scholarly journals The effect of nouns and verbs on pausing in spoken language

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-58
Author(s):  
Oleksandr Ishchenko ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Pause Duration ◽  
Conversational Speech ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Expressive Speech ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Relative Standard

The study analyzes speech pauses of Ukrainian. The research material is the audio texts of spontaneous conversational speech of customarily pronunciation and intonation, as well as non-spontaneous (read) speech of clear pronunciation and expressive intonation. We show a robust tendency for high frequency of pauses after nouns. It suggests that pausing is like a predictor of nouns. The frequency of pausing after verbs is slightly lower. The probability of pause location after any another part of speech is much lower. Generally, pausing can be occurred after words of any grammatical category. These findings spread virtually equally to both spontaneous conversational speech and non-spontaneous speech (clear intonated reading). The effect of nouns on pause occurrence may be caused by universal property of the human language. It is recently accepted that nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages. This is because nouns load cognitive processes of the speech production planning more as compared with verbs and other parts. At the same time, some Ukrainian language features also impact the pausing after nouns (these features are characteristic of other Slavic languages too). This is about a prosodic phrasing of Ukrainian according to that interpausal utterances usually are finalized by nouns (rarely by verbs or other principal parts of speech) which get most semantic load. The pauses do not follow after each noun, because they can be exploited in the speech segmentation in depends on linguistic (linguistic structure of speech), physiological (individuality of speech production, breathing), and psycholingual factors. We suggest that the priming effect as a noun- and verb-inducted psycholingual factor can significantly impact pausing in spoken language. Statistical measures show the following: 430 ms ±60% is the average pause duration of non-spontaneous clear expressive speech, 355 ms ±50% is the average pause duration of spontaneous customarily speech. Thus, pauses of non-spontaneous speech have a longer duration than of spontaneous speech. This is indicated by both the average pause duration means (ms) and the relative standard deviation of pause durations (±%). Keywords: expressive speech, spontaneous speech, phonetics, prosody, speech pauses, pausing, prepausal words, nouns, verbs.

scholarly journals How the Probabilistic Structure of Grammatical Context Shapes Speech

Entropy ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maja Linke ◽  
Michael Ramscar
Keyword(s):  
Spoken Language ◽  
Conversational Speech ◽  
Human Communication ◽  
Levels Of Abstraction ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Structural Differences ◽  
Usage Patterns ◽  
Probabilistic Structure ◽  
Multiple Levels ◽  
Context Shapes

Does systematic covariation in the usage patterns of forms shape the sublexical variance observed in conversational speech? We address this question in terms of a recently proposed discriminative theory of human communication that argues that the distribution of events in communicative contexts should maintain mutual predictability between language users, present evidence that the distributions of words in the empirical contexts in which they are learned and used are geometric, and thus support this. Here, we extend this analysis to a corpus of conversational English, showing that the distribution of grammatical regularities and the sub-distributions of tokens discriminated by them are also geometric. Further analyses reveal a range of structural differences in the distribution of types in parts of speech categories that further support the suggestion that linguistic distributions (and codes) are subcategorized by context at multiple levels of abstraction. Finally, a series of analyses of the variation in spoken language reveals that quantifiable differences in the structure of lexical subcategories appears in turn to systematically shape sublexical variation in speech signal.

A syllable-centric framework for the evolution of spoken language

1998 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 518-518 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Greenberg
Keyword(s):  
Speech Production ◽  
Visual Cues ◽  
Temporal Dynamics ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Sensory Coding ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Linguistic Information ◽  
Temporal Properties ◽  
Rapid Transmission

The cyclic nature of speech production, as manifested in the syllabic organization of spoken language, is likely to reflect general properties of sensori-motor integration rather than merely a phylogenetic progression from mastication, teeth chattering, and lipsmacks. The temporal properties of spontaneous speech reflect the entropy of its underlying constituents and are optimized for rapid transmission and decoding of linguistic information conveyed by a complex constellation of acoustic and visual cues, suggesting that the dawn of human language may have occurred when the articulatory cycle was efficiently yoked to the temporal dynamics of sensory coding and rapid retrieval from referential memory.

