Language and SpeechPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-03-05DOI: 10.1177/00238309241230899
Lucia Mareková, Štefan Beňuš
{"title":"Speech Fluency Production and Perception in L1 (Slovak) and L2 (English) Read Speech.","authors":"Lucia Mareková, Štefan Beňuš","doi":"10.1177/00238309241230899","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241230899","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Research on fluency in native (L1) and non-native (L2) speech production and perception helps us understand how individual L1 speaking style might affect perceived L2 fluency and how this relationship might be reflected in L1 versus L2 oral assessment. While the relationship between production and perception of fluency in spontaneous speech has been studied, the information provided by reading has been overlooked. We argue that reading provides a direct and controlled way to assess language proficiency that might complement information gained from spontaneous speaking. This work analyzes the relationship between speech fluency production and perception in passages of L1 (Slovak) and L2 (English) read by 57 undergraduate Slovak students of English and rated for fluency by 15 English teachers who are Slovak natives. We compare acoustic production measures between L1 and L2 and analyze how their effect on perceived fluency differs for the two languages. Our main finding is that the articulation rate, the overall number of pauses, and the number of between-clause and mid-clause pauses predict ratings differently in L1 Slovak versus L2 English. The speech rate and durations of pauses predict ratings similarly in both languages. The contribution of our results to understanding fluency aspects of spontaneous and read speech, the relationship between L1 and L2, the relationship between production and perception, and to the teaching of L2 English are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"36-62"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140040861","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 : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-07-25DOI: 10.1177/00238309241260062
Feier Gao, Chien-Jer Charles Lin
{"title":"Incorporating Frequency Effects in the Lexical Access of Mandarin Tone 3 Sandhi.","authors":"Feier Gao, Chien-Jer Charles Lin","doi":"10.1177/00238309241260062","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241260062","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Mandarin tone 3 sandhi refers to the phenomenon whereby a tone 3 syllable changes to a tone 2 when followed by another tone 3. This phonological process creates a deviation between the tonal forms realized at morphemic (/tone3-tone3/) and word ([tone2-tone3]) levels, posing questions in terms of how disyllabic tone 3 sandhi words are represented and accessed. The current study conducted three cross-modal lexical decision priming experiments to investigate this issue. Experiment 1 manipulated the frequencies of the initial morpheme and whole word, showing that the higher initial-character frequency against the whole word gives stronger activation to the underlying representation and the lower frequency of the initial character leads to stronger activation of the surface tone. Experiments 2 and 3 operationalized the relative frequency of the initial tone 3 morpheme's realization as a sandhi tone, finding that the competition between the two tonal realizations also influences how T3 sandhi words are accessed. Specifically, the more frequently the T3 morpheme surfaces as a T2 allomorph, the less activated the underlying representation becomes in the mental lexicon. Our results indicate a complex interplay between morpheme, word, and the associated tonal representations in the mental lexicon and that these factors co-determine the lexical access of tone 3 sandhi.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"204-228"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141762454","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 : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-03-28DOI: 10.1177/00238309241234565
Xiaoyi Tian, Amanda E Griffith, Zane Price, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Kevin Tang
{"title":"Investigating Linguistic Alignment in Collaborative Dialogue: A Study of Syntactic and Lexical Patterns in Middle School Students.","authors":"Xiaoyi Tian, Amanda E Griffith, Zane Price, Kristy Elizabeth Boyer, Kevin Tang","doi":"10.1177/00238309241234565","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241234565","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Linguistic alignment, the tendency of speakers to share common linguistic features during conversations, has emerged as a key area of research in computer-supported collaborative learning. While previous studies have shown that linguistic alignment can have a significant impact on collaborative outcomes, there is limited research exploring its role in K-12 learning contexts. This study investigates syntactic and lexical linguistic alignments in a collaborative computer science-learning corpus from 24 pairs (48 individuals) of middle school students (aged 11-13). The results show stronger effects of self-alignment than partner alignment on both syntactic and lexical levels, with students often diverging from their partners on task-relevant words. Furthermore, student self-alignment on the syntactic level is negatively correlated with partner satisfaction ratings, while self-alignment on lexical level is positively correlated with their partner's satisfaction.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"63-86"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11831868/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140307734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language and SpeechPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-05-23DOI: 10.1177/00238309241252983
Emily W Wang, Maria I Grigos
