Language and Speech recent issues

Variability in Word Duration as a Function of Probability, Speech Style, and Prosody

Baker, R. E., Bradlow, A. R. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:59:59 PST

This article examines how probability (lexical frequency and previous mention), speech style, and prosody affect word duration, and how these factors interact. Participants read controlled materials in clear and plain speech styles. As expected, more probable words (higher frequencies and second mentions) were significantly shorter than less probable words, and words in plain speech were significantly shorter than those in clear speech. Interestingly, we found second mention reduction effects in both clear and plain speech, indicating that while clear speech is hyper-articulated, this hyper-articulation does not override probabilistic effects on duration. We also found an interaction between mention and frequency, but only in plain speech. High frequency words allowed more second mention reduction than low frequency words in plain speech, revealing a tendency to hypo-articulate as much as possible when all factors support it. Finally, we found that first mentions were more likely to be accented than second mentions. However, when these differences in accent likelihood were controlled, a significant second mention reduction effect remained. This supports the concept of a direct link between probability and duration, rather than a relationship solely mediated by prosodic prominence.

Event-related Potentials Reflecting the Processing of Phonological Constraint Violations

Domahs, U., Kehrein, W., Knaus, J., Wiese, R., Schlesewsky, M. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:59:59 PST

How are violations of phonological constraints processed in word comprehension? The present article reports the results of an event-related potentials (ERP) study on a phonological constraint of German that disallows identical segments within a syllable or word (CC_iVC_i). We examined three types of monosyllabic CCVC words: (a) existing words ( p k), (b) wellformed novel words ( p f), and (c) illformed novel words ( p p) as instances of Obligatory Contour Principle (OCP) violations. Wellformed and illformed novel words evoked an N400 effect in comparison to existing words. In addition, illformed words produced an enhanced late posterior positivity effect compared to wellformed novel words. Our findings support the well-known observation that novel words evoke higher costs in lexical integration (reflected by N400 effects). Crucially, modulations of a late positive component (LPC) show that violations of phonotactic constraints influence later stages of cognitive processing even when stimuli have already been detected as non-existing. Thus, the comparison of electrophysiological effects evoked by the two types of non-existing words reveals the stages at which phonologically based structural wellformedness comes into play during word processing.

L1-Spanish Speakers' Acquisition of the English /i/--/ / Contrast II: Perception of Vowel Inherent Spectral Change1

Morrison, G. S. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:59:59 PST

L1-Spanish learners of English have been reported to distinguish English /i/ and / / on the basis of duration cues, whereas L1-English listeners primarily use spectral cues. Morrison (2008a) hypothesized that duration-based perception is a secondary developmental stage that emerges from an initial stage of multidimensional-category-goodness assimilation of tokens of English /i/ and / / to Spanish /i/, with English vowel tokens perceived to be good examples of Spanish /i/ labeled as English / / and poor examples labeled as English /i/.

Phonetic Specificity in Early Lexical Acquisition: New Evidence from Consonants in Coda Positions

Nazzi, T., Bertoncini, J. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:59:59 PST

Use of precise consonantal information while learning new words has been established for onset consonants in previous studies, which showed that infants as young as 16 to 20 months of age can simultaneously learn two new words that differ only by a syllable-initial consonant (Havy & Nazzi, 2009; Nazzi, 2005; Nazzi & New, 2007; Werker, Fennell, Corcoran, & Stager, 2002). However, there is no systematic evidence to show whether specific phonetic information in other positions within the syllable can be used while learning new words. To the contrary, Nazzi (2005) found that when tested using the same task, 20-month-olds can learn two words that differ only by a consonant, but fail to do so if they differ only by a vowel, leaving open the possibility that specificity is limited to syllable-onset positions. Accordingly, the present study evaluated 20-month-olds’ ability to learn two words that differ only by a consonant in either onset or coda position. Infants succeeded for both positions, ruling out the possibility that only syllable-onset positions are specified. This further suggests that the previously reported consonant/ vowel asymmetry cannot be fully explained by syllable-onset positional effects. Additionally, the present study evaluated whether words following a predominant labial-coronal pattern would be easier to learn than less frequent coronal-labial words. It failed to obtain any such evidence.

