Acoustic correlates of phrase-internal lexical boundaries in Dutch

The aim of this study was to determine if Dutch speakers reliably signal phrase-internal lexical boundaries, and if so, how. Six speakers recorded 4 pairs of phonemically identical strong-weak-strong (SWS) strings with matching syllable boundaries but mismatching intended word boundaries (e.g. reis # pastei versus reispas # tij, or more broadly C1V2(C)#C2V2(C)C3V3(C) vs. C1V2(C)C2V2(C)#C3V3(C)). An Analysis of Variance revealed 3 acoustic parameters that were significantly greater in S#WS items (C2 DURATION, RIME1 DURATION, C3 BURST AMPLITUDE) and 5 parameters that were significantly greater in the SW#S items (C2 VOT, C3 DURATION, RIME2 DURATION, RIME3 DURATION, and V2 AMPLITUDE). Additionally, center of gravity measurements suggested that the [s] to [t] coarticulation was greater in reis # pa[st]ei versus reispa[s] # [t]ij. Finally, a Logistic Regression Analysis revealed that the 3 parameters (RIME1 DURATION, RIME2 DURATION, and C3 DURATION) contributed most reliably to a S#WS versus SW#S classification

Prosodic boundary phenomena

Synopsis: In spoken language comprehension, the hearer is faced with a more or less continuous stream of auditory information. Prosodic cues, such as pitch movement, pre-boundary lengthening, and pauses, incrementally help to organize the incoming stream of information into prosodic phrases, which often coincide with syntactic units. Prosody is hence central to spoken language comprehension and some models assume that the speaker produces prosody in a consistent and hierarchical fashion. While there is manifold empirical evidence that prosodic boundary cues are reliably and robustly produced and effectively guide spoken sentence comprehension across different populations and languages, the underlying mechanisms and the nature of the prosody-syntax interface still have not been identified sufficiently. This is also reflected in the fact that most models on sentence processing completely lack prosodic information. This edited book volume is grounded in a workshop that was held in 2021 at the annual conference of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Sprachwissenschaft (DGfS). The five chapters cover selected topics on the production and comprehension of prosodic cues in various populations and languages, all focusing in particular on processing of prosody at structurally relevant prosodic boundaries. Specifically, the book comprises cross-linguistic evidence as well as evidence from non-native listeners, infants, adults, and elderly speakers, highlighting the important role of prosody in both language production and comprehension

Prosodic description: An introduction for fieldworkers

This article provides an introductory tutorial on prosodic features such as tone and accent for researchers working on little-known languages. It specifically addresses the needs of non-specialists and thus does not presuppose knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of prosodic features. Instead, it intends to introduce the uninitiated reader to a field often shied away from because of its (in part real, but in part also just imagined) complexities. It consists of a concise overview of the basic phonetic phenomena (section 2) and the major categories and problems of their functional and phonological analysis (sections 3 and 4). Section 5 gives practical advice for documenting and analyzing prosodic features in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente

Native Language Influence in the Segmentation of a Novel Language

Published online: 04 Apr 2016.A major problem in second language acquisition (SLA) is the segmentation of fluent speech in the target language, i.e., detecting the boundaries of phonological constituents like words and phrases in the speech stream. To this end, among a variety of cues, people extensively use prosody and statistical regularities. We examined the role of pitch, duration, and transitional probabilities (TPs) between adjacent syllables in the segmentation of a novel language by native speakers of German and compared their responses with the segmentation by the listeners with a phonologically different native language: Italian. We used an artificial language with different prosodic cues marking the boundaries of statistically defined words. In artificial-language learning experiments, we compared how Germans and Italians use prosodic and statistical cues for segmenting continuous speech. We show that native phonology modulates the processing of prosodic cues in novel languages. While native speakers of Italian interpret prosodic cues at both the word and the phrasal level, native speakers of German interpret them exclusively at the phrasal level. Phrasal prosody can facilitate the segmentation of a novel language when prosodic and statistical cues lead to the same segmentation solution. Word-level prosody does not necessarily facilitate segmentation, but it can disrupt it when statistical and prosodic cues lead to different segmentation solutions.The research leading to these results was supported by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC Grant Agreement Number 269502 (PASCAL), by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany, and by the Basque Foundation of Science, Spain

Differential contribution of prosodic cues in the native and non-native segmentation of French speech

This is the published version, also available here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/lp-2012-0018.This study investigates the use of prosodic information in the segmentation of French speech by mid-level and high-level English second/foreign language (L2) learners of French and native French listeners. The results of two word-monitoring tasks, one with natural stimuli and one with resynthesized stimuli, show that as L2 learners become more proficient in French, they go from parsing accented syllables as word-initial to parsing them as word-final, but unlike native listeners, they use duration increase but not fundamental frequencyx (F0) rise as a cue to word-final boundaries. These results are attributed to: (1) the L2 learners' native language, in which F0 rise is a reliable cue to word-initial boundaries but not word-final boundaries; (2) the co-occurrence of F0 and duration cues in word-final syllables in French, rendering L2 learners' use of F0 rise unnecessary for locating word-final boundaries; and (3) the optional marking of word-initial boundaries by F0 cues in French, thus making it difficult for non-native listeners to tease the two types of F0 rise apart. We argue that these factors prevent English listeners from attending to F0 rise as a cue to word-final boundaries in French, irrespective of their proficiency in French

Prominence in Indonesian Stress, Phrases, and Boundaries

Many (Western) languages have word-based stress, which entails that one, predictable syllable per word is more prominent than all the other syllables in that word. Some linguists claim that such stresses also occur in Indonesian. In this article, we set out to investigate that claim using experimental, phonetic methods. The results confirm our hypothesis that Indonesian lacks word-based stress. Yet, we do observe some kind of prominence pattern. In the last part of this article, we search for the phonological phenomenon that generates this pattern, exploring the level of the phrase to see whether phrasal accents or boundary markers are likely candidates

Discourse markers and the segmentation of spontaneous speech - The case of Swedish men 'but/and/so'

Prosodic and lexical correlates of ‘clause-like’ and ‘paragraph-like’ boundaries associated with the Swedish discourse marker men ‘but/and/so’ are examined. Men-tokens in spontaneous monologues were labelled as to their boundary-status, first using text-only data. The ‘strong’ tokens (labelled identically by all labellers) were subsequently seen to be correlated with clear differences in the prosodic and lexical parameters examined. This tendency was not found for the corresponding ‘weak’ tokens which were subsequently relabelled using both text and speech nor for the data-base as a whole. A test using a neural network trained using strong tokens is seen to be able to correctly categorize 90% of the strong men-tokens as to their associated boundary-type. The results show that discourse markers along with their prosodic and lexical correlates constitute a constellation of important information for understanding how segmentation of speech is produced and understoo