PROSODIC STRESS IN THE THEORY OF RHYTHM BY HENRI MESHONNIK UNDER THE MAGNIFYING GLASS OF EXPERIMENTAL PHONETICS

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-56
Author(s):  
Ekaterina M. BELAVINA
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Stress System ◽  
Acoustic Parameters ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Linguistics ◽  
Theory Of Literature ◽  
Muscular Effort ◽  
Experimental Phonetics

Henri Meschonnik’s legacy includes diversified, multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary research. The history and theory of literature, philosophy and linguistics underlie his methodology for studying rhythm. To analyze the text, Meshonnik uses the stress system, in particular, the prosodic stress that occurs on the first syllable of a word when its first consonant is repeated in a verse or in a prosaic sentence. The existence of prosodic stress, which is understood in this way, is ignored by phoneticians. The stress in the text is presented in the theory of Madden as a symbolic display of a clot of energy, since initially stress in speech concentrates muscular effort. The article makes an attempt to determine what is the current status of prosodic stress, an important element of A. Meshonnik’s analytical apparatus. Stress has measurable acoustic parameters (intensity, pitch, duration), so an experiment was carried out (using a Praat speech analyzer). The stress on the first syllable in French phonetics is considered to be additional, depending on the individual implementation, however, Meshonnik, as well as his follower and co-author J. Desson, consider prosodic stress to be a linguistic (phonological) law. The article describes the stage of the experiment when native speakers (students of ENS Paris) were offered the phrase of Flaubert, commented by Madden and Desson in “Treatise on Rhythm”, and the same phrase, modified in two ways, to trace the stress in the absence of sound repetition. In the course of the experiment, most of the participants showed a slight increase in intensity when reading the original phrase, a decrease in intensity when reading a shortened phrase, and in some cases, the intensity increased when reading a phrase with a word modified to avoid repetitions.

The Relation of Language Context and Religiosity to Trilemma Judgments

2021 ◽  
pp. 002202212110339
Author(s):  
Elyas Barabadi ◽  
Mohsen Rahmani Tabar ◽  
James R. Booth
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Second Language ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Language ◽  
Standard Measure ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Language Context

Utilitarian judgments maximize benefit for the most people, whereas deontological judgments are based on moral norms. Previous work shows that people tend to make more utilitarian judgments in their second compared to their native language, whereas higher religiosity is associated with more deontological judgments. However, it is not known whether the effect of language context is moderated by the religiosity of the individual. We hypothesized that more religious participants from all three languages would favor deontological choices irrespective of language context. In order to investigate this, we studied native speakers of Persian who either had Arabic or English as their second language, and all participants were given a standard measure of religiosity. Decision making was measured by the classic trolley trilemma in which a participant could “push” a person to save the lives of more people which is considered a utilitarian judgment. Alternatively, they could “switch” a track to save the lives of more people (“indirect”), or do nothing (“inaction”), both of which are considered deontological. Consistent with the literature showing more utilitarian judgments in the second language, English participants preferred the push option, whereas Persian participants favored the inaction option. L2 Arabic participants more often chose the indirect option. However, participants’ religiosity moderated this effect of language context. Although L2 Arabic participants’ choices were not influenced by religiosity, higher religiosity in the L2 English and L1 Persian groups was associated with more deontological choices.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Language as a Predictor of the Will for Independence in Catalonia in 1996 and 2020

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. 426-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordi Argelaguet
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
First Language ◽  
Reform Process ◽  
Place Of Birth ◽  
Powerful Predictor ◽  
Exogenous Variables ◽  
The Will ◽  
Logistic Regressions ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Secessionist Movement

The Catalan secessionist parties, if added together, have won all the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia from 2010 to 2021. Their voters have been increasingly mobilized since the start of the controversial reform process of the Statute of Autonomy (2004–2010). The aim of this article is twofold. First, it intends to test whether language is the strongest predictor in preferring independence in two separate and distinct moments, 1996 and 2020. And second, to assess whether its strength has changed—and how—between both years. Only the most exogenous variables to the dependent variable are used in each of two logistic regressions to avoid problems of endogeneity: sex, age, size of town of residence, place of birth of the individual and of their parents, first language (L1), and educational level. Among them, L1 was—and still is—the most powerful predictor, although it is not entirely determinative. The secessionist movement not only gathers a plurality of Catalan native speakers, but it receives a not insignificant level of support among those who have Spanish as their L1. Conversely, the unionist group, despite being composed primarily by people who have Spanish as their L1 and have their family origins outside Catalonia, has a native Catalan-speaking minority inside. This imperfect division, which is based on ethnolinguistic alignments—and whose relevance cannot be neglected—alleviates the likelihood of an ethnic-based conflict.

