scholarly journals Perceptual Asymmetries and Auditory Processing of Estonian Quantities

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Liis Kask ◽  
Nele Põldver ◽  
Pärtel Lippus ◽  
Kairi Kreegipuu
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Pitch Contour ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Perceptual Asymmetry ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Body Of Knowledge ◽  
Contour Level ◽  
Estonian Language ◽  
Physical Features

Similar to visual perception, auditory perception also has a clearly described “pop-out” effect, where an element with some extra feature is easier to detect among elements without an extra feature. This phenomenon is better known as auditory perceptual asymmetry. We investigated such asymmetry between shorter or longer duration, and level or falling of pitch of linguistic stimuli that carry a meaning in one language (Estonian), but not in another (Russian). For the mismatch negativity (MMN) experiment, we created four different types of stimuli by modifying the duration of the first vowel [ɑ] (170, 290 ms) and pitch contour (level vs. falling pitch) of the stimuli words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’). The stimuli were synthesized from Estonian words (‘SATA,’ ‘SAKI’) and follow the Estonian language three-way quantity system, which incorporates tonal features (falling pitch contour) together with temporal patterns. This made the meaning of the word dependent on the combination of both features and allows us to compare the relative contribution of duration and pitch contour in discrimination of language stimuli in the brain via MMN generation. The participants of the experiment were 12 Russian native speakers with little or no experience in Estonian and living in Estonia short-term, and 12 Estonian native speakers (age 18–27 years). We found that participants’ perception of the linguistic stimuli differed not only according to the physical features but also according to their native language, confirming that the meaning of the word interferes with the early automatic processing of phonological features. The GAMM and ANOVA analysis of the reversed design results showed that the deviant with longer duration among shorter standards elicited a MMN response with greater amplitude than the short deviant among long standards, while changes in pitch contour (falling vs. level pitch) produced neither strong MMN nor asymmetry. Thus, we demonstrate the effect of language background on asymmetric perception of linguistic stimuli that aligns with those of previous studies (Jaramillo et al., 2000), and contributes to the growing body of knowledge supporting auditory perceptual asymmetry.

scholarly journals The acoustic characteristics of non-native American English vowels

Linguistica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Biljana Čubrović
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Language Background ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Native Speech

This study aims at discussing the phonetic property of vowel quality in English, as exercised by both native speakers of General American English (AE) and non-native speakers of General American English of Serbian language background, all residents of the United States. Ten Serbian male speakers and four native male speakers of AE are recorded in separate experiments and their speech analyzed acoustically for any significant phonetic differences, looking into a set of monosyllabic English words representing nine vowels of AE. The general aim of the experiments is to evaluate the phonetic characteristics of AE vowels, with particular attention to F1 and F2 values, investigate which vowels differ most in the two groups of participants, and provide some explanations for these variations. A single most important observation that is the result of this vowel study is an evident merger of three pairs of vowels in the non-native speech: /i ɪ/, /u ʊ/, and /ɛ æ/.

Language background affects online word order processing in a second language but not offline

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (04) ◽  
pp. 802-825 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNIKA ANDERSSON ◽  
SUSAN SAYEHLI ◽  
MARIANNE GULLBERG
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Order ◽  
English Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Order Processing ◽  
Online Processing ◽  
Related Potentials ◽  
Crosslinguistic Influence

This study examines possible crosslinguistic influence on basic word order processing in a second language (L2). Targeting Swedish V2 word order we investigate adult German learners (+V2 in the L1) and English learners (-V2 in the L1) of Swedish who are matched for proficiency. We report results from two offline behavioural tasks (written production, metalinguistic judgements), and online processing as measured by event-related potentials (ERPs). All groups showed sensitivity to word order violations behaviourally and neurocognitively. Behaviourally, the learners differed from the native speakers only on judgements. Crucially, they did not differ from each other. Neurocognitively, all groups showed a similar increased centro-parietal P600 ERP-effect, but German learners (+V2) displayed more nativelike anterior ERP-effects than English learners (-V2). The results suggest crosslinguistic influence in that the presence of a similar word order in the L1 can facilitate online processing in an L2 – even if no offline behavioural effects are discerned.

