Speech Prosody: The Musical, Magical Quality of Speech

When we speak, we can vary how we use our voices. Our speech can be high or low (pitch), loud or soft (loudness), and fast or slow (duration). This variation in pitch, loudness, and duration is called speech prosody. It is a bit like making music. Varying our voices when we speak can express sarcasm or emotion and can even change the meaning of what we are saying. So, speech prosody is a crucial part of spoken language. But how do speakers produce prosody? How do listeners hear and understand these variations? Is it possible to hear and interpret prosody in other languages? And what about people whose hearing is not so good? Can they hear and understand prosodic patterns at all? Let’s find out!

Speech and Language Outcomes in Adults and Children with Cochlear Implants

Cochlear implants (CIs) represent a significant engineering and medical milestone in the treatment of hearing loss for both adults and children. In this review, we provide a brief overview of CI technology, describe the benefits that CIs can provide to adults and children who receive them, and discuss the specific limitations and issues faced by CI users. We emphasize the relevance of CIs to the linguistics community by demonstrating how CIs successfully provide access to spoken language. Furthermore, CI research can inform our basic understanding of spoken word recognition in adults and spoken language development in children. Linguistics research can also help us address the major clinical issue of outcome variability and motivate the development of new clinical tools to assess the unique challenges of adults and children with CIs, as well as novel interventions for individuals with poor outcomes.

SATIRE LANGUAGE STYLE BY BU TEJO IN THE SHORT FILM “TILIK”

The use of satire language style by a film creator aims to convey meaning to the public. This study aims at analyzing the use of satire language styles used by Bu Tejo in a short film entitled "Tilik." This research used a qualitative descriptive method. The object of this research is satire utterances spoken by Bu Tejo in the film "Tilik." The data collection techniques in this study used observation, listening, and note-taking techniques. The results demonstrate three types of satire languages used by Bu Tejo in the film “Tilik": cynicism, irony, and sarcasm. It is also found that cynicism is the most spoken language than sarcasm. The study highlights that the use of satire language uttered by Bu Tejo aims to convey ideas and perspectives related to problems occurring in society and express dissatisfaction.

The Borrowing Processes of Thai Language in Patani Malay Dialect in Thailand

This study concerns with the processes borrowing Thai language (TL) words in Patani Malay Dialect (PMD) from the perspective of Sociolinguistics. The main objective of this study is to see how the processes happen from TL to PMD. The research data for TL loanwords in PMD are obtained from written and spoken language while the data from TL itself are obtained from written materials. Attention towards the processes of TL loanwords in PMD is in regard with the study about similarities between TL and Malay language (ML) through two important processes; importation and substitution. Indirectly this study also touched on the influence of TL which has an important role to the lexical elements of PMD. In addition to the elaboration of the borrowing process, an analysis was also carried out on the process of changing TL loanwords in PMD in terms of phonology involving vocal and consonant changes using descriptive approaches. Finally, the findings showed that apart from direct borrowing from TL, PMD also adapts the loanwords according to the existing system in PMD. Even from the borrowing elements themselves, it is found that there are words considered to come from the same family while some are borrowed from other languages.

Spoken Grammar: Meaning, Principles and Characteristics

The terms Spoken Grammar was coined by the two corpus grammarians, Ronald Carter and Mike McCarthy. In the 19th century, it came under the impact of a number of local dialects represented by the cockney dialect in London, and the Lothian dialect in Edinburgh. The discussions, debates and studies on Spoken grammar have led to the specification of three main viewpoints concerning the existence of this types of grammar. The viewpoints entail that (1) grammatical rules do not govern spoken language, which is disorderly and disordered; (2) Speaking English lacks a distinct grammar. It has the same syntax as written English grammar; and (3) spoken language is regulated by a separate grammar with its own set of rules and conventions; i.e. it has its own grammar represented by its own set of rules, regulations, and classifications compared to those of the written language. T validate or refute the implications of the preceding viewpoints, relevant literature concludes that spoken grammar is quite prevalent in everyday conversational spoken English. It is characterized by being more flexible and less strict compared to written grammar. This is so because the informal context of using spoken grammar makes it have a syntax that varies from the traditional written grammar in a number of aspects. This purely theoretical research aims at shedding light on the definition, meaning, principles and the main characteristics of spoken grammar. The emphasis on the distinctive features of spoken grammar has triggered the researchers to focus on a further point of discussion, namely the differences between spoken and written grammar. To substantiate such differences, examples from closely relevant grammatical literature have also been provided. The research ends with some concluding points drawn upon from the preceding discussed and presented points.

