Publications

Use of Tonal Information in Korean Lexical Access

No abstract is provided for this article.

Recency of immersion in L2 environment more important than L2 proficiency in speech segmentation

Speech segmentation is a language-specific skill: each language provides different cues for optimally segmenting the continuous speech stream into words. When exposed to a novel language, listeners have been shown to use those segmentation cues that they are familiar with from their native language (L1). Learning a second language (L2) entails learning to use the prosodic segmentation cues appropriate for that language. Whereas many studies have addressed the influence of the L1 on segmentation of L2 or novel languages, it is yet unclear how L1 and L2 segmentation strategies might compete in highly proficient L2 learners. In order to assess the prominence of L1 vs. L2 prosodic segmentation strategies, this study investigates which segmentation cues take precedence when listeners are exposed to a novel language. It assesses to what extent proficiency in the L2 and recent exposure to the L2 affect the use of L1 versus L2-specific segmentation cues in segmenting novel-language speech. Participants were (1) native listeners of French, (2) native listeners of English without functional knowledge of French, and (3) native listeners of English with a high proficiency in French as an L2 (assessed with a cloze test) who had lived in a French-speaking country for at least three months. Importantly, all participants were living in the USA at the time of testing. The native listeners of French and the L2 learners of French had been selected to vary in the amount of time elapsed since their last stay in a French-speaking country. In an artificial language learning experiment, participants were tested on their use of a segmentation cue that matches French but not English prosody, namely a high tone on word-final syllables. The word-final high F0 is expected to be a useful segmentation cue for French listeners, because accented syllables in French occur at the right edge of the Accentual Phrase and are word-final; in non-utterance-final positions, they have higher F0 and longer duration than the corresponding unaccented syllables. It is not expected to be a useful segmentation cue for (monolingual) English listeners, because in English, accented syllables tend to be word-initial, with F0 rise, increased amplitude and, to some extent, increased duration signaling this word-initial prominence. During a training phase, 30 participants were exposed to a 20-minute speech stream consisting of six trisyllabic words without any phonetic word-boundary cues except the word-final high F0. In the subsequent test phase, they were tested on their recognition of the trained words. The results showed no effect of French proficiency for the L2 learners. There was, however, a strong effect of recent linguistic exposure: performance increased with decreasing time in the USA since the last stay in a French-speaking country. Surprisingly, the recency of immersion in an L2 environment thus turned out to override L2 proficiency. These results indicate that recent linguistic exposure is a crucial factor influencing listeners’ use of prosodic cues in speech segmentation. This suggests that speech-processing routines are much less rigid and more adaptive than previously assumed. AMLaP 2012 Poster Session 4 September 8, 14:00-15:30

Domain-initial strengthening in four languages

No abstract is provided for this article.

Articulation of word and sentence stress

This paper reports on the articulation of two aspects of speech prosody: word and sentence stress. Word stress is examined in reiterant renditions of minimal pairs differing in the location of main stress (e.g., DIScharge–disCHARGE), with the contrastive stress difference manifested as differences in the location of the nuclear pitch accent. Sentence stress is examined in sets of minimal sentences differing in the presence or location of the nuclear pitch accent (e.g., so TOMMY gave Debby a song from Timmy). Three talkers read these materials while movements of the jaw and tongue (using the Carstens Articulograph) or of 20 reflective infrared markers on the face (using the Qualysis Motion Capture system) were recorded. Syllables with and without contrastive pitch accents are compared along several articulatory dimensions, including: jaw displacement and duration of movement, jaw peak opening and closing velocities, jaw peak acceleration, whole head displacement, and eyebrow displacement. These comparisons allow us to determine whether the talkers articulate the focused syllables/words differently. The three talkers were selected to differ in their overall visual speech intelligibility, as rated by expert deaf speechreaders, and therefore interspeaker differences in articulation are expected. [Work supported by NSF KDI Grant 9996088.]

Statistical Patterns in Consonant Cluster Simplification in Seoul Korean: Within-dialect Interspeaker and Intraspeaker Variation

This study examines how young speakers of Seoul Korean produce tri-consonantal clusters /1kt/ and /1pt/ as in palk-ta ('to be bright') and palp-ta ('to step on'). Production data were collected from 20 speakers of Seoul Korean. The results of narrow transcription of the data showed that simplification is not obligatory as some speakers often preserve all three consonants. When simplified, there was a clear asymmetry between /1kt/ and /1pt/. Speakers showed no clear preference for either C1 preservation (C1=/1/) or C2 preservation (C2=/k/ in /1kt/ and /p/ in /1pt/) in production of /1kt/, but in production of /1pt/, strong preference was found for C1-preserved to C2-preserved variant. When compared with production data in Cho (1999), simplification patterns appear to have changed over the past 10 years, in a direction to preserve the first member of the cluster (/1/) more often, especially with /1kt/. There was no substantial between-item variation, indicating that simplification patterns are not lexically specified. Finally, the results suggest that the process of tri-consonantal simplification has not been fully phonologized in the grammar of the language as evident in substantial inter- and intra-speaker variation.

