Language and SpeechPub Date : 2026-06-01Epub Date: 2025-03-29DOI: 10.1177/00238309251314862
Andrei Munteanu, Angelika Kiss
{"title":"Form-Meaning Relations in Russian Confirmative and Surprise Declarative Questions.","authors":"Andrei Munteanu, Angelika Kiss","doi":"10.1177/00238309251314862","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309251314862","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Declarative questions (DQs) are declarative sentences used as questions. As declaratives, they differ from information-seeking polar questions (ISQs) in their syntax, and as biased questions, they differ from polar questions because they can convey various epistemic stances: a request for confirmation, surprise, or incredulity. Most studies on their intonation typically compare just one subtype to ISQs. In this paper, we present a production study where participants pronounced ISQs, confirmative and surprise DQs, and assertions in Russian. We analyzed the pitch and duration of the target utterances, as these prosodic cues proved to be important in the formal markedness of various biased question types across languages. A principal component analysis (PCA) on the pitch contours shows that DQs bear the same rise-fall contour as ISQs, but its peak falls on the stressed syllable of the last word of the sentence instead of the verb. The intonation of surprise DQs differs from that of confirmative ones in that they also exhibit a slight peak on the subject. Pitch alone is thus enough to distinguish the four utterance types tested. The PCA analysis was also used to identify higher-level trends in the data (principal components), two of which appear to correspond to core semantic properties, namely belief change and commitment. In addition to intonation, speaker commitment also correlates with utterance duration.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"278-313"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC13195068/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143743905","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 : 2026-06-01Epub Date: 2025-08-13DOI: 10.1177/00238309251353529
Sonia Barnes, Whitney Chappell
{"title":"Language Attitudes and Stereotypes Condition the Processing of Contact-Induced Linguistic Variants.","authors":"Sonia Barnes, Whitney Chappell","doi":"10.1177/00238309251353529","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309251353529","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines the effect of language attitudes and stereotypes on vowel perceptions by two groups of listeners from Asturias, Spain that differ in their relationship with the languages present in their communities: Spanish, the national majority language, and Asturian, the regional minority language. The responses of 165 participants from the Nalón Valley (a mining area in the region) were compared with those of 156 listeners from Gijón (the largest urban area) as they categorized words containing synthesized productions of Spanish [o] and Asturian [u] in a task that combined binary forced-choice identification and visual priming. The results of a mixed-effects regression model reveal that, for the Nalón Valley group, positive attitudes toward Asturian result in higher rates of /u/ selection, while, for the Gijón group, positive attitudes toward Asturian intersect with negative stereotypes about urban Asturians who avoid the regional language. We propose that spreading activation and weighting in exemplar-based models can account for these different findings: the greater use of Asturian in the Nalón Valley results in weaker and more varied links between vowel exemplars and social properties, limiting the effect of visual priming. However, a heavier weight exists between stereotypes of urban Asturians and Spanish exemplars in the city, resulting in a priming effect in Gijón that does not emerge in the Nalón Valley. We conclude that individual experience, attitudes, and stereotypes work together to condition speech perception uniquely in light of the local context.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"595-619"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-06-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"144838531","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":"Allophonic Variation in L1 and L2 English Laterals: Evidence from L1 Japanese-L2 English Speakers.","authors":"Takayuki Nagamine","doi":"10.1177/00238309261446912","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261446912","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Second language (L2) learners often face a number of obstacles in acquiring target-like speech production patterns. This study examines L1 Japanese speakers' production of L2 English /l/ to investigate how they implement position-dependent allophonic variation while overcoming mismatches between Japanese (L1) and English (L2) in (1) the number of liquid phonemes, (2) their allophonic distributions, and (3) syllable structure. Acoustic and articulatory (ultrasound) analyses of word-initial and word-final English /l/ produced by thirteen L1 Japanese-L2 English speakers and nine L1 English speakers show that L1 Japanese-L2 English speakers produce target-like lateral allophony acoustically, although their lateral production is overall clearer (i.e., less velarised) than that of L1 English speakers. By contrast, L1 Japanese-L2 English speakers' articulation is non-target-like, characterised by different tongue shape dimensions and the absence of coronal-dorsal timing patterns found in L1 English speakers' production. Overall, the results highlight the complex nature of L2 speech production, in which L2 speakers utilise a wider range of phonetic cues to overcome learning challenges than is commonly assumed.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261446912"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148058171","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":"A Cross-Language Comparison of Length Perception in Italian-Learning Adults.","authors":"Andrea Pešková, Kateřina Chládková","doi":"10.1177/00238309261440514","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261440514","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study investigates how adult learners perceive segmental length in L2 Italian. We tested 104 learners from 5 L1 backgrounds that differ in their phonological treatment of quantity: Finnish (vowel and consonant length), Czech and Slovak (vowel length), German (restricted vowel length), and Spanish (no phonemic length). These groups were compared with 34 native speakers of Italian, a language with distinctive consonant length (e.g., <i>papa</i> 'Pope' vs. <i>pappa</i> 'porridge'). Using an AX discrimination task with 45 pseudowords, we examined the influence of L1, stress position, consonant type, and proficiency. The results reveal that L1 strongly predicts perceptual sensitivity to consonantal length contrasts: Finnish learners showed the highest sensitivity, followed by Slovak, Czech, German, and Spanish learners. Discrimination of vowel-length contrasts was weaker across all groups and showed more variation, likely because in Italian, vowel duration does not cue phoneme identity. Stress position also played a significant role: discrimination of consonantal quantity contrasts was most robust in post- and pre-stressed syllables and weakest in unstressed contexts. Consonant type further influenced performance, with quantity being easier to discriminate in sonorants than in obstruents, although L1-specific effects emerged. Proficiency did not emerge as a uniform global predictor, but descriptive patterns indicated higher performance among advanced learners than among beginner-level and intermediate-level learners. Overall, the multifactorial analysis highlights the role of L1 in shaping learners' perception of L2 length, alongside prosodic effects, segmental properties, and proficiency. The study also underscores the importance of perceptual training in acquiring new phonological contrasts.