Intentional Control and Operational Constraints in Prosodic Phrasing: A Study of Picture-elicited Narrations by French Children

Vion, M., Colas, A. — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 03:59:59 PST

This study deals with the determinants of prosodic phrasing in French schoolchildren’s narratives. Children (aged 7 to 11) told picture stories to a silent same-age peer. The establishment of temporal and/or causal relations between the events was more or less guided by the drawings (ordered vs. arbitrary sequences). The comprehension of the referential links was more or less supported by the way the frames were displayed (simultaneous vs. consecutive display mode). Four storytelling conditions that differed by the constraints imposed on inference-resolving and memory-searching were thus defined.

Naïve French listeners were asked to segment tape-recorded narrations using prosodic variation as a criterion, and to decide whether each prosodic segment was "conclusive" or "continuative." The comparison of the listeners’ segmentation labels to those of an expert (functional and formal annotation) showed that more than 91% of the labels corresponded to prosodic boundaries and more than 78% of the non-terminal labels corresponded to non-terminal boundaries, but only 55% of the terminal labels corresponded to terminal boundaries. The storytellers’ boundaries were then analyzed as a function of age and storytelling conditions. Non-terminal and terminal boundaries varied with the picture-display mode. Terminal boundaries also depended on the type of event sequence, and non-terminal boundaries on the improvement of the linguistic and communicative skills of the narrators. Terminal judgments of non-terminal boundaries mainly occurred in texts where each event was told in a single proposition either without anaphoric references to the main character or with anaphoric pronouns.

Audiovisual Prosody--Introduction to the Special Issue

Krahmer, E., Swerts, M. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Optical Phonetics and Visual Perception of Lexical and Phrasal Stress in English

Scarborough, R., Keating, P., Mattys, S. L., Cho, T., Alwan, A. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

In a study of optical cues to the visual perception of stress, three American English talkers spoke words that differed in lexical stress and sentences that differed in phrasal stress, while video and movements of the face were recorded. The production of stressed and unstressed syllables from these utterances was analyzed along many measures of facial movement, which were generally larger and faster in the stressed condition. In a visual perception experiment, 16 perceivers identified the location of stress in forced-choice judgments of video clips of these utterances (without audio). Phrasal stress was better perceived than lexical stress. The relation of the visual intelligibility of the prosody of these utterances to the optical characteristics of their production was analyzed to determine which cues are associated with successful visual perception. While most optical measures were correlated with perception performance, chin measures, especially Chin Opening Displacement, contributed the most to correct perception independently of the other measures. Thus, our results indicate that the information for visual stress perception is mainly associated with mouth opening movements.

Interaction of Audition and Vision for the Perception of Prosodic Contrastive Focus

Dohen, M., L{oelig}venbruck, H. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Prosodic contrastive focus is used to attract the listener's attention to a specific part of the utterance. Mostly conceived of as auditory/acoustic, it also has visible correlates which have been shown to be perceived. This study aimed at analyzing auditory-visual perception of prosodic focus by elaborating a paradigm enabling an auditory-visual advantage measurement (avoiding the ceiling effect) and by examining the interaction between audition and vision. A first experiment proved the efficiency of a whispered speech paradigm to measure an auditory-visual advantage for the perception of prosodic features. A second experiment used this paradigm to examine and characterize the auditory-visual perceptual processes. It combined performance assessment (focus detection score) to reaction time measurements and confirmed and extended the results from the first experiment. This study showed that adding vision to audition for perception of prosodic focus can not only improve focus detection but also reduce reaction times. A further analysis suggested that audition and vision are actually integrated for the perception of prosodic focus. Visual-only perception appeared to be facilitated for whispered speech suggesting an enhancement of visual cues in whispering. Moreover, the potential influence of the presence of facial markers on perception is discussed.

