{"title":"Cross-Linguistic Influences on the Production of Third Language German Vowel Length Contrasts by Cantonese-English Bilingual Learners.","authors":"Yanjiao Zhu, Peggy Pik Ki Mok","doi":"10.1177/00238309261443305","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261443305","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examined the read speech of vowel length contrasts produced by Cantonese-English-German trilinguals, comparing their performance with that of Mandarin-English-German trilinguals, Cantonese-English bilinguals, native English speakers, and native German speakers. Acoustic and statistical analyses of vowel quality and duration across the first language (L1), second language (L2), and third language (L3) yielded several key findings. First, Cantonese-speaking trilinguals were more nativelike than the Mandarin-speaking trilinguals in both the L2 and L3, indicating that the L1 exerts a sustained influence across the multilingual system. Second, Cantonese-English-German trilinguals differed from Cantonese-English bilinguals in the L2 but not the L1, suggesting that reverse transfer from the L3 more strongly affects the L2 than the L1. Finally, individuals who produced larger quality contrasts in L2 vowel length distinctions also demonstrated greater quality contrasts in comparable L3 vowels, whereas those who produced larger duration contrasts in the L1 exhibited reduced duration contrasts in analogous L3 vowels, indicating that L1-L3 and L2-L3 bidirectional interactions emerge among phonetically similar vowels. The study highlights the dynamicity of the multilingual phonological system.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261443305"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147845935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Speech Timing and the Perception of Foreign Accent: The Case of Arabic-Accented English.","authors":"Ghazi Algethami, Sam Hellmuth","doi":"10.1177/00238309261440491","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261440491","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study reports an experiment conducted to examine the contribution of non-native speech timing to the perception of foreign accent. Native English listeners rated utterances produced in English by speakers whose first language was English or Saudi Arabic, for the degree of perceived foreign accent. The utterances were acoustically modified to significantly reduce segmental and intonational information available to the listeners. The listeners were able to distinguish the native and non-native speaker groups in the acoustically degraded utterances. This suggests that the listeners were able to make use of temporal cues, in the absence of segmental and intonational information, to rate the utterances for the degree of foreign accent. To further investigate this, three temporal measures (articulation rate, durational ratio of unstressed to stressed vowels, utterance-final vowel lengthening) were calculated for each utterance to examine their contribution to the overall perception of foreign accent. Among these measures, articulation rate and, to a lesser extent, the durational ratio of unstressed to stressed vowels played a role in cueing the listeners' perception of foreign accent. However, while the impact of articulation rate on listener ratings varied by speaker group, higher values of the ratio of unstressed to stressed vowel duration, reflecting lower degrees of vowel reduction, consistently predicted foreign accent ratings.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261440491"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147788717","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Role of Production in Prediction: Bidirectional Causal Evidence From Articulatory Suppression and Speech Shadowing.","authors":"Shun Liu, Suiping Wang, Xiqin Liu","doi":"10.1177/00238309261441302","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261441302","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Although the production system is thought to play a vital role in language prediction, direct evidence demonstrating both enhancement and suppression of real-time prediction within a consistent paradigm is scarce. To explore this problem, our study used a dual-task visual world eye-tracking paradigm across two experiments, investigating the production system's influence on prediction by both impairing and enhancing its availability. In Experiment 1, participants either performed articulatory suppression (silently repeating the syllable /pa/) or finger tapping while listening to sentences. Results showed that articulatory suppression attenuated anticipatory eye movements toward target objects, compared to finger tapping. This suggests that reducing the availability of the production system diminished predictive processing. In Experiment 2, participants listened to sentences and concurrently performed speech shadowing (covertly repeating the heard speech in real time). By comparing its results with previous data, we found that speech shadowing enhanced anticipatory fixations relative to listening, indicating that increasing production engagement facilitates prediction. In both experiments, prediction effects were tested before the target noun was presented, providing unambiguous evidence of anticipation. Together, these findings offer integrated, bidirectional causal evidence that engaging production processes during comprehension can both strengthen and weaken prediction, depending on whether production resources are augmented or constrained. This research advances our understanding of the mechanisms underlying prediction in language processing and underscores the importance of production in shaping anticipatory comprehension.