Long and short vowels in Swiss French: Their production and perception

Contrary to what is stated in much of the literature which is based in large part on Parisian French, many dialects of French still have long and short vowels (e.g. in Switzerland and Belgium). This study had two aims. The first was to show that Swiss French speakers, as opposed to Parisian French speakers, produce long vowels with durations that are markedly different from those of short vowels. The second aim was to show that, for these two groups, vowel duration has a different impact on word recognition. A production study showed that Swiss French speakers make a clear duration difference between short and long vowels (the latter are more than twice the length of the former on average) whereas the Parisian French do not. In an identification study which used stimuli pronounced in Swiss French, it was shown that words articulated with long vowels created no recognition problem for Swiss French listeners whereas they did so for Parisian French listeners. These results are discussed in terms of models of speech perception and word recognition.

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Unstressed Vowel Reduction Across Majorcan Catalan Dialects: Production and Spoken Word Recognition

Language and Speech ◽

10.1177/0023830917736019 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 61 (3) ◽

pp. 430-465 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Miquel Llompart ◽

Miquel Simonet

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Lexical Processing ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Decision Task ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Lexical Representations ◽

Production Study ◽

Speech Performance

This study investigates the production and auditory lexical processing of words involved in a patterned phonological alternation in two dialects of Catalan spoken on the island of Majorca, Spain. One of these dialects, that of Palma, merges /ɔ/ and /o/ as [o] in unstressed position, and it maintains /u/ as an independent category, [u]. In the dialect of Sóller, a small village, speakers merge unstressed /ɔ/, /o/, and /u/ to [u]. First, a production study asks whether the discrete, rule-based descriptions of the vowel alternations provided in the dialectological literature are able to account adequately for these processes: are mergers complete? Results show that mergers are complete with regards to the main acoustic cue to these vowel contrasts, that is, F1. However, minor differences are maintained for F2 and vowel duration. Second, a lexical decision task using cross-modal priming investigates the strength with which words produced in the phonetic form of the neighboring (versus one’s own) dialect activate the listeners’ lexical representations during spoken word recognition: are words within and across dialects accessed efficiently? The study finds that listeners from one of these dialects, Sóller, process their own and the neighboring forms equally efficiently, while listeners from the other one, Palma, process their own forms more efficiently than those of the neighboring dialect. This study has implications for our understanding of the role of lifelong linguistic experience on speech performance.

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Representations and representational specificity in speech perception and spoken word recognition

The Oxford Handbook of Psycholinguistics ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198568971.013.0001 ◽

2007 ◽

pp. 2-18 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

David B. Pisoni ◽

Susannah V. Levi

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word Recognition ◽

Spoken Word ◽

Lexical Knowledge ◽

New Approaches ◽

Abstract Representations ◽

New Directions ◽

Learning And Adaptation ◽

New Framework

This article examines how new approaches—coupled with previous insights—provide a new framework for questions that deal with the nature of phonological and lexical knowledge and representation, processing of stimulus variability, and perceptual learning and adaptation. First, it outlines the traditional view of speech perception and identifies some problems with assuming such a view, in which only abstract representations exist. The article then discusses some new approaches to speech perception that retain detailed information in the representations. It also considers a view which rejects abstraction altogether, but shows that such a view has difficulty dealing with a range of linguistic phenomena. After providing a brief discussion of some new directions in linguistics that encode both detailed information and abstraction, the article concludes by discussing the coupling of speech perception and spoken word recognition.

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Opnieuw Leren Horen

Toegepaste Taalwetenschap in Artikelen ◽

10.1075/ttwia.69.08jon ◽

2003 ◽

Vol 69 ◽

pp. 91-103

Author(s):

Petra Jongmans

Keyword(s):

Data Analysis ◽

Speech Perception ◽

Cochlear Implant ◽

Inner Ear ◽

Hard Of Hearing ◽

Research Question ◽

Training Programme ◽

The Other ◽

Short Vowels ◽

The One

A CI (Cochlear Implant) is a medical device that electrically stimulates the hearing nerve in the cochlea (inner ear). Combined with actively training the hearing, it allows Cl-patients to hear again. In my research, I approached the model underlying the training programme linguistically, to see which theories on speech perception could also apply to the speech perception of CI-patients. Specifically, I examined their speech perception on phoneme level using VC-word lists. With the goal of contributing to an effective hearing training, I have tried to answer the following questions: - which phonemes are particularly difficult for patients? - what kind of confusions are made between phonemes? Mainly based on the literature on hard-of-hearing and normally hearing people, some hypotheses and a research question were formulated. Data-analysis was used to further investigate these hypotheses. A number of significant differences in difficulty were found between different phoneme categories, as well as patterns in the confusion of phonemes. It was found, for example, that long vowels are easier to perceive than short vowels and that for consonants a division can be made between plosives and fricatives on the one hand and nasals and approximants on the other, the latter group causing more problems. The research results are now being used for training CI-patients in Leiden.

