Lexical alignment in triadic communication

Foltz A, Gaspers J, Thiele K, Stenneken P, Cimiano P. Lexical alignment in triadic communication. Frontiers in Psychology. 2015;6: 127

Analyzing the Sounds of Languages

This book is intended primarily as a textbook for LING 2051, Analyzing the sounds of languages, but can also be used for self study to learn the basics of quantitative methods and as an introduction to the statistical program R (www.r-project.org). We introduce basic, yet often misunderstood, concepts of quantitative analysis and statistics, using real data taken from the field of linguistics, especially phonetics and phonology. We introduce questions, such as “Do Southerners really talk more slowly?” (Chapter 10), or “Why do we expect scholarly words to be longer than familiar words?” (Chapter 2) as a framework for introducing the numerical concepts required to answer research questions such as these. We believe that statistical methods should not be introduced in the absence of a research question and a solid understanding of the data, which is why we use real data and questions that are relevant to anyone who commands a spoken language. A good amount of space is also devoted to illustrating how to formulate and answer a research question, and hypothesis development and testing

Production of tongue twisters by speakers with partial glossectomy

Bressmann T, Foltz A, Zimmermann J, Irish JC. Production of tongue twisters by speakers with partial glossectomy. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics. 2014;28(12):951-964.A partial glossectomy can affect speech production. The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of the presence of a tumour as well as the glossectomy surgery on the patients' production of tongue twisters with the sounds [t] and [k]. Fifteen patients with tongue cancer and 10 healthy controls took part in the study. The outcome measures were the patients' speech acceptability, rate of errors, the time needed to produce the tongue twisters, pause duration between item repetitions and the tongue shape during the production of the consonants [t] and [k] before and after surgery. The patients' speech acceptability deteriorated after the surgery. Compared to controls, the patients' productions of the tongue twisters were slower but not more errorful. Following the surgery, their speed of production did not change, but the rate of errors was higher. Pause duration between items was longer in the patients than in the controls but did not increase from before to after surgery. Analysis of the patients' tongue shapes for the productions of [t] and [k] indicated a higher elevation following the surgery for the patients with flap reconstructions. The results demonstrated that the surgical resection of the tongue changed the error rate but not the speed of production for the patient. The differences in pause duration also indicate that the tumour and the surgical resection of the tongue may impact the phonological planning of the tongue twister

Modeling Shifts of Attention During Spatial Language Comprehension

Kluth T, Burigo M, Knoeferle P. Modeling Shifts of Attention During Spatial Language Comprehension. In: Tenbrink T, Foltz A, Wallington A, Redondo JO, Ryan J, Bedford E, eds. UK-CLC 2016 Conference Proceedings. Bangor, Gwynedd: Bangor University; 2016: 71