Are Eyebrow Movements Linked to Voice Variations and Turn-taking in Dialogue? An Experimental Investigation

Guaitella, I., Santi, S., Lagrue, B., Cave, C. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Following our work on the relationship between eyebrow movements and the fundamental frequency of the voice, this article presents the results of a study on this phenomenon, and also on the temporal location of rapid eyebrow movements with respect to speaking turns during dialogue. We used an automatic movement-acquisition system coupled with the simultaneous, synchronized recording of the vocal production. This procedure permits an objective analysis of eyebrow movements in relation to the vocal production. The data obtained showed that the speakers' rapid eyebrow movements were associated both with turn-taking (occurring right before or right after speaking turn onset) and with changes in the fundamental frequency. These findings suggest that rapid eyebrow movements are mainly linked to motivation and the intention to communicate, and may also act as a focus marker in speech.

Multimodal Indices to Japanese and French Prosodically Expressed Social Affects

Rilliard, A., Shochi, T., Martin, J.-C., Erickson, D., Auberge, V. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Whereas several studies have explored the expression of emotions, little is known on how the visual and audio channels are combined during production of what we call the more controlled social affects, for example, "attitudinal" expressions. This article presents a perception study of the audovisual expression of 12 Japanese and 6 French attitudes in order to understand the contribution of audio and visual modalities for affective communication. The relative importance of each modality in the perceptual decoding of the expressions of four speakers is analyzed as a first step towards a deeper comprehension of their influence on the expression of social affects. Then, the audovisual productions of two speakers (one for each language) are acoustically (F0, duration and intensity) and visually (in terms of Action Units) analyzed, in order to match the relation between objective parameters and listeners' perception of these social affects. The most pertinent objective features, either acoustic or visual, are then discussed, in a bilingual perspective: for example, the relative influence of fundamental frequency for attitudinal expression in both languages is discussed, and the importance of a certain aspect of the voice quality dimension in Japanese is underlined.

Effects of Varying Rate of Signing on ASL Manual Signs and Nonmanual Markers

Wilbur, R. B. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Spoken languages are characterized by flexible, multivariate prosodic systems. As a natural language, American Sign Language (ASL), and other sign languages (SLs), are also expected to be characterized in the same way. Artificially created signing systems for classroom use, such as signed English, serve as a contrast to natural sign languages. The present article explores the effects of changes in signing rate on signs, pauses, and, unlike previous studies, a variety of nonmanual markers.

Rate was a main effect on the duration of signs, the number of pauses and pause duration, the duration of brow raises, the duration of licensed lowered brows, the number and duration of blinks, all of which decreased with increased signing rate. This indicates that signers produced their different signing rates without making dramatic changes in the number of signs, but instead by varying the sign duration, in accordance with previous observations (Grosjean, 1978, 1979). These results can be brought to bear on three different issues: (1) the difference between grammatical nonmanuals and non-grammatical nonmanuals; (2) the fact that nonmanuals in general are not just a modality effect; and (3) the use of some nonmanuals as pragmatically determined as opposed to overt morphophonological markers reflecting the semantic—syntax—pragmatic interfaces.