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Effects of Surprisal and Entropy on Vowel Duration in Japanese

Language and Speech ◽

10.1177/0023830917737331 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 62 (1) ◽

pp. 80-114 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Jason A. Shaw ◽

Shigeto Kawahara

Keyword(s):

Shannon Entropy ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Vowel Quality ◽

Vowel Length ◽

European Languages ◽

Short Vowels ◽

Word Duration ◽

Communicative Efficiency ◽

Linguistic Units ◽

Positive Effect

Research on English and other languages has shown that syllables and words that contain more information tend to be produced with longer duration. This research is evolving into a general thesis that speakers articulate linguistic units with more information more robustly. While this hypothesis seems plausible from the perspective of communicative efficiency, previous support for it has come mainly from English and some other Indo-European languages. Moreover, most previous studies focus on global effects, such as the interaction of word duration and sentential/semantic predictability. The current study is focused at the level of phonotactics, exploring the effects of local predictability on vowel duration in Japanese, using the Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese. To examine gradient consonant-vowel phonotactics within a consonant–vowel-mora, consonant-conditioned Surprisal and Shannon Entropy were calculated, and their effects on vowel duration were examined, together with other linguistic factors that are known from previous research to affect vowel duration. Results show significant effects of both Surprisal and Entropy, as well as notable interactions with vowel length and vowel quality. The effect of Entropy is stronger on peripheral vowels than on central vowels. Surprisal has a stronger positive effect on short vowels than on long vowels. We interpret the main patterns and the interactions by conceptualizing Surprisal as an index of motor fluency and Entropy as an index of competition in vowel selection.

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Perception of Hearing Aid–Processed Speech in Individuals with Late-Onset Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder

Journal of the American Academy of Audiology ◽

10.3766/jaaa.14102 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 26 (10) ◽

pp. 815-823 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jijo Pottackal Mathai ◽

Sabarish Appu

Keyword(s):

Speech Perception ◽

Word Recognition ◽

Hearing Aids ◽

Repeated Measures ◽

Late Onset ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Auditory Neuropathy ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Temporal Envelope ◽

Compression Time

Background: Auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder (ANSD) is a form of sensorineural hearing loss, causing severe deficits in speech perception. The perceptual problems of individuals with ANSD were attributed to their temporal processing impairment rather than to reduced audibility. This rendered their rehabilitation difficult using hearing aids. Although hearing aids can restore audibility, compression circuits in a hearing aid might distort the temporal modulations of speech, causing poor aided performance. Therefore, hearing aid settings that preserve the temporal modulations of speech might be an effective way to improve speech perception in ANSD. Purpose: The purpose of the study was to investigate the perception of hearing aid–processed speech in individuals with late-onset ANSD. Research Design: A repeated measures design was used to study the effect of various compression time settings on speech perception and perceived quality. Study Sample: Seventeen individuals with late-onset ANSD within the age range of 20–35 yr participated in the study. Data Collection and Analysis: The word recognition scores (WRSs) and quality judgment of phonemically balanced words, processed using four different compression settings of a hearing aid (slow, medium, fast, and linear), were evaluated. The modulation spectra of hearing aid–processed stimuli were estimated to probe the effect of amplification on the temporal envelope of speech. Repeated measures analysis of variance and post hoc Bonferroni’s pairwise comparisons were used to analyze the word recognition performance and quality judgment. Results: The comparison between unprocessed and all four hearing aid–processed stimuli showed significantly higher perception using the former stimuli. Even though perception of words processed using slow compression time settings of the hearing aids were significantly higher than the fast one, their difference was only 4%. In addition, there were no significant differences in perception between any other hearing aid–processed stimuli. Analysis of the temporal envelope of hearing aid–processed stimuli revealed minimal changes in the temporal envelope across the four hearing aid settings. In terms of quality, the highest number of individuals preferred stimuli processed using slow compression time settings. Individuals who preferred medium ones followed this. However, none of the individuals preferred fast compression time settings. Analysis of quality judgment showed that slow, medium, and linear settings presented significantly higher preference scores than the fast compression setting. Conclusions: Individuals with ANSD showed no marked difference in perception of speech that was processed using the four different hearing aid settings. However, significantly higher preference, in terms of quality, was found for stimuli processed using slow, medium, and linear settings over the fast one. Therefore, whenever hearing aids are recommended for ANSD, those having slow compression time settings or linear amplification may be chosen over the fast (syllabic compression) one. In addition, WRSs obtained using hearing aid–processed stimuli were remarkably poorer than unprocessed stimuli. This shows that processing of speech through hearing aids might have caused a large reduction of performance in individuals with ANSD. However, further evaluation is needed using individually programmed hearing aids rather than hearing aid–processed stimuli.

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