The Contributions of Crosslinguistic Influence and Individual Differences
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Journal of Phonetics (1984) 12: 345-354
In: Journal of Phonetics (1984) 12: 345-354. On the nature of labial velar shift Raymond Hickey Bonn University Abstract Labial velar shift is a common diachronic occurrence in various languages which in recent works on phonology has been captured by the reintroduction of the Jakobsonian feature [grave]. The type of shift involved, the form and direction it takes is a matter which has received insufficient attention. The present study is an attempt to account for this shift by viewing manifestations of it in Romance, Celtic, Germanic, Slavic and Uralic. The essential difference between lenition and labial velar shift is emphasized and the notion of favouring conditions for the shift (the phonotactic environment of the segments involved) is introduced. In all cases the acoustic (and hence autditory) similarity of the segments which undergo shifting is seen to be the triggering factor. It is by now commonplace to maintain that a phonological framework must take cognizance of, and provide notational means for describing, the interrelatedness of labial and velar segments. Evidence abounds in a variety of languages (see below) that labials and velars relate in a manner which say labials and dentals do not. In early distinctive feature theory (Jakobson and Halle, 1956, p. 43) this fact could be captured by the use of the feature [grave]. It was also quickly recognized by linguists after the publication of Chomsky and Halle (1968) that the abandoning of the feature [grave] constituted a loss in generalization (Ladefoged, 1972, p.44; Hyman, 1973; Lass and Anderson, 1975, p.187). However, in those works where the necessity for the feature [grave] is insisted upon (Davidsen-Nielsen and Ørum, 1978, p.201; Sommerstein, 1977, p. -
At the Juncture of Prosody, Phonology, and Phonetics – the Interaction of Phrasal and Syllable Structure in Shaping the Timing of Consonant Gestures∗
At the juncture of prosody, phonology, and phonetics – the interaction of phrasal and syllable structure in shaping the timing of consonant gestures∗ Dani Byrd and Susie Choi The Laboratory Phonology research paradigm has established that abstract phonological structure has direct reflections in the spatiotemporal details of speech production. Past exploration of the complex relationship between lin- guistic structural properties and articulation has resulted in a softening of a severance between phonetics and phonology, which in recent years has begun to likewise encompass the phonetics-prosody interface. The abstract organiza- tion not only of words, but also of phrases, has a complex and rich effect on the articulatory details of speech production. This paper considers how phono- logical and prosodic structure interact in shaping the temporal realization of consonant sequences. Specifically, we examine the influence on articulatory timing of syllable structure effects in onset, coda, and heterosyllabic positions, and prosodic effects in the vicinity of a variety of phrase boundary conditions that grade in strength. Simultaneously, this work seeks to test and refine the π- gesture theoretical model of prosodic representation in speech production (Byrd & Saltzman 2003). 1. Introduction Three of the founders of Laboratory Phonology – Beckman, Ladd, and Pierre- humbert – describe its research paradigm as “involving the cooperation of peo- ple...whoshareaconcernforstrengtheningfoundations of phonology through improved methodology, explicit modeling, and cumulation of results” (Pier- rehumbert, Beckman, and Ladd 2001). Over the preceding nine Laboratory Phonology conferences, leading research in linguistic speech experimentation has clearly established that many aspects of abstract phonological structure are directly reflected in the spatiotemporal details of speech production. -
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Libri Phonetica 1999;56:105–107 = Part I, ‘Introduction’, includes a single Winifred Strange chapter written by the editor. It is an Speech Perception and Linguistic excellent historical review of cross-lan- Experience: Issues in Cross-Language guage studies in speech perception pro- Research viding a clear conceptual framework of York Press, Timonium, 1995 the topic. Strange presents a selective his- 492 pp.; $ 59 tory of research that highlights the main ISBN 0–912752–36–X theoretical themes and methodological paradigms. It begins with a brief descrip- How is speech perception shaped by tion of the basic phenomena that are the experience with our native language and starting points for the investigation: the by exposure to subsequent languages? constancy problem and the question of This is a central research question in units of analysis in speech perception. language perception, which emphasizes Next, the author presents the principal the