A syllable-centric framework for the evolution of spoken language

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
Rapid Transmission

The cyclic nature of speech production, as manifested in the syllabic organization of spoken language, is likely to reflect general properties of sensori-motor integration rather than merely a phylogenetic progression from mastication, teeth chattering, and lipsmacks. The temporal properties of spontaneous speech reflect the entropy of its underlying constituents and are optimized for rapid transmission and decoding of linguistic information conveyed by a complex constellation of acoustic and visual cues, suggesting that the dawn of human language may have occurred when the articulatory cycle was efficiently yoked to the temporal dynamics of sensory coding and rapid retrieval from referential memory.

scholarly journals The effect of nouns and verbs on pausing in spoken language

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Ishchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Pause Duration ◽  
Conversational Speech ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Expressive Speech ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Relative Standard

The study analyzes speech pauses of Ukrainian. The research material is the audio texts of spontaneous conversational speech of customarily pronunciation and intonation, as well as non-spontaneous (read) speech of clear pronunciation and expressive intonation. We show a robust tendency for high frequency of pauses after nouns. It suggests that pausing is like a predictor of nouns. The frequency of pausing after verbs is slightly lower. The probability of pause location after any another part of speech is much lower. Generally, pausing can be occurred after words of any grammatical category. These findings spread virtually equally to both spontaneous conversational speech and non-spontaneous speech (clear intonated reading). The effect of nouns on pause occurrence may be caused by universal property of the human language. It is recently accepted that nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages. This is because nouns load cognitive processes of the speech production planning more as compared with verbs and other parts. At the same time, some Ukrainian language features also impact the pausing after nouns (these features are characteristic of other Slavic languages too). This is about a prosodic phrasing of Ukrainian according to that interpausal utterances usually are finalized by nouns (rarely by verbs or other principal parts of speech) which get most semantic load. The pauses do not follow after each noun, because they can be exploited in the speech segmentation in depends on linguistic (linguistic structure of speech), physiological (individuality of speech production, breathing), and psycholingual factors. We suggest that the priming effect as a noun- and verb-inducted psycholingual factor can significantly impact pausing in spoken language. Statistical measures show the following: 430 ms ±60% is the average pause duration of non-spontaneous clear expressive speech, 355 ms ±50% is the average pause duration of spontaneous customarily speech. Thus, pauses of non-spontaneous speech have a longer duration than of spontaneous speech. This is indicated by both the average pause duration means (ms) and the relative standard deviation of pause durations (±%). Keywords: expressive speech, spontaneous speech, phonetics, prosody, speech pauses, pausing, prepausal words, nouns, verbs.

He who Hesitates: Hesitation Phenomena as Quality Control in Speech Production, Obstacles in Non-Native Speech Perception

2000 ◽  
Vol 182 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marnie Reed
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Classification Framework ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Control Devices ◽  
Content Processing ◽  
Hesitation Phenomena

This study was designed to determine the nature and occurrence of hesitation phenomena in spontaneous speech of native and non-native speakers, and to determine whether and to what extent the hesitation phenomena normal in spontaneous speech pose perception problems for non-native speakers. A quantitative analysis reveals that hesitation phenomena are ubiquitous in both native and non-native speech production. A qualitative analysis based on a content-processing classification framework reveals the function of hesitations. Hesitations act as overt traces of prospective and retrospective speech-processing tasks which function to forestall errors, and to permit detection and repair of errors once they are committed. Hesitations are quality control devices; native and non-native speakers are highly successful utilizing them to forestall errors. However, hesitation phenomena clearly pose perception problems for non-native speakers who show little evidence of recognizing them as such. Like native speakers, non-native speakers produce hesitation phenomena. Unlike native speakers, who edit and filter out the hesitations they hear, non-native speakers attempt to assign meaning to speakers' faulty output or to parenthetical remarks. Hesitations are unpredictable in their frequency or occurrence; failure to provide training in these oral discourse features of connected speech may result in non-native speakers whose speech production vastly outstrips their perception.

scholarly journals Environmental and Linguistic Typology of Whistled Languages

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 493-510
Author(s):  
Julien Meyer
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Natural Speech ◽  
Language Diversity ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Language Family ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Linguistic Typology ◽  
Language Structure

Whistled forms of languages are distributed worldwide and survive only in some of the most remote villages on the planet. They are not limited to a given continent, language family, or language structure, but they have been detected only sporadically by researchers and travelers, partly because they can be taken for nonlinguistic phenomena, such as simple signaling. Whistled speech consists of speaking while whistling to communicate at a long distance. The result is a melody that imitates modal speech and that remains intelligible for the interlocutors. This review proposes a typology of this special, little-known, natural speech type and takes socio-environmental and linguistic aspects into consideration. The amazing potential of this phenomenon to provide an alternative point of view into language diversity and speech offers a unique occasion to revisit human language with original insights embracing the adaptive flexibility that characterizes speech production and perception.

