{"title":"Rhythm Is a Marker of Ethnicity in Modern Hebrew: Evidence from a Perception Study and Actors’ Ethnicized Portrayals","authors":"Si Berrebi, Sharon Peperkamp","doi":"10.1177/00238309241243025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309241243025","url":null,"abstract":"In Modern Hebrew, only three segmental markers are typically acknowledged as ethnically conditioned, and usage of these markers has significantly decreased in second and third generation speakers. Yet the sociolinguistic situation of diverging language backgrounds of first generation speakers, compounded with ethnic segregation in housing and the workforce, seems like a fertile ground for social identification from speech. We report two studies on prosodic variation in Modern Hebrew: a perception study and a “matched-pairs” corpus study. The results of the first illustrate that even in the absence of the known segmental markers, ethnicity perception of young native speakers may still diverge between two major ethnic identities, Mizrahi (Middle Eastern) and Ashkenazi (European). The main acoustic correlate was rhythm, measured as the proportional duration of vowels in the utterance. In the second study, actors’ speech rhythm was found to be modulated by their portrayed ethnic identity in the same direction, suggesting that this variable is socially salient—and for some speakers, controllable—enough to be involved in style shifting. This study joins a growing body of work illustrating that relatively mild rhythmic variation can contribute to social identification, and in the current case, also for ethnicity portrayal.","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":"26 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637247","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":"Language Dependency of /s/ Production: Native Dutch Versus Non-Native English","authors":"Meike M. de Boer, Willemijn F. L. Heeren","doi":"10.1177/00238309241242114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309241242114","url":null,"abstract":"With forensic recordings being collected in multiple languages increasingly often, this study investigates the language dependency of the voiceless alveolar fricative /s/ in speakers of native (L1) Dutch and non-native (L2) English. Due to phonetic similarity between the languages, Dutch learners of English may exhibit language-independent /s/ acoustics, making it an interesting feature for multilingual forensic speaker comparisons (FSCs). However, the findings show that out of the four spectral moments, center of gravity, standard deviation ( SD), skewness, and kurtosis, only SD remained stable across the languages; the other measurements were language-dependent. The results were largely independent of the /s/ tokens’ contexts, although an interaction between language and context was found for skewness and kurtosis: With a labial right phonetic neighbor, language dependency was largely reduced. The findings have implications for FSCs: as /s/ is language-dependent in speakers of L1 Dutch and L2 English, it shows limited potential for cross-linguistic speaker comparisons in forensic casework.","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":"44 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140630219","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 Effects of Phonological Complexity on Word Production in French-Speaking Children.","authors":"Margaret Kehoe","doi":"10.1177/00238309241237473","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309241237473","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Word complexity indices, such as the Index of Phonetic Complexity (IPC) and the Word Complexity Measure (WCM), code a word in terms of featural and structural properties that pose difficulty in phonological development. Studies have investigated the influence of complexity indices on vocabulary development; however, few have examined their influence on consonant accuracy. Furthermore, these indices were developed for English-speaking children and have not been widely applied to other languages. This study investigates whether a word's phonological complexity influences how accurately it is produced in French-speaking children. Four databases consisting of the productions of children (<i>n</i> = 74), aged 1;11 to 4;9, were analyzed. Words were coded in terms of the IPC, WCM, and parameters that add complexity during phonological development. Using mixed-effects logistic regression, we examined whether phonological complexity as determined by the IPC, WCM, or by alternative indices better accounts for the influence of complexity on production. We also investigated whether the accuracy of a target sound/structure was influenced by a word's complexity. Results indicated that complexity based on the IPC or WCM significantly influenced consonant accuracy; however, indices tapping fewer features provided superior model fit. At younger ages, the presence of fricatives/liquids and, at all ages, the presence of alveopalatal fricatives, codas, and clusters significantly influenced accuracy. Findings were inconclusive as to whether whole word complexity influenced the accuracy of a target sound/structure. Results suggest that current complexity indices provide only approximate indications of how featural and structural properties of words influence production.