Fine phonetic detail and intonational meaning

International audienceThe development of theories about form-function relations in intonation should be informed by a better understanding of the dependencies that hold among different phonetic parameters. Fine phonetic detail encodes both linguistically structured meaning and paralinguistic meaning. <BR /

Annotation prosodique et typologie

Le développement récent de l'analyse de grands corpus oraux pose crucialement la question de la transcription/annotation des phénomènes prosodiques. Peut-elle se faire sur des bases semblables à ce qui se fait au niveau segmental ? Suppose-t-elle une connaissance phonologique du fonctionnement prosodique de la langue à transcrire ? Un système de transcription de la variation intonative appelé IVTS et dérivé de IViE a été developpé récemment (mettre références) et offre l'avantage d'encoder la variation, qu'elle soit intra- ou interlangues indépendamment de l'analyse phonologique de la langue ou de la variété étudiée. Selon nous IVTS représente donc l'outil idéal pour étudier les variétés régionales d'une même langue, pour comparer les systèmes intonatifs de deux langues différentes, ou pour établir l'inventaire phonologique d'une langue nouvelle. Ce papier a pour objectif de présenter IVTS et de l'évaluer vis-à-vis d'autres systèmes de transcription de la prosodie disponibles : IPA, ToBI et INTSINT. Notre étude se basera sur des transcriptions de plusieurs variétés du français (Marseille, Périgueux, Belgique) et d'une variété de l'Occitan dont la phonologie intonative est encore inconnue

Cross-linguistic Influences on Sentence Accent Detection in Background Noise.

This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-native language. We compared Dutch, Finnish, and French non-native listeners of English, whose cueing and use of prosodic prominence is gradually further removed from English, and compared their results on a phoneme monitoring task in different levels of noise and a quiet condition to those of native listeners. Overall phoneme detection performance was high for the native and the non-native listeners, but deteriorated to the same extent in the presence of background noise. Crucially, relative similarity between the prosodic cues to sentence accent of one's native language compared to that of a non-native language does not determine the ability to perceive and use sentence accent for speech perception in that non-native language. Moreover, proficiency in the non-native language is not a straightforward predictor of sentence accent perception performance, although high proficiency in a non-native language can seemingly overcome certain differences at the prosodic level between the native and non-native language. Instead, performance is determined by the extent to which listeners rely on local cues (English and Dutch) versus cues that are more distributed (Finnish and French), as more distributed cues survive the presence of background noise better

Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language: evidence from English and Norwegian.

Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, Garmann & Kristoffersen, 2019). To investigate the extent to which children use this strategy to differing degrees depending on the ambient language, we analysed word initial cluster production acoustically in nine Norwegian and nine English speaking children aged 2;6-6 years, and eight adults, four from each language. The results showed that Norwegian-speaking children produce significantly more instances of vocalic insertions than English-speaking children do. The same pattern is found in Norwegian- versus English-speaking adults. We argue that this cross-linguistic difference is an example of the influence of prosodic-phonetic biases in language-specific developmental paths in the acquisition of speech.British Academy Small Research Grant SG122210 ‘The acquisition of consonant timing: a study in cross-linguistic micro-variation’, MultiLing, A Centre of Excellence funded by the Research Council of Norway (project number 223265), and from the Faculty of Education and International Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University

Vocalic Intrusions in Consonant Clusters in Child-Directed vs. Adult-Directed Speech.

In this paper, we investigate a prosodic-phonetic feature in child-directed speech within a dynamic, complex, interactive theoretical framework. We focus on vocalic intrusions, commonly occurring in Norwegian word initial consonant clusters. We analysed child-directed speech from nine Norwegian-speaking mothers to their children, aged 2;6, 4, and 6 years, and compared the incidence and duration of vocalic intrusions in initial consonant clusters in these data with those in adult-directed speech and child speech. When viewed overall, vocalic intrusion was found to be similar in incidence in child- and adult-directed speech. However, closer examination revealed differential behaviour in child-directed speech for certain conditions. Firstly, a difference emerged for one particular phonetic context: While vocalic intrusions in /Cr/ clusters are frequent in adult-directed speech, their presence is near-categorical in child-directed speech. Secondly, we found that the duration of vocalic intrusions was longer in child- than in adult-directed speech, but only when directed to 2;6-year-olds. We argue that vocalic intrusions in child-directed speech may have both a bonding as well as a didactic function, and that these may vary according to the age of the child being addressed

Size and depth of residual tumor after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy in rectal cancer – implications for the development of new imaging modalities for response assessment

With the shift towards organ preserving treatment strategies in rectal cancer it has become increasingly important to accurately discriminate between a complete and good clinical response after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Standard of care imaging techniques such as CT and MRI are well equipped for initial staging of rectal tumors, but discrimination between a good clinical and complete response remains difficult due to their limited ability to detect small residual vital tumor fragments. To identify new promising imaging techniques that could fill this gap, it is crucial to know the size and invasion depth of residual vital tumor tissue since this determines the requirements with regard to the resolution and imaging depth of potential new optical imaging techniques. We analyzed 198 pathology slides from 30 rectal cancer patients with a Mandard tumor regression grade 2 or 3 after CRT that underwent surgery. For each patient we determined response pattern, size of the largest vital tumor fragment or bulk and the shortest distance from the vital tumor to the luminal surface. The response pattern was shrinkage in 14 patients and fragmentation in 16 patients. For both groups combined, the largest vital tumor fragment per patient was smaller than 1mm for 38% of patients, below 0.2mm for 12% of patients and for one patient as small as 0.06mm. For 29% of patients the vital tumor remnant was present within the first 0.01mm from the luminal surface and for 87% within 0.5mm. Our results explain why it is difficult to differentiate between a good clinical and complete response in rectal cancer patients using endoscopy and MRI, since in many patients submillimeter tumor fragments remain below the luminal surface. To detect residual vital tumor tissue in all patients included in this study a technique with a spatial resolution of 0.06mm and an imaging depth of 8.9mm would have been required. Optical imaging techniques offer the possibility of detecting majority of these cases due to the potential of both high-resolution imaging and enhanced contrast between tissue types. These techniques could thus serve as a complimentary tool to conventional methods for rectal cancer response assessment