Testing the Hyperarticulation and Prosodic Hypotheses of Child-Directed Speech: Insights From the Perceptual and Acoustic Characteristics of Child-Directed Cantonese Tones

Purpose The function of child-directed speech has been debated for decades. This study examined the perceptual and acoustic characteristics of child- and adult-directed Cantonese tones to test the hyperarticulation and prosodic hypotheses that have been proposed to account for the acoustic modifications in child-directed speech. Method Sixty-two mother–child dyads participated in the study. The mothers verbally labeled 30 pictures in monosyllabic isolated words and in the final position of a carrier sentence to the experimenter and their 1- to 5-year-old children. The 8,634 adult- and child-directed productions were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information and presented to 5 judges for tone identification. Acoustic analysis was performed on the productions. Results Acoustically, child-directed tones were produced with an elevated pitch, and the pitch level decreased as the child's age increased. Acoustic contrasts between phonetically similar and more confusing tones were not enhanced in child-directed speech, and unexpectedly, child-directed tones were identified with a lower accuracy than adult-directed tones. The perceptual errors of child-directed tones mirrored the errors found in identifying tones excised from sentence-final position, which had a pitch-lowering effect on the tones. The lower perceptual accuracy, the lack of enhanced acoustic contrasts in confusing tone pairs, and the similarities in the error patterns in identifying tones in child-directed speech and tones in utterance-final position suggest that the acoustic modifications in child-directed tones are prosodic effects serving pragmatic purposes. Conclusion The findings reject the hyperarticulation hypothesis and support the prosodic hypothesis of child-directed speech.

Download Full-text

In situ acoustic analysis of two twentieth-century heritage carillons

Heritage Science ◽

10.1186/s40494-021-00482-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 9 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Scott Allan Orr

Keyword(s):

Twentieth Century ◽

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Mechanical Action ◽

Ex Situ ◽

Physical Acoustics ◽

Acoustic Characteristics ◽

Dynamic Level ◽

Significant Difference ◽

And Function

AbstractCarillons are a diverse and global form of musical and civic heritage: musical instruments comprised of a series of 23 or more bells, typically hung in a tower-like structure, tuned chromatically and played from a touch-sensitive manual and pedal console using an elaborate mechanical action. Carillon bells have a distinct series of musical overtones which should be accurately tuned to one another and with other bells they sound alongside. Although these overtones have been previously studied ex situ, this study assesses the acoustic characteristics of two early-twentieth century carillons in Toronto, Canada as a combination of structure, bells, and mechanical action. Thus, the instrument and its context are considered holistically, more accurately reflecting the musical sensitivity of a carillonist. Spectral analysis of audio samples of each bell at different musical dynamic levels enabled the analysis of the acoustic qualities of the bells and the mechanical action of the instruments. The tuning of bells in the instruments varied; most importantly, there was a significant difference between the audial intensity of the bell tones produced by the instruments, demonstrating the importance of the mechanical action as part of the ‘carillon system’. This was represented with a resistive power-law model, that represents the sensitivity of intensity to carillonist musical dynamic level. A discussion of the implications for artistic and heritage practice follows. Understanding the in situ physical acoustics of the carillon as a holistic instrument in its context informs performers, arrangers, and composers of how they can best embrace the instrument’s unique qualities to improve artistic pursuits and support the appreciation of carillons as heritage instruments and function as civic voices.

Download Full-text

Initial laryngeal neutralisation in Tyrolean

Phonology ◽

10.1017/s0952675717000380 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 35 (1) ◽

pp. 79-114 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Alessandro Vietti ◽

Birgit Alber ◽

Barbara Vogt

Keyword(s):

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Initial Position ◽

Final Position ◽

Acoustic Cues ◽

Acoustic Parameters ◽

Place Of Articulation ◽

Closure Duration

In the Southern Bavarian variety of Tyrolean, laryngeal contrasts undergo a typologically interesting process of neutralisation in word-initial position. We undertake an acoustic analysis of Tyrolean stops in word-initial, word-medial intersonorant and word-final contexts, as well as in obstruent clusters, investigating the role of the acoustic parameters VOT, prevoicing, closure duration and F0 and H1–H2* on following vowels in implementing contrast, if any. Results show that stops contrast word-medially via [voice] (supported by the acoustic cues of closure duration and F0), and are neutralised completely in word-final position and in obstruent clusters. Word-initially, neutralisation is subject to inter- and intraspeaker variability, and is sensitive to place of articulation. Aspiration plays no role in implementing laryngeal contrasts in Tyrolean.