{"title":"Effects of Speaking Rate Changes on Speech Motor Variability in Adults.","authors":"Emily W Wang, Maria I Grigos","doi":"10.1177/00238309241252983","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241252983","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The relationship between speaking rate and speech motor variability was examined in three groups of neurotypical adults, <i>n</i> = 40; 15 young adults (18-30 years), 13 adults (31-40 years), and 12 middle-aged adults (41-50 years). Participants completed a connected speech task at three speaking rates (habitual, fast, and slow) where kinematic (lower lip movement) and acoustic data were obtained. Duration and variability were measured at each speaking rate. Findings revealed a complex relationship between speaking rate and variability. Adults from the middle age range (31-40 years) demonstrated shorter acoustic and kinematic durations compared with the oldest age group (41-50 years) during the habitual speaking rate condition. All adults demonstrated the greatest variability in the slow speaking rate condition, with no significant differences in variability between habitual and fast speaking rates. Interestingly, lip aperture variability was significantly lower in the youngest age group (18-30 years) compared with the two older groups during the fast speaking rate condition. Differences in measures of acoustic variability were not observed across the age levels. Strong negative correlations between kinematic/acoustic duration and lip aperture/acoustic variability in the youngest age group were revealed. Therefore, while a slow speaking rate does result in greater variability compared with habitual and fast speaking rates, longer durations of productions by the different age groups were not linked to higher spatiotemporal index (STI) values, suggesting that timing influences speech motor variability, but is not the sole contributor.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"141-161"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141086564","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 : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-06-14DOI: 10.1177/00238309241258162
Ronny Bujok, Antje S Meyer, Hans Rutger Bosker
{"title":"Audiovisual Perception of Lexical Stress: Beat Gestures and Articulatory Cues.","authors":"Ronny Bujok, Antje S Meyer, Hans Rutger Bosker","doi":"10.1177/00238309241258162","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241258162","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Human communication is inherently multimodal. Auditory speech, but also visual cues can be used to understand another talker. Most studies of audiovisual speech perception have focused on the perception of speech segments (i.e., speech sounds). However, less is known about the influence of visual information on the perception of suprasegmental aspects of speech like lexical stress. In two experiments, we investigated the influence of different visual cues (e.g., facial articulatory cues and beat gestures) on the audiovisual perception of lexical stress. We presented auditory lexical stress continua of disyllabic Dutch stress pairs together with videos of a speaker producing stress on the first or second syllable (e.g., articulating <i>VOORnaam</i> or <i>voorNAAM</i>). Moreover, we combined and fully crossed the face of the speaker producing lexical stress on either syllable with a gesturing body producing a beat gesture on either the first or second syllable. Results showed that people successfully used visual articulatory cues to stress in muted videos. However, in audiovisual conditions, we were not able to find an effect of visual articulatory cues. In contrast, we found that the temporal alignment of beat gestures with speech robustly influenced participants' perception of lexical stress. These results highlight the importance of considering suprasegmental aspects of language in multimodal contexts.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"181-203"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11831865/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141321984","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language and SpeechPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-07-27DOI: 10.1177/00238309241261702
Ricky K W Chan, Bruce Xiao Wang
{"title":"Modeling Lexical Tones for Speaker Discrimination.","authors":"Ricky K W Chan, Bruce Xiao Wang","doi":"10.1177/00238309241261702","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241261702","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Fundamental frequency (F0) has been widely studied and used in the context of speaker discrimination and forensic voice comparison casework, but most previous studies focused on long-term F0 statistics. Lexical tone, the linguistically structured and dynamic aspects of F0, has received much less research attention. A main methodological issue lies on how tonal F0 should be parameterized for the best speaker discrimination performance. This paper compares the speaker discriminatory performance of three approaches with lexical tone modeling: discrete cosine transform (DCT), polynomial curve fitting, and quantitative target approximation (qTA). Results show that using parameters based on DCT and polynomials led to similarly promising performance, whereas those based on qTA generally yielded relatively poor performance. Implications modeling surface tonal F0 and the underlying articulatory processes for speaker discrimination are discussed.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"229-243"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141768005","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 : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-06-10DOI: 10.1177/00238309241254350
Stephanie Kaucke, Marcel Schlechtweg
{"title":"English Speakers' Perception of Non-native Vowel Contrasts in Adverse Listening Conditions: A Discrimination Study on the German Front Rounded Vowels /y/ and /ø/.","authors":"Stephanie Kaucke, Marcel Schlechtweg","doi":"10.1177/00238309241254350","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241254350","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Previous research has shown that it is difficult for English speakers to distinguish the front rounded vowels /y/ and /ø/ from the back rounded vowels /u/ and /o/. In this study, we examine the effect of noise on this perceptual difficulty. In an Oddity Discrimination Task, English speakers without any knowledge of German were asked to discriminate between German-sounding pseudowords varying in the vowel both in quiet and in white noise at two signal-to-noise ratios (8 and 0 dB). In test trials, vowels of the same height were contrasted with each other, whereas a contrast with /a/ served as a control trial. Results revealed that a contrast with /a/ remained stable in every listening condition for both high and mid vowels. When contrasting vowels of the same height, however, there was a perceptual shift along the F2 dimension as the noise level increased. Although the /ø/-/o/ and particularly /y/-/u/ contrasts were the most difficult in quiet, accuracy on /i/-/y/ and /e/-/ø/ trials decreased immensely when the speech signal was masked. The German control group showed the same pattern, albeit less severe than the non-native group, suggesting that even in low-level tasks with pseudowords, there is a native advantage in speech perception in noise.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"162-180"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11831862/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"141297207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Language and SpeechPub Date : 2025-03-01Epub Date: 2024-03-04DOI: 10.1177/00238309241230625
