Articulation in time : Some word-initial segments in Swedish

Speech is both dynamic and distinctive at the same time. This implies a certain contradiction which has entertained researchers in phonetics and phonology for decades. The present dissertation assumes that articulation behaves as a function of time, and that we can find phonological structures in the dynamical systems. EMA is used to measure mechanical movements in Swedish speakers. The results show that tonal context affects articulatory coordination. Acceleration seems to divide the movements of the jaw and lips into intervals of postures and active movements. These intervals are affected differently by the tonal context. Furthermore, a bilabial consonant is shorter if the next consonant is also made with the lips. A hypothesis of a correlation between acoustic segment duration and acceleration is presented. The dissertation highlights the importance of time for how speech ultimately sounds. Particularly significant is the combination of articulatory timing and articulatory duration

Speech Rhythm in Spontaneous and Controlled L2 Speaking Modes: Exploring Differences and Distance Measures

Studies of speech rhythm have often used read speech rather than spontaneous speech in their comparisons. However, read speech has been shown to be perceptually different from spontaneous speech, which may be due to rhythmic differences between the two modes. To examine this, the effect of speaking mode (spontaneous or controlled) was assessed in a group of 82 Spanish-Catalan learners of English relative to a control group of 8 native English speakers. Results found strong rhythmic differences between the two modes, but minimal differences between the learners and native speakers. Additionally, Mahalanobis distance analyses revealed that non-native speakers differed significantly more from the native control group in the spontaneous condition than the controlled condition

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

Methods in prosody

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study

The Role of Native Language and the Fundamental Design of the Auditory System in Detecting Rhythm Changes

Accepted December 13, 2018Purpose: We investigated whether rhythm discrimination is mainly driven by the native language of the listener or by the fundamental design of the human auditory system and universal cognitive mechanisms shared by all people irrespective of rhythmic patterns in their native language. Method: In multiple experiments, we asked participants to listen to 2 continuous acoustic sequences and to determine whether their rhythms were the same or different (AX discrimination). Participants were native speakers of 4 languages with different rhythmic properties (Spanish, French, English, and German) to understand whether the predominant rhythmic patterns of a native language affect sensitivity, bias, and reaction time in detecting rhythmic changes in linguistic (Experiment 2) and in nonlinguistic (Experiments 1 and 2) acoustic sequences. We examined sensitivity and bias measures, as well as reaction times. We also computed Bayes factors in order to assess the effect of native language. Results: All listeners performed better (i.e., responded faster and manifested higher sensitivity and accuracy) when detecting the presence or absence of a rhythm change when the 1st stimulus in an AX test pair exhibited regular rhythm (i.e., a syllable-timed rhythmic pattern) than when the 1st stimulus exhibited irregular rhythm (i.e., stress-timed rhythmic pattern). This result pattern was observed both on linguistic and nonlinguistic stimuli and was not modulated by the native language of the participant. Conclusion: We conclude that rhythm change detection is a fundamental function of a processing system that relies on general auditory mechanisms and is not modulated by linguistic experience.The authors acknowledge support from Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness Grant PSI2017-82563-P (awarded to A. G. S.), the “Severo Ochoa” Programme for Centres/Units of Excellence in R&D Grant SEV-2015-490 (BCBL), and the Basque Foundation for Science Grant IKERBASQUE (awarded to A. G. S. and M. O.). D. M. G. was supported by Grant PIA/Basal FB0003 from the Chilean Research Council. L. P. was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness via Juan de la Cierva fellowship

A Romance language perspective

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study