Token Frequency Effects in Homophone Production: An Elicitation Study

In natural production, adults differentiate homophones prosodically as a function of the frequency of their intended meaning. This study compares adult and child productions of homophones to determine whether prosodic differentiation of homophones changes over development. Using a picture-based story-completion paradigm, isolated tokens of homophones were elicited from English-learning children and adult native English speakers. These tokens were measured for duration, vowel duration, pitch, pitch range, and vowel quality. Results indicate that less frequent meanings of homophones are longer in duration than their more frequent counterparts in both adults and children. No other measurement differed as a function of meaning frequency. As speakers of all ages produce longer tokens of lower frequency homophones, homophone differentiation does not change over development, but is included in children’s early lexicons. These findings indicate that production planning processes alone may not fully account for differences in homophone duration, but rather that the differences could be learned and represented from experience even in the early stages of lexical acquisition.

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Comparative Acoustic Analyses of L2 English: The Search for Systematic Variation

Phonetica ◽

10.1159/000508387 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 77 (6) ◽

pp. 441-479

Author(s):

Rebecca Laturnus

Keyword(s):

Voice Onset Time ◽

Nonnative Speakers ◽

Onset Time ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

English Speakers ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Language Background ◽

Accented Speech ◽

Foreign Accents ◽

Acoustic Analyses

Background/Aims: Previous research has shown that exposure to multiple foreign accents facilitates adaptation to an untrained novel accent. One explanation is that L2 speech varies systematically such that there are commonalities in the productions of nonnative speakers, regardless of their language background. Methods: A systematic acoustic comparison was conducted between 3 native English speakers and 6 nonnative accents. Voice onset time, unstressed vowel duration, and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels were analyzed, comparing each nonnative accent to the native English talkers. A subsequent perception experiment tests what effect training on regionally accented voices has on the participant’s comprehension of nonnative accented speech to investigate the importance of within-speaker variation on attunement and generalization. Results: Data for each measure show substantial variability across speakers, reflecting phonetic transfer from individual L1s, as well as substantial inconsistency and variability in pronunciation, rather than commonalities in their productions. Training on native English varieties did not improve participants’ accuracy in understanding nonnative speech. Conclusion: These findings are more consistent with a hypothesis of accent attunement wherein listeners track general patterns of nonnative speech rather than relying on overlapping acoustic signals between speakers.

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A valid alternative for in-person language assessments in brain tumor patients: feasibility and validity measures of the new TeleLanguage test

Neuro-Oncology Practice ◽

10.1093/nop/npy020 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 6 (2) ◽

pp. 93-102 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Elke De Witte ◽

Vitória Piai ◽

Garret Kurteff ◽

Ruofan Cai ◽

Peter Mariën ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Brain Tumor ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

English Speakers ◽

Auditory Comprehension ◽

Tumor Patients ◽

Language Tests ◽

Geographical Regions ◽

Validity Measures ◽

Language Assessments ◽

Story Completion

Abstract Background Although language deficits after awake brain surgery are usually milder than post-stroke, postoperative language assessments are needed to identify these. Follow-up of brain tumor patients in certain geographical regions can be difficult when most patients are not local and come from afar. We developed a short telephone-based test for pre- and postoperative language assessments. Methods The development of the TeleLanguage Test was based on the Dutch Linguistic Intraoperative Protocol and existing standardized English batteries. Two parallel versions were composed and tested in healthy native English speakers. Subsequently, the TeleLanguage Test was administered in a group of 14 tumor patients before surgery and at 1 week, 1 month, and 3 months after surgery. The test includes auditory comprehension, repetition, semantic selection, sentence or story completion, verbal naming, and fluency tests. It takes less than 20 minutes to administer. Results Healthy participants had no difficulty performing any of the language tests via the phone, attesting to the feasibility of a phone assessment. In the patient group, all TeleLanguage test scores significantly declined shortly after surgery with a recovery to preoperative levels at 3 months postsurgery for naming and fluency tasks and a recovery to normal levels for the other language tasks. Analysis of the in-person language assessments (until 1 month) revealed a similar profile. Conclusion The use of the TeleLanguage battery to conduct language assessments from afar can provide convenience, might optimize patient care, and enables longitudinal clinical research. The TeleLanguage is a valid tool for various clinical and scientific purposes.