Tsung-Ying Chen
{"title":"The \"Starting-Small\" Effect in Phonology: Evidence From Biased Learning of Opaque and Transparent Vowel Harmony.","authors":"Tsung-Ying Chen","doi":"10.1177/00238309241230625","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309241230625","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>The starting-small effect is a cognitive advantage in language acquisition when learners begin by generalizing on regularities from structurally simple and shorter tokens in a skewed input distribution. Our study explored this effect as a potential explanation for the biased learning of opaque and transparent vowel harmony. In opaque vowel harmony, feature agreement occurs strictly between adjacent vowels, and an intervening \"neutral vowel\" blocks long-distance vowel harmony. Thus, opaque vowel harmony could be acquired even if learners start with structurally simpler and more frequent disyllabic tokens. Alternatively, transparent vowel harmony can only be observed in longer tokens demonstrating long-distance agreement by skipping a neutral vowel. Opaque vowel harmony is predicted to be learned more efficiently due to its compatibility with local dependency acquired via starting-small learning. In two artificial grammar learning experiments, learners were exposed to both vowel harmony patterns embedded in an equal number of disyllabic and trisyllabic tokens or a skewed distribution with twice as many disyllabic tokens. In Exp I, learners' test performance suggests the consistently biased learning of local and opaque vowel harmony with starting-small learning. Furthermore, in Exp II, the acquired vowel harmony patterns varied significantly by working memory capacity with a balanced but not skewed input distribution, presumably because of the ease of cognitive demand with starting-small learning.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"3-35"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140023262","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":"Development of Vowel Intrusion in Spanish Heritage Speakers.","authors":"Gemma Repiso-Puigdelliura","doi":"10.1177/00238309251315068","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309251315068","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study investigates the sound system of heritage speakers (henceforth, HSs) as they shift dominance from their heritage language to their majority language. Specifically, it analyzes the production of intrusive vowels in Spanish consonant clusters across the lifespan of HSs, focusing on tautosyllabic clusters (i.e., /Cɾ/) and heterosyllabic clusters (i.e., /ɾ.C/). Semi-spontaneous speech was elicited from three age groups of Spanish HSs-younger children, older children, and adults-for whom American English is the majority language, as well as from three age-matched groups of non-heritage Spanish speakers raised in Mexico. The presence and duration of intrusive vowels were examined, with the latter calculated as a ratio of intrusive vowel duration to tap duration. Overall, the results indicate that all speaker groups more frequently produce consonant clusters with intrusive vowels than without. However, Spanish HSs produced fewer and shorter intrusive vowels compared with their non-heritage counterparts. In addition, heritage and non-heritage speakers exhibited a lower rate of intrusive vowel production in the 5-to-8 -year-old group compared with adults. Despite this, the absence of an interaction between age group and speaker type suggests a parallel pattern of change in intrusive vowel production across all ages. Voicing emerged as the most consistent phonetic factor, predicting a higher rate of intrusive vowels with a longer duration relative to the tap.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309251315068"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143517094","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":"F0 and Voice Quality of Coarticulated Mandarin Tones.","authors":"Yaqian Huang","doi":"10.1177/00238309251315081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309251315081","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Tonal coarticulation occurs when adjacent tones affect the production of each other, and this often induces changes in both F0 and voice quality of the tones. In Mandarin, F0 height of the target tone is affected by adjacent tones through both carryover assimilation and anticipatory dissimilation. In addition, voice quality is found to be largely dependent on F0, such that lower F0 induces creakier quality, regardless of tone. Given this dependency of voice quality on F0, it is unclear how this interaction manifests in the context of coarticulated tones. This study investigates the relationship between F0 and voice quality changes in coarticulated tones in three-tone sequences. Voice quality is assessed both acoustically and articulatorily using electroglottography (EGG). Our study confirms both carryover and anticipatory effects on F0. Changes in voice quality are largely expected from the direction of F0 changes. However, tone-specific exceptions especially in the dipping Tone 3 and falling Tone 4 are present, which we interpret as support for the (potential) independence of voice quality from F0.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309251315081"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2025-02-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143517096","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}