Statistical Speech Segmentation in Tone Languages: The Role of Lexical Tones

First Published May 9, 2017Research has demonstrated distinct roles for consonants and vowels in speech processing. For example, consonants have been shown to support lexical processes, such as the segmentation of speech based on transitional probabilities (TPs), more effectively than vowels. Theory and data so far, however, have considered only non-tone languages, that is to say, languages that lack contrastive lexical tones. In the present work, we provide a first investigation of the role of consonants and vowels in statistical speech segmentation by native speakers of Cantonese, as well as assessing how tones modulate the processing of vowels. Results show that Cantonese speakers are unable to use statistical cues carried by consonants for segmentation, but they can use cues carried by vowels. This difference becomes more evident when considering tone-bearing vowels. Additional data from speakers of Russian and Mandarin suggest that the ability of Cantonese speakers to segment streams with statistical cues carried by tone-bearing vowels extends to other tone languages, but is much reduced in speakers of non-tone languages.The research leading to these results has received funding from: the European Research Council under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC [grant agreement 269502, PASCAL]; the Chilean CONICYT program PIA/BASAL [grant FB0003]; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; and the Basque Foundation for Science (Ikerbasque)

(un)Doing standards in education with actor-network theory

Recent critiques have drawn important attention to the depoliticized consensus and empty promises embedded in network discourses of educational policy. While acceding this critique, this discussion argues that some forms of network analysis – specifically those adopting actor-network theory (ANT) approaches - actually offer useful theoretical resources for policy studies. Drawing from ANT-inspired studies of policy processes associated with educational standards, the article shows the ambivalences and contradictions as well as the possibilities that can be illuminated by ANT analysis of standards as networks. The discussion outlines the diverse network conceptions, considerations and sensibilities afforded by ANT approaches. Then it shows four phenomena that have been highlighted by ANT studies of educational standards: ordering (and rupturing) practice through ‘immutable mobiles’, local universality, tensions among networks of prescription and networks of negotiation, and different co-existing ontological forms of the same standards. The conclusion suggests starting points, drawing from these ANT-inspired network analyses, for examining policy processes associated with educational standards

What have we been thinking of? A critical overview of 40 years of student learning research in higher education

This paper is a response to the request from the organisers of the HECU4 conference to consider the following three questions in relation to the recent history of research into student learning in higher education: What do we know?, What do we need to know?, and What might we do about it? A survey of article titles reporting on research into student learning was carried out in three key higher education journals, and the results of this were then considered in the context of other, related research perspectives. The paper will first report on the results of this review, and then discuss these results in the context of theoretical moves in psychology and sociology over the same period of time. The trends identified in the higher education journals will then be compared to research into student learning in higher education which is published in two other disciplinary areas: Adult Education and Sociolinguistics. After raising some questions that arise from these comparisons, the final section of the paper will outline some suggestions about ways in which higher education researchers might begin to ‘think differently’ about learning and research in this field

Words, rules, and mechanisms of language acquisition

We review recent artificial language learning studies, especially those following Endress and Bonatti (2007), suggesting that humans can deploy a variety of learning mechanisms to acquire artificial languages. Several experiments provide evidence for multiple learning mechanisms that can be deployed in fluent speech: one mechanism encodes the positions of syllables within words and can be used to extract generalization, while the other registers co-occurrence statistics of syllables and can be used to break a continuum into its components. We review dissociations between these mechanisms and their potential role in language acquisition. We then turn to recent criticisms of the multiple mechanisms hypothesis and show that they are inconsistent with the available data. Our results suggest that artificial and natural language learning is best understood by dissecting the underlying specialized learning abilities, and that these data provide a rare opportunity to link important language phenomena to basic psychological mechanisms

Education and service : how theories can help in understanding tensions

Acknowledgements: our thanks to Ayelet Kuper for a helpfuldiscussion about the possible application of discourseanalysis to service–training tensionsPeer reviewedPostprin

Reading educational reform with actor network theory: Fluid spaces, otherings, and ambivalences

In considering two extended examples of educational reform efforts, this discussion traces relations that become visible through analytic approaches associated with actor-network theory (ANT). The strategy here is to present multiple readings of the two examples. The first reading adopts an ANT approach to follow ways that all actors – human and non-human entities, including the entity that is taken to be ‘educational reform’ – are performed into being through the play of linkages among heterogeneous elements. Then, further readings focus not only on the material practices that become enacted and distributed, but also on the otherings that occur: the various fluid spaces and ambivalent belongings that create actor-network(s) but also escape them. For educational research, particularly in educational reform and policy, it is argued that ANT analyses are particularly useful to examine the complex enactments in these dynamics. That is, ANT can illuminate movements of ordering and disordering that occur through minute socio-material connections in educational interventions. ANT readings also can discern, within these attempts to order people and practices, the spaces of flux and instability that enable and protect alternate possibilities

Mapping children's presence in the neighbourhood

Within the work of Gert Biesta, public spaces are considered as the main fields where processes of civic learning can take place. Learning is always “in place and time”. Place matters, not only as a spatial background or set of conditions , but as a pedagogical process in itself. So in order to facilitate processes of civic learning we need to understand how spaces function as a co-educator in its own right.. In my PhD I studied how the neighbourhood can be understood as a co-educator. The processes through which children are socialised into a given order are not universal, nor neutral. One might state that children grow up into very different orders. The neighbourhood is an important factor into these diversified socialisation processes, but the neighbourhood is also made by its residents and users themselves, including children. This emphasises that socialisation is a relational process and not a functional oneway introduction of children into a prescribed social ordeIn this contribution, a methodological framework will be developed for understanding and studying the neighbourhood of children as a co-educator. The basis of this framework is formed by the synergy between spatial, social and personal dimensions of the neighbourhood

Vocational knowledge in motion: rethinking vocational knowledge through vocational teachers' professional development

The paper presents empirical data to consider some of the current debates concerning the nature of vocational knowledge taught in Further Education colleges to students following craft, vocational and occupational courses. The concept of ‘knowledge in motion’ and workplace learning theories are employed as a conceptual framework to examine the continuing professional development (CPD) activities of vocational teachers. This is used to shed light on the ways in which teachers use CPD as a means of accessing and transporting vocational knowledge from occupations to classrooms. Empirical data were gathered through questionnaire, in-depth interviews and participant observation. The findings are presented around five themes: (1) the range of CPD engaged with by vocational teachers; (2) the limitations of propositional, explicit knowledge; (3) engaging with and capturing tacit knowledge; (4) managing the temporality of vocational knowledge; and (5) networking within and to the occupation. Findings suggests that vocational knowledge is distributed and networked and this conceptualisation makes visible some of the ways teachers are able, through CPD activity, to transport vocational knowledge from occupations to classrooms