Lexical stress perception as a function of acoustic properties and the native language of the listener

The study is part of a series investigating production and perception of lexical stress in a number of languages including Brazilian Portuguese, English, Estonian, French, Italian and Swedish. The production database contains data representing male and female speakers in the above languages in three speaking styles – spontaneous speech, phrase reading, and wordlist reading. Keywords from these recordings, representing male and female speakers and all speaking styles are used. The participants’ task is to judge the relative syllable prominences of the keywords presented one by one. In a previous study, subjects were native Swedish speakers. In the present study subjects are native speakers of Italian. In the analyses, perception results are correlated with acoustic variables shown to be important in the production studies. From the previous perception study we know that acoustic syllable prominence affects perceived syllable prominence. But there is also a possibility that listeners’ perception may be biased by expectations based on the listeners’ native language. The main result is that there are great similarities between the Swedish and Italian listeners in the way acoustic prominence affects perceived prominence, but we are also able to demonstrate a case of native language bias.Peer reviewe

The acoustic basis of lexical stress perception

Peer reviewe

The listening talker: A review of human and algorithmic context-induced modifications of speech

International audienceSpeech output technology is finding widespread application, including in scenarios where intelligibility might be compromised - at least for some listeners - by adverse conditions. Unlike most current algorithms, talkers continually adapt their speech patterns as a response to the immediate context of spoken communication, where the type of interlocutor and the environment are the dominant situational factors influencing speech production. Observations of talker behaviour can motivate the design of more robust speech output algorithms. Starting with a listener-oriented categorisation of possible goals for speech modification, this review article summarises the extensive set of behavioural findings related to human speech modification, identifies which factors appear to be beneficial, and goes on to examine previous computational attempts to improve intelligibility in noise. The review concludes by tabulating 46 speech modifications, many of which have yet to be perceptually or algorithmically evaluated. Consequently, the review provides a roadmap for future work in improving the robustness of speech output

The polylogue project: part 1: shortmind

The aim of this collaborative project [edited by F. Senn, E. Mihalycsa and J. Wawrzycka], the work of ten authors and covering more than ten languages, is to chart the possibilities of translation to recreate in the TL texts, the anomalous, elliptic, pre-grammatical, inchoative forms that became almost a signature mark of the Joycean interior monologue, and which here are called 'shortmind'. It therefore addresses such issues as indeterminacy, (anomalous) word order, punctuation, ellipsis, polysemy, ungrammaticality, linguistic sub-standards etc., and examines the (un)willingness of translation texts to breach ingrained rules and norms of (syntactic, narrative) control, correctness and coherence, in the TL culture

Communicative functions of rhythm in spoken discourse - the case of radio broadcasting

Time is one of the most precious resources in the audio-visual media. Journalists working in radio broadcasting are particularly subject to time constraints. Their message has to be passed on by the speech signal in a few minutes or seconds without visual support of written text or pictures. Therefore, the message has to be structured in a way that the most important aspects of the information are made prominent and interesting for the audience. On the other hand, journalists have to keep in time and need strategies to orient themselves in time in order to achieve exact timing of their spoken discourse. In this article, I lend support to the notion that the rhythmic structure of speech is one of the major tools for journalists to succeed in this endeavor. First, I review some of the literature on the nature of speech rhythm and its role for speech perception, language acquisition, processing and interaction. Second, the state of the art about what we know about rhythmic prominence in radio broadcasting is given. Finally, the idea will be advanced that speech rhythm, sometimes in conjunction with gesture, improves timing and time estimation in journalists speaking on air. A rich set of literature from different domains is presented in order to identify major questions and pathways for future research on speech rhythm in radio broadcasting.Le temps est une ressource précieuse dans les médias audio-visuels. Les journalistes qui travaillent à la radio sont particulièrement soumis aux contraintes temporelles. Leur message doit être diffusé en quelques minutes ou secondes sans le support visuel d'un texte ou des images. Ainsi, le message doit être structuré de telle façon que les aspects les plus importants seront proéminents dans le discours et intéressent l'audience. D'un autre point de vue, les journalistes ont besoin de bien contrôler le temps qu'ils mettent eux-mêmes pour prononcer leur discours et de s'orienter dans le temps pour ajuster le temps de leur intervention le plus précisément possible. Dans cette contribution, j'examine l'hypothèse que le rythme de la parole fournit les structures nécessaires pour la réussite dans ces défis journalistiques. Dans un premier temps, je présente la littérature sur la nature du rythme de la parole et son rôle dans la perception et le traitement de la parole, l'acquisition de la langue et dans l'interaction. Deuxièmement, je passe en revue les résultats principaux des études concernant la proéminence rythmique dans le phonostyle radiophonique. Finalement, l'hypothèse défendue est que le rythme de la parole, parfois concurremment avec les gestes, conduit à un meilleur timing et une meilleure estimation du temps par les journalistes eux-mêmes quand ils sont à l'antenne. L'article fournira au lecteur un aperçu détaillé et multidisciplinaire de la littérature et identifiera les enjeux et de nouvelles pistes pour la recherche future à propos du rythme de la parole à la radio