Defective neural motor speech mappings as a source for apraxia of speech : evidence from a quantitative neural model of speech processing

This unique resource reviews research evidence pertaining to best practice in the clinical assessment of established areas such as intelligibility and physiological functioning, as well as introducing recently developed topics such as conversational analysis, participation measures, and telehealth. In addition, new and established research methods from areas such as phonetics, kinematics, imaging, and neural modeling are reviewed in relation to their applicability and value for the study of disordered speech. Based on the broad coverage of topics and methods, the textbook represents a valuable resource for a wide ranging audience, including clinicians, researchers, as well as students with an interest in speech pathology and clinical phonetics

Fast Speech in Unit Selection Speech Synthesis

Moers-Prinz D. Fast Speech in Unit Selection Speech Synthesis. Bielefeld: Universität Bielefeld; 2020.Speech synthesis is part of the everyday life of many people with severe visual disabilities. For those who are reliant on assistive speech technology the possibility to choose a fast speaking rate is reported to be essential. But also expressive speech synthesis and other spoken language interfaces may require an integration of fast speech. Architectures like formant or diphone synthesis are able to produce synthetic speech at fast speech rates, but the generated speech does not sound very natural. Unit selection synthesis systems, however, are capable of delivering more natural output. Nevertheless, fast speech has not been adequately implemented into such systems to date. Thus, the goal of the work presented here was to determine an optimal strategy for modeling fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis to provide potential users with a more natural sounding alternative for fast speech output

Rhythmic unit extraction and modelling for automatic language identification

International audienceThis paper deals with an approach to Automatic Language Identification based on rhythmic modelling. Beside phonetics and phonotactics, rhythm is actually one of the most promising features to be considered for language identification, even if its extraction and modelling are not a straightforward issue. Actually, one of the main problems to address is what to model. In this paper, an algorithm of rhythm extraction is described: using a vowel detection algorithm, rhythmic units related to syllables are segmented. Several parameters are extracted (consonantal and vowel duration, cluster complexity) and modelled with a Gaussian Mixture. Experiments are performed on read speech for 7 languages (English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin and Spanish) and results reach up to 86 ± 6% of correct discrimination between stress-timed mora-timed and syllable-timed classes of languages, and to 67 ± 8% percent of correct language identification on average for the 7 languages with utterances of 21 seconds. These results are commented and compared with those obtained with a standard acoustic Gaussian mixture modelling approach (88 ± 5% of correct identification for the 7-languages identification task)

The production and perception of peripheral geminate/singleton coronal stop contrasts in Arabic

Gemination is typologically common word-medially but is rare at the periphery of the word (word-initially and -finally). In line with this observation, prior research on production and perception of gemination has focused primarily on medial gemination. Much less is known about the production and perception of peripheral gemination. This PhD thesis reports on comprehensive articulatory, acoustic and perceptual investigations of geminate-singleton contrasts according to the position of the contrast in the word and in the utterance. The production component of the project investigated the articulatory and acoustic features of medial and peripheral gemination of voiced and voiceless coronal stops in Modern standard Arabic and regional Arabic vernacular dialects, as produced by speakers from two disparate and geographically distant countries, Morocco and Lebanon. The perceptual experiment investigated how standard and dialectal Arabic gemination contrasts in each word position were categorised and discriminated by three groups of non-native listeners, each differing in their native language experience with gemination at different word positions. The first experiment used ultrasound and acoustic recordings to address the extent to which word-initial gemination in Moroccan and Lebanese dialectal Arabic is maintained, as well as the articulatory and acoustic variability of the contrast according to the position of the gemination contrast in the utterance (initial vs. medial) and between the two dialects. The second experiment compared the production of word-medial and -final gemination in Modern Standard Arabic as produced by Moroccan and Lebanese speakers. The aim of the perceptual experiment was to disentangle the contribution of phonological and phonetic effects of the listeners’ native languages on the categorisation and discrimination of non-lexical Moroccan gemination by three groups of non-native listeners varying in their phonological (native Lebanese group and heritage Lebanese group, for whom Moroccan is unintelligible, i.e., non-native language) and phonetic-only (native English group) experience with gemination across the three word positions. The findings in this thesis constitute important contributions about positional and dialectal effects on the production and perception of gemination contrasts, going beyond medial gemination (which was mainly included as control) and illuminating in particular the typologically rare peripheral gemination

Assessing the adequate treatment of fast speech in unit selection systems for the visually impaired

Moers D, Wagner P. Assessing the adequate treatment of fast speech in unit selection systems for the visually impaired. In: Proceedings of the 6th ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop on Speech Synthesis (SSW-6). 2007: 282-287.This paper describes work in progress concerning the adequate modeling of fast speech in unit selection speech synthesis systems – mostly having in mind blind and visually impaired users. Initially, a survey of the main phonetic characteristics of fast speech will be given. From this, certain conclusions concerning an adequate modeling of fast speech in unit selection synthesis will be drawn. Subsequently, a questionnaire assessing synthetic speech related preferences of visually impaired users will be presented. The last section deals with future experiments aiming at a definition of criteria for the development of synthesis corpora modeling fast speech within the unit selection paradigm

The Role of Perception in the Typology of Geminate Consonants: Effects of Manner of Articulation, Segmental Environment, Position, and Stress

