scholarly journals Automatic Speech Segmentation in French / Segmentação automática da fala em francês

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 1551
Author(s):  
Philippe Martin
Keyword(s):  
Speech Rate ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
Content Word ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Speech Segmentation ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Computer Algorithm ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Slow Speech

Abstract: Whether we read aloud or silently, we segment speech not in words, but in accent phrases, i.e. sequences containing only one stressed syllable (excluding emphatic stress). In lexically stressed languages such as Italian or English, the location of stress in a noun, an adverb, a verb or an adjective (content words) is defined in the lexicon, and accent phrases include one single content word together with its associated grammatical words. In French, a language deprived from lexical stress, accent phrases are defined by the time it takes to read or pronounce them. Therefore, actual phrasing, i.e. the segmentation into accent phrases, depends strongly on the speech rate chosen by the speaker or the reader, whether in oral or silent reading mode. With a slow speech rate, all content words form accent phrases whose final syllables are stressed, whereas a fast speech rate could merge up to 10 or 11 syllables together in a single accent phrase with more than one content word. Based on this observation, and on other properties of stressed syllables, a computer algorithm for automatic phrasing, operating in a top-down fashion, is presented and applied to two examples of read and spontaneous speech.Keywords: accent phrase; French; phrasing; stress location; boundary detection.Resumo: Quando lemos em voz alta ou silenciosamente, segmentamos a fala em palavras, mas em grupos acentuais, i.e., sequências contendo uma única sílaba acentuada (excluindo-se acento enfático). Em línguas lexicalmente acentuadas como o italiano ou o inglês, a localização do acento em um substantivo, um advérbio, um verbo ou em um adjetivo (palavras lexicais) é definida no léxico, e sintagmas acentuais incluem uma única palavra lexical, acompanhada das palavras gramaticais a ela associadas. Em francês, uma língua que não possui acento lexical, sintagmas acentuais são definidos pelo tempo que se leva para lê-los ou pronunciá-los. Assim, os constituintes concretos, i.e., a segmentação em grupos acentuais, depende fortemente da velocidade de fala escolhida pelo falante ou leitor, tanto na fala como na leitura silenciosa. Com uma velocidade de fala baixa, todas as palavras lexicais formam grupos acentuais cujas sílabas finais são acentuadas, enquanto o ritmo de fala rápido poderia juntar de 10 a 11 sílabas em um mesmo grupo acentual contendo mais de uma palavra lexical. Com base nessa observação e em outras propriedades das sílabas acentuadas, um algoritmo computacional para segmentação automática, atuando de maneira top-down é apresentado e aplicado a dois exemplos de leitura e fala espontânea.Palavras-chave: grupo acentual; francês; segmentação; posição do acento; detecção de fronteira.

scholarly journals Durational correlates of English sublexical constituent structure

Phonology ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 477-524 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariko Sugahara ◽  
Alice Turk
Keyword(s):  
Speech Rate ◽  
Morphological Structure ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Constituent Structure ◽  
Foot Structure ◽  
Initial Syllable ◽  
Level Ii ◽  
Level I ◽  
Slow Speech ◽  
Stress Patterns

This study investigates whether differences (a) in word-internal morphological structure and (b) in lexical stress patterns are reflected in prosodic constituent structure, by examining duration measurements in Scottish English. In Experiments 1 and 2, at a slow speech rate, stem-final rhymes followed by Level II suffixes were on average 4–6% longer than corresponding strings in monomorphemic words, and 7–8% longer than stem-final rhymes followed by Level I suffixes. These results are consistent with the view that stems preceding Level II suffixes are mapped onto prosodic words in the prosodic representation. Experiment 3 obtained no reliable durational differences, even at a slow speech rate, between the initial syllable rhymes of SS words and SW words, which does not provide evidence for the hypothesis that these different stress patterns are represented as differences in foot structure.

Lexical Stress Effects in Silent Reading

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara E. Breen ◽  
Charles E. Clifton
Keyword(s):  
Silent Reading ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Stress Effects

scholarly journals The level of awareness and production of English lexical stress among English language teacher trainees in Malaysia

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernie Adnan ◽  
Stefanie Pillai ◽  
Poh Shin Chiew
Keyword(s):  
Teacher Education ◽  
English Language ◽  
Acoustic Analysis ◽  
Intermediate Level ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Language Teacher ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Teacher Trainees ◽  
Systematic Pattern ◽  
Second Language Teacher

The realisation of lexical stress among Malaysian speakers of English is likely to be different from other varieties of English. In spite of this, there is a preference for a native pronunciation model in the teaching of English in Malaysia. In relation to this issue, this paper focuses on lexical stress among a group of Teaching of English as a Second Language teacher trainees. The objectives of this paper are to assess the overall level of awareness of lexical stress among them, to examine their production of lexical stress, and to determine the link between their level of awareness and production. The method used to elicit data for the first objective was a Lexical Stress Awareness Test (LSAT), completed by 104 teacher trainees. Data for the second objective were obtained by recording the trainees reading sentences containing test words. The findings from the LSAT indicate that most of the trainees have an intermediate level of awareness of English lexical stress. They were generally unable to describe the characteristics of a stressed syllable. In addition, the findings from the acoustic analysis of the recordings suggest that they did not have a systematic pattern of stressing syllables with the main correlate of stress being vowel lengthening. In contrast, most of them chose ‘higher pitch’ as the characteristic of a stressed syllable. Hence, there is an inconsistency between their awareness and production of lexical stress in English. We discuss the implications of these findings in relation to the teaching of pronunciation in the classroom and the effect of lexical stress placement on intelligibility. Our general conclusion is that more attention needs to be given in teacher education to how lexical stress is used in English, and also to the characteristics of stress in the Malaysian variety of English.

