scholarly journals Prosodic Boundary Effects on Syntactic Disambiguation in Children With Cochlear Implants

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (5) ◽  
pp. 1188-1202
Author(s):  
Talita Fortunato-Tavares ◽  
Richard G. Schwartz ◽  
Klara Marton ◽  
Claudia F. de Andrade ◽  
Derek Houston
Keyword(s):  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Processing Speed ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Boundary Effects ◽  
Linguistic Differences ◽  
Relative Boundary ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Prosodic Boundary

Purpose This study investigated prosodic boundary effects on the comprehension of attachment ambiguities in children with cochlear implants (CIs) and normal hearing (NH) and tested the absolute boundary hypothesis and the relative boundary hypothesis. Processing speed was also investigated. Method Fifteen children with NH and 13 children with CIs (ages 8–12 years) who are monolingual speakers of Brazilian Portuguese participated in a computerized comprehension task with sentences containing prepositional phrase attachment ambiguity and manipulations of prosodic boundaries. Results Children with NH and children with CIs differed in how they used prosodic forms to disambiguate sentences. Children in both groups provided responses consistent with half of the predictions of the relative boundary hypothesis. The absolute boundary hypothesis did not characterize the syntactic disambiguation of children with CIs. Processing speed was similar in both groups. Conclusions Children with CIs do not use prosodic information to disambiguate sentences or to facilitate comprehension of unambiguous sentences similarly to children with NH. The results suggest that cross-linguistic differences may interact with syntactic disambiguation. Prosodic contrasts that affect sentence comprehension need to be addressed directly in intervention with children with CIs.

scholarly journals Effects of Cooperating and Conflicting Prosody in Spoken English Garden Path Sentences: ERP Evidence for the Boundary Deletion Hypothesis

2011 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 2731-2751 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efrat Pauker ◽  
Inbal Itzhak ◽  
Shari R. Baum ◽  
Karsten Steinhauer
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Syntactic Structure ◽  
Brain Response ◽  
Garden Path ◽  
Spoken English ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
On Line ◽  
Prosodic Boundary

In reading, a comma in the wrong place can cause more severe misunderstandings than the lack of a required comma. Here, we used ERPs to demonstrate that a similar effect holds for prosodic boundaries in spoken language. Participants judged the acceptability of temporarily ambiguous English “garden path” sentences whose prosodic boundaries were either in line or in conflict with the actual syntactic structure. Sentences with incongruent boundaries were accepted less than those with missing boundaries and elicited a stronger on-line brain response in ERPs (N400/P600 components). Our results support the notion that mentally deleting an overt prosodic boundary is more costly than postulating a new one and extend previous findings, suggesting an immediate role of prosody in sentence comprehension. Importantly, our study also provides new details on the profile and temporal dynamics of the closure positive shift (CPS), an ERP component assumed to reflect prosodic phrasing in speech and music in real time. We show that the CPS is reliably elicited at the onset of prosodic boundaries in English sentences and is preceded by negative components. Its early onset distinguishes the speech CPS in adults both from prosodic ERP correlates in infants and from the “music CPS” previously reported for trained musicians.

scholarly journals Modelling automatic detection of prosodic boundaries for brazilian portuguese spontaneous speech

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 ◽  
pp. 105-128
Author(s):  
Tommaso Raso ◽  
Bárbara Teixeira ◽  
Plínio Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Information Structure ◽  
Speech Rate ◽  
Automatic Detection ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Acoustic Parameters ◽  
Linear Discriminant ◽  
Two Samples ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Prosodic Boundary