Stage Monologue and its Linguistic Features (Textual and Prosodic Analysis)

Spoken language production is considered to be one of the most difficult aspects of teaching a foreign language. It usually involves mastering pronunciation of sounds and intonation. If nowadays many teachers do not worry about the phonetic details of sounds, there is still focus on intonation as it has a great impact on the comprehensibility of the learner’s English. This is a very important issue for future teachers because correctness of pronunciation is one of the goals of any spoken language programme, with students asked to produce quite extended spoken monologues and to follow the requirements of various intonational styles. The aim of this study is to analyse textual and prosodic characteristics of stage monologue – a text produced on a theatre stage or in a film. Analytical methods were applied in order to obtain information about textual features and prosodic stylistic markers such as pitch level, range, tone modifications, loudness, and tempo, and also to develop style-forming factors in stage monologue. Results show that the stage monologues analysed possess all necessary characteristics of a text: informational content, delimitation, continuum, coherence, cohesion and completeness. Further analysis of stage monologue showed that it can be characterised by such specific features as expressiveness, normativeness, effectiveness, and conversational character. Stage monologues also possess all necessary prosodic markers. Certain style-forming factors of stage monologue were also developed in this study, including delimitation, accentuation of key words, thematic centres and expressively prominent centres, type of composition scheme, and theme. These results will be of significant pedagogical value to students who intend to become English teachers, and to teachers involved in linguistics research.

Orthographic Learning

This chapter discusses orthographic learning, i.e., how children learn the relation between their spoken language and writing system. The process is discussed for children learning to read and write in one language, as well as for multilingual children acquiring literacy in more than one language. In both cases, the developmental course is mapped from children's first insights into the form and function of their writing systems to the development of word-specific mental representations that code for multiple linguistic forms (i.e., sound, spelling, and meaning). The chapter concludes with instructional recommendations for supporting children's orthographic learning throughout development.

Family-Centered Intervention for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Multilingual Learners

This chapter explores principles of family-centered listening and spoken language (LSL) intervention, research, and best practices for children who are d/Deaf or hard of hearing (DHH) using multiple spoken languages and their families. Children with any degree/type of hearing loss who are in environments where multiple languages are spoken are referred to as deaf multilingual learners (DMLs). The language landscape for these children is varied. Some DMLs acquire a first language (L1) at home and are exposed to subsequent spoken languages in school or community settings; others are born into families where multiple languages are spoken from the beginning. While the chapter focuses on a framework of family-centered intervention applied to language development for DMLs whose families have selected LSL outcomes, the principles discussed broadly apply to DMLs using varied language(s) or modality(ies). Through analysis of best practices for interventionists and case studies, readers will understand bi/multilingual spoken language development for children who are DHH.

A Novel Sentence Completion System for Punjabi using Deep Neural Networks

Sentence completion systems are actively studied by many researchers which ultimately results in the reduction of cognitive effort and enhancement in user-experience. The review of the literature reveals that most of the work in the said area is in English and limited effort spent on other languages, especially vernacular languages. This work aims to develop state-of-the-art sentence completion system for the Punjabi language, which is the 10th most spoken language in the world. The presented work is an outcome of the results of the experimentation on various neural network language model combinations. A new Sentence Search Algorithm (SSA) and patching system are developed to search, complete and rank the completed sub-string and give a syntactically rich sentence(s). The quantitative and qualitative evaluation metrics were utilized to evaluate the system. The results are quite promising, and the best performing model is capable of completing a given sub-string with more acceptability. Best performing model is utilized for developing the user-interface.