importance of crosslinguistic studies. theories, methods, findings and limita- Speech Perception and Linguistic Experi- tions in early cross-language research, ence: Issues in Cross-Language Research focused on categorical perception as the contains the contributions to a Workshop dominant paradigm in the study of adult in Cross-Language Perception held at the and infant perception in the 1960s and University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla., 1970s. Finally, Strange reviews the most USA, in May 1992. important findings and conclusions in This text may be said to represent recent cross-language research (1980s and the first compilation strictly focused on early 1990s), which yielded a large theoretical and methodological issues of amount of new information from a wider cross-language perception research. -
Technologies for the Study of Speech: Review and an Application
Themes in Science & Technology Education, 8(1), 17-32, 2015 Technologies for the study of speech: Review and an application Elena Babatsouli [email protected] Institute of Monolingual and Bilingual Speech, Crete, Greece Abstract. Technologies used for the study of speech are classified here into non-intrusive and intrusive. The paper informs on current non-intrusive technologies that are used for linguistic investigations of the speech signal, both phonological and phonetic. Providing a point of reference, the review covers existing technological advances in language research methodology for normal and disordered speech, cutting across boundaries of sub-fields: child vs. adult; first, second, or bilingual; standard or dialectal. The indispensability of such technologies for investigating linguistic aspects of speech is evident in an application that uses CLAN to manage and perform phonological and computational analysis of a bilingual child’s dense speech data, longitudinally over 17 months of phonological development in Greek/English. Backed by acoustic analysis using Praat, developmental results on the child’s labio-velar approximant in English are also given. Keywords: technologies, normal/disordered speech, child development, CLAN Introduction Speech data feed the observation, documentation and analysis of oral language; theoretical speculations in phonology are grounded on phonetic evidence which, in turn, provide yardsticks for comparing the production of speech cross-linguistically in all its likely forms: child and adult; standard or dialectal; first (L1), second (L2), bilingual (L1ˡ2); normal or disordered. Despite the presence of universal patterns (Jakobson, 1941/1968) in speech, production variability is a prevalent phenomenon, sometimes going unnoticed and at other times drawing the listener’s attention to inaccuracy and even unintelligibility, as witnessed in random errors, idiolects, dialects, accents, speech disorders, and speech impairments. -
Effects of Instruction on L2 Pronunciation Development: a Synthesis of 15 Quasiexperimental Intervention Studies
RESEARCH ISSUES TESOL Quarterly publishes brief commentaries on aspects of qualitative and quantitative research. Edited by CONSTANT LEUNG King’s College London Effects of Instruction on L2 Pronunciation Development: A Synthesis of 15 Quasi- Experimental Intervention Studies KAZUYA SAITO Waseda University Tokyo, Japan doi: 10.1002/tesq.67 & Over the past 25 years second language (L2) acquisition research has paid considerable attention to the effectiveness of instruction on L2 morphosyntax development, and the findings of relevant empirical studies have been extensively summarized using narrative review meth- ods (e.g., Ellis, 2002) as well as meta-analytic review methods (e.g., Spada & Tomita, 2010). These researchers have reached a consensus that (a) integrating language focus into meaning-oriented classrooms is more effective than a purely naturalistic approach, and (b) contextu- alized grammar teaching methods (e.g., focus-on-form instruction, form-focused instruction) is more effective than decontexualized gram- mar teaching methods (e.g., focus-on-formS instruction, grammar- translation method). What is surprising in this vein of L2 acquisition studies, however, is the lack of research in the area of L2 pronuncia- tion development. Pronunciation teaching has been notorious for its overdependence on decontextualized practice such as mechanical drills and repetition, reminiscent of the audiolingual teaching meth- ods of several decades ago (for discussion, see Celce-Murcia, Brinton, Goodwin, & Griner, 2010). Furthermore, very few language teachers actually receive adequate training in the specific area of pronunciation teaching (Foote, Holtby, & Derwing, 2011). 842 TESOL QUARTERLY Vol. 46, No. 4, December 2012 © 2012 TESOL International Association In recent years, several researchers have made strong calls for research on teaching for intelligible (rather than native-like) pronunciation. -
Why Is Pronunciation So Difficult to Learn?