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309241237473"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140337569","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":"Production of the English /ɹ/ by Mandarin-English Bilingual Speakers.","authors":"Shuwen Chen, D H Whalen, Peggy Pik Ki Mok","doi":"10.1177/00238309241230895","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309241230895","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Rhotic sounds are some of the most challenging sounds for L2 learners to acquire. This study investigates the production of English rhotic sounds by Mandarin-English bilinguals with two English proficiency levels. The production of the English /ɹ/ by 17 Mandarin-English bilinguals was examined with ultrasound imaging and compared with the production of native English speakers. The ultrasound data show that bilinguals can produce native-like bunched and retroflex gestures, but the distributional pattern of tongue shapes in various contexts differs from that of native speakers. Acoustically, the English /ɹ/ produced by bilinguals had a higher F3 and F3-F2, as well as some frication noise in prevocalic /ɹ/, features similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/. Mandarin-English bilinguals did produce language-specific phonetic realizations for the English and Mandarin /ɹ/s. There was a positive correlation between language proficiency and English-specific characteristics of /ɹ/ by Mandarin-English bilinguals in both articulation and acoustics. Phonetic similarities facilitated rather than hindered L2 speech learning in production: Mandarin-English bilinguals showed better performance in producing the English /ɹ/ allophones that were more similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/ (syllabic and postvocalic /ɹ/s) than producing the English /ɹ/ allophone that was less similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/ (prevocalic /ɹ/). This study contributes to our understanding of the mechanism of speech production in late bilinguals.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"238309241230895"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140095028","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 : 2024-03-01Epub Date: 2023-06-05DOI: 10.1177/00238309231173337
Daria Seres, Joan Borràs-Comes, M Teresa Espinal
{"title":"Bridging Inferences and Reference Management: Evidence from an Experimental Investigation in Catalan and Russian.","authors":"Daria Seres, Joan Borràs-Comes, M Teresa Espinal","doi":"10.1177/00238309231173337","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309231173337","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This article focuses on the choice of nominal forms in a language with articles (Catalan) in comparison to a language without articles (Russian). An experimental study (consisting of various naturalness judgment tasks) was run with speakers of these two languages which allowed to show that in bridging contexts native speakers' preferences vary when reference is made to one single individual or to two disjoint referents. In the former case, Catalan speakers chose (in)definite NPs depending on their accessibility to contextual information that guarantees a unique interpretation (or the lack of it) for the entity referred to. Russian speakers chose bare nominals as a default form. When reference is made to two disjoint referents (as encoded by the presence of an additional <i>altre/drugoj</i> \"other\" NP), speakers prefer an optimal combination of two indefinite NPs (i.e., <i>un</i> NP followed by <i>un altre</i> NP in Catalan; <i>odin</i> \"some/a\" NP followed by <i>drugoj</i> NP in Russian). This study shows how speakers of the two languages manage to combine grammatical knowledge (related to the meaning of the definite and the indefinite articles and <i>altre</i> in Catalan; and the meaning of bare nominals, <i>odin</i> and <i>drugoj</i> in Russian) with world knowledge activation and accessibility to discourse information.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"203-227"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9935008","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 : 2024-03-01Epub Date: 2023-06-10DOI: 10.1177/00238309231176526
Katherine Chia, Michael P Kaschak
{"title":"Elliptical Responses to Direct and Indirect Requests for Information.","authors":"Katherine Chia, Michael P Kaschak","doi":"10.1177/00238309231176526","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309231176526","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>We present two studies examining the factors that lead speakers to produce elliptical responses to requests for information. Following Clark and Levelt and Kelter, experimenters called businesses and asked about their closing time (e.g., <i>Can you tell me what time you close?</i>). Participants provided the requested information in full sentence responses (<i>We close at 9</i>) or elliptical responses (<i>At 9</i>). A reanalysis of data from previous experiments using this paradigm shows that participants are more likely to produce an elliptical response when the question is a direct request for information (<i>What time do you close?