“Because It Sounds Right”: A Guiding Light of Speaker Knowledge

Approaches to second language teaching have included continuous exposure, grammar lessons, and a various combinations of these methods. Recent studies highlight specific, detailed knowledge, in speakers of a language, of the phonetic and structural information of many kinds of phrases. These include formulaic expressions (idioms, proverbs, conversational speech formulas, expletives), lexical bundles (sentence stems, conventional expressions, discourse organizers), and collocations (a range of other unitary, multiword expressions). These exemplars share the feature of familiarity: they are known and recognized by speakers of a language, and stored in mental representation with their concomitant features of structure, phonetic and prosodic shape, meaning, and use. In addition, the linguistic sciences currently advance the perspective that language competence is constituted by knowledge of constructions at various levels of abstraction, implying a larger role of memory in language competence than previously understood. Performance by persons with neurological disorders reveals specific effects on production of these kinds of phrases. Given the putatively extremely large repertory of known, stored expressions and constructions that have been shown to constitute language representation, a guiding principle of speaker use might be that the expression sounds right, implying special importance to listening exercises in second language learning

Effects of Age of Arrival on Acquisition of Formulaic Expressions in the Second Language

Little is known about age effects on formulaic language acquisition in second language (L2) learners. This research compared use and comprehension of formulaic expressions (FEs) in English and Russian by two groups of Russian bilingual speakers differing in age of arrival (AoA) to the USA. A critical period perspective predicts better performance in the early than the later group in the second language. Contrary to this expectation, the early arriving group did not perform significantly better than the later arriving group on the English formulaic tasks. They did perform better on the English than the Russian formulaic tasks. The later arriving group scored significantly higher than the early group on all formulaic tasks in Russian, and performed significantly better in Russian than English. Both bilingual groups scored higher on comprehension than production for English. The surprising result, that earlier arrival in the second language country did not significantly benefit formulaic language use, remains to be explained. Linguistic input and brain maturation likely both play important roles in formulaic language acquisition

The Affective Nature of Formulaic Language: A Right-Hemisphere Subcortical Process

Formulaic expressions naturally convey affective content. The unique formal and functional characteristics of idioms, slang, expletives, proverbs, conversational speech formulas, and the many other conventional expressions in this repertory have been well-described: these include unitary form, conventionalized and non-literal meanings, and reliance on social context. Less highlighted, but potent, is the intrinsic presence of affective meaning. Expletives, for example, signal strong emotion. Idioms, too, inherently communicate emotional connotations, and conversational speech formulas allow for empathetic bonding and humor. The built-in affective content of formulaic expressions, in combination with their other unique characteristics, is compatible with the proposal that brain structures other than those representing grammatical language are in play in producing formulaic expressions. Evidence is presented for a dual process model of language, whereby a right hemisphere-subcortical system modulates formulaic language

Evaluation, treatment, and analysis of a rare case of motor speech systems dyscoordination syndrome

This report describes an unusual presentation of a voice disorder arising from inability to coordinate the three components of motor speech: respiration, phonation, and articulation. These systems were individually intact, as demonstrated by laryngoscopy, motor speech examination, and treatment methods achieving success under controlled conditions. Following initial programming of his deep brain stimulation device, a 62-year-old male, diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease 14 years previously, abruptly experienced a vocal disorder characterized by pressed, very low frequency creaky voice produced on held breath. Evaluation and therapy sessions revealed intact respiration, phonation, and articulation as component systems of motor speech, while indicating a severe deficit in coordinating these systems for articulated speech. Performance varied with mode of vocal production. Vowel prolongation and singing were normal in contrast to severe impairment when respiration and phonation were integrated with articulated speech. A listening study utilizing speech samples from five spoken modes—conversation, repetition, formulaic expressions, continuously phonated material and singing, yielded higher intelligibility on sung and continuously phonated phrases, confirming clinical impressions. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, vowel quality (harmonic-to-noise ratios) and duration supported the intelligibility results. Repetition and conversation were similarly impaired, suggesting that the disability was not attributable to the basal ganglia. This case reveals the role of higher order management of respiration, articulation, and voice for speech and describes a successful treatment utilizing breath control

Emotionally expressed voices are retained in memory following a single exposure.