Reliability of Hypernasality Rating

2018 ◽  
Vol 55 (8) ◽  
pp. 1060-1071 ◽  
Author(s):  
Renata Paciello Yamashita ◽  
Elisabet Borg ◽  
Svante Granqvist ◽  
Anette Lohmander
Keyword(s):  
Cleft Lip And Palate ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Intraclass Correlation ◽  
Speech Disorders ◽  
Brazilian Portuguese ◽  
Rater Reliability ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Cleft Palate Speech ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Perceptual Assessment

Objective: To compare reliability in auditory-perceptual assessment of hypernasality for 3 different methods and to explore the influence of language background. Design: Comparative methodological study. Participants and Materials: Audio recordings of 5-year-old Swedish-speaking children with repaired cleft lip and palate consisting of 73 stimuli of 9 nonnasal single-word strings in 3 different randomized orders. Four experienced speech-language pathologists (2 native speakers of Brazilian–Portuguese and 2 native speakers of Swedish) participated as listeners. After individual training, each listener performed the hypernasality rating task. Each order of stimuli was analyzed individually using the 2-step, VISOR and Borg centiMax scale methods. Main Outcome Measures: Comparison of intra- and inter-rater reliability, and consistency  for each method within language of the listener and between listener languages (Swedish and Brazilian–Portuguese). Results: Good to excellent intra-rater reliability was found within each listener for all methods, 2-step: κ = 0.59-0.93; VISOR: intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) = 0.80-0.99; Borg centiMax (cM) scale: ICC = 0.80-1.00. The highest inter-rater reliability was demonstrated for VISOR (ICC = 0.60-0.90) and Borg cM-scale (ICC = 0.40-0.80). High consistency within each method was found with the highest for the Borg cM scale (ICC = 0.89-0.91). There was a significant difference in the ratings between the Swedish and the Brazilian listeners for all methods. Conclusions: The category-ratio scale Borg cM was considered most reliable in the assessment of hypernasality. Language background of Brazilian–Portuguese listeners influenced the perceptual ratings of hypernasality in Swedish speech samples, despite their experience in perceptual assessment of cleft palate speech disorders.

scholarly journals Relative Contribution of Auditory and Visual Information to Mandarin Chinese Tone Identification by Native and Tone-naïve Listeners

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 856-876
Author(s):  
Yueqiao Han ◽  
Martijn Goudbeek ◽  
Maria Mos ◽  
Marc Swerts
Keyword(s):  
Mandarin Chinese ◽  
Visual Information ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Mcgurk Effect ◽  
Auditory Speech ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Lip Reading ◽  
Show Evidence ◽  
Visual Materials ◽  
Chinese Subjects

Speech perception is a multisensory process: what we hear can be affected by what we see. For instance, the McGurk effect occurs when auditory speech is presented in synchrony with discrepant visual information. A large number of studies have targeted the McGurk effect at the segmental level of speech (mainly consonant perception), which tends to be visually salient (lip-reading based), while the present study aims to extend the existing body of literature to the suprasegmental level, that is, investigating a McGurk effect for the identification of tones in Mandarin Chinese. Previous studies have shown that visual information does play a role in Chinese tone perception, and that the different tones correlate with variable movements of the head and neck. We constructed various tone combinations of congruent and incongruent auditory-visual materials (10 syllables with 16 tone combinations each) and presented them to native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and speakers of tone-naïve languages. In line with our previous work, we found that tone identification varies with individual tones, with tone 3 (the low-dipping tone) being the easiest one to identify, whereas tone 4 (the high-falling tone) was the most difficult one. We found that both groups of participants mainly relied on auditory input (instead of visual input), and that the auditory reliance for Chinese subjects was even stronger. The results did not show evidence for auditory-visual integration among native participants, while visual information is helpful for tone-naïve participants. However, even for this group, visual information only marginally increases the accuracy in the tone identification task, and this increase depends on the tone in question.