Prosodically driven phonetic detail in speech processing: The case of domain-initial strengthening in English

We explore the role of the acoustic consequences of domain-initial strengthening in spoken-word recognition. In two cross-modal identity-priming experiments, listeners heard sentences and made lexical decisions to visual targets, presented at the onset of the second word in two-word sequences containing lexical ambiguities (e.g., bus tickets, with the competitor bust). These sequences contained Intonational Phrase (IP) or Prosodic Word (Wd) boundaries, and the second word's initial Consonant and Vowel (CV, e.g., [tɪ]) was spliced from another token of the sequence in IP- or Wd-initial position. Acoustic analyses showed that IP-initial consonants were articulated more strongly than Wd-initial consonants. In Experiment 1, related targets were post-boundary words (e.g., tickets). No strengthening effect was observed (i.e., identity priming effects did not vary across splicing conditions). In Experiment 2, related targets were pre-boundary words (e.g., bus). There was a strengthening effect (stronger priming when the post-boundary CVs were spliced from IP-initial than from Wd-initial position), but only in Wd-boundary contexts. These were the conditions where phonetic detail associated with domain-initial strengthening could assist listeners most in lexical disambiguation. We discuss how speakers may strengthen domain-initial segments during production and how listeners may use the resulting acoustic correlates of prosodic strengthening during word recognition.

More than a magic moment – Paving the way for dynamics of articulation and prosodic structure†

Research into human communication through the spoken language is full of dichotomies that have often stood in the way of progress in the past, notably the distinction between phonetics and phonology, and more recently, and somewhat orthogonally, between prosody and articulation. The papers collected here make considerable advances in overcoming these restrictions, providing valuable contributions towards the integration of these fields. The increasing evidence for dependencies across the different levels of linguistic structure, and the complexity of the interplay between them, has led to the application of dynamical approaches to spoken language description. With these approaches, coordination and variation within and across systems have begun to play a central role. This paper identifies a common thread through the papers in this issue, in which variation is a consequence of dynamically time-varying behavior that cannot be captured by static snapshots (magic moments).

Compensation for complete assimilation in speech perception: The case of Korean labial-to-velar assimilation

In connected speech, phonological assimilation to neighboring words can lead to pronunciation variants (e.g., ‘garden bench’→“gardem bench”). A large body of literature suggests that listeners use the phonetic context to reconstruct the intended word for assimilation types that often lead to incomplete assimilations (e.g., a pronunciation of “garden” that carries cues for both a labial [m] and an alveolar [n]). In the current paper, we show that a similar context effect is observed for an assimilation that is often complete, Korean labial-to-velar place assimilation. In contrast to the context effects for partial assimilations, however, the context effects seem to rely completely on listeners’ experience with the assimilation pattern in their native language.

Methodological consideration in research on French second-language speech perception and spoken word recognition

The present chapter provides an overview of methodological considerations for research on French speech perception and spoken word recognition by second/foreign language (L2) learners. French has several phonetic and phonological characteristics that are relatively infrequent cross-linguistically and thus make it a very interesting L2 to investigate from the perspective of speech perception and spoken word recognition. The chapter provides a review of the methodological approaches used in studies that focus on these characteristics, considering both the perception and processing of speech sounds that are lexically contrastive and the perception and processing of speech sounds that signal word boundaries. The chapter also identifies areas for further investigation and open research questions, and it makes theoretical and methodological recommendations that take advantage of the unique properties of French speech for further advancing research on L2 learners’ speech perception and spoken word recognition.

Prosodic strengthening in reference to the lexical pitch accent system in South Kyungsang Korean

Theories of the phonetics-prosody interface suggest that prosodic strengthening that arises with prosodic structuring is not simply a low-level phonetic phenomenon, but it serves as a phonetic hallmark of a higher-order prosodic structure in reference to linguistic (phonological) contrast. The present study builds on this theoretical premise by examining acoustic realization of the phonological tonal contrast in the lexical pitch accent system of South Kyungsang (SK) Korean. Results showed that phonetic realization of F0 and the degree of glottalization (as reflected in spectral tilt measures such as H1-A1c and H1-A3c) of vowels in vowel-initial words were systematically modulated by the higher-order prosodic structure, and that the prosodic-structural modulation gave rise to distinct prosodic strengthening effects as a function of the source of prosodic strengthening. In particular, the prominence-induced strengthening (due to focus) entailed a phonetic polarizing effect on the F0 contrast in a way that enhances the phonological High vs. Low tone contrast. The boundary-induced strengthening effect, on the other hand, could be better understood as enhancing the phonetic clarity of prosodic junctures. The distinct prosodic strengthening effects were further evident in the way that glottalization was fine-tuned according to prosodic structure and phonological (tonal) contrast. Prosodic strengthening effects were also found to interact with intrinsic vowel height, implying that the low-level phonetic effect may be under speaker control in reference to higher-order prosodic and phonological contrast systems of the language. Finally, the results informed a theoretical debate regarding whether the Low tone that contrasts with the High tone in word-initial position should be considered lexically specified vs. post-lexical assigned.