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261440514"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148058138","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":"Alignment to a Mandarin Target Correlates With Talker Discrimination Ability in Tibetan-Mandarin Bilinguals.","authors":"Yanbing Hu, Xiaofeng Ma","doi":"10.1177/00238309261452272","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309261452272","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Extracting talker identity from speech signals is a core perceptual function, yet the mechanisms underlying second Language (L2) identity processing remain unclear. Grounded in the DIVA model and Source-Filter Theory, this study investigated the coupling between perception and production in Tibetan-Mandarin bilinguals. Participants performed a delayed imitation task and a talker-identity discrimination task. Imitation performance was quantified within a multidimensional acoustic space defined by fundamental frequency (F0), harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR), and formant dispersion (FD). Results indicated that learners achieved significant acoustic convergence toward the L2 model speaker, which persisted as episodic traces across short-term temporal delays. In the discrimination task, sensitivity improved with acoustic distance but plateaued between medium and large distances, while a significant negative response bias in the near condition revealed a tendency toward perceptual assimilation. Crucially, regression and machine-learning analyses revealed that only FD distance was significantly associated with discrimination sensitivity. Unlike source-related cues such as F0 that fluctuate with context, FD reflects relatively invariant vocal-tract structures. These findings suggest that the formation of L2 talker-identity representations involves a functional anatomical alignment with the target speaker through sensorimotor inverse mapping. By locking onto structural invariants like FD, learners can overcome within-person variability to form detailed episodic identity representations. This study extends the scope of auditory targets in speech production models from segmental to indexical levels.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261452272"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"148058186","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}
Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Tom Fritzsche, Leonardo Piot, Rowena Garcia
{"title":"Is KO OK? Segmentation of Consonant- and Vowel-Initial Words in German-Learning Infants.","authors":"Natalie Boll-Avetisyan, Tom Fritzsche, Leonardo Piot, Rowena Garcia","doi":"10.1177/00238309261441549","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309261441549","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Infants develop the ability to segment words from continuous speech from the age of 6 months onwards. However, in French- and English-learning infants, this ability initially appears to be restricted to consonant-initial words. Vowel-initial word segmentation only emerges at around 13.5 months of age, or at 11 months when additional segmentation cues are provided. Previous research has attributed this asymmetry to phonological and acoustic differences between word-initial consonants and vowels. The present study examined whether distributional properties such as the likelihood of encountering vowel-initial words also contribute to this developmental pattern. For this, 114 infants learning German, a language with a higher proportion of vowel-initial words than English and French, were tested. Using the head-turn preference procedure, 11-month-olds (Experiment 1) and 8-month-olds (Experiment 2) were familiarized with isolated words beginning with either consonants or vowels. Subsequently, their preference for listening to text passages containing these words was assessed. While the 8-month-olds showed no evidence of segmentation for either word type, the 11-month-olds successfully segmented both consonant- and vowel-initial words, showing no advantage for either of the word types. The results support an input-based account: Experience with a language richer in vowel-initial words may facilitate earlier segmentation of vowel-initial forms. Overall, the findings highlight the influence of language-specific distributional properties on early segmentation biases and underscore the need for research with infants learning structurally diverse languages.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261441549"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147977175","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":"How Do Ukrainian Learners of German Process Lexical Stress? Evidence from Production and Perception.","authors":"Klymentii Myslyvyi, Bettina Braun","doi":"10.1177/00238309261434240","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309261434240","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This study examines (a) the prosodic cues to stress and focus in Ukrainian speakers in their first language (L1 Ukrainian) and in a second language (L2 German), as compared to German speakers and (b) the influence of F0 during online word recognition in L2 German. Analyses of productions of trisyllabic target words differing in stress (Experiment 1) show that stressed vowels are consistently longer and produced with slightly higher intensity than unstressed vowels, with little additional modulation by focus (focused, unfocused) and hardly any group effects (L1 Ukrainian, L2 German, L1 German). The groups differed strongly in F0 though. While L1 Ukrainian speakers produced the initial syllable with high-pitched and stressed syllables with a falling/low F0 contour (suggesting head-edge prominence marking), L1 German speakers produced focus with a rising pitch accent. There were two subgroups of learners: a small group that produced the conditions as in L1 Ukrainian (Type 1) and a larger group that was similar to L1 German (Type 2). In perception (Experiment 2), target words were fixated more when the first syllable was high-pitched (in line with L1 Ukrainian productions). Similar to Germans, Type 2 learners temporarily treated high-pitched syllables as stressed, leading to increased competitor fixations when the pitch peak preceded the stressed syllable (early-peak accent, H+L*, compared to medial-peak accents, L+H*). These findings demonstrate individual differences in the L2 production of stress and focus, which are closely linked to cue use during L2 word recognition.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309261434240"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2026-05-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"147965571","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":"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}