Fluency in dialogue: Turn‐taking behavior shapes perceived fluency in native and nonnative speech

Fluency is an important part of research on second language learning, but most research on language proficiency typically has not included oral fluency as part of interaction, even though natural communication usually occurs in conversations. The present study considered aspects of turn-taking behavior as part of the construct of fluency and investigated whether these aspects differentially influence perceived fluency ratings of native and non-native speech. Results from two experiments using acoustically manipulated speech showed that, in native speech, too ‘eager’ (interrupting a question with a fast answer) and too ‘reluctant’ answers (answering slowly after a long turn gap) negatively affected fluency ratings. However, in non-native speech, only too ‘reluctant’ answers led to lower fluency ratings. Thus, we demonstrate that acoustic properties of dialogue are perceived as part of fluency. By adding to our current understanding of dialogue fluency, these lab-based findings carry implications for language teaching and assessmen

Pausing and sentence stress in children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy

Introduction: Children with dysarthria due to cerebral palsy (CP) can experience problems manipulating intensity, fundamental frequency and duration to signal sentence stress in an utterance. Pauses have been identified as a potential additional cue for stress marking, which could compensate for this deficit. Objective: This study aimed to determine whether children use pauses to signal stress placement, and whether this differs between typically-developing children and those with CP. Methods: Six children with CP and eight typically developing children produced utterances with stress on target words in two different positions. Pauses before and after the stressed target words were analyzed in terms of number, location and duration. Results: Results showed that both groups inserted pauses into their utterances. However, neither group used pause location or duration in a systematic manner to signal the position of stressed words. Conclusions: The results suggest that pausing was not used strategically by either group to signal sentence stress. Further research is necessary to explore the value of pausing as a cue to stress marking in general and as a potential compensatory strategy for speakers with dysarthria

The Anglo-Germanic and Latin concepts of politeness and time in cross-atlantic business communication: from cultural misunderstanding to management success

Bond and Hofstede (1989) have demonstrated that culture has a large impact on international business success. In Western cultures it would relate to individualism and in Oriental cultures to Confucian dynamism. Their conception of politeness as a leading principle in human relations and their use of time seems unlike that of Western cultures. Within the Western hemisphere, however, Anglo-Germanic and Latin cultures do not share the same concepts of politeness and time. Spanish business letters seem to be overpolite compared to American ones. Whereas Dutch people stick to one topic at the same time in their negotiations, Italians tend to interrupt to tackle as many issues as possible. Anglo-Germanic and Latin cultures seem to differ in their means of expression of politeness in negotiating and writing. The main source  seems to be the striking difference in power distance between Anglo-Germanic and Latin management cultures, a phenonomenon which was observed in Hofstede’s first study with IBM (1980). Irrespective of its origin, politeness or the presumed lack of it could easily lead to intercultural misunderstanding.Hofstede’s work can be used as a framework to analyse some of the potential sources of misunderstanding caused by such differences. The purpose of this paper is to summarize some data to illustrate the importance of the above cultures on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, to evidence some politeness markers including the time concept, such as pausing and silencing in oral communication and courteous beginnings and endings of Latin business letters, and to retrace the perception of such behaviour by a person from the other culture. How can cultures respect each other and how can politeness be interpreted in a proper way without insulting the other party?How can cultures respect each other, learn from each other and cooperate effectively, for instance, in business and technology?  What could be the consequences for the international practice of business management and communication in the Anglo-Germanic and Latin cultures of some EU and NAFTA countries? On the basis of those research findings we will present some guidelines for successful intercultural cooperation in the EU keeping an eye on new trade possibilities on the other side of the Atlantic

Universal and language-specific processing : the case of prosody

A key question in the science of language is how speech processing can be influenced by both language-universal and language-specific mechanisms (Cutler, Klein, & Levinson, 2005). My graduate research aimed to address this question by adopting a crosslanguage approach to compare languages with different phonological systems. Of all components of linguistic structure, prosody is often considered to be one of the most language-specific dimensions of speech. This can have significant implications for our understanding of language use, because much of speech processing is specifically tailored to the structure and requirements of the native language. However, it is still unclear whether prosody may also play a universal role across languages, and very little comparative attempts have been made to explore this possibility. In this thesis, I examined both the production and perception of prosodic cues to prominence and phrasing in native speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese. In focus production, our research revealed that English and Mandarin speakers were alike in how they used prosody to encode prominence, but there were also systematic language-specific differences in the exact degree to which they enhanced the different prosodic cues (Chapter 2). This, however, was not the case in focus perception, where English and Mandarin listeners were alike in the degree to which they used prosody to predict upcoming prominence, even though the precise cues in the preceding prosody could differ (Chapter 3). Further experiments examining prosodic focus prediction in the speech of different talkers have demonstrated functional cue equivalence in prosodic focus detection (Chapter 4). Likewise, our experiments have also revealed both crosslanguage similarities and differences in the production and perception of juncture cues (Chapter 5). Overall, prosodic processing is the result of a complex but subtle interplay of universal and language-specific structure

The effect of informational load on disfluencies in interpreting: a corpus-based regression analysis

This article attempts to measure the cognitive or informational load in interpreting by modelling the occurrence rate of the speech disfluency uh(m). In a corpus of 107 interpreted and 240 non-interpreted texts, informational load is operationalized in terms of four measures: delivery rate, lexical density, percentage of numerals, and average sentence length. The occurrence rate of the indicated speech disfluency was modelled using a rate model. Interpreted texts are analyzed based on the interpreter's output and compared with the input of non-interpreted texts, and measure the effect of source text features. The results demonstrate that interpreters produce significantly more uh(m) s than non-interpreters and that this difference is mainly due to the effect of lexical density on the output side. The main source predictor of uh(m) s in the target text was shown to be the delivery rate of the source text. On a more general level of significance, the second analysis also revealed an increasing effect of the numerals in the source texts and a decreasing effect of the numerals in the target texts