Visual Intonation in the Prosody of a Sign Language

Dachkovsky, S., Sandler, W. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

While visual signals that accompany spoken language serve to augment the communicative message, the same visual ingredients form the substance of the linguistic system in sign languages. This article provides an analysis of visual signals that comprise part of the intonational system of a sign language. The system is conveyed mainly by particular actions of the upper face, and is shown to pattern linguistically and predictably in Israeli Sign Language. Its components, aligned with prosodic constituents, are associated with particular but general meanings and may be combined to derive complex meanings. The Brow Raise component is functionally comparable to H tones, signaling continuation and dependency, and characterizing yes/no questions and the if-clause of conditionals, for example. The component Squint instructs the addressee to retrieve information that is not readily accessible, and characterizes relative clauses, topics, and other structures. The details of the componential analysis proposed here explain why the two components together co-occur on such seemingly diverse structures as yes/no questions about mutually retrievable information and counterfactual conditionals. Like auditorily perceived intonational melodies, the visual intonational arrays in sign language provide a subtle, intricately structured, and meaningful accompaniment to the words and sentences of language.

Mixed Signals: Combining Linguistic and Affective Functions of Eyebrows in Questions in Sign Language of the Netherlands

de Vos, C., van der Kooij, E., Crasborn, O. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

The eyebrows are used as conversational signals in face-to-face spoken interaction (Ekman, 1979). In Sign Language of the Netherlands (NGT), the eyebrows are typically furrowed in content questions, and raised in polar questions (Coerts, 1992). On the other hand, these eyebrow positions are also associated with anger and surprise, respectively, in general human communication (Ekman, 1993). This overlap in the functional load of the eyebrow positions results in a potential conflict for NGT signers when combining these functions simultaneously. In order to investigate the effect of the simultaneous realization of both functions on the eyebrow position we elicited instances of both question types with neutral affect and with various affective states. The data were coded using the Facial Action Coding System (FACS: Ekman, Friesen, & Hager, 2002) for type of brow movement as well as for intensity. FACS allows for the coding of muscle groups, which are termed Action Units (AUs) and which produce facial appearance changes. The results show that linguistic and affective functions of eyebrows may influence each other in NGT. That is, in surprised polar questions and angry content question a phonetic enhancement takes place of raising and furrowing, respectively. In the items with contrasting eyebrow movements, the grammatical and affective AUs are either blended (occur simultaneously) or they are realized sequentially. Interestingly, the absence of eyebrow raising (marked by AU 1+2) in angry polar questions, and the presence of eyebrow furrowing (realized by AU 4) in surprised content questions suggests that in general AU 4 may be phonetically stronger than AU 1 and AU 2, independent of its linguistic or affective function.

Recalibration of Phonetic Categories by Lipread Speech: Measuring Aftereffects After a 24-hour Delay

Vroomen, J., Baart, M. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Listeners hearing an ambiguous speech sound flexibly adjust their phonetic categories in accordance with lipread information telling what the phoneme should be (recalibration). Here, we tested the stability of lipread-induced recalibration over time. Listeners were exposed to an ambiguous sound halfway between /t/ and /p/ that was dubbed onto a face articulating either /t/ or /p/. When tested immediately, listeners exposed to lipread /t/ were more likely to categorize the ambiguous sound as /t/ than listeners exposed to /p/. This aftereffect dissipated quickly with prolonged testing and did not reappear after a 24-hour delay. Recalibration of phonetic categories is thus a fragile phenomenon.

MushyPeek: A Framework for Online Investigation of Audiovisual Dialogue Phenomena

Edlund, J., Beskow, J. — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Evaluation of methods and techniques for conversational and multimodal spoken dialogue systems is complex, as is gathering data for the modeling and tuning of such techniques. This article describes MushyPeek, an experiment framework that allows us to manipulate the audiovisual behavior of interlocutors in a setting similar to face-to-face human—human dialogue. The setup connects two subjects to each other over a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone connection and simultaneously provides each of them with an avatar representing the other. We present a first experiment which inaugurates, exemplifies, and validates the framework. The experiment corroborates earlier findings on the use of gaze and head pose gestures in turn-taking.

