Engaging stories eradicate age effects in dip-listening

Fluctuating background masking sounds facilitate speech intelligibility by providing speech ‘glimpses’ (masking release). Older adults benefit less from glimpses, but masking release is typically investigated using isolated sentences. Recent work indicates that naturalistic speech (spoken stories) may qualitatively alter speech-in-noise listening. Moreover, neural sensitivity to different amplitude envelopes profiles (ramped vs. damped) changes with age, but whether this impacts speech listening is unknown. In three experiments, we investigate how masking release in younger and older adults differs for masked disconnected sentences and stories, and how intelligibility varies with masker temporal profile. Intelligibility was generally greater for damped compared to ramped maskers for both age groups and speech types. Masking release was reduced in older relative to younger adults for disconnected sentences (Experiment 1), and stories with a randomized sentence order (Experiment 3). When listening to stories with a coherent narrative, older adults demonstrated equal (Experiment 3) or greater (Experiment 2) masking release compared to younger adults. Reduced masking release previously observed in older adults does not appear to generalize to sounds with an engaging, connected narrative: this reinforces the idea that the listening materials qualitatively change listening behavior and that standard intelligibility paradigms may underestimate speech-listening abilities in older adults.

Spojka Kým V Sémantických A Komunikačných Súvislostiach

The study focuses on the communication-oriented analysis and interpretation of semantic and communicative (illocutive) functions of the Slovak conjunction kým [‘while’]. Research is based on the text material of the Slovak National Corpus containing synchronic dynamics of the sentence in which the conjunction kým [‘while’] expresses temporal and/or contrastive meanings. Kým [‘while’] is understood as a poly-semantic and poly-functional word which forms relations of limitative, successive, simultaneous and contrastive-simultaneous coincidence between an independent clause (P) and a whileclause (Q). Regarding the semantic functions of the conjunction, the study also discusses the function of temporal and pragmatic collocations, and complementary and competitive use of synonymous conjunctions. It verifies the connections between the actual dispositions of the conjunction kým [‘while’] and a dialogic or narrative interpretation, the choice of perspective and the sentence order. A part of the study presents the use of the conjunction kým [‘while’] in the communicative functions of assertion, direction, interrogation, satisfaction, commission and admonition. It demonstrates the dominance of illocutions which are based on the negative life experience of a speaker

Some Means of Achieving Creativity in the Language of the Qur'an

Meaning exists on various levels, among them what is based upon knowledge and bound by linguistic and social consensus. Creativity can be achieved by a departure from normal usage through one of the following means: transferring a word into a fresh context, e.g. metaphorical usage; transferring sentence structure into a fresh context, e.g. making an indicative sentence express an imperative; relaxing the rules of meaning – the rules of inflection, morphology, usage of particles, sentence order and structure. The article employs numerous verses of the Qur'an to explain how departure from normal usage achieves excellence in the language and style of the text of the Qur'an.