www.ccsenet.org/elt English Language Teaching Vol. 4, No. 3; September 2011 Why is Pronunciation So Difficult to Learn? Abbas Pourhossein Gilakjani (Corresponding author) School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia 3A-05-06 N-Park Jalan Batu Uban 11700 Gelugor Pulau Pinang Malaysia Tel: 60-174-181-660 E-mail: [email protected] Mohammad Reza Ahmadi School of Educational Studies, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia 3A-05-06 N-Park Alan Batu Uban 1700 Gelugor Pulau Pinang Malaysia Tel: 60-175-271-870 E-mail: [email protected] Received: January 8, 2011 Accepted: March 21, 2011 doi:10.5539/elt.v4n3p74 Abstract In many English language classrooms, teaching pronunciation is granted the least attention. When ESL teachers defend the poor pronunciation skills of their students, their arguments could either be described as a cop-out with respect to their inability to teach their students proper pronunciation or they could be regarded as taking a stand against linguistic influence. If we learn a second language in childhood, we learn to speak it fluently and without a ‘foreign accent’; if we learn in adulthood, it is very unlikely that we will attain a native accent. In this study, the researchers first review misconceptions about pronunciation, factors affecting the learning of pronunciation. Then, the needs of learners and suggestions for teaching pronunciation will be reviewed. Pronunciation has a positive effect on learning a second language and learners can gain the skills they need for effective communication in English. Keywords: Pronunciation, Learning, Teaching, Misconceptions, Factors, Needs, Suggestions 1. Introduction General observation suggests that it is those who start to learn English after their school years are most likely to have serious difficulties in acquiring intelligible pronunciation, with the degree of difficulty increasing markedly with age. -
Relations Between Speech Production and Speech Perception: Some Behavioral and Neurological Observations
14 Relations between Speech Production and Speech Perception: Some Behavioral and Neurological Observations Willem J. M. Levelt One Agent, Two Modalities There is a famous book that never appeared: Bever and Weksel (shelved). It contained chapters by several young Turks in the budding new psycho- linguistics community of the mid-1960s. Jacques Mehler’s chapter (coau- thored with Harris Savin) was entitled “Language Users.” A normal language user “is capable of producing and understanding an infinite number of sentences that he has never heard before. The central problem for the psychologist studying language is to explain this fact—to describe the abilities that underlie this infinity of possible performances and state precisely how these abilities, together with the various details . of a given situation, determine any particular performance.” There is no hesi tation here about the psycholinguist’s core business: it is to explain our abilities to produce and to understand language. Indeed, the chapter’s purpose was to review the available research findings on these abilities and it contains, correspondingly, a section on the listener and another section on the speaker. This balance was quickly lost in the further history of psycholinguistics. With the happy and important exceptions of speech error and speech pausing research, the study of language use was factually reduced to studying language understanding. For example, Philip Johnson-Laird opened his review of experimental psycholinguistics in the 1974 Annual Review of Psychology with the statement: “The fundamental problem of psycholinguistics is simple to formulate: what happens if we understand sentences?” And he added, “Most of the other problems would be half way solved if only we had the answer to this question.” One major other 242 W. -
Colored-Speech Synaesthesia Is Triggered by Multisensory, Not Unisensory, Perception Gary Bargary,1,2,3 Kylie J
PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Report Colored-Speech Synaesthesia Is Triggered by Multisensory, Not Unisensory, Perception Gary Bargary,1,2,3 Kylie J. Barnett,1,2,3 Kevin J. Mitchell,2,3 and Fiona N. Newell1,2 1School of Psychology, 2Institute of Neuroscience, and 3Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin ABSTRACT—Although it is estimated that as many as 4% of sistent terminology reflects an underlying lack of understanding people experience some form of enhanced cross talk be- about the amount of information processing required for syn- tween (or within) the senses, known as synaesthesia, very aesthesia to be induced. For example, several studies have little is understood about the level of information pro- found that synaesthesia can occur very rapidly (Palmeri, Blake, cessing required to induce a synaesthetic experience. In Marois, & Whetsell, 2002; Ramachandran & Hubbard, 2001; work presented here, we used a well-known multisensory Smilek, Dixon, Cudahy, & Merikle, 2001) and is sensitive to illusion called the McGurk effect to show that synaesthesia changes in low-level properties of the inducing stimulus, such as is driven by late, perceptual processing, rather than early, contrast (Hubbard, Manoha, & Ramachandran, 2006) or font unisensory processing. Specifically, we tested 9 linguistic- (Witthoft & Winawer, 2006). These findings suggest that syn- color synaesthetes and found that the colors induced by aesthesia is an automatic association driven by early, unisensory spoken words are related to what is perceived (i.e., the input. However, attention, semantic information, and feature- illusory combination of audio and visual inputs) and not to binding processes (Dixon, Smilek, Duffy, Zanna, & Merikle, the auditory component alone. -
Samples of Phonological Development
Galasso Ling 417: Review Exam 1. A Synthesis: Representational Stages in Child Phonological and Morphological Development Lecture Review (Chapters 3-4) Galasso Stages of ‘Rule Representation’ Scheme: 1. Phonology 2. Morphology Pre-Representational Representational Pre-Representational Representational ·Idiomatic Speech ·Formulaic ·Partial rules ·Full rules ·Lexical ·Functional [prIti] /prIti/ ‘u-shape’: /bIdi/ Referential (‘pretty’) [CVCV] [CCVCV] | Context-bound Noun ↔ Determiner Phonological Rules: | Verb ↔ Auxiliary/Modal · Assimilation | | · Default voicing [car] ‘car’ | · Syllabic Development [raisins] [rainsins]-{es} (e.g., u-shape learning) [ø Pl] [+Pl] [Number] · weak syllable deletion | | [formulaic] ‘category’ [‘Iwant’] ‘I’ [Case] (p.169) word mapping/bootstrapping: Semantic Syntactic (p. 372) morphology processing: Derivational Inflectional teach-{er} teacher-{s} Data: (Galasso) ‘Sally Exp’ (Gordon) ‘Rat-eater Exp. fMRI Brain Imagining Overview: Children first produce language in a pre-representational way whereby both Phonology and Morphology are underdeveloped. Regarding phonology, idiomatic speech such as formulaic, echolalia and mimic expressions are the hallmark of a Pre-Representational stage, usually beginning as early as 14 months and lasting up until 24months (+/-20%). Regarding Morphology, chunking has been observed whereby young children (up until 24months) are seemingly unable to partition the morphological segments e.g., [stem+affix] and rather produce both as a single whole chunk—e.g., ‘raisins’ (as a singular word and where the plural {s}is not yet productive). 1 Galasso Ling 417: Review Exam 1. 1. Phonology: Phonemic/Syllabic Development and Consonant Harmony [1] The early production of the word ‘spaghetti’ offers linguists a valuable insight into the phonological rules children employ at the earliest stages of representational speech. (p. 93) (a) spaghetti → /bʌzgɛdi/ Above, spaghetti /sp∧gɛti/ becomes /b∧zgɛdi/ (CVC+CVCv) with initial /s/ deletion and strategic reinsertion (voiced to /z/) to create the /CVC-CVCv/ structure. -
Introduction: an Overview of Research on Prosodic Development
chapter 1 Introduction An overview of research on prosodic development Pilar Prieto1,2 & Núria Esteve-Gibert3,4 1Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA) / 2Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Department of Translation and Language Sciences / 3Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LPL UMR 7309 / 4Universitat de Barcelona Prosody in spoken language, realized through patterns of timing, melody, and intensity, is used across languages to convey a wide range of language functions, which are crucial for both structuring information in speech and encoding an important set of semantico-pragmatic meanings. First and foremost, prosody con- stitutes the ‘organizational structure of speech’ (Beckman, 1996). We use it to sepa- rate our speech into chunks of information, thus helping our interlocutor to parse our discourse into meaningful syntactic units but also sending signals about when to take turns in our conversation. Secondly, prosody plays a key pragmatic role in conversation because it can convey a broad panoply of communicative meanings, ranging from the type of speech act (assertion, question, request, etc.), informa- tion status (given vs. new information, broad focus