Mapping and Manipulating Facial Expression

Wed, 03 Jun 2009 08:38:58 PDT

Nonverbal visual cues accompany speech to supplement the meaning of spoken words, signify emotional state, indicate position in discourse, and provide back-channel feedback. This visual information includes head movements, facial expressions and body gestures. In this article we describe techniques for manipulating both verbal and nonverbal facial gestures in video sequences of people engaged in conversation. We are developing a system for use in psychological experiments, where the effects of manipulating individual components of nonverbal visual behavior during live face-to-face conversation can be studied. In particular, the techniques we describe operate in real-time at video frame-rate and the manipulation can be applied so both participants in a conversation are kept blind to the experimental conditions.

Automatic Syllabification in English: A Comparison of Different Algorithms

Marchand, Y., Adsett, C. R., Damper, R. I. — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:18:54 PST

Automatic syllabification of words is challenging, not least because the syllable is not easy to define precisely. Consequently, no accepted standard algorithm for automatic syllabification exists. There are two broad approaches: rule-based and data-driven. The rule-based method effectively embodies some theoretical position regarding the syllable, whereas the data-driven paradigm tries to infer "new" syllabifications from examples assumed to be correctly syllabified already. This article compares the performance of several variants of the two basic approaches. Given the problems of definition, it is difficult to determine a correct syllabification in all cases and so to establish the quality of the "gold standard" corpus used either to evaluate quantitatively the output of an automatic algorithm or as the example-set on which data-driven methods crucially depend. Thus, we look for consensus in the entries in multiple lexical databases of pre-syllabified words. In this work, we have used two independent lexicons, and extracted from them the same 18,016 words with their corresponding (possibly different) syllabifications. We have also created a third lexicon corresponding to the 13,594 words that share the same syllabifications in these two sources. As well as two rule-based approaches (Hammond's and Fisher's implementation of Kahn's), three data-driven techniques are evaluated: a look-up procedure, an exemplar-based generalization technique, and syllabification by analogy (SbA). The results on the three databases show consistent and robust patterns. First, the data-driven techniques outperform the rule-based systems in word and juncture accuracies by a very significant margin but require training data and are slower. Second, syllabification in the pronunciation domain is easier than in the spelling domain. Finally, best results are consistently obtained with SbA.

Syllable Timing and Pausing: Evidence from Cantonese

Perry, C., Wong, R. K.-S., Matthews, S. — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:18:54 PST

We examined the relationship between the acoustic duration of syllables and the silent pauses that follow them in Cantonese. The results showed that at major syntactic junctures, acoustic plus silent pause durations were quite similar for a number of different syllable types whose acoustic durations differed substantially. In addition, it appeared that CV: syllables, which had the longest acoustic duration of all syllable types that were examined, were also the least likely to have silent pauses after them. These results suggest that cross-language differences between the probability that silent pauses are used at major syntactic junctures might potentially be explained by the accuracy at which timing slots can be assigned for syllables, rather than more complex explanations that have been proposed.

Measuring Phonological Development: A Follow-up Study of Five Children Acquiring Finnish

Saaristo-Helin, K. — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:18:54 PST

This study applies the Phonological Mean Length of Utterance measurement (PMLU; Ingram & Ingram, 2001; Ingram, 2002) to the data of five children acquiring Finnish and evaluates their phonological development longitudinally at four different age points: 2;0, 2;6, 3;0, and 3;6. The children's results on PMLU and related measures are discussed together with remarks on individual differences regarding the acquisition of consonants, consonant clusters and word length. During the period analyzed the children's phonetic inventories increase and they gradually overcome the constraints against long words and consonant sequences. The PMLU method's ability to reflect the qualitative changes and individual differences between the children is found to be limited in some respects, although overall development can be noted in the values. The PMLU method's strengths and weaknesses are evaluated critically and improvements suggested.

