From speech to language

2021 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-224
Author(s):  
Helen Kai-Yun Chen ◽  
Chiu-yu Tseng
Keyword(s):  
Information Content ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Information Distribution ◽  
Continuous Speech ◽  
Comprehensive Account ◽  
Alternative Function ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Cognitive Explanation ◽  
Shed Light

Abstract This study proposes a novel exploration of perceived prosodic highlights in continuous speech, focusing on the alternative function of indexing and projecting information content deployment in the speech context. Given the assumption that prosodic highlight allocation directly reflects the interlocutors’ information content deployment, this study foregrounds perception-based prominences for indexing both the key information (KEY) and the projector (PJR) that projects the deployment of key/focal information. Two information content planning units (PJR plus its respective projection PJN, and KEY) prompted by prosodic highlights were established, based on quantitative analyses and discriminative acoustic features. Additional analyses confirm a general heavy-to-light information distribution across both units, showcasing that the relative projection trajectory size in the PJR-PJN unit is positively correlated to its position within discourse-prosodic units. Current results, therefore, directly substantiate the cognitive explanation of prosodic projection in speech, as evidence beyond syntactic relationships are drawn and prosodic projection is shown to involve perceived prosodic highlight allocation and information deployment in a fixed pattern. Explorations of prosody-prompted projection shed light on a more comprehensive account of the mechanism behind information planning, hence facilitating a deeper understanding of the composition of context prosody and the derivation of linguistic invariants from speech.

Do Special Elections Tell Anything about Upcoming General Elections?

2021 ◽  
pp. 159-182
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock ◽  
Karen L. Owen
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
General Election ◽  
World War ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Shed Light

Chapter 6 presents quantitative analyses on 298 special election contests held since World War II. The authors model two features associated with special elections. The first analysis seeks to understand the correlates of winning a special election. The second set of models explores whether results of special elections shed light on which party will excel in the next general election.

Information Distribution Within Musical Segments

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-242 ◽  
Author(s):  
Antoni B. Chan ◽  
Janet H. Hsiao
Keyword(s):  
Asymmetric Information ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Word Reading ◽  
Word Identification ◽  
Information Distribution ◽  
Position Effects ◽  
Asymmetric Effects ◽  
Potential Factor ◽  
Optimal Viewing Position ◽  
Viewing Position

In research on word recognition, it has been shown that word beginnings have higher information content for word identification than word endings; this asymmetric information distribution within words has been argued to be due to the communicative pressure to allow words in speech to be recognized as early as possible. Through entropy analysis using two representative datasets from Wikifonia and the Essen folksong corpus, we show that musical segments also have higher information content (i.e., higher entropy) in segment beginnings than endings. Nevertheless, this asymmetry was not as dramatic as that found within words, and the highest information content was observed in the middle of the segments (i.e., an inverted U pattern). This effect may be because the first and last notes of a musical segment tend to be tonally stable, with more flexibility in the first note for providing the initial context. The asymmetric information distribution within words has been shown to be an important factor accounting for various asymmetric effects in word reading, such as the left-biased preferred viewing location and optimal viewing position effects. Similarly, the asymmetric information distribution within musical segments is a potential factor that can modulate music reading behavior and should not be overlooked.

THE EINSTEIN–PODOLSKY–ROSEN PROPOSITION ON QUANTUM THEORY AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR INTUITIVE CLASSICAL LOGIC

2010 ◽  
Vol 19 (06) ◽  
pp. 799-807 ◽  
Author(s):  
ALI ESKANDARIAN
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Quantum Theory ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Classical Logic ◽  
Quantum States ◽  
Einstein Podolsky Rosen ◽  
Completeness Of Quantum Mechanics ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Intense Research

Einstein, Podolsky and Rosen raised foundational questions about the completeness of quantum mechanics, if certain intuitive logical statements regarding the nature of reality were assumed to be true. These questions are ultimately of significance to the information content of the theory, which is currently the focus of intense research. In this presentation, selected investigations that have made progress in addressing the EPR concerns and that shed light on the nature of quantum states are surveyed. The implications for intuitive classical logic are speculated in the concluding remarks.

scholarly journals Serotype cycles in cholera dynamics

2006 ◽  
Vol 273 (1603) ◽  
pp. 2879-2886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katia Koelle ◽  
Mercedes Pascual ◽  
Md Yunus
Keyword(s):  
Time Series ◽  
Population Level ◽  
Early Warning Systems ◽  
Warning Systems ◽  
The Past ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Cross Immunity ◽  
Reproductive Rates ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
Strain Cycling

