scholarly journals Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English

2009 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 977-990 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Boris New
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Frequency Measure ◽  
Current Word

A novel corpus developed to evaluate the impact of hospital noise on speech intelligibility

2021 ◽  
Vol 263 (4) ◽  
pp. 2157-2163
Author(s):  
Sydney Perry ◽  
Tessa Bent ◽  
Erica Ryherd ◽  
Melissa Baese-Berk
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
American English ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Sound Levels ◽  
Word Familiarity ◽  
Medical Dictionary ◽  
Communication Breakdowns ◽  
Hospital Noise ◽  
The Impact

Hospital noise often exceeds recommended sound levels set by health organizations leading to reductions in speech intelligibility and communication breakdowns between doctors and patients. However, quantifying the impact of hospital noise on intelligibility has been limited by stimuli employed in prior studies, which did not include medically related terminology. To address this gap, a corpus of medically related sentences was developed. Word frequency, word familiarity, and sentence predictability, factors known to impact intelligibility of speech, were quantified. Nearly 700 words were selected from the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary. Word frequency was taken from Lexique, a 51-million-word corpus of American subtitles (Brysbaert & New, 2009). Word familiarity was rated by 41 monolingual listeners. The words were then used to construct 200 sentences. To determine sentence predictability, the sentences were presented to 48 participants with one word missing; their task was to fill in the missing word. Three 40 item sentence sets with different familiarity / frequency types (low/low, high/low, high/high) were selected, all with low predictability levels. These sentences and 40 standard speech perception sentences were recorded by two male and two female talkers. This corpus can be used to assess how hospital noise impacts intelligibility across listener populations. Brysbaert, M., & New, B. (2009). Moving beyond Kučera and Francis: A critical evaluation of current word frequency norms and the introduction of a new and improved word frequency measure for American English. Behavior Research Methods, 41, 977-990. doi:10.3758/BRM.41.4.977.

scholarly journals td-deletion in British English: New evidence for the long-lost morphological effect

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23
Author(s):  
Maciej Baranowski ◽  
Danielle Turton
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Past Tense ◽  
Morphological Effect ◽  
British English ◽  
Glottal Stop ◽  
New Evidence

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes td-deletion, the process whereby coronal stops /t, d/ are deleted after a consonant at the end of the word (e.g., best, kept, missed) in the speech of 93 speakers from Manchester, stratified for age, social class, gender, and ethnicity. Prior studies of British English have not found the morphological effect—more deletion in monomorphemic mist than past tense missed—commonly observed in American English. We find this effect in Manchester and provide evidence that the rise of glottal stop replacement in postsonorant position in British English (e.g., halt, aunt) may be responsible for the reduction in the strength of this effect in British varieties. Glottaling blocks deletion, and, because the vast majority of postsonorant tokens are monomorphemic, the higher rates of monomorpheme glottaling dampens the typical effect of deletion in this context. These findings indicate organization at a higher level of the grammar, while also showing overlaid effects of factors such as style and word frequency.

scholarly journals The Word Frequency Effect in Word Processing: An Updated Review

2017 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marc Brysbaert ◽  
Paweł Mandera ◽  
Emmanuel Keuleers
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Word Processing ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Frequency Effect ◽  
Word Frequency Effect ◽  
Frequency Measure ◽  
Language Exposure ◽  
High Frequency Words

The word frequency effect refers to the observation that high-frequency words are processed more efficiently than low-frequency words. Although the effect was first described over 80 years ago, in recent years it has been investigated in more detail. It has become clear that considerable quality differences exist between frequency estimates and that we need a new standardized frequency measure that does not mislead users. Research also points to consistent individual differences in the word frequency effect, meaning that the effect will be present at different word frequency ranges for people with different degrees of language exposure. Finally, a few ongoing developments point to the importance of semantic diversity rather than mere differences in the number of times words have been encountered and to the importance of taking into account word prevalence in addition to word frequency.

scholarly journals Linguostatistic and associative verbal parameters of an American mathematician’s idiolect (based on the dialogue of the film A Beautiful Mind)

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-45
Author(s):  
S. G. Lebedeva
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Cognitive Process ◽  
Semantic Analysis ◽  
Numerical Solutions ◽  
American English ◽  
Research Capacity ◽  
Mental Condition ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Professional Activity ◽  
Semantic Fields

The study is focused on an American mathematician’s idiolect by analysis of the protagonist’s direct speech in the film A Beautiful Mind. The ideal scientist’s generalized image followed by the stylization of his idiolect contains the research capacity: this modelled language personality refers not only and not so much to its prototype, but to the stereotype of a mathematician’s idiolect circulated to American English speakers. The study was done by the methodology based on counting the word frequency by using software TextSTAT and comparing the results with the word frequency in the Corpus of Contemporary American English to assess the degree of deviation of the mathematician’s stylized lexicon from an average American English native speaker’s lexicon objectively. The associative semantic analysis of the studied personality’s main metonymic characteristic expressed by the phrase “A Beautiful Mind” located the associative semantic fields of the concept MIND in the native English speakers’ mass consciousness and set the main directions to research the associative semantic fields of the American mathematician’s general lexicon as follows: “Cognition”, “Mental condition” and “Eccentricity”. The further research is focused on the scientist’s vocabulary which is directly related to his professional activity. The structuring the field “Professional communication” (terms, professional slang, jargonisms, nomenclature), studying the quantitative ratios of these vocabulary groups and their contextual links revealed the specific scientific interests, isolation in a team and deviant language behavior. The analysis of the field “Cognition” indicated several nouns and verbs (work, time, number, to work, to win, to lose and others) as its semantic center. The research of their contextual links showed that the language personality’s main value is a dedicated cognitive process consisting in numerical solutions of problems to determine the causal relationships of reality. The solutions are not only thought, but imagined; feelings are also involved in the cognitive process. Multiplicity of solution makes choice important. The associative semantic fields structuring the mathematician’s lexicon are interrelated. There are lexical units (love, bicycle) that carry information in the intersections of the fields implicitly. Such lexical units form symbols which connect the series of heterogeneous concepts in the studied language personality’s mind.

Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change

2002 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 261-290 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Bybee
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Sound Change ◽  
Rate Of Change ◽  
Exemplar Model ◽  
Frequency Effects ◽  
Lexical Variation ◽  
Phonetic Detail ◽  
Lexical Diffusion ◽  
Context Of Use

The literature on frequency effects in lexical diffusion shows that even phonetically gradual changes that in some cases are destined to be lexically regular show lexical diffusion while they are in progress. Change that is both phonetically and lexically gradual presents a serious challenge to theories with phonemic underlying forms. An alternate exemplar model that can account for lexical variation in phonetic detail is outlined here. This model predicts that the frequency with which words are used in the contexts for change will affect how readily the word undergoes a change in progress. This prediction is tested on data from /t, d/ deletion in American English. Finally, the effect of bound morphemes on the diffusion of a sound change is examined. The data suggest that instances of a bound morpheme can affect the rate of change for that morpheme overall.

scholarly journals Linguistic entrenchment and the effect of subjective lexical familiarity in Korean /n/-insertion

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Jiyeon Song ◽  
Amanda Dalola
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Language Variation ◽  
Language Experience ◽  
Frequency Measure ◽  
Exemplar Theory

Korean shows variable /n/-insertion between a morpheme-final consonant and the initial /i/ or /j/ of a following morpheme. Literature has shown that the appearance of the phenomenon can be affected by various parameters, including social and phonological factors. Exemplar theory contends that a word’s susceptibility to language variation correlates directly with its word frequency, a unitary frequency measure based on a corpus (Pierrehumbert 2001; Bybee 2002). However, given that individuals have different language experience, word frequency rarely addresses individual differences in the same way that self-rated measures of word frequency, known as subjective lexical familiarity, do. This research investigates whether and how the metric of self-rated lexical familiarity affects Korean /n/-insertion. Results indicate that subjective lexical familiarity significantly predicts the appearance of /n/-insertion, such that words more familiar to the speaker show /n/-insertion more often than those that are less familiar.

scholarly journals Spoken word frequency counts based on 1.6 million words in American English

2007 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 1025-1028 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew J. Pastizzo ◽  
Robert F. Carbone
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
American English ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Frequency Counts

Electron Microscopy of Metal-Matrix Composites

1970 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 404-405
Author(s):  
A. Lawley ◽  
M. R. Pinnel ◽  
A. Pattnaik
Keyword(s):  
Electron Microscopy ◽  
Metal Matrix Composites ◽  
Metal Matrix ◽  
Critical Evaluation ◽  
Elastic Behavior ◽  
Matrix Composites ◽  
Directionally Solidified ◽  
Fracture Characteristics ◽  
Broad Program

As part of a broad program on composite materials, the role of the interface on the micromechanics of deformation of metal-matrix composites is being studied. The approach is to correlate elastic behavior, micro and macroyielding, flow, and fracture behavior with associated structural detail (dislocation substructure, fracture characteristics) and stress-state. This provides an understanding of the mode of deformation from an atomistic viewpoint; a critical evaluation can then be made of existing models of composite behavior based on continuum mechanics. This paper covers the electron microscopy (transmission, fractography, scanning microscopy) of two distinct forms of composite material: conventional fiber-reinforced (aluminum-stainless steel) and directionally solidified eutectic alloys (aluminum-copper). In the former, the interface is in the form of a compound and/or solid solution whereas in directionally solidified alloys, the interface consists of a precise crystallographic boundary between the two constituents of the eutectic.

Addressing African American English in Early Literacy Assessment and Instruction

2008 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 54-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Patton Terry
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
Early Literacy ◽  
American English ◽  
Critical Role ◽  
Literacy Skills ◽  
African American English ◽  
Literacy Assessment ◽  
Learning To Read ◽  
Speech Language Pathologist ◽  
Early Literacy Assessment

Abstract Determining how best to address young children's African American English use in formal literacy assessment and instruction is a challenge. Evidence is not yet available to discern which theory best accounts for the relation between AAE use and literacy skills or to delineate which dialect-informed educational practices are most effective for children in preschool and the primary grades. Nonetheless, consistent observations of an educationally significant relation between AAE use and various early literacy skills suggest that dialect variation should be considered in assessment and instruction practices involving children who are learning to read and write. The speech-language pathologist can play a critical role in instituting such practices in schools.

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