Japanese Mental Syllabary and Effects of Mora, Syllable, Bi-mora and Word Frequencies on Japanese Speech Production

Tamaoka, K., Makioka, S. — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:18:54 PST

The present study investigated the existence of a Japanese mental syllabary and units stored therein for speech production. Experiment 1 compared naming latencies between high and low initial mora frequencies using CVCVCV nonwords, indicating that nonwords with a high initial mora frequency were named faster than those with a low frequency initial mora. Experiments 2 and 3 clarified the possibility of CV light and CVN/CVR heavy syllables as being units implicated in speech production. CVNCV nonwords in Experiment 2 and CVRCV nonwords in Experiment 3 displayed shorter naming latencies and lower error rates than their baseline (same bi-mora frequencies) of CVCVCV-structured nonwords. Since bi-mora frequencies between CVN/CVR and CVCV were the same, heavy syllables comprised of CVN and CVR units may contribute to ready-made motor-programs stored in the Japanese mental syllabary as variations of the 100 core light syllables (300 units in total). Experiment 4 further tested the effects of bi-mora frequency on the naming of nonwords, and found that CVCVCV-structured nonwords with high bi-mora frequencies were named more quickly and accurately than those with low bi-mora frequencies, although some bi-mora combinations seem to exhibit nonconforming tendencies (i.e., null significance in item analysis). Experiment 5 demonstrated that the naming of real words with high word frequency was quicker than for other real word conditions with low word frequencies (i.e., word frequency effects), with little effect of bi-mora frequencies. Unlike the nonword condition of Experiment 4, bi-mora frequency had only a minor influence on the naming of real words. Based on these findings, the present study proposes a possible model of the Japanese mental syllabary accompanied by a discussion of bi-mora and word frequency effects.

Independent Effects of Orthographic and Phonological Facilitation on Spoken Word Production in Mandarin

Qingfang Zhang, , Chen, H.-C., Stuart Weekes, B., Yufang Yang, — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 08:18:54 PST

A picture—word interference paradigm with visually presented distractors was used to investigate the independent effects of orthographic and phonological facilitation on Mandarin monosyllabic word production. Both the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and the picture—word relationship along different lexical dimensions were varied. We observed a pure orthographic facilitation effect and a pure phonological facilitation effect, and found that the patterns of orthographic and phonological facilitation were different. Of most interest, the additive effects of orthographic and phonological facilitation at —150-ms and 0-ms SOAs indicated that the orthographic effect was largely independent of the phonological effect on spoken picture naming. We argue that the present findings are useful for constraining theoretical models of language production and contend that theoretical models of word production need to consider independent effects of orthography and phonology on picture naming, at least in Chinese.

L1-Spanish Speakers' Acquisition of the English /i /--/I/ Contrast: Duration-based Perception is Not the Initial Developmental Stage

Morrison, G. S. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

L1-Spanish L2-English listeners' perception of a Canadian-English /bIt/— /bId/—/bit/—/bid/ continuum was investigated. Results were largely consistent with the developmental stages for L1-Spanish listeners' acquisition of English /i/ and /I/ hypothesized by Escudero (2000): Stage 0, inability to distinguish. Stage 1, duration based. Stage 2, duration and spectral based. Stage 3, L1-English-like primarily spectral based. However, on the basis of the results an additional stage was hypothesized: Stage ½, multidimensional-category-goodness-difference assimilation to Spanish /i/, with English vowel tokens perceived as good examples of Spanish /i/ labeled as English /I/ and poor examples labeled as English /i/. It is hypothesized that L1-Spanish listeners' preference for duration cues is not an initial strategy for distinguishing English /i/ and /I/. Rather, it is a secondary developmental stage which emerges from an earlier stage when both spectral and duration cues are used.

