Speech synthesis, Speech simulation and speech science

Speech synthesis research has been transformed in recent years through the exploitation of speech corpora - both for statistical modelling and as a source of signals for concatenative synthesis. This revolution in methodology and the new techniques it brings calls into question the received wisdom that better computer voice output will come from a better understanding of how humans produce speech. This paper discusses the relationship between this new technology of simulated speech and the traditional aims of speech science. The paper suggests that the goal of speech simulation frees engineers from inadequate linguistic and physiological descriptions of speech. But at the same time, it leaves speech scientists free to return to their proper goal of building a computational model of human speech production

Words and Subwords: Phonology in a Piece-Based Syntactic Morphology

The goal of this dissertation is to take generalizations made in a variety of phonological and morphological theories and account for them in a piece-based syntactic theory of morphology. The theories discussed are Cyclic phonology, Lexical Phonology (and Stratal Optimality Theory), Prosodic Hierarchy Theories, and Syntactic Spell-Out Only theories. Phonological and morphological generalizations from these theories include the cyclic/non-cyclic distinction of phonological blocks and morphemes, ``grammatical\u27\u27 words and phonological words (their equivalence and apparent mismatches), incorporation of clitics into word level phonology, morpheme-sensitive phonological processes, and the relationship between syntactic spell-out phases and phonological domains. I present a framework within the theory of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, et seq.) in which I account for these generalizations in several ways. I relate as much phonological structure to morphosyntactic structure as possible. However, there are several phonological phenomena which cannot be accounted for by syntactic structure alone. To account for these phenomena, I propose that the syntax feeds information in chunks to PF (cyclic spell-out) but that the morphology and phonology may operate on that information, creating mismatches between syntactic structure and phonological domains. For the cyclic/non-cyclic distinction of phonology, there are mismatches between syntactic spell-out domains and phonological interactions at the subword level. I propose a ``phonocyclic buffer\u27\u27 into which phonologically cyclic exponents are added and over which the cyclic phonology is calculated. This is illustrated with data from yer lowering and yer deletion in Slovak and Polish, English stress and derivational affixes, and Spanish depalatalization. For the relationship between ``grammatical\u27\u27 words and phonological/prosodic words, I propose an interface function relating morphosyntactic words (M-Words; non-minimal complex heads of the syntax) and phonological words. The basic relationship is illustrated with data from English voicing assimilation and German devoicing. I argue against two types of apparent mismatches between M-Words and phonological words, such as those proposed for Japanese ``Aoyagi\u27\u27 prefixes, Vietnamese interleaving word order, Plains Cree polysynthetic verbs, and Spanish compounds. I find some of these apparent mismatches can be handled elsewhere in the phonological system, while others are examples of complex syntactic structure (but not of mismatches between syntactic and phonological structure). I also present an operation which can create phonological words out of non-M-Word configurations, dubbed Stray Terminal Grouping. This is illustrated with data from Bilua, Standard English, and African American Vernacular English. Regarding the behavior of clitics (independent syntactic pieces which are phonological dependent on a host), I find that their behavior is not predetermined or memorized, but is dependent on the morphosyntactic context in which they are derived. I show cases from Turkish, Maltese, and Makassarese in which morphemes variably behave like clitics or affixes depending on their context. I argue that this variable behavior may be determined either by syntactic or morphological operations. Finally, I investigate two types of morpheme-sensitive phonological processes, morphophonological rules and morpheme/morpheme readjustments, illustrated with data from Slavic derived imperfect raising, German umlaut, and Kashaya decrement and palatalization. I argue that these processes are underlyingly phonological in nature, but are activated by morphological diacritics. This activation can happen during two different stages of linearization; Morpheme/morpheme readjustments occur at the level of subword concatenation while morphophonological rules occur at the level of subword chaining. This division accounts for the difference in locality conditions between the two types of processes. The conclusion of this dissertation is that we can account for these phonological generalizations in a piece-based syntactic framework, but not by syntax alone. Rather, it must be a combination of syntactic, morphological, and phonological operations which combine to create the phonological output

Unraveling the Contribution of Morphological Awareness to Reading: A Longitudinal Analysis of Word-Level Outcomes for Latent Profiles of Young Readers

