The distribution of (word-initial) glottal stop in Dutch

Wetensch. publicatieFaculteit der Lettere

Sandhi processes in natural and synthetic speech

Wetensch. publicatieFaculteit der Lettere

Quantitative correlates as predictors of judged fluency in consecutive interpreting: implications for automatic assessment and pedagogy

This chapter presents an experimental study of consecutive interpreting which investigates whether: (a) judged fluency can be predicted from computer-based quantitative prosodic measures including temporal and melodic measures. Ten raters judged six criteria of accuracy and fluency in two consecutive interpretations of the same recorded source speech, from Chinese ‘A’ into English ‘B’, by twelve trainee interpreters (seven undergraduates, five postgraduates). The recorded interpretations were examined with the speech analysis tool Praat. From a computerized count of the pauses thus detected, together with disfluencies identified by raters, twelve temporal measures of fluency were calculated. In addition, two melodic measures, i.e., pitch level and pitch range, were automatically generated. These two measures are often considered to be associated with speaking confidence and competence. Statistical analysis shows: (a) strong correlations between judged fluency and temporal variables of fluency; (b) no correlation between pitch range and judged fluency, but a moderate (negative) correlation between pitch level and judged fluency; and (c) the usefulness of effective speech rate (number of syllables, excluding disfluencies, divided by the total duration of speech production and pauses) as a predictor of judged fluency. Other important determinants of judged fluency were the number of filled pauses, articulation rate, and mean length of pause. The potential for developing automatic fluency assessment in consecutive interpreting is discussed, as are implications for informing the design of rubrics of fluency assessment and facilitating formativeassessment in interpreting education.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

Effects of immediate repetition at different stages of consecutive interpreting training. An experimental study

The present study investigates whether immediate repetition improves consecutive interpreting performance during training. In addition, the study tries to shed light on whether the effects of immediate repetition differ between BA and MA interpreting trainees. In the experiment, ten raters judged six major quality measures of the accuracy and fluency of the interpreting output recorded from seven BA trainees and five MA trainees. The seventh quality measure expressed linguistic complexity as the number of clauses per AS-unit. The results show that the main effects of repetition and proficiency are both significant on accuracy and fluency, but the main effects are absent on linguistic complexity. Moreover, in terms of fluency BA trainees benefit significantly more from repetition than MA trainees. Accuracy improvement through repetition does not differ significantly between the two groups. The results have implications for consecutive interpreting training at different stages.Theoretical and Experimental Linguistic

The role of lexical stress in the recognition of spoken words: prelexical or postlexical?

Fonetische correlaten en communicatieve functies van linguïstische structuu

The Distribution of Nickel in the West-Atlantic Ocean, Its Relationship With Phosphate and a Comparison to Cadmium and Zinc

Nickel (Ni) is a bio-essential element required for the growth of phytoplankton. It is the least studied bio-essential element, mainly because surface ocean Ni concentrations are never fully depleted and Ni is not generally considered to be a limiting factor. However, stimulation of growth after Ni addition has been observed in past experiments when seemingly ample ambient dissolved Ni was present, suggesting not all dissolved Ni is bio-available. This study details the distribution of Ni along the GEOTRACES GA02 Atlantic Meridional section. Concentrations of Ni were lowest in the surface ocean and the lowest observed concentration of 1.7 nmol kg(-1) was found in the northern hemisphere (NH). The generally lower surface concentrations in the NH subtropical gyre compared to the southern hemisphere (SH), might be related to a greater Ni uptake by nitrogen fixers that are stimulated by iron (Fe) deposition. The distribution of Ni resembles the distribution of cadmium (Cd) and also features a so called kink (change in the steepness of slope) in the Ni-PO4 relationship. Like for Cd, this is caused by the mixing of Nordic and Antarctic origin water masses. The overall distribution of Ni is driven by mixing with an influence of regional remineralization. This influence of remineralization is, with a maximum remineralization contribution of 13% of the highest observed concentration, smaller than for Cd (30%), but larger than for zinc (Zn; 6%). The uptake pattern in the formation regions of Antarctic origin water masses is suggested to be more similar to Zn than to Cd, however, the surface concentrations of Ni are never fully depleted. This results in a North Atlantic concentration distribution of Ni where the trends of increasing and decreasing concentrations between water masses are similar to those observed for Cd, but the actual concentrations as well as the uptake and remineralization patterns are different between these elements

A comparison of some Dutch spelling reform proposals affecting verb inflection

Wetensch. publicati

Winter Air-Sea CO2 Fluxes Constructed From Summer Observations of the Polar Southern Ocean Suggest Weak Outgassing

