scholarly journals Stress avoidance in hiatus

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anya Lunden
Keyword(s):  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Stress Avoidance ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Multiple Languages

Multiple languages avoid stressing the first of two vowels in hiatus. Evidence that this avoidance has a perceptual basis is shown by the results of a perceptual study. Antepenultimate and penultimate stress versions of 40 three-syllable Norwegian nonce words were played to English listeners, who were asked to identify whether stress was on the first or second syllable. It was found that listeners had significantly more trouble correctly identifying penultimate stress in cases of hiatus (that is, where the penultimate vowel was immediately followed by the vowel of the final syllable). Steriade (2012, 2017) has proposed that Interval Theory accounts for the lack of stress in this position because the weight domain is too small to fulfill the requirement to bear stress. While this account is compatible with the perceptual account proposed here, an examination of the possible weight domains of the stimuli used finds a problem for Interval Theory. The onset of a stressed syllable is found to significantly lengthen, but because Interval Theory takes this consonant to be part of the preceding, unstressed interval, interval durations are out of sync with the relative prominence of the weight domains in a word.

Intonation in Palenquero

2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
José Ignacio Hualde ◽  
Armin Schwegler
Keyword(s):  
Final Section ◽  
Equatorial Guinea ◽  
Strong Tendency ◽  
Lexical Tone ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Word Level ◽  
Caribbean Spanish ◽  
History Of ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Published Research

The least understood aspect of Palenquero phonology is its intonational system. This is a serious gap, as it is precisely in the realm of prosody that the most striking phonological differences between Palenquero and (Caribbean) Spanish are apparent. Although several authors have speculated that African influence may be at the source of Palenquero’s peculiar intonation, to date published research offers no detailed information about the intonation of the creole. The goal of this study is to remedy this situation. Here we identify several specific intonational features where conservative (or older-generation) Palenquero differs from (Caribbean) Spanish. One of these features is a strong tendency to use invariant word-level contours, with a H tone on the stressed syllable and L tones on unstressed syllables, in all sentential contexts, including prenuclear positions. A second feature that we have identified is the use of a sustained phrase-final high or mid level contour in declaratives accented on the final syllable, and a long fall in declaratives accented on the penult. The final section addresses the issue of the possible origin of these intonational features. We point out similarities with Equatorial Guinea Spanish and conclude that, at some point in the history of Palenquero, the Spanish prosodic system was interpreted as involving lexical tone, in conformity with claims in the literature regarding several Atlantic creoles.

Intonation of the Altai language (simple one-component imperative utterances)

2021 ◽  
pp. 261-271
Author(s):  
Albina A. Dobrinina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Word Form ◽  
Fundamental Tone ◽  
Altai Republic ◽  
Tone Frequency ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Third Person ◽  
Single Compound ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Phonetic Study

The paper presents the results of studying the Altai language intonation on the experimental material recorded from six speakers fluent in the Altai language from different regions of the Altai Republic. The recording program consisted of situational single-component imperative utterances. Twenty sentences were pronounced three times each in positive and negative versions, in singular and plural, having different degrees of imperativeness, but without any expressive emotional load. The single-compound motivational statements considered are expressed by imperative or desirable verb forms in the first-, second-, and third-person singular and plural in the affirmative and negative variants. The experimental phonetic study has revealed rising tone to be characteristic for positive and negative imperative one-component sentences, with fundamental tone frequency peaks at the last syllable and there being a possibility for intensity, presumably marking the stressed syllable, to shift within a word-form. The analysis showed the intonation marking of motivational statements to depend on their type: action stimulation, order or demand, are characterized by inclination, a request - by a combined ascending-descending tone, a ban - by a descending tone, advice - both by ascending-descending intonation and declination. In the negative version, in singular and plural, in three or more syllabic sentences on the negative particles -ba / -be, -pa / -pe, etc., there is an even tone or a decrease in the frequency of the fundamental tone. The peak of intensity in such sentences is realized on the last syllable of the verb. In addition, the vowel of the final syllable is usually prolonged.