Theories of English literacy development assume that both phonological awareness and morphological awareness are metalinguistic skills involved in word identification. While there is robust empirical evidence supporting the key role of phonological awareness in reading, there is a smaller – though growing - body of empirical evidence suggesting morphological awareness makes a unique contribution to word identification. Much of the morphological awareness research has focused on its contribution to decoding in general; analysis of its specific role in the identification of different word types (i.e., morphologically complex words compared to non-morphologically complex words; real words compared to pseudowords) is inconsistent and limited. This study aims to fill this gap by examining Grade 2 students’ accuracy reading a variety of word types, controlling for morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and verbal cognitive ability. Results suggest that morphological awareness contributes to the recognition of morphologically complex and non-morphologically complex real words, but not to pseudowords. Also crucial to the field of morphological awareness research is a more developed understanding of the reader. Latent profile analysis was used to empirically determine unique student profiles of phonological and morphological awareness ability. Reading outcomes (e.g., decoding accuracy and reading comprehension) were analyzed longitudinally for each profile, across Grades 2-4, a critical developmental period when learning to read. Students in the morphologically dominant group and the phonologically dominant group performed similarly across time on all outcome measures. Students with commensurate development of these skills outperformed the other two groups on all measures at all time points, suggesting both skills are needed for higher levels of reading achievement during elementary school grade levels. Because many students struggle learning to read, this finding is useful in identifying the different skill profiles that are more or less at-risk for future reading outcomes

Simulating vocal learning of spoken language: Beyond imitation

Computational approaches have an important role to play in understanding the complex process of speech acquisition, in general, and have recently been popular in studies of vocal learning in particular. In this article we suggest that two significant problems associated with imitative vocal learning of spoken language, the speaker normalisation and phonological correspondence problems, can be addressed by linguistically grounded auditory perception. In particular, we show how the articulation of consonant-vowel syllables may be learnt from auditory percepts that can represent either individual utterances by speakers with different vocal tract characteristics or ideal phonetic realisations. The result is an optimisation-based implementation of vocal exploration – incorporating semantic, auditory, and articulatory signals – that can serve as a basis for simulating vocal learning beyond imitation

Systematicity, motivatedness, and the structure of the lexicon

For the majority of the 20th century, one of the central dogmas of linguistics was that, at the level of the lexicon, the relationship between words and meanings is arbitrary: there is nothing about the word ‘dog’ for example that makes it a particularly good label for a dog. However, in recent years it has become increasingly recognized that non-arbitrary associations between words and meanings make up a small, but potentially important portion of the lexicon. This thesis focuses on exploring the effect that non-arbitrary associations between words and meanings have on language learning and the structure of the lexicon. Based on a critical analysis of the existing literature, and the results of a number of experiments presented here, I suggest that the overall prevalence and developmental timing of two forms of non-arbitrariness in the lexicon– systematicity and motivatedness – is shaped by the pressure for languages to be learnable while remaining expressive. The effect of pressures for learnability and expressivity have been recognized to have important implications for the structure of language generally, but have so far not been applied to explain structure at the level of the lexicon. The central claim presented in this dissertation is that features of the perceptual and cognitive organization of humans results in specific types of associations between words and meanings being easier for naïve learners to acquire than others, and that the pressure for languages to be learnable results in lexica that leverage these human biases. Taking advantage of these biases, however, induces constraints on the structure of the lexicon that, left unchecked, might limit its expressivity or penalize subsequent learning. Thus, lexica are structured such that early-acquired words are able to leverage these biases while avoiding the limitations imposed by those biases when they are extended past a certain point

An integrated theory of language production and comprehension

Currently, production and comprehension are regarded as quite distinct in accounts of language processing. In rejecting this dichotomy, we instead assert that producing and understanding are interwoven, and that this interweaving is what enables people to predict themselves and each other. We start by noting that production and comprehension are forms of action and action perception. We then consider the evidence for interweaving in action, action perception, and joint action, and explain such evidence in terms of prediction. Specifically, we assume that actors construct forward models of their actions before they execute those actions, and that perceivers of others' actions covertly imitate those actions, then construct forward models of those actions. We use these accounts of action, action perception, and joint action to develop accounts of production, comprehension, and interactive language. Importantly, they incorporate well-defined levels of linguistic representation (such as semantics, syntax, and phonology). We show (a) how speakers and comprehenders use covert imitation and forward modeling to make predictions at these levels of representation, (b) how they interweave production and comprehension processes, and (c) how they use these predictions to monitor the upcoming utterances. We show how these accounts explain a range of behavioral and neuroscientific data on language processing and discuss some of the implications of our proposal