This is the final version. Available on open access from Wiley via the DOI in this recordData Availability Statement: All of the data products used in this study are freely available online, links can be found through the following cited sources: Bakker et al. (2016), Olsen et al. (2019), Roemmich and Gilson (2009), Meier et al. (2017), Bushinsky, Gray, et al. (2017), Dlugokencky et al. (2017), Holte et al. (2017), Atlas et al. (2011), Kalnay et al. (1996), Rödenbeck, Keeling, et al. (2013), Bushinsky, Landschützer, et al. (2019), and Landschützer, Gruber, and Bakker (2017). CCMP Version-2.0 vector wind analyses are produced by Remote Sensing Systems; these data are available at www.remss.com. Argo data were collected and made freely available by the International Argo Program and the national programs that contribute to it (http://www.argo.ucsd.edu, http://argo.jcommops.org). The Argo Program is part of the Global Ocean Observing System (Argo 2000). Argo float data and metadata are from the Global Data Assembly Center (Argo GDAC, http://doi.org/10.17882/42182).The Southern Ocean plays an important role in the global oceanic uptake of CO2. Estimates of the air-sea CO2 flux are made using the partial pressure of CO2 at the sea surface ((Formula presented.)), but winter observations of the region historically have been sparse, with almost no coverage in the Pacific or Indian ocean sectors south of the Polar front in the period 2004–2017. Here, we use summertime observations of relevant properties in this region to identify subsurface waters that were last in contact with the atmosphere in the preceding winter, and then reconstruct “pseudo observations” of the wintertime (Formula presented.). These greatly improve wintertime coverage south of the Polar Front in all sectors, improving the robustness of flux estimates there. We add the pseudo observations to other available observations of (Formula presented.) and use a multiple linear regression to produce a gap-filled time-evolving estimate of (Formula presented.) from which we calculate the air-sea flux. The inclusion of the pseudo observations increases outgassing at the beginning of the period, but the effect reduces with time. We estimate a 2004–2017 long-term mean flux of −0.02 ± 0.02 Pg C yr−1 for the Southern Ocean south of the Polar Front, similar to comparable studies based on shipboard (Formula presented.) data. However, we diverge somewhat from an estimate which utilized autonomous float data for recent years: we find a small sink in 2017 of −0.08 ± 0.03 Pg C yr−1 where the float-based estimate suggested a small source.Natural Environment Research Council (NERC

SUBTLEX-CY: A new word frequency database for Welsh

We present SUBTLEX-CY, a new word frequency database created from a 32 million word corpus of Welsh television subtitles. An experiment comprising of a lexical decision task examined SUBTLEX-CY frequency estimates against words with inconsistent frequencies in a much smaller Welsh corpus that is often used by researchers, the Cronfa Electroneg o’r Gymraeg (CEG; Ellis et al., 2001) as well as four other Welsh word frequency databases. Words were selected that were classified as low frequency (LF) in SUBTLEX-CY and high frequency (HF) in CEG and compared to words that were classified as medium frequency (MF) in both SUBTLEX-CY and CEG. Reaction time analyses showed that HF words in CEG were responded to more slowly compared to medium frequency (MF) words, suggesting that SUBTLEX-CY corpus provides a more reliable estimate of Welsh word frequencies. The new Welsh word frequency database that also includes part-of-speech, contextual diversity, and other lexical information is freely available for research purposes on the Open Science Framework repository at https://osf.io/9gkqm/

Overview of the Nordic Seas CARINA data and salinity measurements

Water column data of carbon and carbon relevant hydrographic and hydrochemical parameters from 188 previously non-publicly available cruises in the Arctic, Atlantic, and Southern Ocean have been retrieved and merged into a new database: CARINA (CARbon IN the Atlantic). The data have been subject to rigorous quality control (QC) in order to ensure highest possible quality and consistency. The data for most of the parameters included were examined in order to quantify systematic biases in the reported values, i.e. secondary quality control. Significant biases have been corrected for in the data products, i.e. the three merged files with measured, calculated and interpolated values for each of the three CARINA regions; the Arctic Mediterranean Seas (AMS), the Atlantic (ATL) and the Southern Ocean (SO). With the adjustments the CARINA database is consistent both internally as well as with GLODAP (Key et al., 2004) and is suitable for accurate assessments of, for example, oceanic carbon inventories and uptake rates and for model validation. The Arctic Mediterranean Seas include the Arctic Ocean and the Nordic Seas, and the quality control was carried out separately in these two areas. This contribution provides an overview of the CARINA data from the Nordic Seas and summarises the findings of the QC of the salinity data. One cruise had salinity data that were of questionable quality, and these have been removed from the data product. An evaluation of the consistency of the quality controlled salinity data suggests that they are consistent to at least ±0.005