Clash of signs: Putting bilingualism back into language evolution

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Samuel
Keyword(s):  
Language Evolution ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Alarm Calls ◽  
Bilingual Children ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Typically Developing ◽  
Typically Developing Children ◽  
Modern Humans ◽  
The Real ◽  
Multiple Languages

Research and thinking into the cognitive aspects of language evolution has usually attempted to account for how the capacity for learning even one modern human language developed. Bilingualism has perhaps been thought of as something to think about only once the ‘real’ puzzle of monolingualism is solved, but this would assume in turn (and without evidence) that bilingualism evolved after monolingualism. All typically-developing children (and adults) are capable of learning multiple languages, and the majority of modern humans are at least bilingual. In this paper I ask whether by skipping bilingualism out of language evolution we have missed a trick. I propose that exposure to synonymous signs, such as food and alarm calls, are a necessary precondition for the abstracting away of sound from referent. In support of this possibility is evidence that modern day bilingual children are better at breaking this ‘word magic’ spell. More generally, language evolution should be viewed through the lens of bilingualism, as this is the end state we are attempting to explain.

scholarly journals Who Is Centered? A Systematic Review of Early Childhood Researchers’ Descriptions of Children and Caregivers From Linguistically Minoritized Communities

2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-30
Author(s):  
Xigrid T. Soto-Boykin ◽  
Anne L. Larson ◽  
Arnold Olszewski ◽  
Veena Velury ◽  
Anna Feldberg
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Early Childhood ◽  
Young Children ◽  
Early Childhood Special Education ◽  
Children And Families ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Strength Based ◽  
Multiple Languages ◽  
Linguistic Backgrounds ◽  
Infants And Young Children

Young children with and without disabilities who are bilingual or in the process of learning multiple languages have many strengths; however, educational policies and bias related to bilingualism for children from linguistically minoritized groups have typically included deficit-based views. The purpose of this systematic review was to identify how researchers describe these children and their caregivers. Thirty research studies were included in the review. Each study was published in Infants and Young Children, Journal of Early Intervention, or Topics in Early Childhood Special Education between 1988 and 2020. Studies were coded to determine participant characteristics and whether deficit- or strength-based descriptions of participants were used. Although researchers’ descriptions of participants’ linguistic backgrounds varied, most were English-centric, and deficit-based descriptions of bilingualism were more prevalent than strength-based descriptions. Preliminary recommendations are provided for describing children and families from linguistically minoritized communities and including strength-based language in research and practice.

T Lymphocyte Polyclonal Proliferation and Stress Response Style

1987 ◽  
Vol 60 (3_part_2) ◽  
pp. 1121-1122
Author(s):  
Edward A. Workman ◽  
Mariano F. La Via
Keyword(s):  
T Cell ◽  
T Lymphocyte ◽  
Life Stress ◽  
Type A Behavior ◽  
Response Style ◽  
Cell Mediated Immunity ◽  
Behavioral Indices ◽  
Cell Immunity ◽  
Stress Avoidance ◽  
Pearson Correlations

18 subjects were measured on cell-mediated immunity (T lymphocyte polyclonal proliferation) and four behavioral indices including over-all life stress, stress-avoidance tendency, stress-intrusion tendency, and tendency toward cardiovascular Type A behavior. Of Pearson correlations computed between T lymphocyte polyclonal proliferation and each of the four behavioral indices, the only significant value was that, .47, between T cell immunity and tendency toward stress avoidance. Of the variables investigated, the best predictor of T cell immunocompetence is the tendency toward avoiding stress. Results are discussed in terms of implications for research.

Simple metathesis in loanword phonology: the Arabic-Romance language contact

2020 ◽  
Vol 136 (4) ◽  
pp. 1049-1084
Author(s):  
Yvonne Kiegel-Keicher
Keyword(s):  
Structural Change ◽  
Language Contact ◽  
Syllable Structure ◽  
Stressed Syllable ◽  
Romance Language ◽  
Syllable Weight ◽  
Systematic Process ◽  
Loanword Phonology

AbstractSimple metathesis can be found in numerous Ibero-Romance arabisms compared with their Andalusi Arabic etyma. The analysis of a corpus of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan arabisms illustrates its effects on syllable structure and syllable weight. It can be shown that Arabic-Romance simple metathesis constitutes a motivated structural change that provides for typologically unmarked syllable weight relations within the word. After the resyllabification it entails the involved unstressed syllables no longer excede the stressed syllable in weight. However, it is not an obligatory, systematic process, but merely an optional tendency, which corresponds to the universal tendency expressed by the Weight Law.