A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF TIME-PREPOSITIONS IN THE RUSSIAN LANGUAGE

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (28) ◽  
pp. 187-195
Author(s):  
Yabing Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Foreign Students ◽  
Russian Language ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Organic Structure ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
True Meaning ◽  
Oral Speech ◽  
The Russian Language

This article is devoted to the problem of using Russian time-prepositions by foreigners, especially by the Chinese. An analysis of modern literature allows the author to identify the main areas of the work aimed at foreign students’ development of the skills and abilities to correctly build the prepositional combinations and continuously improve the communication skills by means of the Russian language. In this paper, the time-prepositions in the Russian language have been analyzed in detail; some examples of polysemantic use of prepositions, their semantic and stylistic shades alongside with possible errors made by foreign students are presented. The results of the study are to help in developing a system of teaching Russian time-prepositions to a foreign language audience, taking into account their native language, on the basis of the systemic and functional, communicative and activity-centred basis. The role of Russian time-prepositions in constructing word combinations has been identified; the need for foreign students’ close attention to this secondary part of speech has been specified. It has been stated that prepositions are the most dynamic and open type of secondary language units within the quantitative and qualitative composition of which regular changes take place. The research substantiates the need that students should be aware of the function of time-preposition in speech; they are to get acquainted with the main time-prepositions and their meanings, to distinguish prepositions and other homonymous parts of speech as well as to learn stylistic shades of time-prepositions. Some recommendations related to the means of mastering time-prepositions have been given: to target speakers to assimilate modern literary norms and, therefore, to teach them how to choose and use them correctly by means of linguistic keys that are intended to fill the word with true meaning, to give it an organic structure, an inherent form and an easy combinability in the texts and oral speech.

He who Hesitates: Hesitation Phenomena as Quality Control in Speech Production, Obstacles in Non-Native Speech Perception

2000 ◽  
Vol 182 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marnie Reed
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Classification Framework ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Control Devices ◽  
Content Processing ◽  
Hesitation Phenomena

This study was designed to determine the nature and occurrence of hesitation phenomena in spontaneous speech of native and non-native speakers, and to determine whether and to what extent the hesitation phenomena normal in spontaneous speech pose perception problems for non-native speakers. A quantitative analysis reveals that hesitation phenomena are ubiquitous in both native and non-native speech production. A qualitative analysis based on a content-processing classification framework reveals the function of hesitations. Hesitations act as overt traces of prospective and retrospective speech-processing tasks which function to forestall errors, and to permit detection and repair of errors once they are committed. Hesitations are quality control devices; native and non-native speakers are highly successful utilizing them to forestall errors. However, hesitation phenomena clearly pose perception problems for non-native speakers who show little evidence of recognizing them as such. Like native speakers, non-native speakers produce hesitation phenomena. Unlike native speakers, who edit and filter out the hesitations they hear, non-native speakers attempt to assign meaning to speakers' faulty output or to parenthetical remarks. Hesitations are unpredictable in their frequency or occurrence; failure to provide training in these oral discourse features of connected speech may result in non-native speakers whose speech production vastly outstrips their perception.

scholarly journals On derivatives

enadakultura ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tamar Makharoblidze
Keyword(s):  
Semantic Category ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Word Form ◽  
Grammatical Category ◽  
Short Article ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
General Linguistics ◽  
Lexical Content ◽  
Inflectional Affixes