Vaihtelu nivhin kielen konsonanttialternaatiossa

Nivhin kieli on Venäjän Kaukoidässä puhuttava isolaattikieli. Kieli on vakavasti uhanalainen, eikä se enää siirry lapsille. Arviot nykyisestä puhujamäärästä vaihtelevat joistakin kymmenistä satoihin. Tutkielmassa kartoitettiin nivhin kielelle ominaista alkukonsonanttien alternaatiota (Consonant Mutation) ja siinä esiintyvää vaihtelua. Alternaatio tapahtuu samapaikkaisten klusiilien ja frikatiivien välillä, esim. cus pəɲx ’lihakeitto’ mutta cʰo vəɲx ’kalakeitto’. Fonologisen ympäristön lisäksi alternaatio vaatii tietyn morfosyntaktisen kontekstin. Tutkimuksen tarkoituksena oli selvittää alternaation säännönmukaisuutta nykyisten nivhin puhujien kielessä. Omien kenttätyöhavaintojeni perusteella oli syytä epäillä, että nykyisillä puhujilla alternaatiot eivät toteudu yhtä johdonmukaisesti kuin kirjallisuudessa on tavallisesti esitetty. Tukea tälle hypoteesille oli löydettävissä kelttiläisten kielten vastaavankaltaisissa alternaatioissa havaitusta kehityksestä kielen käytön vähentyessä. Lisäksi oli ennalta tiedossa, että resonanttien jälkeisessä ympäristössäalternaatiossa on runsaasti vaihtelua. Aineistona oli kahdeksan vuosina 2002–2013 ilmestynyttä Sound Materials of the Nivkh Language -sarjan julkaisua, jotka sisälsivät yhteensä noin viisi ja puoli tuntia nivhinkielisiä keskusteluja transkriptioineen. Näistä poimittiin kaikkiaan yli 2 300 konsonanttialternaatiokontekstia, jotka tallennettiin tietokantaan laajempaa tarkastelua varten. Alternaation toteutumista vertailtiin puhujakohtaisesti, erilaisissa syntaktisissa rakenteissa ja eri äänteiden välillä. Tutkimus vahvistaa resonanttien jälkeisen alternaation heikon ennustettavuuden. Muissa tapauksissa yleisten sääntöjen vastaisia muotoja oli vajaat 7 prosenttia, joista osalle löytyi mahdollisia selittäviä tekijöitä, kuten leksikaalisia poikkeuksia. Vaille selitystä tapauksista jäivät sen verran harvat, että niiden osalta pienessä, normittamattomassa kielessä esiintyvää luontaista variaatiota voidaan pitää todennäköisempänä selittävänä tekijänä kuin kielen attritiota, vaikka nuorimpien puhujien kohdalla tätäkään ei voida sulkea pois.Nikvh is a language isolate spoken in the Russian Far East. The language is severely endangered and it is no longer transmitted to children. Estimates on the current number of speakers vary from tens to hundreds. The study examines the alternation of initial consonants in Nivkh (Consonant Mutation, CM) and the variation occurring in it. Consonant Mutation takes place between homorganic plosives and fricatives, e.g. cus pəɲx ’meat soup’ but cʰo vəɲx ’fish soup’. In addition to the phonological environment, it also requires a certain morphosyntactic context. The aim of the study was to determine the regularity of CM in the speech of the current Nivkh speakers. My own fieldwork results had led me to suppose that the modern speakers would not exhibit CM as regularly as it has been traditionally described in the literature. Developments observed in similar alternations in obsolescent Celtic languages gave support to this hypothesis. It had also been documented that in Nivkh CM, variation is abundant in post-sonorant environments. My data consisted of eight volumes of the series Sound Materials of the Nivkh Language, published between 2002 and 2013. Altogether they contained about five and a half hours of conversations in Nivkh and their transcriptions. From these, more than 2 300 contexts of CM were retrieved and saved to a database for further analysis. The realization of CM was compared between speakers, in different syntactic structures, and for different alternating sounds. The study confirms the weak predictability of post-sonorant CM. In other cases, less than 7 % of forms were at odds with the traditional rules, and even some of these could be attributed to explaining factors such as lexical exceptions. Some anomalies were left unexplained, but their frequency was low enough to conclude that the natural variation occurring in a small language without a prestige norm is a more probable explanation than language attrition, even though the latter may contribute to the variation in case of the youngest speakers

Spelling-sound knowledge in the context of multilingualism: : is lexical access selective or nonselective?

