The Influence of the Mother Tongue and of Musical Experience on Rhythm Perception

Native language and musical experience are both said to influence our perception of rhythm; however, the study of the influence of native language on rhythm perception is limited. This thesis tested if and how linguistic and musical experiences affect our rhythm perception. The term rhythm, as used here, is identical to the musical term, metre, which refers to a recurring regular pattern of prominent and non-prominent elements. First, this thesis examined language-specific rhythms in English, Japanese, and Russian to explore whether listeners are better at detecting irregularities in rhythms that frequently occur in their native language, compared to those that are less frequent. A review of the existing literature and an original, corpus-based examination show that English and Russian rhythms are based on a relatively regular alternation of prominent and non-prominent syllables, whereas Japanese rhythm is based on a subtle alternation of prominent and non-prominent morae, less regular than that of English and Russian rhythms. Similarly, culture-specific musical rhythms are discussed to examine the influence of musical experience on rhythm perception. It is shown that, in traditional Japanese and Russian musical works, non-binary rhythms are prevalent, while they are relatively rare in English music. A series of perceptual experiments with both English, Japanese, and Russian-speaking musicians and non-musicians showed that musical experience affects rhythm perception but is less effective than linguistic experience in shaping responses to rhythm irregularities. These perception experiments showed that Japanese speakers perceived binary and non-binary rhythms more accurately than English and Russian speakers, while there were no significant differences between English and Russian speakers. In addition, it was found that clashes (rhythm irregularities caused by successive prominent elements) were less tolerated than lapses (rhythm irregularities caused by sequences of non-prominent elements). The experimental results showed that all participants tolerated lapses more readily than clashes, which suggests that clashes lead to dysrhythmic sequences that are easier to detect than those of lapses

Dialectal phonology constrains the phonetics of prominence

Accentual prominence has well-documented effects on various phonetic properties, including timing, vowel quality, amplitude, and pitch. These cues can exist in trading relationships and can differ in magnitude in different languages. Less is understood about how phonetic cues to accentuation surface under different phonological constraints, such as those posed by segmental phonology, aspects of the prosodic hierarchy, and intonational phonology. Dialectal comparisons offer a valuable window on these issues, because dialects of a language share basic aspects of structure and function, but can differ in key segmental and suprasegmental constraints which may affect the cues that realise accentual prominence. We compared the realisation of trochaic words (e.g. cheesy, picky) in accented/unaccented and phrase-final/non-final positions in two dialects of British English, Standard Southern British English, and Standard Scottish English as spoken in Glasgow. We found generally shallower prominence gradients for Glasgow than SSBE with respect to intensity and duration, and very little evidence of accentual lengthening of vowels in Glasgow, compared to robust effects in SSBE. In contrast, phrase-finality had similar effects across the two dialects. The differences observed illustrate how the expression of accentual prominence reflects and reveals the different segmental and intonational systems that operate within dialects of the same language

The Interaction of Domain-initial Effects with Lexical Stress: Acoustic Data from English, Spanish, and Portuguese

The phonetic implementation of domain-initial boundaries has gained considerable attention in the literature. However, most studies of the phenomenon have investigated small samples of articulatory data in which target syllables were lexically prominent and/or phrasally accented, introducing important potential confounds. This dissertation tackles these issues by examining how domain-initial effects operate on the acoustic properties of fully unstressed word-initial CV syllables in phrasally unaccented words. Similar materials were designed for a reading task in which 14 speakers of English, Spanish and Portuguese, languages that differ in how lexical prominence affects segmental makeup, took part. Results from the acoustic analyses show that domain-initial effects extend further than previously suggested, and that these interact with lexical stress in language-specific ways. These findings highlight how the marking of domain-initial boundaries relates to both the prominence and grouping functions of prosody, and suggest a linguistic, rather than purely biomechanical, motivation for domain-initial effects

ニホンゴ リズム コウゾウ ニ オケル ポーズ ゼンボイン ノ ユウヒョウセイ

学位記番号 : 甲第28号（旧）大阪外国語大学で授与された博士論文であ

Gemination and degemination in English affixation: Investigating the interplay between morphology, phonology and phonetics

In English, phonological double consonants only occur across morphological boundaries, for example, in affixation (e.g. in unnatural, innumerous). There are two possibilities for the phonetic realization of these morphological geminates: Either the phonological double is realized with a longer duration than a phonological singleton (gemination), or it is of the same duration as a singleton consonant (degemination). The present book provides the first large-scale empirical study on the gemination with the five English affixes un-, locative in-, negative in-, dis- and -ly. Using corpus and experimental data, the predictions of various approaches to the morpho-phonological and the morpho-phonetic interface are tested. By finding out which approach can account best for the gemination pattern of English affixed words, important implications about the interplay between morphology, phonology and phonetics are drawn

Investigating the interplay between morphology, phonology and phonetics

In English, phonological double consonants only occur across morphological boundaries, for example, in affixation (e.g. in unnatural, innumerous). There are two possibilities for the phonetic realization of these morphological geminates: Either the phonological double is realized with a longer duration than a phonological singleton (gemination), or it is of the same duration as a singleton consonant (degemination). The present book provides the first large-scale empirical study on the gemination with the five English affixes un-, locative in-, negative in-, dis- and -ly. Using corpus and experimental data, the predictions of various approaches to the morpho-phonological and the morpho-phonetic interface are tested. By finding out which approach can account best for the gemination pattern of English affixed words, important implications about the interplay between morphology, phonology and phonetics are drawn

Listeners integrate pitch and durational cues to prosodic structure in word categorization

In this study we investigate how listeners perceive vowel duration as a cue to voicing based on changes in pitch height, using a 2AFC task in which they categorized a target word from a vowel duration continuum as coat or code. We consider this issue in light of (1) psychoacoustic perceptual interactions between pitch and duration and (2) compensatory effects for prosodically driven patterning of pitch and duration in the accentual/prominence-marking system of English. In two experiments we found that listeners' interpretation of pitch as a psychoacoustic, or prosodic event is dependent on continuum step size and range. In Experiment 1 listeners exemplified the expected psychoacoustic pattern in categorization. In Experiment 2, we altered the duration continuum in an attempt to highlight pitch as a language-specific prosodic property and found that listeners do indeed compensate for prosodically driven patterning of pitch and duration. The results thus highlight flexibility in listeners' interpretation of these acoustic dimensions. We argue that, in the right circumstances, prosodic patterns influence listeners' interpretation of pitch and expectations about vowel duration in the perception of isolated words. Results are discussed in terms of more general implications for listeners' perception of prosodic and segmental cues, and possibilities for cross-linguistic extension

Gemination and degemination in English affixation: Investigating the interplay between morphology, phonology and phonetics

In English, phonological double consonants only occur across morphological boundaries, for example, in affixation (e.g. in unnatural, innumerous). There are two possibilities for the phonetic realization of these morphological geminates: Either the phonological double is realized with a longer duration than a phonological singleton (gemination), or it is of the same duration as a singleton consonant (degemination). The present book provides the first large-scale empirical study on the gemination with the five English affixes un-, locative in-, negative in-, dis- and -ly. Using corpus and experimental data, the predictions of various approaches to the morpho-phonological and the morpho-phonetic interface are tested. By finding out which approach can account best for the gemination pattern of English affixed words, important implications about the interplay between morphology, phonology and phonetics are drawn