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Measuring Vowel Duration Variability in Native English Speakers and Polish Learners

Research in Language ◽

10.2478/v10015-011-0034-9 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 10 (2) ◽

pp. 201-214 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Andrzej Porzuczek

Keyword(s):

Native Speakers ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

Descriptive Statistics ◽

English Speakers ◽

Length Variation ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Statistical Measures ◽

Temporal Aspects ◽

Native Speech ◽

The Difference

This paper presents a set of simple statistical measures that illustrate the difference between native English speakers and Polish learners of English in varying the length of vocalic segments in read speech. Relative vowel duration and vowel length variation are widely used as basic criteria for establishing rhythmic differences between languages and dialects of a language. The parameter of vocalic duration is employed in popular measures such as ΔV (Ramus et al. 1999), VarcoV (Dellwo 2006, White and Mattys 2007), and PVI (Low et al. 2000, Grabe and Low 2002). Apart from rhythm studies, the processing of data concerning vowel duration can be used to establish the level of discrepancy between native speech and learner speech in investigating other temporal aspects of FL pronunciation, such as tense-lax vowel distinction, accentual lengthening or the degree of unstressed vowel reduction, which are often pointed out as serious problems in the acquisition of English pronunciation by Polish learners. Using descriptive statistics (relations between personal mean vowel duration and standard deviation), the author calculates several indices that demonstrate individual learners' (13 subjects) scores in relation to the native speakers' (12 subjects) score ranges. In some tested aspects, the results of the two groups of speakers are almost cleanly separated, which suggests not only the existence of specific didactic problems but also their actual scale.

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Investigating satirical discourse processing and comprehension: the role of cognitive, demographic, and pragmatic features

Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/langcog.2019.30 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 11 (3) ◽

pp. 499-525 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

STEPHEN SKALICKY

Keyword(s):

Figurative Language ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

The United States ◽

English Speakers ◽

Intended Meaning ◽

Language Background ◽

News Reports ◽

Theoretical Predictions ◽

Text Reading

abstractSatire is a subtle type of figurative discourse and is still relatively under-studied from the perspective of figurative language researchers. The purpose of this study is to investigate cognitive, demographic, and pragmatic factors previously suggested to influence satire processing and comprehension but which have yet to be studied using behavioral methods. Specifically, this study examines Need for Cognition (NFC; the desire to engage in cognitively difficult tasks), general knowledge, demographic measures such as language background, and affective perceptions of humor, sincerity, and positivity. Sixty-one participants (32 non-native English speakers) read satirical and non-satirical news reports taken from The Onion and Science Daily, respectively, both published in the United States. Perceptions of sincerity, humor, and positivity, reading times, and written interpretations of the intended meaning for each text were recorded. Results from statistical analyses suggested NFC significantly influenced satirical text reading times. Moreover, language background and perceptions of sincerity significantly influenced satire comprehension. These results highlight an interplay between individual differences during satire processing and comprehension, and work to validate some, but not all, theoretical predictions for satire processing and comprehension.

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An acoustic analysis of American English liquids by adults and children: Native English speakers and native Japanese speakers of English

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America ◽

10.1121/1.5130574 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 146 (4) ◽

pp. 2671-2681

Author(s):

Katsura Aoyama ◽

James E. Flege ◽

Reiko Akahane-Yamada ◽

Tsuneo Yamada

Keyword(s):

Acoustic Analysis ◽

American English ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

English Speakers ◽

Native Japanese Speakers ◽

Japanese Speakers ◽

Adults And Children

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Effects of age and experience on the production of English word-final stops by Korean speakers

Bilingualism Language and Cognition ◽

10.1017/s136672890999006x ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 13 (3) ◽

pp. 263-278 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

WENDY BAKER

Keyword(s):

Stop Consonant ◽

Age Of Acquisition ◽

Native English Speakers ◽

English Word ◽

Perceptual Judgment ◽

English Speakers ◽

Vowel Duration ◽

Closure Duration ◽

Monosyllabic Words ◽

Consonant Voicing

This study examined the effect of second language (L2) age of acquisition and amount of experience on the production of word-final stop consonant voicing by adult native Korean learners of English. Thirty learners, who differed in amount of L2 experience and age of L2 exposure, and 10 native English speakers produced 8 English monosyllabic words ending in voiced and voiceless stops. These productions were presented to 10 English listeners for perceptual judgment and subjected to acoustic analyses to determine how well learners produced vowel duration and closure (stop gap) duration, two cues to stop consonant voicing. Results revealed that even learners with 10 years of L2 experience did not always produce stop consonant voicing accurately, that learners' age of acquisition influenced their production of both cues, that vowel duration was easier to learn than closure duration, and that English listeners used both these cues in their judgments of production accuracy.

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