Speech is segmented into intonational units marked by prosodic boundaries. This segmentation is claimed to have important consequences on syntax, information structure and cognition. This work aims both to investigate the phonetic-acoustic parameters that guide the production and perception of prosodic boundaries, and to develop models for automatic detection of prosodic boundaries in male monological spontaneous speech of Brazilian Portuguese. Two samples were segmented into intonational units by two groups of trained annotators. The boundaries perceived by the annotators were tagged as either terminal or non-terminal. A script was used to extract 111 phonetic-acoustic parameters along speech signal in a right and left windows around the boundary of each phonological word. The extracted parameters comprise measures of (1) Speech rate and rhythm; (2) Standardized segment duration; (3) Fundamental frequency; (4) Intensity; (5) Silent pause. The script considers as prosodic boundary positions at which at least 50% of the annotators indicated a boundary of the same type. A training of models composed by the parameters extracted by the script was developed; these models, were then improved heuristically. The models were developed from the two samples and from the whole data, both using non-balanced and balanced data. Linear Discriminant Analysis algorithm was adopted to produce the models. The models for terminal boundaries show a much higher performance than those for non-terminal ones. In this paper we: (i) show the methodological procedures; (ii) analyze the different models; (iii) discuss some strategies that could lead to an improvement of our results.

scholarly journals Reading Test-Sentence Comprehension: An Adapted Version of Lobrot's Lecture 3 Test for Brazilian Portuguese

Dyslexia ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas de Araújo Vilhena ◽  
Ana Sucena ◽  
São Luís Castro ◽  
Ângela Maria Vieira Pinheiro
Keyword(s):  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Test Sentence ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Reading Test

scholarly journals Short information units

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 03-35
Author(s):  
Tommaso Raso ◽  
Saulo Santos
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Lexical Item ◽  
Phonological Word ◽  
Information Unit ◽  
Specific Circumstance ◽  
Linguistic Functions ◽  
Prosodic Boundary ◽  
Intonation Unit

Our main goal is to show that short information units (one phonological word immediately preceded and followed by a prosodic boundary, at least one of which with non-terminal value) can be classified only on the basis of their formal prosodic characteristics. That is to say that lexicon and syntax may vary with respect to the informational function, while what formally marks the informational function is the regularity of the prosodic profile of the lexical item. We also maintain that an information unit corresponds to an intonation unit (except in one specific circumstance). We use just one lexeme for the analysis, the Brazilian Portuguese ASSIM, and extract all the occurrences where this lexeme is found in a dedicated prosodic unit in the C-ORAL-BRASIL corpus. According to our analysis, this lexeme can fulfill at least five different information units, i.e. it can fulfill at least five different linguistic functions, recognizable by their prosodic regularities.

scholarly journals Prosodic Phrasing and Syllable Prominence in Spoken Prose. A Validated Coding Manual

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Isabelle Franz ◽  
Christine A. Knoop ◽  
Gerrit Kentner ◽  
Sascha Rothbart ◽  
Vanessa Kegel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Signal ◽  
Coding System ◽  
Plain Text ◽  
Coding Systems ◽  
Potential Applications ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Coding Manual ◽  
Prose Rhythm ◽  
Prosodic Boundary ◽  
Current Systems

Current systems for predicting prosodic prominence and boundaries in texts focus on syntax/semantic-based automatic decoding of sentences that need to be annotated syntactically (Atterer & Klein 2002; Windmann et al. 2011). However, to date, there is no phonetically validated replicable system for manually coding prosodic boundaries and syllable prominence in longer sentences or texts. Based on work in the fields of metrical phonology (Liberman & Prince 1977), phrase formation (Hayes 1989) and existing pause coding systems (Gee and Grosjean 1983), we developed a manual for coding prosodic boundaries (with 6 degrees of juncture) and syllable prominence (8 degrees). Three independent annotators applied the coding system to the beginning pages of four German novels and to four short stories (20 058 syllables, Fleiss kappa .82). For the phonetic validation, eight professional speakers read the excerpts of the novels aloud. We annotated the speech signal automatically with MAUS (Schiel 1999). Using PRAAT (Boersma & Weenink 2019), we extracted pitch, duration, and intensity for each syllable, as well as several phonetic parameters for pauses, and compared all measures obtained to the theoretically predicted levels of syllable prominence and prosodic boundary strength. The validation with the speech signal shows that our annotation system reliably predicts syllable prominence and prosodic boundaries. Since our annotation works with plain text, there are many potential applications of the coding system, covering research on prose rhythm, synthetic speech and (psycho)linguistic research on prosody.