Studies of voice recognition in biology suggest that long exposure may not satisfactorily represent the voice acquisition process. The current study proposes that humans can acquire a newly familiar voice from brief exposure to spontaneous speech, given a personally engaging context. Studies have shown that arousing and emotionally engaging experiences are more likely to be recorded and consolidated in memory. Yet it remains undemonstrated whether this advantage holds for voices. The present study examined the role of emotionally expressive context in the acquisition of voices following a single, 1-minute exposure by comparing recognition of voices experienced in engaging and neutral contexts at two retention intervals. Listeners were exposed to a series of emotionally nuanced and neutral videotaped narratives produced by performers, and tested on the recognition of excerpted voice samples, by indicating whether they had heard the voice before, immediately and after a one-week delay. Excerpts were voices from exposed videotaped narratives, but utilized verbal material taken from a second (nonexposed) narrative provided by the same performer. Overall, participants were consistently able to distinguish between voices that were exposed during the video session and voices that were not exposed. Voices experienced in emotional, engaging contexts were significantly better recognized than those in neutral ones both immediately and after a one-week delay. Our findings provide the first evidence that new voices can be acquired rapidly from one-time exposure and that nuanced context facilitates initially inducting new voices into a repertory of personally familiar voices in long-term memory. The results converge with neurological evidence to suggest that cerebral processes differ for familiar and unfamiliar voices

Speech Intelligibility During Clinical and Low Frequency

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the subthalamic nucleus (STN) has become an effective and widely used tool in the treatment of Parkinson’s disease (PD). STN-DBS has varied effects on speech. Clinical speech ratings suggest worsening following STN-DBS, but quantitative intelligibility, perceptual, and acoustic studies have produced mixed and inconsistent results. Improvements in phonation and declines in articulation have frequently been reported during different speech tasks under different stimulation conditions. Questions remain about preferred STN-DBS stimulation settings. Seven right-handed, native speakers of English with PD treated with bilateral STN-DBS were studied off medication at three stimulation conditions: stimulators off, 60 Hz (low frequency stimulation—LFS), and the typical clinical setting of 185 Hz (High frequency—HFS). Spontaneous speech was recorded in each condition and excerpts were prepared for transcription (intelligibility) and difficulty judgements. Separate excerpts were prepared for listeners to rate abnormalities in voice, articulation, fluency, and rate. Intelligibility for spontaneous speech was reduced at both HFS and LFS when compared to STN-DBS off. On the average, speech produced at HFS was more intelligible than that produced at LFS, but HFS made the intelligibility task (transcription) subjectively more difficult. Both voice quality and articulation were judged to be more abnormal with DBS on. STN-DBS reduced the intelligibility of spontaneous speech at both LFS and HFS but lowering the frequency did not improve intelligibility. Voice quality ratings with STN-DBS were correlated with the ratings made without stimulation. This was not true for articulation ratings. STN-DBS exacerbated existing voice problems and may have introduced new articulatory abnormalities. The results from individual DBS subjects showed both improved and reduced intelligibility varied as a function of DBS, with perceived changes in voice appearing to be more reflective of intelligibility than perceived changes in articulation

The formulaic schema in the minds of two generations of native speakers

Schemata are expressions that are fixed except for slots available for novel words (I’m not a ____ person). Our goals were to quantify speakers’ knowledge, examine semantic flexibility in open slots, and compare performance data in two generations of speakers using cloze procedures in formulaic expressions, schemata open slots, fixed portions of schemata, and novel sentences. Fewer unique words appeared for the schemata-fixed and formulaic exemplars, reflecting speakers’ knowledge of these utterances; the most semantic categories appeared for schemata-open responses. Age groups did not differ. Schemata exemplify creative interplay between novel lexical retrieval and fixed formulaic expression