An ERP Study in English Relative Clause Processing by Chinese-English Bilinguals

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Huili Wang ◽  
Liwen Ma ◽  
Youyou Wang ◽  
Melissa Troyer ◽  
Qiang Li
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Sentence Processing ◽  
Relative Clause ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Brain Activity ◽  
Working Memory Capacity ◽  
Large Body ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Study Support

AbstractThe processing of relative clauses receives much concern from linguists. The finding that object relatives are easier to process than subject relatives in Chinese challenges the notion that subject relative clauses are preferred universally. A large body of literature provides theories related to sentence processing mechanisms for native speakers but leaves one area relatively untouched: how bilinguals process sentences. This study is designed to examine the case where the individuals with a Chinese L1 language background process subject-extracted subject relative clauses (SS) and subject-extracted object relative clauses (SO) by using eventrelated potentials (ERPs) to probe into the real-time language processing and presents a direct manifestation of brain activity. The findings from this study support the subject relative clause preference due to the strong influence of English relative clause markedness and bilinguals’ relative lower working memory capacity.

The relative contribution of segments and intonation to the perception of foreign-accented speech

2015 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-322 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOAN SERENO ◽  
LYNNE LAMMERS ◽  
ALLARD JONGMAN
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Frequency ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
The Other ◽  
Foreign Accent ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Relative Impact ◽  
Accented Speech ◽  
Relative Contribution ◽  
Accented English

ABSTRACTThe present study examines the relative impact of segments and intonation on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility, specifically investigating the separate contribution of segmental and intonational information to perceived foreign accent in Korean-accented English. Two English speakers and two Korean speakers recorded 40 English sentences. The sentences were manipulated by combining segments from one speaker with intonation (fundamental frequency contour and duration) from another speaker. Four versions of each sentence were created: one English control (English segments and English intonation), one Korean control (Korean segments and Korean intonation), and two Korean–English combinations (one with English segments and Korean intonation; the other with Korean segments and English intonation). Forty native English speakers transcribed the sentences for intelligibility and rated their comprehensibility and accentedness. The data show that segments had a significant effect on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility, but intonation only had an effect on intelligibility. Contrary to previous studies, the present study, separating segments from intonation, suggests that segmental information contributes substantially more to the perception of foreign accentedness than intonation. Native speakers seem to rely mainly on segments when determining foreign accentedness.

scholarly journals Homophone auditory processing in cross-linguistic perspective

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 529
Author(s):  
Youtao Lu ◽  
James L. Morgan
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Intrinsic Properties ◽  
Native Japanese Speakers ◽  
Processing Abilities ◽  
Chinese And English

Previous studies reported conflicting results for the effects of homophony on visual word processing across languages. On finding significant differences in homophone density in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese and English, we conducted two experiments to compare native speakers’ competence in homophone auditory processing across these three languages. A lexical decision task showed that the effect of homophony on word processing in Japanese was significantly less detrimental than in Mandarin and English. A word-learning task showed that native Japanese speakers were the fastest in learning novel homophones. These results suggest that language-intrinsic properties influence corresponding language processing abilities of native speakers.

scholarly journals Native-like Performance of Pragmatic Features: Speech Acts in Spanish

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-30
Author(s):  
Marta Vacas Matos ◽  
Andrew D. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Learning Style ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Physical Contact ◽  
Contrastive Analysis ◽  
Language Background ◽  
Learning Style Preferences ◽  
Style Preferences ◽  
Learning Style Preference

Abstract This study had as its goal to investigate how nonnative speakers (NNSs) of Spanish were able to perform pragmatics which in various ways resembled that of native speakers (NSs). The study focused on three advanced NNSs of Spanish who had contributed data six years earlier to a corpus of NS and NNS speech acts of complimenting, apologizing and refusing. The purpose was to do a contrastive analysis comparing the pragmatic performance of NNSs and NSs in order to capture both similarities and areas where highly competent NNSs displayed knowledge gaps, however subtle. The subjects responded to a language background questionnaire regarding their learning of Spanish and also completed a learning style preference survey. They were then asked to revisit their earlier performance in pragmatics from the corpus data and to describe the strategies that they used to produce their highly-rated performance in Spanish pragmatics at that time. The findings revealed ways in which the three subjects differentially imitated NS behavior, and provided insights as to how they arrived at native-like behavior in their facial expressions, use of clicks, physical contact practices, colloquial language, and cursing. The subjects’ reported learning style preferences appeared to be generally consistent with the strategies that they reported using for dealing with the pragmatic features of interest, such as the way that they dealt with cursing.