scholarly journals Japanese Language and "Characters": From the Perspective of Teaching Japanese as a Foreign Language

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-68
Author(s):  
Yukiko SHUKURI
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Proficiency ◽  
Proficiency Test ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Test Results ◽  
Textbook Research ◽  
Language Proficiency Test

This paper introduces current status of "role language" and the "speaker's character" and their applications in Japanese teaching materials. Besides it studies the knowledge of Russian learners of Japanese and carefully examines their knowledge of four typical kinds of "role language" in Japanese anime and manga by using a questionnaire and follow-up interviews. From the results of the textbook research, the following two things are revealed; (a) first person pronouns except for watashi are rarely used, (b) there is not enough explanations about different "speaker's characters" in detail. Furthermore, findings of the questionnaire show that some of the learners who have the same impression of the characters as Japanese native speakers, wrongly connect a certain "role language" to illustrations of a character, and results of as much as three kinds of "role language" have a low positive correlation with the learners' results of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. Results also reveal that all four kinds of "role language" have no correlation with other factors, such as student's duration of learning Japanese, or frequency of the use of Japanese outside the classroom.

Perception of Vowels and Dental Consonants in Bangla Speech Processing

2013 ◽  
pp. 246-272
Author(s):  
Syed Akhter Hossain ◽  
M. Lutfar Rahman ◽  
Faruk Ahmed ◽  
M. Abdus Sobhan
Keyword(s):  
Speech Enhancement ◽  
Automatic Speech Recognition ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Problem Area ◽  
Acoustic Features ◽  
Acoustic Parameters ◽  
Independent Manner

The aim of this chapter is to clearly understand the salient features of Bangla vowels and the sources of acoustic variability in Bangla vowels, and to suggest classification of vowels based on normalized acoustic parameters. Possible applications in automatic speech recognition and speech enhancement have made the classification of vowels an important problem to study. However, Bangla vowels spoken by different native speakers show great variations in their respective formant values. This brings further complications in the acoustic comparison of vowels due to different dialect and language backgrounds of the speakers. This variation necessitates the use of normalization procedures to remove the effect of non-linguistic factors. Although several researchers found a number of acoustical and perceptual correlates of vowels, acoustic parameters that work well in a speaker-independent manner are yet to be found. Besides, study of acoustic features of Bangla dental consonants to identify the spectral differences between different consonants and to parameterize them for the synthesis of the segments is another problem area for study. The extracted features for both Bangla vowels and dental consonants are tested and found with good synthetic representations that demonstrate the quality of acoustic features.

scholarly journals The Nature of Unconscious Attention to Subliminal Cues

Vision ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prasad ◽  
Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Attentional Capture ◽  
Response Times ◽  
Attentional Selection ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Selection History ◽  
Spatial Cuing ◽  
Attentional System ◽  
The Individual

Attentional selection in humans is mostly determined by what is important to them or by the saliency of the objects around them. How our visual and attentional system manage these various sources of attentional capture is one of the most intensely debated issues in cognitive psychology. Along with the traditional dichotomy of goal-driven and stimulus-driven theories, newer frameworks such as reward learning and selection history have been proposed as well to understand how a stimulus captures attention. However, surprisingly little is known about the different forms of attentional control by information that is not consciously accessible to us. In this article, we will review several studies that have examined attentional capture by subliminal cues. We will specifically focus on spatial cuing studies that have shown through response times and eye movements that subliminal cues can affect attentional selection. A majority of these studies have argued that attentional capture by subliminal cues is entirely automatic and stimulus-driven. We will evaluate their claims of automaticity and contrast them with a few other studies that have suggested that orienting to unconscious cues proceeds in a manner that is contingent with the top-down goals of the individual. Resolving this debate has consequences for understanding the depths and the limits of unconscious processing. It has implications for general theories of attentional selection as well. In this review, we aim to provide the current status of research in this domain and point out open questions and future directions.