The present study seeks to answer the question whether consonant duration is perceived differently across consonants of different manners of articulation and in different contextual environments and whether such differences may be related to the typology of geminates. The results of the crosslinguistic identification experiment suggest higher perceptual acuity in labeling short and long consonants in sonorants than in obstruents. Duration categories were also more consistently and clearly labelled in the intervocalic than in the preconsonantal environment, in the word-initial than in the word-final position, and after stressed vowels than between unstressed vowels. These perceptual asymmetries are in line with some typological tendencies, such as the crosslinguistic preference for intervocalic and post-stress geminates, but contradict other proposed crosslinguistic patterns, such as the preference for obstruent geminates and the abundance of word-final geminates

Back from the future:Nonlinear anticipation in adults and children's speech

Purpose: This study examines the temporal organization of vocalic anticipation in German children from 3 to 7 years of age and adults. The main objective was to test for non-linearprocesses in vocalic anticipation, which may result from the interaction between lingualgestural goalsfor individual vowels, and those for their neighbors over time. Method: The technique of ultrasound imaging was employed to record tongue movement at fivetimepoints throughout short utterances of the form V1#CV2. Vocalic anticipation was examined with Generalized Additive Modeling, an analytical approach allowing forthe estimation of both linear and non-linearinfluences on anticipatoryprocesses. Results: both adults and children exhibit non-linear patterns of vocalic anticipation over time with the degree and extent of vocalic anticipation varying as a function of the individual consonants and vowels assembled. However, noticeable developmental discrepancieswere found with vocalic anticipation being present earlier in children ́sutterances at 3-4-5 years of agein comparison to adults and to some extent 7-year-old children.Conclusions: Anarrowing of speech production organization from large chunks in kindergarten to more contextually-specified organizationsseems to occur fromkindergarten toprimary school toadulthood, although variation in the temporal overlap of lingual gestures for consecutive segments is already present in the youngestcohorts. In adults, non-linear anticipatory patterns over time suggest a strong differentiation between the gestural goals for consecutive segments. In children, this differentiation is not yet mature: vowelsshow greater prominence over time and seem activated more in-phase with those of previous segments relative to adults

After Self-Imitation Prosodic Training L2 Learners Converge Prosodically to the Native Speakers

Little attention is paid to prosody in second language (L2) instruction, but computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT) offers learners solutions to improve the perception and production of L2 suprasegmentals. In this study, we extend with acoustic analysis a previous research showing the effectiveness of self-imitation training on prosodic improvements of Japanese learners of Italian. In light of the increased degree of correct match between intended and perceived pragmatic functions (e.g., speech acts), in this study, we aimed at quantifying the degree of prosodic convergence towards L1 Italian speakers used as a model for self-imitation training. To measure convergence, we calculated the difference in duration, F0 mean, and F0 max syllable-wise between L1 utterances and the corresponding L2 utterances produced before and after training. The results showed that after self-imitation training, L2 learners converged to the L1 speakers. The extent of the effect, however, varied based on the speech act, the acoustic measure, and the distance between L1 and L2 speakers before the training. The findings from perceptual and acoustic investigations, taken together, show the potential of self-imitation prosodic training as a valuable tool to help L2 learners communicate more effectively

An exploration of the rhythm of Malay

In recent years there has been a surge of interest in speech rhythm. However we still lack a clear understanding of the nature of rhythm and rhythmic differences across languages. Various metrics have been proposed as means for measuring rhythm on the phonetic level and making typological comparisons between languages (Ramus et al, 1999; Grabe & Low, 2002; Dellwo, 2006) but the debate is ongoing on the extent to which these metrics capture the rhythmic basis of speech (Arvaniti, 2009; Fletcher, in press). Furthermore, cross linguistic studies of rhythm have covered a relatively small number of languages and research on previously unclassified languages is necessary to fully develop the typology of rhythm. This study examines the rhythmic features of Malay, for which, to date, relatively little work has been carried out on aspects rhythm and timing. The material for the analysis comprised 10 sentences produced by 20 speakers of standard Malay (10 males and 10 females). The recordings were first analysed using rhythm metrics proposed by Ramus et. al (1999) and Grabe & Low (2002). These metrics (∆C, %V, rPVI, nPVI) are based on durational measurements of vocalic and consonantal intervals. The results indicated that Malay clustered with other so-called syllable-timed languages like French and Spanish on the basis of all metrics. However, underlying the overall findings for these metrics there was a large degree of variability in values across speakers and sentences, with some speakers having values in the range typical of stressed-timed languages like English. Further analysis has been carried out in light of Fletcher’s (in press) argument that measurements based on duration do not wholly reflect speech rhythm as there are many other factors that can influence values of consonantal and vocalic intervals, and Arvaniti’s (2009) suggestion that other features of speech should also be considered in description of rhythm to discover what contributes to listeners’ perception of regularity. Spectrographic analysis of the Malay recordings brought to light two parameters that displayed consistency and regularity for all speakers and sentences: the duration of individual vowels and the duration of intervals between intensity minima. This poster presents the results of these investigations and points to connections between the features which seem to be consistently regulated in the timing of Malay connected speech and aspects of Malay phonology. The results are discussed in light of current debate on the descriptions of rhythm

From phonetics to phonology and back again. Ladd, D.R.: phonetics in phonology; in Goldsmith, Riggle, Yu, the handbook of phonological theory; 2nd ed., pp. 348-373 (Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester 2011)

The new edition of Goldsmith [1995] has a very different content structure, for example, it no longer contains chapters on ‘Experimental Phonology’ (Ohala) or on ‘The Internal Organization of Speech Sounds’ (Clements and Hume), and it advocates a different perspective on the relationship between phonology and phonetics, summa- rized as follows in the ‘Preface’