Download Full-text

Relationships between structural and acoustic properties of maternal talk and children’s early word recognition

First Language ◽

10.1177/0142723717714946 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 37 (6) ◽

pp. 612-629 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Chiara Suttora ◽

Nicoletta Salerni ◽

Paola Zanchi ◽

Laura Zampini ◽

Maria Spinelli ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Word Recognition ◽

Acoustic Properties ◽

Final Position ◽

Syntactic Complexity ◽

High Pitch ◽

Acoustic Characteristics ◽

Child Interaction ◽

Speech Features ◽

Final Syllable ◽

Listening Task

This study aimed to investigate specific associations between structural and acoustic characteristics of infant-directed (ID) speech and word recognition. Thirty Italian-acquiring children and their mothers were tested when the children were 1;3. Children’s word recognition was measured with the looking-while-listening task. Maternal ID speech was recorded during a mother–child interaction session and analyzed in terms of amount of speech, lexical and syntactic complexity, positional salience of nouns and verbs, high pitch and variation, and temporal characteristics. The analyses revealed that final syllable length positively predicts children’s accuracy in word recognition whereas the use of verbs in the utterance-final position has an adverse effect on children’s performance. Several of the expected associations between ID speech features and children’s word recognition skills, however, were not significant. Taken together, these findings suggest that only specific structural and acoustic properties of ID speech can facilitate word recognition in children, thereby fostering their ability to extrapolate sound patterns from the stream and map them with their referents.

Download Full-text

Examining Factors Influencing the Viability of Automatic Acoustic Analysis of Child Speech

Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research ◽

10.1044/2018_jslhr-s-17-0275 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 61 (10) ◽

pp. 2487-2501 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Thea Knowles ◽

Meghan Clayards ◽

Morgan Sonderegger

Keyword(s):

Young Children ◽

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Center Of Gravity ◽

Training Data ◽

Alignment Accuracy ◽

Older Children ◽

Acoustic Characteristics ◽

Phonetic Transcription ◽

Very Young Children ◽

Child Speech

Purpose Heterogeneous child speech was force-aligned to investigate whether (a) manipulating specific parameters could improve alignment accuracy and (b) forced alignment could be used to replicate published results on acoustic characteristics of /s/ production by children. Method In Part 1, child speech from 2 corpora was force-aligned with a trainable aligner (Prosodylab-Aligner) under different conditions that systematically manipulated input training data and the type of transcription used. Alignment accuracy was determined by comparing hand and automatic alignments as to how often they overlapped (%-Match) and absolute differences in duration and boundary placements. Using mixed-effects regression, accuracy was modeled as a function of alignment conditions, as well as segment and child age. In Part 2, forced alignments derived from a subset of the alignment conditions in Part 1 were used to extract spectral center of gravity of /s/ productions from young children. These findings were compared to published results that used manual alignments of the same data. Results Overall, the results of Part 1 demonstrated that using training data more similar to the data to be aligned as well as phonetic transcription led to improvements in alignment accuracy. Speech from older children was aligned more accurately than younger children. In Part 2, /s/ center of gravity extracted from force-aligned segments was found to diverge in the speech of male and female children, replicating the pattern found in previous work using manually aligned segments. This was true even for the least accurate forced alignment method. Conclusions Alignment accuracy of child speech can be improved by using more specific training and transcription. However, poor alignment accuracy was not found to impede acoustic analysis of /s/ produced by even very young children. Thus, forced alignment presents a useful tool for the analysis of child speech. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.7070105

Download Full-text

Error patterns in young German children's wh-questions*

Journal of Child Language ◽

10.1017/s0305000912000104 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 40 (3) ◽

pp. 656-671 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

DANIEL SCHMERSE ◽

ELENA LIEVEN ◽

MICHAEL TOMASELLO

Keyword(s):

Longitudinal Analysis ◽

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Lexical Analysis ◽

Error Patterns ◽

German Child ◽

Wh Questions ◽

Stress Patterns ◽

Omission Errors

ABSTRACTIn this article we report two studies: a detailed longitudinal analysis of errors in wh-questions from six German-learning children (age 2 ; 0–3 ; 0) and an analysis of the prosodic characteristics of wh-questions in German child-directed speech. The results of the first study demonstrate that German-learning children frequently omit the initial wh-word. A lexical analysis of wh-less questions revealed that children are more likely to omit the wh-word was (‘what’) than other wh-words (e.g. wo ‘where’). In the second study, we performed an acoustic analysis of sixty wh-questions that one mother produced during her child's third year of life. The results show that the wh-word was is much less likely to be accented than the wh-word wo, indicating a relationship between children's omission of wh-words and the stress patterns associated with wh-questions. The findings are discussed in the light of discourse–pragmatic and metrical accounts of omission errors.