E-Mentoring the Individual Writer within a Global Creative Community

2010 ◽  
pp. 98-116
Author(s):  
Linda Venis
Keyword(s):  
Online Courses ◽  
Perfect Match ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Creative Work ◽  
Student Body ◽  
Fiction Writing ◽  
Feature Film ◽  
Online Curriculum ◽  
Student Advisor ◽  
The Individual

This chapter presents a case study of how the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program, which is America’s largest continuing education provider of online creative writing and screenwriting courses and services, offers individualized feedback and mentoring to 1,000’s of aspiring and practicing writers worldwide. Writing creatively is singularly private and can be isolating; the Writers’ Program’s 220 annually-offered online courses in fiction writing, memoir, personal essay, children’s literature, playwriting, poetry, publishing, feature film writing, and television writing provide access to in-depth instructor/student, student/student, and student/advisor relationships designed to help meet individual writing goals. Writing education is particularly well-suited for online delivery because writers write: students submit their work in writing; the teacher and fellow students give their feedback in writing. For students, the act of learning to write online reinforces their accountability to create in a disciplined way and allows time to absorb and respond to critiques with reflection. For teachers, e-mentoring requires unusual rigor and preciseness in order to give thoughtful feedback on each piece of creative work, and the 80 professional writers who teach the Writers’ Program online courses employ a range of pedagogical strategies to do so. In addition, the Writers’ Program provides personalized guidance and advice on writing online through its student advisors as well as an array of services, including one-on-one manuscript and script consultations; feature film mentorships for which students sign up monthly and receive “on demand” guidance on their projects; and a first-of-its-kind course limited to six advanced students in which they hold virtual internships at production companies and studios as script readers. The chapter begins with an overview of UCLA Extension and the Writers’ Program’s history, mission, products, services, and managerial structure, and then describes the origins and current status of the Writers’ Program’s online curriculum and educational services. The ways in which writing education comprises a near-perfect match for a virtual delivery system are explored, followed by a discussion of what makes Writers’ Program’s products and services uniquely suited to deliver e-mentoring for a global, mostly post-baccalaureate student body who puts a high premium on results and quality of interaction. The chapter next outlines how clear expectations, course design, lectures and critiquing guidelines ensure successful response to creative work (instructor/student and student/peers), and then focuses on “best practices” techniques and strategies that online Writers’ Program instructors use to shape and deliver critiques, including a common critiquing vocabulary and methodology, use of technological tools to provide sustained, personalized feedback, and ways to cultivate the individual writer’s sense of place in the global literary and entertainment communities. The chapter concludes by addressing technological, pedagogical, and economic challenges and future directions of e-mentoring aspiring creative writers and screenwriters.

scholarly journals Multi-model ensemble simulations of olive pollen distribution in Europe in 2014: current status and outlook

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (20) ◽  
pp. 12341-12360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikhail Sofiev ◽  
Olga Ritenberga ◽  
Roberto Albertini ◽  
Joaquim Arteta ◽  
Jordina Belmonte ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Perfect Match ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Ensemble Averaging ◽  
Phenological Model ◽  
Skill Scores ◽  
Concentration Time Series ◽  
Pollen Distribution ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Olive Pollen

Abstract. The paper presents the first modelling experiment of the European-scale olive pollen dispersion, analyses the quality of the predictions, and outlines the research needs. A 6-model strong ensemble of Copernicus Atmospheric Monitoring Service (CAMS) was run throughout the olive season of 2014, computing the olive pollen distribution. The simulations have been compared with observations in eight countries, which are members of the European Aeroallergen Network (EAN). Analysis was performed for individual models, the ensemble mean and median, and for a dynamically optimised combination of the ensemble members obtained via fusion of the model predictions with observations. The models, generally reproducing the olive season of 2014, showed noticeable deviations from both observations and each other. In particular, the season was reported to start too early by 8 days, but for some models the error mounted to almost 2 weeks. For the end of the season, the disagreement between the models and the observations varied from a nearly perfect match up to 2 weeks too late. A series of sensitivity studies carried out to understand the origin of the disagreements revealed the crucial role of ambient temperature and consistency of its representation by the meteorological models and heat-sum-based phenological model. In particular, a simple correction to the heat-sum threshold eliminated the shift of the start of the season but its validity in other years remains to be checked. The short-term features of the concentration time series were reproduced better, suggesting that the precipitation events and cold/warm spells, as well as the large-scale transport, were represented rather well. Ensemble averaging led to more robust results. The best skill scores were obtained with data fusion, which used the previous days' observations to identify the optimal weighting coefficients of the individual model forecasts. Such combinations were tested for the forecasting period up to 4 days and shown to remain nearly optimal throughout the whole period.