scholarly journals Stress matters: Effects of anticipated lexical stress on silent reading

2011 ◽  
Vol 64 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mara Breen ◽  
Charles Clifton
Keyword(s):  
Silent Reading ◽  
Lexical Stress

Figures of/for Voice

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Nowell Smith
Keyword(s):  
Inner Ear ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
Silent Reading ◽  
The Body ◽  
Read Aloud ◽  
Sound Recording ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Presence And Absence

The concept of “voice” has long been highly ambiguous, with the physiological-phonetic process of sound production entangled in a far more extensive cultural and metaphysical imaginary of voice. Neither purely sound nor purely signification, voice can name either a sonorous excess over signification or the point at which sounds start to signify. Neither purely of the body nor ever extricated from its body, it can figure multiple kinds of meaningful embodiment, the breakdown of meaning in brute materiality, or even a strangely disembodied emanation. Voice can be both intentional and involuntary, both singular and plural, both presence and absence, both the possession of a subject and something that possesses subjects or is uncontainable by the subject. Voices may signify immediacy and be experienced as immediate, and yet they are continually mediated—by text, by technology, by art. In literature, the status of voice is particularly fraught. Not only do literary works deploy this imaginary of voice, but voice is crucial to literature’s medium. If this is most evident in the case of works composed or transmitted orally, it also holds for written works that, while destined for silent reading, nevertheless construct a virtual soundworld destined for its reader’s inner ear, to be subvocalized rather than read aloud. Literary works have been crucial in the development and deployment of the cultural-metaphysical imaginary of voice, precisely because “voice” poses such a diverse set of questions and problems for literature. These problems change focus and force with the development of technologies of inscription and prosthesis, from printing to sound recording to automated speech.

Nuclear Pitch Accents in Majorcan Catalan Declaratives: Phonology, Phonetics, Diachrony

2009 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Read Aloud ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Relative Pitch ◽  
Acoustic Study ◽  
Production Experiment ◽  
Pitch Accents

AbstractThe present paper reports on the findings of an acoustic study of nuclear pitch accents in Majorcan Catalan. A total of 10 speakers participated in a production experiment. Nuclear pitch accents were investigated by measuring relative pitch changes between several sequential temporal landmarks in and around nuclear stressed syllables in read-aloud declaratives. The results provide evidence for the presence of a low (L) tone associated with the nuclear stressed syllable for 9 of the 10 participants, and that of a high (H) trailing tone for only 4 of the participants. The implications of these results for a phonological analysis of Majorcan Catalan nuclear pitch accents, as well as the diachrony of nuclear pitch accents in Iberian Romance, are discussed.

scholarly journals Prosodically-conditioned Syllable Structure in English

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paula Orzechowska ◽  
Janina Mołczanow ◽  
Michał Jankowski
Keyword(s):  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Consonant Clusters ◽  
Metrical Structure ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Main Stress ◽  
Unstressed Syllable

Abstract This paper investigates the interplay between the metrical structure and phonotactic complexity in English, a language with lexical stress and an elaborate inventory of consonant clusters. The analysis of a dictionary- and corpus-based list of polysyllabic words leads to two major observations. First, there is a tendency for onsetful syllables to attract stress, and for onsetless syllables to repel it. Second, the stressed syllable embraces a greater array of consonant clusters than unstressed syllables. Moreover, the farther form the main stress, the less likely the unstressed syllable is to contain a complex onset. This finding indicates that the ability of a position to license complex onsets is related to its distance from the prosodic head.

Processing Continuous Speech in Infancy

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louise Goyet ◽  
Séverine Millotte ◽  
Anne Christophe ◽  
Thierry Nazzi
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Language Development ◽  
Word Segmentation ◽  
Speech Segmentation ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Early Language ◽  
Early Language Development ◽  
Early Use ◽  
Prosodic Boundary ◽  
Transitional Probabilities

The present chapter focuses on fluent speech segmentation abilities in early language development. We first review studies exploring the early use of major prosodic boundary cues which allow infants to cut full utterances into smaller-sized sequences like clauses or phrases. We then summarize studies showing that word segmentation abilities emerge around 8 months, and rely on infants’ processing of various bottom-up word boundary cues and top-down known word recognition cues. Given that most of these cues are specific to the language infants are acquiring, we emphasize how the development of these abilities varies cross-linguistically, and explore their developmental origin. In particular, we focus on two cues that might allow bootstrapping of these abilities: transitional probabilities and rhythmic units.

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