Child--Adult Differences in Second-Language Phonological Learning: The Role of Cross-Language Similarity

Baker, W., Trofimovich, P., Flege, J. E., Mack, M., Halter, R. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

This study evaluated whether age effects on second language (L2) speech learning derive from changes in how the native language (L1) and L2 sound systems interact. According to the "interaction hypothesis" (IH), the older the L2 learner, the less likely the learner is able to establish new vowel categories needed for accurate L2 vowel production and perception because, with age, L1 vowel categories become more likely to perceptually encompass neighboring L2 vowels. These IH predictions were evaluated in two experiments involving 64 native Korean- and English-speaking children and adults. Experiment 1 determined, as predicted, that the Korean children were less likely than the Korean adults to perceive L2 vowels as instances of a single L1 vowel category. Experiment 2 showed that the Korean children surpassed the Korean adults in production of certain vowels but equaled them in vowel perception. These findings, which partially support the IH, are discussed in relation to L2 speech learning.

Perceptual Tests of Rhythmic Similarity: II. Syllable Rhythm

Kim, J., Davis, C., Cutler, A. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

To segment continuous speech into its component words, listeners make use of language rhythm; because rhythm differs across languages, so do the segmentation procedures which listeners use. For each of stress-, syllable-and mora-based rhythmic structure, perceptual experiments have led to the discovery of corresponding segmentation procedures. In the case of mora-based rhythm, similar segmentation has been demonstrated in the otherwise unrelated languages Japanese and Telugu; segmentation based on syllable rhythm, however, has been previously demonstrated only for European languages from the Romance family. We here report two target detection experiments in which Korean listeners, presented with speech in Korean and in French, displayed patterns of segmentation like those previously observed in analogous experiments with French listeners. The Korean listeners' accuracy in detecting word-initial target fragments in either language was significantly higher when the fragments corresponded exactly to a syllable in the input than when the fragments were smaller or larger than a syllable. We conclude that Korean and French listeners can call on similar procedures for segmenting speech, and we further propose that perceptual tests of speech segmentation provide a valuable accompaniment to acoustic analyses for establishing languages' rhythmic class membership.

Word Length and Lexical Competition: Longer is the Same as Shorter

Vitevitch, M. S., Stamer, M. K., Sereno, J. A. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

Neighborhood density refers to the number of words that sound similar to a given word. Previous studies have found that neighborhood density influences the recognition of spoken words (Luce & Pisoni, 1998); however, this work has focused almost exclusively on monosyllabic words in English. To investigate the effects of neighborhood density on longer words, bisyllabic words varying in neighborhood density were presented auditorily to participants in a perceptual identification task and a lexical decision task. In the perceptual identification task, words with sparse neighborhoods were more accurately identified than words with dense neighborhoods. In the lexical decision task, words with sparse neighborhoods were responded to more quickly and more accurately than words with dense neighborhoods. These results are similar to those found in studies examining the influence of neighborhood density on the recognition of monosyllabic words in English. In order to better understand lexical processing, models of spoken word recognition must account for the processing of words of all types.

Compensatory Vowel Lengthening for Omitted Coda Consonants: A Phonetic Investigation of Children's Early Representations of Prosodic Words

Jae Yung Song, , Demuth, K. — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST

Children's early word productions often differ from the target form, sometimes exhibiting vowel lengthening when word-final coda consonants are omitted (e.g., dog /d g/ -> [d :]). It has typically been assumed that such lengthening compensates for a missing prosodic unit (a mora). However, this study raises the alternative hypothesis that vowel lengthening in early productions compensates for the missing coda segment. If lengthening selectively occurs with short/lax vowels but not long/tense vowels, this would provide support for the hypothesis that lengthening serves to preserve bimoraic or `minimal word' structure. However, if lengthening occurs across the board, this would indicate that lengthening compensates for the omitted segment. In order to address this issue, matched word pairs produced with and without a coda were extracted from the spontaneous speech of three English-speaking children between the ages of 1;1 and 2;6. Phonetic analysis compared the duration of vowels in words with and without the coda. The results showed that two children lengthened both short and long vowels when the coda was omitted, whereas one child selectively lengthened only short vowels. The implications of these findings, both for the representation of prosodic words, and for theories of production more generally, are discussed.

Editors' Report for Volume 51

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 00:00:00 PST