trueswell, J. C. (2007). "Children's use of gender and order-of-mention during pronoun comprehension." "Language and Cognitive Processes"], showing that children's interpretation of unaccented nouns and pronouns is constrained in contexts with one single highly accessible object. (Contains 7 figures and 8 tables.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
9. Acoustic Correlates of Fatigue in Laryngeal Muscles: Findings for a Criterion-Based Prevention of Acquired Voice Pathologies (EJ811637)
Boucher, Victor J.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, v51 n5 p1161-1170 Oct 2008
2008-10-00
Descriptors: Fatigue (Biology); Intervals; Suprasegmentals; Human Body; Acoustics; Syllables; Diagnostic Tests; Oral Language; Voice Disorders
Abstract: Purpose: The objective was to identify acoustic correlates of laryngeal muscle fatigue in conditions of vocal effort. Method: In a previous study, a technique of electromyography (EMG) served to define physiological signs of "voice fatigue" in laryngeal muscles involved in voicing. These signs correspond to spectral changes in contraction potentials. A corpus of vocalizations from the 7 participants in the EMG study was used to explore the effects of muscle fatigue on voice acoustics. Each participant produced vocalizations at regular intervals (50 in all) extending across a day (12-14 hr). The participants also produced 5 min of loud speech with peaks of 74 dBA at 1 m between each vocalization. Twenty acoustic parameters were measured using the Multi-Dimensional Voice Program (Kay Elemetrics, Lincoln Park, New Jersey). Results: The analyses showed no consistent correlations between acoustic parameters and estimates of muscle fatigue. However, in all cases, nonlinear jumps occurred in the frequency of amplitude tremor at points where fatigue estimates showed a critical shift. These jumps were robust despite changes in F0 in some individuals. Conclusion: A brief rise in voice tremor can correspond to a critical change in laryngeal muscle tissues seen as a condition where continued vocal effort can increase the risk of lesions or other conditions affecting voice. Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
10. Clause Segmentation by 6-Month-Old Infants: A Crosslinguistic Perspective (EJ814824)
Johnson, Elizabeth K.; Seidl, Amanda
Infancy, v13 n5 p440-455 Sep 2008
Descriptors: Infants; Attention; Indo European Languages; Language Acquisition; Suprasegmentals; Acoustics; Cues; Speech; Comparative Analysis; English; Foreign Countries
Abstract: Each clause and phrase boundary necessarily aligns with a word boundary. Thus, infants' attention to the edges of clauses and phrases may help them learn some of the language-specific cues defining word boundaries. Attention to prosodically well-formed clauses and phrases may also help infants begin to extract information important for learning the grammatical structure of their language. Despite the potentially important role that the perception of large prosodic units may play in early language acquisition, there has been little work investigating the extraction of these units from fluent speech by infants learning languages other than English. We report 2 experiments investigating Dutch learners' clause segmentation abilities. In these studies, Dutch-learning 6-month-olds readily extract clauses from speech. However, Dutch learners differ from English learners in that they seem to be more reliant on pauses to detect clause boundaries. Two closely related explanations for this finding are considered, both of which stem from the acoustic differences in clause boundary realizations in Dutch versus English. (Contains 2 tables, 2 figures, and 4 footnotes.) Note:The following two links are not-applicable for text-based browsers or screen-reading software. Show Hide Full Abstract
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