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261441302"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147788729","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perceptual Development of Second Language Sound Categories in a Study Abroad Program: L1 Mandarin Speakers in Spain.","authors":"Xiaotong Xi, Christine Shea, Peng Li","doi":"10.1177/00238309261434241","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261434241","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the interrelationships among the language learning context, cross-language perceptual mapping, and individual differences in the acquisition of perceptual categorization in a study abroad program over one academic year. Thirty Mandarin speakers learning Spanish completed an identification task that employed Spanish /p-b, t-d, k-ɡ/ contrasts on three continua differing in voice onset time upon arrival and at the end of their program. Individual differences measures included auditory acuity of duration and Spanish language use during the study abroad period. Their perceptual performance on the Spanish voicing contrast was compared to that of a Mandarin-English control group and a Spanish Native Group. At the group level, the learners' perceptual performance showed little change after studying abroad and fell between that of Chinese-English controls and the Spanish natives. However, at the individual level, greater auditory acuity of duration and more Spanish use predicted improved perceptual performance from the beginning to the end of the program. The findings suggest that while the formation of second language perceptual categories can be challenging, individual differences can modulate development over time.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261434241"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147788714","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lexical Bias Effects do not Influence Responses to Real-Time Temporal Auditory Feedback Perturbation.","authors":"Miriam Oschkinat, Eva Reinisch, Philip Hoole","doi":"10.1177/00238309261426375","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261426375","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In speech perception, listeners tend to hear real words rather than non-words on a physically balanced real word-non-word continuum (lexical bias effect). Bourguignon et al. found a similar effect in speech production: With spectral auditory feedback perturbations, they altered vowels toward other vowels thereby causing a shift in lexical status (from word to non-word or vice versa) or not. This study tests whether the lexical bias effect can be extended to the temporal domain in speech production. We perturbed the German vowels /a/ and /a:/ in real words toward the respective other phoneme using a real-time temporal auditory feedback adaptation paradigm. This manipulation pushed the percepts either toward another real word (lexical condition) or not (non-lexical condition). In both perturbation setups (stretching short /a/, or compressing long /a:/), speakers counteracted the perturbation with productions opposing the direction of perturbation. However, response magnitude was similar across conditions, that is, independent of a shift in lexical status. The results indicate that, in the temporal domain, speakers do not heavily rely on higher-level linguistic information, but rather are principally oriented toward maintaining phonemic identification. These findings further imply that temporal and spectral parameters in speech production and perception are governed by different processing strategies.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261426375"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147693573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Perceiving and Modeling the Scope of Question Focus in Korean.","authors":"Stephen M Jones, Yoolim Kim, Cong Zhang","doi":"10.1177/00238309261419799","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261419799","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The precise nature of the prosodic contribution to disambiguating open and polar questions with indefinite content pro-forms in Korean (e.g., <i>nwukwu</i> \"who/someone\") remains a matter of debate. One possible relevant prosodic feature is expanded F0 range at the site of question focus. We report the results of a pilot experiment followed by a large-scale online speech perception gating study <math><mrow><mrow><mo>(</mo><mrow><mi>n</mi><mo>=</mo><mn>124</mn></mrow><mo>)</mo></mrow></mrow></math> that manipulated the natural prosody of identical strings read as statements or open or polar questions. We found a tendency for all questions to be perceived as open questions, regardless of prosody. Open questions were reliably disambiguated from other utterance types, and there was no effect of the prosodic manipulation. Polar questions did show a significant effect of the prosodic manipulation <math><mrow><mrow><mo>(</mo><mrow><mi>p</mi><mo><</mo><mo>.</mo><mn>001</mn></mrow><mo>)</mo></mrow><mo>,</mo></mrow></math> but even with full natural prosody, these stimuli were never correctly identified above chance levels. We suggest that in the absence of context, there is a strong preference for hearers to interpret content pro-forms as question words, and that subsequent prosodic information may be discounted if a hearer has already committed to their interpretation. The present findings have implications for formal accounts of the Korean syntax-prosody interface.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261419799"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147647293","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Saleh Ghadanfari, Jalal Al-Tamimi, Ghada Khattab, Laurence White
{"title":"Comparing Prosodic Timing Effects in Hadari and Bedouin Dialects of Kuwaiti Arabic: A Speech Cycling Study.","authors":"Saleh Ghadanfari, Jalal Al-Tamimi, Ghada Khattab, Laurence White","doi":"10.1177/00238309261419808","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261419808","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We examined differences in speech timing between the Hadari and Bedouin Kuwaiti Arabic dialects using speech cycling. In our version of the paradigm, speakers repeated six-syllable phrases, with the start of each repetition aligned in time with a metronome beat. Previous speech cycling work finds that stressed vowel onsets tend to occur at harmonic phases (e.g., 1/2) within the Phrase Repetition Cycle (PRC), potentially reflecting coordination between prosodic units. Hadari has phonetically stronger stress contrast, with greater unstressed syllable reduction than Bedouin, which may afford closer alignment to harmonic phases. Six trochaic and six iambic sentences were read aloud by 18 Hadari and 18 Bedouin speakers at three metronome trial rates: slow, medium, and fast. The phases of the final (external) and medial (internal) stressed syllables-heavy, CVV(C), or light, CVC-relative to the PRC were analyzed. For the external phase, Hadari tended to align light syllables earlier in the PRC and more similarly to heavy syllables than Bedouin. Vowel duration analysis suggested that this pattern may be due to greater compression of preceding unstressed vowels in Hadari. This suggests that local timing patterns, in particular variation in durational stress contrast, modulate rhythmic coordination between prosodic units.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261419808"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-04-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147624738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Kaijun Jiang, Xueqiao Li, Chaoxiong Ye, Peixin Nie, Jarmo A Hämäläinen, Piia Astikainen