scholarly journals Gestural coordination at prosodic boundaries and its role for prosodic structure and speech planning processes

2014 ◽  
Vol 369 (1658) ◽  
pp. 20130397 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Krivokapić
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Prosodic Structure ◽  
Multiple Functions ◽  
The Past ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Planning Processes ◽  
Speech Planning ◽  
Prosodic Boundary ◽  
Important Progress ◽  
Made In

Prosodic structure is a grammatical component that serves multiple functions in the production, comprehension and acquisition of language. Prosodic boundaries are critical for the understanding of the nature of the prosodic structure of language, and important progress has been made in the past decades in illuminating their properties. We first review recent prosodic boundary research from the point of view of gestural coordination. We then go on to tie in this work to questions of speech planning and manual and head movement. We conclude with an outline of a new direction of research which is needed for a full understanding of prosodic boundaries and their role in the speech production process.

Infants’ Processing of Prosodic Cues: Electrophysiological Evidence for Boundary Perception beyond Pause Detection

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 153-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Holzgrefe-Lang ◽  
Caroline Wellmann ◽  
Barbara Höhle ◽  
Isabell Wartenburger
Keyword(s):  
Age Groups ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Pitch Change ◽  
Prosodic Cues ◽  
Behavioral Studies ◽  
Brain Responses ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Prosodic Boundary ◽  
First Year Of Life

Infants as young as six months are sensitive to prosodic phrase boundaries marked by three acoustic cues: pitch change, final lengthening, and pause. Behavioral studies suggest that a language-specific weighting of these cues develops during the first year of life; recent work on German revealed that eight-month-olds, unlike six-month-olds, are capable of perceiving a prosodic boundary on the basis of pitch change and final lengthening only. The present study uses Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) to investigate the neuro-cognitive development of prosodic cue perception in German-learning infants. In adults’ ERPs, prosodic boundary perception is clearly reflected by the so-called Closure Positive Shift (CPS). To date, there is mixed evidence on whether an infant CPS exists that signals early prosodic cue perception, or whether the CPS emerges only later—the latter implying that infantile brain responses to prosodic boundaries reflect acoustic, low-level pause detection. We presented six- and eight-month-olds with stimuli containing either no boundary cues, only a pitch cue, or a combination of both pitch change and final lengthening. For both age groups, responses to the former two conditions did not differ, while brain responses to prosodic boundaries cued by pitch change and final lengthening showed a positivity that we interpret as a CPS-like infant ERP component. This hints at an early sensitivity to prosodic boundaries that cannot exclusively be based on pause detection. Instead, infants’ brain responses indicate an early ability to exploit subtle, relational prosodic cues in speech perception—presumably even earlier than could be concluded from previous behavioral results.

scholarly journals Prosody-syntax interface and prosodic phrasing in brazilian portuguese

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 47-86
Author(s):  
Carolina Serra
Keyword(s):  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Occurrence Frequency ◽  
Hierarchy Theory ◽  
Prosodic Phrasing ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
Prosodic Boundaries ◽  
Informal Environment ◽  
Phonological Phrase ◽  
Syntactic Cues ◽  
Boundary Mapping