Durational Effects of Stress, Accent, and Voicing on the Preceding Word-final Syllable in English.

Effects of prosodic boundary and syllable structure on the temporal realization of CV gestures

An articulatory study was conducted to explore effects of prosodic boundary and syllable structure on temporal realizations of /ma/ in C♯V vs. ♯CV in Korean (where ‘♯’ denotes an Intonational Phrase or a Word boundary). The vocalic gesture underwent boundary-induced lengthening more in C♯V than in ♯CV, implying that the boundary effect is largely localized to the initial element whether consonantal or vocalic. CV coordination patterns were temporally neutralized between ♯CV and C♯V in the phrase-internal Word boundary condition, showing a possible ‘resyllabifiation’ of ‘C’ with the following vowel in C♯V in the articulatory temporal measures taken in the present study. It was suggested that CV gestures in C♯V, whose phasing relationship has to be determined postlexically, reorganize temporally in an in-phase coupling mode just like the way CV gestures are phased in ♯CV. Finally, while there was leftward shifting of the consonantal gesture in C♯V with some temporal variability across an IP vs. a Word boundary, intergestural timing in ♯CV remained invariant regardless of boundary strength. But the most stable temporal pattern was observed with an IP boundary in ♯CV, interpretable as an important temporal characteristic of domain-initial strengthening. Some of these results were further discussed in terms of their implications for the theory of π-gesture and the gestural coupling model of syllable structure.

Mechanisms of regulation in speech. Special Issue. Journal of Phonetics (guest editors)

No abstract is provided for this article.

Glottal stops do not constrain lexical access as do oral stops

No abstract is provided for this article.

Optical Phonetics and Visual Perception of Lexical and Phrasal Stress in English

In a study of optical cues to the visual perception of stress, three American English talkers spoke words that differed in lexical stress and sentences that differed in phrasal stress, while video and movements of the face were recorded. The production of stressed and unstressed syllables from these utterances was analyzed along many measures of facial movement, which were generally larger and faster in the stressed condition. In a visual perception experiment, 16 perceivers identified the location of stress in forced-choice judgments of video clips of these utterances (without audio). Phrasal stress was better perceived than lexical stress. The relation of the visual intelligibility of the prosody of these utterances to the optical characteristics of their production was analyzed to determine which cues are associated with successful visual perception. While most optical measures were correlated with perception performance, chin measures, especially Chin Opening Displacement, contributed the most to correct perception independently of the other measures. Thus, our results indicate that the information for visual stress perception is mainly associated with mouth opening movements.

Manifestation of prosodic structure in articulatory variation: Evidence from lip kinematics in English

Manifestation of prosodic structure in articulatory variation: Evidence from lip kinematics in English was published in Laboratory Phonology 8 on page 519.

Use of Prosodic Cues in Speech Segmentation: The Effect of Recent Linguistic Exposure

This research examines the relative influences of native language and recent linguistic exposure on listeners’ use of prosodic cues in artificial-language speech segmentation. We tested listeners’ use of fundamental-frequency (F0) rise as cue to word-final boundaries. Participants included French listeners who had spent various amounts of time in the US since their last stay in France, high-proficiency English learners of French who had spent various amounts of time in the US since their last French immersion, and English listeners without functional knowledge of French. The results suggest that recent exposure more accurately predicts listeners’ segmentation accuracy than native language does. Index Terms: speech segmentation, prosodic cues, artificiallanguage learning

Supralaryngeal articulatory signatures of three-way contrastive labial stops in Korean

This study investigates how the three-way contrastive bilabial stops (/p⁎,ph,p/, called fortis, aspirated and lenis, respectively) in word-medial position in Korean are distinct kinematically at the supralaryngeal articulatory level. Results of a magnetometer experiment with seven speakers of Seoul Korean showed that the three-way contrastive stops in VCV sequences (V=/i/ or /a/) are indeed manifested at the supralaryngeal level—not only in consonantal articulation, but also in vocalic articulation of their adjacent vowels. Several specific points have emerged. First, stops were three-way distinct in constriction degree and constriction duration (/p*/>/ph/>/p/). Second, their contrast was also evident in temporal dimensions of the vocalic tongue movement with a three-way distinct pattern (/p*/>/ph/>/p/), and of the lip opening movement with a two-way distinction (/p*,ph/>/p/). Third, consonantal strength was further reflected in V-to-V coarticulation, such that longer constriction triggered more reduction of V-to-V coarticulation. However, there was a case (for /i/ in carryover direction) in which coarticulatory reduction was still observed even when the duration was factored in, showing duration-independent V-to-V coarticulatory resistance associated with the fortis and aspirated stops. Fourth, stable coordination was observed between the lip constriction and the vocalic tongue movement which is in line with previous findings in Japanese and English, suggesting cross-linguistic similarities in consonant–vowel gestural coordination regardless of the rhythmic structure of a given language.