scholarly journals The Interaction Between Timescale and Pitch Contour at Pre-attentive Processing of Frequency-Modulated Sweeps

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
I-Hui Hsieh ◽  
Wan-Ting Yeh
Keyword(s):  
Auditory Processing ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Event Related Potentials ◽  
Pitch Contour ◽  
Hemispheric Dominance ◽  
Oddball Paradigm ◽  
Speech Comprehension ◽  
Cortical Processing ◽  
Formant Frequency ◽  
Related Potentials

Speech comprehension across languages depends on encoding the pitch variations in frequency-modulated (FM) sweeps at different timescales and frequency ranges. While timescale and spectral contour of FM sweeps play important roles in differentiating acoustic speech units, relatively little work has been done to understand the interaction between the two acoustic dimensions at early cortical processing. An auditory oddball paradigm was employed to examine the interaction of timescale and pitch contour at pre-attentive processing of FM sweeps. Event-related potentials to frequency sweeps that vary in linguistically relevant pitch contour (fundamental frequency F0 vs. first formant frequency F1) and timescale (local vs. global) in Mandarin Chinese were recorded. Mismatch negativities (MMNs) were elicited by all types of sweep deviants. For local timescale, FM sweeps with F0 contours yielded larger MMN amplitudes than F1 contours. A reversed MMN amplitude pattern was obtained with respect to F0/F1 contours for global timescale stimuli. An interhemispheric asymmetry of MMN topography was observed corresponding to local and global-timescale contours. Falling but not rising frequency difference waveforms sweep contours elicited right hemispheric dominance. Results showed that timescale and pitch contour interacts with each other in pre-attentive auditory processing of FM sweeps. Findings suggest that FM sweeps, a type of non-speech signal, is processed at an early stage with reference to its linguistic function. That the dynamic interaction between timescale and spectral pattern is processed during early cortical processing of non-speech frequency sweep signal may be critical to facilitate speech encoding at a later stage.

scholarly journals Multimodaalne suhtlus ja kognitsiooniuuringud pedagoogikas

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 115-132
Author(s):  
Silvi Tenjes
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Analytical Approach ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Multimodal Communication ◽  
Research Subjects ◽  
Pedagogical Discourse ◽  
Cognitive Studies ◽  
Estonian Language

Artiklis kirjeldatakse multimodaalset suhtlust kui nähtust, uurimisvaldkonda ja analüütilist lähenemist seoses pedagoogika uurimisteemadega ja inimese sensomotoorsete/kognitiivsete võimetega. Näidatakse, kuidas kognitsiooniuuringud on olemuslikult seotud kaasaegsete multimodaalsete käsitlustega. Näited multimodaalse suhtluse kasulikkusest keeleõppes on esitatud eesti keele foneetika õpetamisest bakalaureuseastmes viimase kahe aasta jooksul mitte-eesti emakeelega õppijatele. Artikkel on suunatud õppejõududele, julgustamaks kasutama erinevaid tehnoloogiaid auditooriumis ehk kontaktõppe situatsioonis humanitaarvaldkonnas.Abstract. Silvi Tenjes: Multimodal communication and studies of cognition in pedagogy. The article describes multimodal communication as a phenomenon, branch of study and analytical approach in connection with the research subjects of pedagogy and human sensomotor/cognitive abilities. The paper reveals the basic connection between cognitive studies and modern multimodal approaches. Examples are presented on the basis of a study of multimodal communication which investigates teaching Estonian phonetics to non-native speakers over the last two years at Bachelor’s level. The article is aimed at teachers to encourage them to use various techniques in the auditorium or contact study situation in the area of humanities.Keywords: pedagogical discourse, multimodal communication, cognition, language learning, Estonian language

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