Interest in understanding strain diversity and its impact on disease dynamics has grown over the past decade. Theoretical disease models of several co-circulating strains indicate that incomplete cross-immunity generates conditions for strain-cycling behaviour at the population level. However, there have been no quantitative analyses of disease time-series that are clear examples of theoretically expected strain cycling. Here, we analyse a 40-year (1966–2005) cholera time-series from Bangladesh to determine whether patterns evident in these data are compatible with serotype-cycling behaviour. A mathematical two-serotype model is capable of explaining the oscillations in case patterns when cross-immunity between the two serotypes, Inaba and Ogawa, is high. Further support that cholera's serotype-cycling arises from population-level immunity patterns is provided by calculations of time-varying effective reproductive rates. These results shed light on historically observed serotype dominance shifts and have important implications for cholera early warning systems.

scholarly journals Infants' Sensitivity to Vowel Harmony and its Role in Segmenting Speech

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toben Herbert Mintz ◽  
Rachel L. Walker ◽  
Celeste Kidd ◽  
Ashlee Welday
Keyword(s):  
Vowel Harmony ◽  
Continuous Speech ◽  
Processing Load ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Speech Input ◽  
Speech Stream ◽  
Sound Structure ◽  
Word Boundaries ◽  
Word Forms ◽  
Shed Light

A critical part of infants’ ability to acquire any language involves segmenting continuous speech input into discrete word-forms. Certain properties of words could provide infants with reliable cues to word boundaries. Here we investigate the potential utility of vowel harmony (VH), a phonological property whereby vowels within a word systematically exhibit similarity (“harmony”) for some aspect of the way they are pronounced. We present evidence that infants with no experience of VH in their native language nevertheless actively use these patterns to generate hypotheses about where words begin and end in the speech stream. In two experiments, we exposed infants learning English, a language without VH, to a continuous speech stream in which the only systematic patterns available to be used as cues to word boundaries came from syllable sequences that showed VH or those that showed vowel disharmony (dissimilarity). After hearing less than one minute of the streams, infants showed evidence of sensitivity to VH cues. These results suggest that infants have an experience-independent sensitivity to VH, and are predisposed to segment speech according to harmony patterns. We also found that when the VH patterns were more subtle (Experiment 2), infants required more exposure to the speech stream before they segmented based on VH, consistent with previous work on infants’ preferences relating to processing load. Our findings evidence a previously unknown mechanism by which infants could discover the words of their language, and they shed light on the perceptual mechanisms that might be responsible for the emergence of vowel harmony as an organizing principle for the sound structure of words in many languages.

Subordination and information distribution in oral and written narratives

1993 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary D. Prideaux
Keyword(s):  
Information Content ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Oral Narratives ◽  
Information Distribution ◽  
Written Narratives ◽  
Conventional View ◽  
Subordinate Clauses ◽  
New Information ◽  
Adverbial Clauses ◽  
Memory Constraints

The ways in which given and new information are distributed, and the functions associated with the distribution, are examined here in terms of information content of relative and adverbial clauses in oral and written narratives. The conventional view that subordinate clauses tend to code given rather than new information is shown to be inadequate. Moreover, a comparison of oral and written narratives of the same events reveals both extensive differences in the two modalities, and at the same time striking similarities in terms of the information distribution within relative clauses. Relative clauses are found to be far more frequent in oral narratives than in their written analogues. However, when the differences are examined in terms of the relative frequencies of given and new relative clauses, the oral narratives are shown to have far more given relative clauses than the written versions, whereas the frequencies for the new relative clauses is virtually identical in the two modalities. This result is attributed to memory constraints.

Dynamic representation of acoustic features in neural responses to continuous speech

2016 ◽  
Vol 140 (4) ◽  
pp. 3158-3158
Author(s):  
Bahar Khalighinejad ◽  
Guilherme Da Silva ◽  
Nima Mesgarani
Keyword(s):  
Neural Responses ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Continuous Speech ◽  
Dynamic Representation

Some properties of the divergence measure of information content as related to quantitative analyses

1982 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 1195-1202
Author(s):  
Karel Eckschlager ◽  
Vladimír Štěpánek
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Analysis ◽  
Information Content ◽  
Shannon’S Entropy ◽  
Divergence Measure ◽  
Shannon's Entropy ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
The Difference

Some properties of the divergence measure of the information content of quantitative analysis results are introduced and it is shown how this measure describes the effect of the difference of a result obtained by the analysis from a preliminary one or from an anticipated value. In the same time the measure is compared to the decrease of uncertainty as expressed in terms of Shannon's entropy.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document