This paper focuses on the Brazilian Portuguese (PB) prosodic phrasing and has two main goals: (1) to find a correlation between the prosodic constituents boundaries, as described by the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory (Nespor & Vogel, 2007 [1986], a.o.) and the perception and production of spontaneous and reading speech breaks, and (2) to describe the phonological characteristics and the syntactic ranking of perceived and non perceived edges. The corpus under analysis includes 5 extracts both of spontaneous and reading speech lasting about 2 minutes each. The reading speech (LE) emerged from the spontaneous speech (FE) orthographic transcription which was collected from an interview in an informal environment. In the perception test, 11 referees heard the 10 speaking extracts, without punctuation, and marked the perceived breaks in the orthographic transcription of each of them. Both the 5 speakers and the 11 referees were students at UFRJ, born in Rio de Janeiro, and were between 22 and 38 years old.The results point out that the prosodic breaks are mainly perceived at the intonational phrase (I) boundary, regardless of the speech style (FE: 91%; LE 99%). However, in LE, 64% of the foreseen I boundaries, described by the Prosodic Hierarchy Theory, were perceived as breaks, but in FE, just 37% were perceived. The most usual nuclear contour in both styles is H+L* L% (this being the Portuguese neutral declarative contour), but its occurrence frequency at perceived breaks draws a distinction between LE and FE (67% and 30%, respectively). In FE, contours like L+H* H% and L*+H H% are also produced (34%). In general, descendant nuclei in LE are predominant, as well as the edge tone L; in FE, both the descendant and ascendant nuclei distribution and low or high boundaries are similar. After running a statistic test, the appearance of an L edge, as a predictive for perception, was globally significant. Concerning the syntactic boundary, it was statistically checked and the result points out that breaks are mainly perceived at the matrix phrase limit (LE: 59%; FE: 61%,), showing the endurance of the matrix phrase edge/I boundary mapping. In general, FE has proved to have a bigger variation on the relation of predicted, perceived and produced, as it was expected, which was also confirmed by statistics. Therefore, the results show that the foreseen I phrasing is fairly robust in both styles, once only 13% of the predicted I boundaries have not been produced as so, regarding intonation. Besides, just 1,4% of the predicted phonological phrase (f) boundaries (and produced as Is) were perceived as breaks by the referees. With this study one may conclude that LE and FE share the same prosodic grammar, performed by the same type of phonological/syntactic cues; nevertheless, these are more consistent in LE and have a more disperse way in FE, adding to a greater difficulty at the systematic perception of prosodic boundaries in FE than in LE.

Disparate Oral and Written Language Abilities in Adolescents With Cochlear Implants: Evidence From Narrative Samples

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Luke Breland ◽  
Joanna H. Lowenstein ◽  
Susan Nittrouer
Keyword(s):  
Academic Achievement ◽  
Cochlear Implants ◽  
Sentence Comprehension ◽  
Digit Span ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
Outcomes For Children ◽  
Children With Hearing Loss

Purpose: In spite of improvements in language outcomes for children with hearing loss (HL) arising from cochlear implants (CIs), these children can falter when it comes to academic achievement, especially in higher grades. Given that writing becomes increasingly relevant to educational pursuits as children progress through school, this study explored the hypothesis that one challenge facing students with CIs may be written language. Method: Participants were 98 eighth graders: 52 with normal hearing (NH) and 46 with severe-to-profound HL who used CIs. Oral and written narratives were elicited and analyzed for morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features. Five additional measures were collected and analyzed as possible predictors of morphosyntactic complexity: Sentence Comprehension of Syntax, Grammaticality Judgment, Expressive Vocabulary, Forward Digit Span, and Phonological Awareness. Results: For oral narratives, groups performed similarly on both morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features; for written narratives, critical differences were observed. Compared with adolescents with NH, adolescents with CIs used fewer markers of morphosyntactic complexity and scored lower on several global narrative features in their written narratives. Adolescents with NH outperformed those with CIs on all potential predictor measures, except for Sentence Comprehension of Syntax. Moderately strong relationships were found between predictor variables and individual measures of morphosyntactic complexity, but no comprehensive pattern explained the results. Measures of morphosyntactic complexity and global narrative features were not well correlated, suggesting these measures are assessing separate underlying constructs. Conclusions: Adolescents with CIs fail to show writing proficiency at high school entry equivalent to that of their peers with NH, which could constrain their academic achievement. Interventions for children with CIs need to target writing skills, and writing assessments should be incorporated into diagnostic assessments. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.17139059

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