Individual Differences in Speech Production and Perception

Inter-individual variation in speech is a topic of increasing interest both in human sciences and speech technology. It can yield important insights into biological, cognitive, communicative, and social aspects of language. Written by specialists in psycholinguistics, phonetics, speech development, speech perception and speech technology, this volume presents experimental and modeling studies that provide the reader with a deep understanding of interspeaker variability and its role in speech processing, speech development, and interspeaker interactions. It discusses how theoretical models take into account individual behavior, explains why interspeaker variability enriches speech communication, and summarizes the limitations of the use of speaker information in forensics

Interweaving letters and sounds : the impact of phonics instruction in English on the oral production and symbolic representation of sounds among university-level L2 English learners

The study described in this thesis was conducted with a number of L1 Spanish learners of L2 English who were students of English Pronunciation Practice (EPP), an undergraduate pronunciation course taught in English Teaching, Translation and Research programs at Facultad de Lenguas (FL), Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (UNC). It was aimed at investigating whether explicit phonics instruction contributes positively to the oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words of a number of university-level L1 Spanish learners of L2 English. A quasi-experimental research designed was used and the data obtained were analyzed with a quantitative method. The participating students were divided into experimental and control groups. The total number of students whose performance was analyzed was 62 (experimental = 33 and control = 29). Both groups were pretested on oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words. Next, the experimental group received a six-lesson phonics instruction focusing on the pronunciation and transcription of six specific orthographic combinations. After that both groups were posttested in terms similar to the pretest. All the data collected were analyzed using the dependent t test (also known as paired t test) to assess the difference between the averages obtained in the pretest and posttest conditions by each group. This was complemented with a variability analysis conducted to determine the degree of difficulty caused by the different combinations to the participating students. The results obtained from this study confirm the hypothesis that students who received explicit phonics instruction performed better in terms of oral production and phonemic transcription of unfamiliar words containing the orthographic combinations chosen than did students who did not receive such instruction. Pedagogical implications, practical applications and directions for future research are given

Problem space of modern society: philosophical-communicative and pedagogical interpretations. Part II

This collective monograph offers the description of philosophical bases of definition of communicative competence and pedagogical conditions for the formation of communication skills. The authors of individual chapters have chosen such point of view for the topic which they considered as the most important and specific for their field of study using the methods of logical and semantic analysis of concepts, the method of reflection, textual reconstruction and comparative analysis. The theoretical and applied problems of modern society are investigated in the context of philosophical, communicative and pedagogical interpretations

Media Influence on Implicit and Explicit Language Attitudes

Sociolinguists often assume that media influences language attitudes, but that assumption has not been tested using a methodology that can attribute cause. This dissertation examines implicit and explicit attitudes about American Southern English (ASE) and the influence television has upon them. Adapting methodologies and constructs from sociolinguistics, social psychology, and communications studies, I test listener attitudes before and after exposure to stereotypically unintelligent and counterstereotypically intelligent representations of Southern-accented speakers in scripted fictional television. The first attitudes experiment tests implicit attitudes through an Implicit Association Test (IAT). This experiment also serves to test sociolinguistic use of the IAT with a more holistic accent as opposed to single linguistic features. The second attitudes experiment tests the effect of television exposure on explicit attitudes towards an ASE-accented research assistant (RA). The experiments also investigate the influence of listener knowledge of regional origin of actors (speaker information), listener perception of how closely television represents the world around them (perceived realism), listener exposure to the South, and listener identity. The hypothesis is that those who hear counterstereotypically intelligent Southern characters will rate a Southern-accented research assistant higher in intelligence than those who hear stereotypically unintelligent Southern characters. The same pattern will hold in the auditory-based IAT. Accents in both the implicit and explicit attitudes experiments are viewed holistically, including multiple features rather than focusing on the most salient features. To clarify results related to the speaker information and perceived realism variables, a separate experiment tests how successful listeners are at differentiating natives from performers of regionally accented American English. Results indicate that televised representations of Southern accents affect explicit, but not implicit attitudes. Participants who heard intelligent Southern characters rated an ASE-accented RA higher in competence than those who heard unintelligent Southern characters. Several demographic variables influenced results regardless of the stereotypicality of the speakers that the listener heard in the television clips, including self-identified race and exposure to Southern television. While implicit attitudes were not affected by television in this case, the IAT was successfully adapted for use with a holistic accent rather than a single feature and also captures associations between an L1 regional accent and a specific stereotype of that accent. I discuss these results in regard to language attitudes at large as well as their implications for an indirect language change model, the Associative-Propositional Evaluation (APE) model of attitudes, and cultivation theory. The dissertation argues that scripted television does influence language attitudes, but in more complex ways than a simple cause-and-effect relationship. While television can affect explicit attitudes towards individual speakers, implicit attitude shift is more difficult and may need more time and/or need a direct cause for a shift to occur. Regardless of media influence, language attitudes are affected by identity and demographic features listeners bring into the interaction with speakers.PHDLinguisticsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146019/1/heheaton_1.pd

A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

Design of a Controlled Language for Critical Infrastructures Protection

We describe a project for the construction of controlled language for critical infrastructures protection (CIP). This project originates from the need to coordinate and categorize the communications on CIP at the European level. These communications can be physically represented by official documents, reports on incidents, informal communications and plain e-mail. We explore the application of traditional library science tools for the construction of controlled languages in order to achieve our goal. Our starting point is an analogous work done during the sixties in the field of nuclear science known as the Euratom Thesaurus.JRC.G.6-Security technology assessmen

The role of phonology in visual word recognition: evidence from Chinese

Posters - Letter/Word Processing V: abstract no. 5024The hypothesis of bidirectional coupling of orthography and phonology predicts that phonology plays a role in visual word recognition, as observed in the effects of feedforward and feedback spelling to sound consistency on lexical decision. However, because orthography and phonology are closely related in alphabetic languages (homophones in alphabetic languages are usually orthographically similar), it is difficult to exclude an influence of orthography on phonological effects in visual word recognition. Chinese languages contain many written homophones that are orthographically dissimilar, allowing a test of the claim that phonological effects can be independent of orthographic similarity. We report a study of visual word recognition in Chinese based on a mega-analysis of lexical decision performance with 500 characters. The results from multiple regression analyses, after controlling for orthographic frequency, stroke number, and radical frequency, showed main effects of feedforward and feedback consistency, as well as interactions between these variables and phonological frequency and number of homophones. Implications of these results for resonance models of visual word recognition are discussed.postprin