Download Full-text

The articulatory and acoustic characteristics of Polish sibilants and their consequences for diachronic change

Journal of the International Phonetic Association ◽

10.1017/s0025100316000062 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 46 (3) ◽

pp. 311-329 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Véronique Bukmaier ◽

Jonathan Harrington

Keyword(s):

Acoustic Analysis ◽

First Language ◽

Gaussian Model ◽

Complete Separation ◽

Tongue Movement ◽

Acoustic Characteristics ◽

Formant Frequencies ◽

Movement Data ◽

Diachronic Change ◽

Physiological Analysis

The study is concerned with the relative synchronic stability of three contrastive sibilant fricatives /sʂ ɕ/ in Polish. Tongue movement data were collected from nine first-language Polish speakers producing symmetrical real and non-word CVCV sequences in three vowel contexts. A Gaussian model was used to classify the sibilants from spectral information in the noise and from formant frequencies at vowel onset. The physiological analysis showed an almost complete separation between /sʂ ɕ/ on tongue-tip parameters. The acoustic analysis showed that the greater energy at higher frequencies distinguished /s/ in the fricative noise from the other two sibilant categories. The most salient information at vowel onset was for /ɕ/, which also had a strong palatalizing effect on the following vowel. Whereas either the noise or vowel onset was largely sufficient for the identification of /sɕ/ respectively, both sets of cues were necessary to separate /ʂ/ from /sɕ/. The greater synchronic instability of /ʂ/ may derive from its high articulatory complexity coupled with its comparatively low acoustic salience. The data also suggest that the relatively late stage of /ʂ/ acquisition by children may come about because of the weak acoustic information in the vowel for its distinction from /s/.

Download Full-text

Acoustic Analysis of Vocal Instability in Cerebellar Dysfunctions

Annals of Otology Rhinology & Laryngology ◽

10.1177/000348949410300203 ◽

1994 ◽

Vol 103 (2) ◽

pp. 98-104 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Hermann Ackermann ◽

Wolfram Ziegler

Keyword(s):

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Cerebellar Atrophy ◽

Motor Deficits ◽

Olivopontocerebellar Atrophy ◽

Normal Range ◽

Pitch Level ◽

Vocal Effort ◽

Cortical Dysfunction ◽

Asymmetrically Distributed ◽

Respiratory Reflexes

Acoustic analysis of vocal instability during the production of isolated vowels, including computation of mean fundamental frequency (F0), period-to-period variability (jitter), pitch fluctuations, and between-trial variation of F0, was performed in 20 patients with cerebellar cortical dysfunction. Eleven subjects suffered from purely cerebellar atrophy (CA). In the remaining 9 patients olivopontocerebellar atrophy (OPCA) had been diagnosed. A subgroup of both the CA and OPCA subjects presented with enlarged pitch fluctuations and/or increased jitter values. It is conceivable that asymmetrically distributed motor deficits at the laryngeal level and altered gain settings of laryngeal and/or respiratory reflexes account for the observed phonatory instability. Moreover, 5 of the 20 cerebellar patients had a pitch level exceeding the upper limit of the normal range. Presumably, this deviation reflects increased vocal effort.

Download Full-text

Content Coverage of Single-Word Tests Used to Assess Common Phonological Error Patterns

Language Speech and Hearing Services in Schools ◽

10.1044/2014_lshss-13-0054 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 46 (1) ◽

pp. 14-29 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Cecilia Kirk ◽

Laura Vigeland

Keyword(s):

Final Position ◽

Error Pattern ◽

Single Word ◽

Error Patterns ◽

Criterion Level ◽

Content Coverage ◽

Cluster Reduction

Purpose This review evaluated whether 9 single-word tests of phonological error patterns provide adequate content coverage to accurately identify error patterns that are active in a child's speech. Method Tests in the current study were considered to display sufficient opportunities to assess common phonological error patterns if they provided at least 4 opportunities for each of 11 error patterns. The target phonemes for these error patterns had to occur as singletons (except for final consonant deletion and cluster reduction) and in stressed syllables (except for weak syllable deletion). Error patterns for which positional asymmetries have been documented (velar fronting, stopping of fricatives and affricates, and cluster reduction) required 4 opportunities in both word-initial and word-final position to meet the study's criterion. Results None of the tests provided 4 opportunities for every error pattern, the criterion level used in this study. Error patterns that tended to be underrepresented across tests included weak syllable deletion, reduction of word-final clusters, fronting of velars, gliding of liquids, and deaffrication. Conclusion This review will allow clinicians to gain a deeper understanding of the methods used to assess phonological error patterns in single-word tests.

Download Full-text

The Potentials of Computer Analyzing the Acoustic Characteristics of a Human Speech under Spaceflight Conditions.

MANNED SPACEFLIGHT ◽

10.34131/msf.20.3.109-124 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 109-124

Author(s):

S.A. Lebedeva ◽

D.M. Shved ◽

V.I. Gushin

Keyword(s):

Noise Suppression ◽

Acoustic Analysis ◽

Historical Review ◽

Physiological Status ◽

Physiological Monitoring ◽

Ground Model ◽

Acoustic Characteristics ◽

Non Invasive ◽

Military Aviation ◽

Audio Recordings

The paper presents current approaches to the assessment of the psycho-physiological status of a human operator by analyzing his/her speaking and gives a historical review of an application of speech acoustic analysis in the field of military aviation and manned spaceflight as well as under conditions of on-ground model experiments. Various methods of mathematical analysis of a speech signal when determining the human emotional and functional status and techniques of noise suppression in audio recordings are also considered. The applicability of the said methods for non-invasive psycho-physiological monitoring of cosmonauts under spaceflight conditions was assessed.

Download Full-text