scholarly journals Depression-level assessment from multi-lingual conversational speech data using acoustic and text features

2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cenk Demiroglu ◽  
Aslı Beşirli ◽  
Yasin Ozkanca ◽  
Selime Çelik
Keyword(s):  
Text Analysis ◽  
Training Data ◽  
Conversational Speech ◽  
Acoustic Feature ◽  
The World ◽  
Significant Burden ◽  
Depression Assessment ◽  
Depression Level ◽  
Text Features ◽  
Multiple Languages

AbstractDepression is a widespread mental health problem around the world with a significant burden on economies. Its early diagnosis and treatment are critical to reduce the costs and even save lives. One key aspect to achieve that goal is to use technology and monitor depression remotely and relatively inexpensively using automated agents. There has been numerous efforts to automatically assess depression levels using audiovisual features as well as text-analysis of conversational speech transcriptions. However, difficulty in data collection and the limited amounts of data available for research present challenges that are hampering the success of the algorithms. One of the two novel contributions in this paper is to exploit databases from multiple languages for acoustic feature selection. Since a large number of features can be extracted from speech, given the small amounts of training data available, effective data selection is critical for success. Our proposed multi-lingual method was effective at selecting better features than the baseline algorithms, which significantly improved the depression assessment accuracy. The second contribution of the paper is to extract text-based features for depression assessment and use a novel algorithm to fuse the text- and speech-based classifiers which further boosted the performance.

Perception of Terminal Fall Contours in Speech Produced by Deaf Persons

1990 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Rubin-Spitz ◽  
Nancy S. McGarr
Keyword(s):  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Significant Contribution ◽  
Linear Regression Analysis ◽  
Regression Function ◽  
Multiple Linear Regression Analysis ◽  
Deaf Children ◽  
Relative Timing ◽  
Acoustic Measures ◽  
Final Syllable ◽  
Deaf Persons

Eight deaf children produced each of nine sentences. F 0 measures were obtained at several locations within each utterance (starting F 0 , peak F 0 , peak F 0 in the final syllable, and final F 0 ). The relative timing of each F 0 measure (ms from onset of the utterance) was also determined. In addition, several difference measures were derived. Listeners experienced with the speech of the deaf were asked to judge whether they heard a terminal fall, rise, or a flat final intonation contour in each utterance. A multiple linear regression analysis was used to determine if any combination of the acoustic measures could predict listeners’ responses. The only variable that made a significant contribution to the regression function was the temporal interval between the terminal peak F 0 and the final F 0 . That is, the more slowly the contour fell the more likely listeners were to perceive the contour as flat, regardless of the amount (in Hz or percentage F 0 ) by which it fell. The regression equation accounted for a statistically significant but not large proportion of the total variance. This suggests that other variables, not measured in this study, play an important role in the perception of utterance final intonation contours in the speech of the deaf.

scholarly journals The Small and Efficient Language Network of Polyglots and Hyper-polyglots

2020 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-76
Author(s):  
Olessia Jouravlev ◽  
Zachary Mineroff ◽  
Idan A Blank ◽  
Evelina Fedorenko
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Default Mode Network ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Neural Architecture ◽  
Initial Characterization ◽  
The One ◽  
Multiple Languages ◽  
Language Network

Abstract Acquiring a foreign language is challenging for many adults. Yet certain individuals choose to acquire sometimes dozens of languages and often just for fun. Is there something special about the minds and brains of such polyglots? Using robust individual-level markers of language activity, measured with fMRI, we compared native language processing in polyglots versus matched controls. Polyglots (n = 17, including nine “hyper-polyglots” with proficiency in 10–55 languages) used fewer neural resources to process language: Their activations were smaller in both magnitude and extent. This difference was spatially and functionally selective: The groups were similar in their activation of two other brain networks—the multiple demand network and the default mode network. We hypothesize that the activation reduction in the language network is experientially driven, such that the acquisition and use of multiple languages makes language processing generally more efficient. However, genetic and longitudinal studies will be critical to distinguish this hypothesis from the one whereby polyglots’ brains already differ at birth or early in development. This initial characterization of polyglots’ language network opens the door to future investigations of the cognitive and neural architecture of individuals who gain mastery of multiple languages, including changes in this architecture with linguistic experiences.

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