TCC(graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Letras Inglês.Muito ainda se discute a respeito da organização do léxico mental e de como ocorre o acesso à seleção das palavras durante a compreensão e produção da linguagem. Dessa forma, estudos na área de aprendizado de segunda língua buscam investigar o acesso lexical em indivíduos bilíngues e como se dá a seletividade das palavras em um contexto em que mais de uma língua pode ser selecionada para utilização. Através de um experimento de priming fonológico do par linguístico coreano-inglês, Lee et al. (2005) revelaram a facilitação na leitura das palavras alvo, indicando não-seletividade no acesso lexical de palavras homófonas que não compartilham informações ortográficas. Dessa forma concluiu-se que a L2 compartilha informações fonológicas com a L1 e o conhecimento da relação grafema-fonema é ativado automaticamente, independente da forma linguística apresentada. No entanto, no que diz respeito a indivíduos multilingues, pouco se sabe a respeito da organização de seu léxico mental, apenas que quanto mais línguas interagem no léxico, mais complexa é sua organização (Toassi, 2016). Portanto, considerando a necessidade de mais estudos na área, o presente estudo busca replicar parcialmente o estudo de Lee et al. (2005), no contexto do multilinguismo, visando compreender se os mesmos resultados se aplicam a indivíduos falantes nativos de português brasileiro, falantes de inglês como L2 e aprendizes de coreano como L3.A lot is still discussed about the organization of the mental lexicon, and how lexical access takes place in word selection during the comprehension and production of language. Studies in the area of second language learning seek to investigate lexical access in bilingual individuals and how words are chosen, in a context in which more than one language can be selected. Through an experiment of phonological priming with Korean-English bilinguals, Lee et al. (2005) revealed facilitation in word reading comprehension, which indicates non-selectivity in lexical access for homophone words that do not share orthographic information. Thus, the authors concluded that the L2 shares phonological information with the L1, and the spelling-sound knowledge is activated automatically, regardless of the linguistic form presented. However, concerning multilingual individuals, even less is known about the organization of their mental lexicon, only that the more the languages that interact in their lexicon, more complex is its organization (Toassi, 2016). Therefore, considering the need of more studies in the area, the present study partially replicates the study by Lee et al. (2005), in the context of multilingualism, seeking to comprehend whether or not the same results apply to native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, speakers of English as an L2, learners of Korean as an L3

Kayardild Morphology, Phonology and Morphosyntax

Kayardild possesses one of, if not the, most exuberant systems of morphological concord known to linguists, and a phonological system which is intricately sensitive to its morphology. This dissertation provides a comprehensive description of the phonology of Kayardild, an investigation of its phonetics, its intonation, and a formal analysis of its inflectional morphology. A key component of the latter is the existence of a ‘morphomic’ level of representation intermediate between morphosyntactic features and underlying phonological forms. Chapter 2 introduces the segmental inventory of Kayardild, the phonetic realisations of surface segments, and their phonotactics. Chapter 3 provides an introduction to the empirical facts of Kayardild word structure, outlining the kinds of morphs of which words are composed, their formal shapes and their combinations. Chapter 4 treats the segmental phonology of Kayardild. After a survey of the mappings between underlying and (lexical) surface forms, the primary topic is the interaction of the phonology with morphology, although major generalisations identifiable in the phonology itself are also identified and discussed. Chapter 5 examines Kayardild stress, and presents a constraint based analysis, before turning to an empirical and analytical discussion of intonation. Chapter 6, on the syntax and morphosyntax of Kayardild, is most substantial chapter of the dissertation. In association with the examination of a large corpus of new and newly collated data, mutually compatible analyses of the syntax and morphosyntactic features of Kayardild are built up and compared against less favourable alternatives. A critical review of Evans’ (1995a) analysis of similar phenomena is also provided. Chapter 7 turns to the realisational morphology — the component of the grammar which ties the morphosyntax to the phonology, by realising morphosyntactic features structures as morphomic representations, then morphomic representations as underlying phonological representations. A formalism is proposed in order to express these mappings within a constraint based grammar. In addition to enriching our understanding of Kayardild, the dissertation presents data and analyses which will be of interest for theories of the interface between morphology on the one hand and phonology and syntax on the other, as well as for morphological and phonological theory more narrowly