The question of derivates has been repeatedly raised in the teaching processes of language grammar and general linguistics. This circumstance became the basis for creating this short article. It is well known that a word-form can be changeable or unchangeable, and this fact is determined by the parts of speech. Form-changing words can undergo two types of change: inflectional and derivative. During the inflectional change, the form of the word changes, but the lexical and semantic aspects of the word do not change, i.e. its semantic and content data do not change. A classic example of this type of change is flexion of nouns.Derivation is the formation of a word from another word by the addition of non-inflectional affixes. Derivation can be of two types. The first is lexical derivation, in which the derivative affix produces a word with a different lexical content. A word-form can be another part of speech or the same part of speech but with a different lexical content. The second type of derivation is, first of all, grammatical derivation, when grammatical categories are produced. The grammatical category in general (and a word-form in general as well) includes the unity of morphological and semantical aspects. There is no separate semantics without morphology. Any semantic category and/or content must be conveyed in a specific form, so only a specific form has a specific morphosemantics, which can be produced by the grammatical derivatives. The main difference between the two types of derivation mentioned above (and therefore between the two types of derivatives) is the levels of the language hierarchy. The first type of affixes works at the lexical level of the language, while the second type derivatives produce forms at the morphological and semantic levels. The second type derivatives are inter-level affixes, because they act on two hierarchical levels. Any grammatical category includes specific morphosemantic oppositional forms. Thus, unlike inflectional affixes, the rest of the morphological affixes are all other types of inter-level derivatives. It should be noted that the preverb in Kartvelian languages ​​is the only linguistic unit with all possible functions of affix. DOWNLOADS

Inconsistencies in spoken language

2008 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 265-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Borochovsky Bar-Aba
Keyword(s):  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
Indirect Speech ◽  
Plural Form ◽  
Verb Tense

This paper displays examples of inconsistencies in spontaneous speech. It refers to cases in which the speaker changes his manner of expression while speaking, even though there generally seems to be no objective reason for doing so. I demonstrate the phenomenon in the use of verb tense, of person inflection, of singular/plural form, and of direct/indirect speech. I suggest that these phenomena be viewed as cases in which the speaker tries (not necessarily consciously) to make his speech less monotonous and more attractive to the listener by providing various ways of expression differing mainly in the degree of closeness they convey between the reported event and the addressee.

Unsupervised learning of part-of-speech guessing rules

1996 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREI MIKHEEV
Keyword(s):  
Training Data ◽  
Evaluation Methodology ◽  
Parts Of Speech ◽  
Part Of Speech Tagging ◽  
Part Of Speech ◽  
Substantial Problem ◽  
Rule Sets ◽  
Induction Experiment ◽  
Unknown Words ◽  
The Impact

Words unknown to the lexicon present a substantial problem to part-of-speech tagging. In this paper we present a technique for fully unsupervised acquisition of rules which guess possible parts of speech for unknown words. This technique does not require specially prepared training data, and uses instead the lexicon supplied with a tagger and word frequencies collected from a raw corpus. Three complimentary sets of word-guessing rules are statistically induced: prefix morphological rules, suffix morphological rules and ending guessing rules. The acquisition process is strongly associated with guessing-rule evaluation methodology which is solely dedicated to the performance of part-of-speech guessers. Using the proposed technique a guessing-rule induction experiment was performed on the Brown Corpus data and rule-sets, with a highly competitive performance, were produced and compared with the state-of-the-art. To evaluate the impact of the word-guessing component on the overall tagging performance, it was integrated into a stochastic and a rule-based tagger and applied to texts with unknown words.

Contribution of the basal ganglia to spoken language: Is speech production like the other motor skills?

2014 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 576-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandre Zenon ◽  
Etienne Olivier
Keyword(s):  
Basal Ganglia ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Motor Skills ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Motor System ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Motor Behaviour ◽  
Hypokinetic Dysarthria ◽  
High Level

AbstractTwo of the roles assigned to the basal ganglia in spoken language parallel very well their contribution to motor behaviour: (1) their role in sequence processing, resulting in syntax deficits, and (2) their role in movement “vigor,” leading to “hypokinetic dysarthria” or “hypophonia.” This is an additional example of how the motor system has served the emergence of high-level cognitive functions, such as language.

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