The predictive function of Swedish word accents

Swedish lexical word accents have been repeatedly said to have a lowfunctional load. Even so, the language has kept these tones ever sincethey emerged probably over a thousand years ago. This article proposesthat the primary function of word accents is for listeners to be ableto predict upcoming morphological structures and narrow down thelexical competition rather than being lexically distinctive. Psycho- andneurophysiological evidence for the predictive function of word accents isdiscussed. A novel analysis displays that word accents have a facilitativerole in word processing. Specifically, a correlation is revealed betweenhow much incorrect word accents hinder listeners’ processing and howmuch they reduce response times when correct. Finally, a dual-route modelof the predictive use of word accents with distinct neural substrates isput forth

Prosodic Cues to the Syntactic Structure of Subordinate Clauses in Swedish

Swedish subordinate clauses introduced by 'att' are syntactically and semantically ambiguous when they do not contain clause level adverbials or topicalized elements. In this study, evidence that such clauses are disambiguated in their prosodic realization is presented

Neurophonetics

This is a short review focusing on some research areas of neurophonetics: the neural underpinnings of speech processing and the time course and components of its neurophysiological correlates

Grammaticalization of prosody in the brain

Based on the results from three Event-Related Potential (ERP) studies, we show how the de- gree of grammaticalization of prosodic features influences their impact on syntactic and mor- phological processing. Thus, results indicate that only lexicalized word accents influence morphological processing. Furthermore, it is shown how an assumed semi-grammaticalized left-edge boundary tone activates main clause structure without, however, inhibiting subordi- nate clause structure in the presence of compet- ing syntactic cues

Swedish as a [+Continuity] language : left-edge prosody and right-edge morphosyntax

Abstract in UndeterminedSwedish and French avoid placing focused constituents at the left periphery of sentences. This has previously been suggested to be due to phonological factors. Here, we develop this idea and argue that the reason for avoiding focus at the left edge in these languages is the existence of syntactically related prosodic prominences in the beginning of utterances. Initial focal accents would overlap with the syntactically related accents, forcing a suboptimal prosodic structure. Further, we provide evidence for such a left-edge boundary tone in Swedish main clauses, as well as for a complementary strong tendency in Swedish to associate the right edge of sentences with focus

Neurophysiology of a left-edge boundary tone using natural and edited F0

The ERP effects of left-edge, sentence-medial boundary tones in East Swedish were examined using synthesized and non-synthesized F0. The perception of the boundary tone gave rise to an N100 effect, reflecting automated processing of the acoustic features of the stimuli, a broadly distributed P200 effect, similar to what has earlier been seen for sentence-initial pitch accents, and an expectancy negativity, previously observed in response to sentence-medial, expected pitch accents. The N100 effect was clear only for the synthesized stimuli, possibly due to their relatively greater salience. The P200 was only seen in the combined results. The expectancy negativity was present in the combined results as well as for the non-edited stimuli. The F0 synthesis in the environment of voiceless obstruents produced a difference in the F0 level before the disambiguation point of the H boundary tone, which led to an anterior negativity starting around 50 ms before the H

The marked status of Accent 2 in Central Swedish

Based on results from psycholinguistic and neuro- linguistic research on the perception of word ac- cents in Central Swedish, we argue that Accent 2 could be seen as “marked,” as opposed to the un- marked Accent 1. The markedness of Accent 2 is assumed to be both phonetic, due to its relatively more complex high tone, and cognitive, due to the fact that the Accent 2 tone activates more word forms and thus increases processing load

Time-Driven Effects on Processing Relative Clauses

The present response time study investigated how a hypothesized time-based working memory constraint of 2–3 s affects the resolution of grammatical and semantic dependencies. Congruent and incongruent object relative (OR) and subject relative sentences were read at different presentation rates so that the distance between dependent words was either shorter or longer than 2–3 s. Incongruent OR sentences showed an effect of presentation rate. Experiment 1 focused on grammatical dependencies. Processing of adjectives with agreement features mismatching those of the preceding dependent word showed rapid agreement resolution at a time-interval below 2 s. Dependency intervals over 3 s reflected a different, more time-consuming process possibly due to extended search in sentence semantic representations as the grammatical form of the first word in the dependency fades away. In experiment 2, focusing on semantic dependencies, incongruent OR sentences displayed a different pattern: a gradual increase in processing time as a function of distance between dependent words. Thus, the 2–3 s long time-window seems to constrain the maintenance of grammatical forms in working memory