vs. narrow focus, contrast), belief status (or epistemic position of the speaker with respect to the information exchange), politeness, and affective states, to indexical functions such as gender, age, and the sociolectal and dialectal status of the speaker (Gussenhoven, 2004; Ladd, 2008; Nespor & Vogel, 2007; see Prieto, 2015, for a review). Finally, in many languages of the world, prosody can also encode phonological contrasts at the lexi- cal level through stress or tonal marking. These various organizational and semantico-pragmatic functions are mani- fested by means of prosodic phrasal grouping (via phrasal intonation markers), intonational prominence, and intonational modulations. -
Perception and Awareness in Phonological Processing: the Case of the Phoneme
See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: http://www.researchgate.net/publication/222609954 Perception and awareness in phonological processing: the case of the phoneme ARTICLE in COGNITION · APRIL 1994 Impact Factor: 3.63 · DOI: 10.1016/0010-0277(94)90032-9 CITATIONS DOWNLOADS VIEWS 67 45 94 2 AUTHORS: José Morais Regine Kolinsky Université Libre de Bruxelles Université Libre de Bruxelles 92 PUBLICATIONS 1,938 CITATIONS 103 PUBLICATIONS 1,571 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE Available from: Regine Kolinsky Retrieved on: 15 July 2015 Cognition, 50 (1994) 287-297 OOlO-0277/94/$07.00 0 1994 - Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. Perception and awareness in phonological processing: the case of the phoneme JosC Morais*, RCgine Kolinsky Laboratoire de Psychologie exptrimentale, Universitt Libre de Bruxelles, Av. Ad. Buy1 117, B-l 050 Bruxelles, Belgium Abstract The necessity of a “levels-of-processing” approach in the study of mental repre- sentations is illustrated by the work on the psychological reality of the phoneme. On the basis of both experimental studies of human behavior and functional imaging data, it is argued that there are unconscious representations of phonemes in addition to conscious ones. These two sets of mental representations are func- tionally distinct: the former intervene in speech perception and (presumably) production; the latter are developed in the context of learning alphabetic literacy for both reading and writing purposes. Moreover, among phonological units and properties, phonemes may be the only ones to present a neural dissociation at the macro-anatomic level. Finally, it is argued that even if the representations used in speech perception and those used in assembling and in conscious operations are distinct, they may entertain dependency relations. -
Phonological Typology, Rhythm Types and the Phonetics-Phonology Interface
Zurich Open Repository and Archive University of Zurich Main Library Strickhofstrasse 39 CH-8057 Zurich www.zora.uzh.ch Year: 2012 Phonological typology, rhythm types and the phonetics-phonology interface. A methodological overview and three case studies on Italo-Romance dialects Schmid, Stephan Posted at the Zurich Open Repository and Archive, University of Zurich ZORA URL: https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-73782 Book Section Published Version Originally published at: Schmid, Stephan (2012). Phonological typology, rhythm types and the phonetics-phonology interface. A methodological overview and three case studies on Italo-Romance dialects. In: Ender, Andrea; Leemann, Adrian; Wälchli, Bernhard. Methods in contemporary linguistics. Berlin: de Gruyter Mouton, 45-68. Phonological typology, rhythm types and the phonetics-phonology interface. A methodological overview and three case studies on Italo- Romance dialects Stephan Schmid 1. Introduction Phonological typology has mainly concentrated on phoneme inventories and on implicational universals, whereas the notion of ‘language type’ ap- pears to be less appealing from a phonological perspective. An interesting candidate for establishing language types on the grounds of phonological or phonetic criteria would have come from the dichotomy of ‘stress-timing’ vs. ‘syllable-timing’, if instrumental research carried out by a number of phoneticians had not invalidated the fundamental claim of the so-called ‘isochrony hypothesis’. Nevertheless, the idea of classifying languages according to their rhythmic properties has continued to inspire linguists and phoneticians, giving rise to two diverging methodological perspectives. The focus of the first framework mainly lies on how phonological processes relate to prosodic domains, in particular to the syllable and to the phonolog- ical word.