{"title":"Effects of Native Language and Exposure to Foreign Language on Categorization and Discrimination of Vowel Duration and Lexical Tone.","authors":"Kaijun Jiang, Xueqiao Li, Chaoxiong Ye, Peixin Nie, Jarmo A Hämäläinen, Piia Astikainen","doi":"10.1177/00238309261425682","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261425682","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Native speakers generally outperform non-native speakers in identifying and discriminating speech sounds. Yet, the categorical perception of native speech sounds can sometimes impede the discrimination of sounds within the same phonemic category. It remains unclear whether different linguistic features show similar patterns in cross-linguistic comparisons. Therefore, we studied the categorization and discrimination of vowel duration and lexical tone-two features that differ fundamentally. Vowel duration (short vs. long) typically requires phonemic context for categorization, while tone (rising vs. falling) can be recognized directly from acoustics. Participants were native Finnish and Mandarin Chinese speakers, and native Mandarin Chinese speakers exposed to Finnish. As expected, Mandarin speakers demonstrated a steeper category boundary for tonal stimuli than Finnish speakers. In contrast, no group difference was found for categorization slope for duration. In discrimination, native speakers outperformed non-native speakers for between-category pairs, as anticipated. For within-category pairs, however, native speakers performed worse than non-native speakers-but only for the tone feature. Mandarin speakers exposed to Finnish showed differences in categorization of vowel duration and in associated reaction times compared with the other groups. The results suggest that native language does not influence vowel perception uniformly across tone and duration features. Moreover, exposure to a foreign language in adulthood may, at least initially, lead to categorization preferences that diverge from, rather than align with, those of native speakers. These findings provide a basis for future theoretical models of how native language and late exposure shape speech perception across different phonetic features.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261425682"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147488341","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"External Vowel Sandhi in Castilian Spanish: An Acoustic Study of Vowel Sequences Across Word Junctures.","authors":"Miquel Simonet, Jessica C Tiegs","doi":"10.1177/00238309261419126","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261419126","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>In Spanish, words may begin or end with a vowel, creating a scenario where two vowels meet across a word juncture, such as in <i>mon<u>o e</u>nano</i> \"dwarf monkey.\" Vowel sequences of this sort are said to be affected by a post-lexical process of hiatus resolution in which one of the two vowels becomes a glide. This study explores the acoustic-phonetic characteristics of vowel sequences across word junctures in Castilian Spanish. We focus on vowel sequences with no high vocoids: /ea ae eo oe/. Production data were collected from a sample of 23 speakers, and acoustic analyses focused on duration and the shape of first (<i>F</i>1) and second formant (<i>F</i>2) tracks. Our findings suggest that cross-lexical vowel sequences are resolved via a phonetic coalescence process that retains some of the linearity in (or recoverability of) the underlying sequence, displaying both some diphthongal qualities and some blending qualities. We find no obvious evidence of a \"dominant\" (syllabic) vowel in the sequence, casting doubt on impressionistic transcription-based descriptions postulating a strict dichotomy between syllabic vowels and glides in post-lexical syllable contraction. We discuss alternative accounts of the resolution of Castilian Spanish vowel sequences across word junctures couched within the framework of Articulatory Phonology, and we argue that post-lexical hiatus resolution is not a phonologized process in this language variety.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261419126"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147349707","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language and SpeechPub Date : 2026-03-01Epub Date: 2024-11-23DOI: 10.1177/00238309241288906
Elisheva Salmon, Dorit Ravid, Elitzur Dattner
{"title":"Building a Grammatical Network: Form and Function in the Development of Hebrew Prepositions.","authors":"Elisheva Salmon, Dorit Ravid, Elitzur Dattner","doi":"10.1177/00238309241288906","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241288906","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study investigates the emergence of prepositions in Hebrew-speaking children aged 2;6-6;0 years, analyzing a peer talk corpus of 75 children across five age groups. Across 45-minute triadic conversations, we examined the distributions, semantic functions, and form-function relations of prepositions. Two results sections are presented. First, using network analysis, we modeled the development of form-function correlations of Hebrew prepositions. Second, we conducted qualitative developmental analyses of the distributions and semantics of all prepositions identified in the study. Our findings reveal that prepositions expressed 22 functions, predominantly grammatical, spatial, and temporal. With age, the use of prepositions increased, abstract functions became more prevalent, and functions were served by a broader range of prepositions. The data suggest the emergence of systematic relations, forming network-based clusters or communities of semantically related functions. This systematic growth of the prepositional category signifies not just lexical but also syntactic development in Hebrew, transitioning from lexicalized preposition-marked verb arguments to diverse, abstract preposition-marked syntactic adjuncts, which enrich clause-level complexity.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"54-93"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142696184","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}