Inconsistencies in spoken language

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Borochovsky Bar-Aba
Keyword(s):  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
Verb Tense

This paper displays examples of inconsistencies in spontaneous speech. It refers to cases in which the speaker changes his manner of expression while speaking, even though there generally seems to be no objective reason for doing so. I demonstrate the phenomenon in the use of verb tense, of person inflection, of singular/plural form, and of direct/indirect speech. I suggest that these phenomena be viewed as cases in which the speaker tries (not necessarily consciously) to make his speech less monotonous and more attractive to the listener by providing various ways of expression differing mainly in the degree of closeness they convey between the reported event and the addressee.

Contribution of the basal ganglia to spoken language: Is speech production like the other motor skills?

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 576-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Zenon ◽  
Etienne Olivier
Keyword(s):  
Basal Ganglia ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Motor Skills ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Motor System ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Motor Behaviour ◽  
Hypokinetic Dysarthria ◽  
High Level

AbstractTwo of the roles assigned to the basal ganglia in spoken language parallel very well their contribution to motor behaviour: (1) their role in sequence processing, resulting in syntax deficits, and (2) their role in movement “vigor,” leading to “hypokinetic dysarthria” or “hypophonia.” This is an additional example of how the motor system has served the emergence of high-level cognitive functions, such as language.

scholarly journals Temporal patterns of words with and without suffixes in spontaneous Hungarian

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-70
Author(s):  
Mária Gósy ◽  
Ákos Gocsál
Keyword(s):  
Lexical Access ◽  
Semantic Representation ◽  
Temporal Patterns ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
Specific Factors

Temporal properties of words are defined by physiological, psychical, and language-specific factors. Lexical representations are assumed to be stored either in a morphologically decomposed form or in a conceptually non-decomposed form. We assumed that the duration of words with and without suffixes would refer to the route of their lexical access. Measured durations of Hungarian nouns with various lengths produced by 10 speakers in spontaneous utterances revealed significant differences, depending on the words’ morphological structures. Durations of monomorphemic nouns were shorter than those of multimorphemic nouns, irrespective of the number of syllables they contained. Our interpretation is that multimorphemic words are accessed decompositionally in spontaneous speech, meaning that stem activation of the semantic representation is followed by activation of one or more suffixes. Durational differences of monomorphemic and multimorphemic words were not stable across word lengths. The number of suffixes did not influence the words’ temporal patterns. Kokkuvõte. Mária Gósy ja Ákos Gocsál: Sufiksiga ja sufiksita sõnade ajaline struktuur spontaanses ungari keeles. Sõnade ajalised omadused sõltuvad füsioloogilistest, psühholoogilistest ja keelespetsiifilistest teguritest. Eelduste kohaselt on sõnad mentaalses leksikonis representeeritud kas morfeemideks analüüsituna või tervikmõistena. Uurimuses lähtuti eeldusest, et sufiksiga ja sufiksita sõnade kestus viitab sellele, kuidas juurdepääs neile toimub. Mõõdeti kümne kõneleja spontaansetes lausungites produtseeritud eri pikkusega ungari nimisõnade kestust. Ilmnes, et kestus sõltus oluliselt sõna morfoloogilisest ülesehitusest. Tüvisõnade kestus oli tuletiste omast lühem, sõltumata silpide arvust sõnas. Järelduseks saadi, et juurdepääs tuletistele toimub spontaanses kõnes osade kaupa: tüve semantilise representatsiooni aktiveerimisele järgneb sufiksi või sufiksite aktiveerimine. Tüvisõnade ja tuletiste kestuserinevused olid eri pikkusega sõnade puhul erinevad. Sufiksite arv sõna ajalist struktuuri ei mõjutanud. Märksõnad: kestus, nimisõnad, tüvisõnad ja tuletised, leksikaalne juurdepääs, spontaansed lausungid

scholarly journals Language prediction mechanisms in human auditory cortex

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. Forseth ◽  
G. Hickok ◽  
P. S. Rollo ◽  
N. Tandon
Keyword(s):  
Speech Perception ◽  
Auditory Cortex ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Planum Temporale ◽  
Gamma Power ◽  
And Function ◽  
Predictive Mechanisms ◽  
Stimulation Of

Abstract Spoken language, both perception and production, is thought to be facilitated by an ensemble of predictive mechanisms. We obtain intracranial recordings in 37 patients using depth probes implanted along the anteroposterior extent of the supratemporal plane during rhythm listening, speech perception, and speech production. These reveal two predictive mechanisms in early auditory cortex with distinct anatomical and functional characteristics. The first, localized to bilateral Heschl’s gyri and indexed by low-frequency phase, predicts the timing of acoustic events. The second, localized to planum temporale only in language-dominant cortex and indexed by high-gamma power, shows a transient response to acoustic stimuli that is uniquely suppressed during speech production. Chronometric stimulation of Heschl’s gyrus selectively disrupts speech perception, while stimulation of planum temporale selectively disrupts speech production. This work illuminates the fundamental acoustic infrastructure—both architecture and function—for spoken language, grounding cognitive models of speech perception and production in human neurobiology.

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