Non-durational acoustic correlates of word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay: The potential roles of amplitude and f0

2018 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-60
Author(s):  
Mohd Hilmi Hamzah ◽  
John Hajek ◽  
Janet Fletcher
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Initial Position ◽  
Acoustic Parameters ◽  
Rare Word ◽  
Acoustic Correlates ◽  
Closure Duration ◽  
Disyllabic Words ◽  
Consonant Gemination ◽  
Manner Of Articulation ◽  
Magnitude Difference

This study reports on non-durational acoustic correlates of typologically rare word-initial consonant gemination in Kelantan Malay (KM) by focusing on two acoustic parameters – amplitude and f0. Given the unusual characteristics of the word-initial consonant contrast and its potential maintenance in domain-initial environments, this study sets to examine the extent to which amplitude and f0 can potentially characterise such a contrast in KM in addition to the cross-linguistically established acoustic correlate of closure duration. The production data involved elicited materials from sixteen KM native speakers. RMS and f0 values were measured at the start of the vowel following stops and sonorants produced in isolation (i.e. utterance-initial position) and in a carrier sentence (i.e. utterance-medial position). Results indicate that the consonant contrast is reflected in systematic differences in (i) vowel onset amplitude and f0 following the target consonant and (ii) the ratios of amplitude and f0 across two syllables of disyllabic words. There are also effects of utterance position, manner of articulation and voicing type on the magnitude of contrast between singletons and geminates with utterance-initial voiceless stops generally showing the greatest magnitude difference. The conclusion is drawn that the KM word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast can be associated with a set of acoustic parameters alongside closure duration.

scholarly journals Bringing linguistic research into legal scholarship and practice

2020 ◽  
pp. 1037969X2096283
Author(s):  
Alexandra Grey ◽  
Laura Smith-Khan
Keyword(s):  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Research Area ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Research Field ◽  
Law Reform ◽  
Collaborative Approach ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Legal Scholarship ◽  
Linguistic Research ◽  
And Linguistics

This article suggests a cohesive articulation of the shared basis upon which the interdisciplinary research field of law and linguistics is developing, organising the research around the familiar three branches of the state: legislature, executive and judiciary, thus providing a map oriented towards non-linguists and legal practitioners. It also invites interdisciplinary scholars to critically reflect on future directions for this research area. This effort to redress the lack of recognition within the law of relevant linguistic research is part of our pursuit of an alternative and more collaborative approach to legal scholarship and law reform addressing issues of communicative barriers and linguistic injustice.

scholarly journals Two decades of research with the GreenLab model in agronomy

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philippe de Reffye ◽  
Baogang Hu ◽  
Mengzhen Kang ◽  
Véronique Letort ◽  
Marc Jaeger
Keyword(s):  
Research Effort ◽  
Mathematical Formulation ◽  
Research Work ◽  
Current Status ◽  
Individual Plant ◽  
Mathematical Framework ◽  
Plant Structure ◽  
Experimental Protocols ◽  
The Individual

Abstract Background With up to 200 published contributions, the GreenLab mathematical model of plant growth, developed since 2000 under Sino-French co-operation for agronomic applications, is descended from the structural models developed in the AMAP unit that characterize the development of plants and encompass them in a conceptual mathematical framework. The model also incorporates widely recognized crop model concepts (thermal time, light use efficiency and light interception), adapting them to the level of the individual plant. Scope Such long-term research work calls for an overview at some point. That is the objective of this review paper, which retraces the main history of the model’s development and its current status, highlighting three aspects. (1) What are the key features of the GreenLab model? (2) How can the model be a guide for defining relevant measurement strategies and experimental protocols? (3) What kind of applications can such a model address? This last question is answered using case studies as illustrations, and through the Discussion. Conclusions The results obtained over several decades illustrate a key feature of the GreenLab model: owing to its concise mathematical formulation based on the factorization of plant structure, it comes along with dedicated methods and experimental protocols for its parameter estimation, in the deterministic or stochastic cases, at single-plant or population levels. Besides providing a reliable statistical framework, this intense and long-term research effort has provided new insights into the internal trophic regulations of many plant species and new guidelines for genetic improvement or optimization of crop systems.

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