</i>) than when the question is an indirect request for information (<i>Can you tell me what time you close?</i>). Participants were less likely to produce an elliptical response when they began their answer by providing a yes/no response (e.g., <i>Sure . . . we close at 9</i>). A new experiment replicated these findings, and further showed that elliptical responses were less likely when (1) irrelevant linguistic content was inserted between the question and the participant's response, and (2) participants verbalized signs of difficulty retrieving the requested information. This latter effect is most prominent in response to questions that are seen as very polite (<i>May I ask you what time you close?</i>). We discuss the role that the recoverability of the intended meaning of the ellipsis, the accessibility of potential antecedents for the ellipsis, pragmatic factors, and memory retrieval play in shaping the production of ellipsis.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"228-254"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9655351","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 : 2024-03-01Epub Date: 2023-04-27DOI: 10.1177/00238309231161289
Bror-Magnus S Strand
{"title":"Playing With Fire Compounds: The Tonal Accents of Compounds in (North) Norwegian Preschoolers' Role-Play Register.","authors":"Bror-Magnus S Strand","doi":"10.1177/00238309231161289","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309231161289","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Prosodic features are some of the most salient features of dialect variation in Norway. It is therefore no wonder that the switch in prosodic systems is what is first recognized by caretakers and scholars when Norwegian children code-switch to something resembling the dialect of the capital (henceforth Urban East Norwegian, UEN) in role-play. With a focus on the system of lexical tonal accents, this paper investigates the spontaneous speech of North Norwegian children engaging in peer social role-play. By investigating F0 contours extracted from a corpus of spontaneous peer play, and comparing them with elicited baseline reference contours, this paper makes the case that children fail to apply the target tonal accent consistent with UEN in compounds in role-play, although the production of tonal accents otherwise seems to be phonetically target like UEN. Put in other words, they perform in accordance with UEN phonetics, but not UEN morpho-phonology.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"113-139"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11420583/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9349828","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 : 2024-03-01Epub Date: 2023-04-17DOI: 10.1177/00238309231163170
Samantha Link, Fabian Tomaschek
{"title":"Predictability Associated With Reduction in Phonetic Signals Without Semantics-The Case of Glossolalia.","authors":"Samantha Link, Fabian Tomaschek","doi":"10.1177/00238309231163170","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309231163170","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Glossolalia can be regarded as an instance of speech production in which practitioners produce syllables in seemingly random sequences. However, a closer inspection of glossalalia's statistical properties reveals that sequences show a Zipfian pattern similar to natural languages, with some syllables being more probable than others. It is well established that statistical properties of sequences are implicitly learned, and that these statistical properties correlate with changes in kinematic and speech behavior. For speech, this means that more predictable items are phonetically shorter. Accordingly, we hypothesized for glossolalia that if practitioners have learned a serial pattern in glossolalia in the same manner as in natural languages, its statistical properties should correlate with its phonetic characteristics. Our hypothesis was supported. We find significantly shorter syllables associated with higher syllable probabilities in glossolalia. We discuss this finding in relation to theories about the sources of probability-related changes in the speech signal.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"72-94"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10916350/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9319010","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 : 2024-03-01Epub Date: 2023-04-25DOI: 10.1177/00238309231162299
Siri Gjersøe, Bert Remijsen
{"title":"Perceptual Sensitivity to Tonal Alignment in Nuer.","authors":"Siri Gjersøe, Bert Remijsen","doi":"10.1177/00238309231162299","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309231162299","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>This paper examines the perceptual threshold in patterns of tonal timing (alignment) of Falling versus Low tones. The results indicate a remarkable sensitivity among the listeners. In a perception experiment with 30 participants, we tested how native speakers of the West Nilotic language Nuer responded to stimuli in which the timing of the F0 fall that distinguishes Low versus Fall following a High target is manipulated. We measured the threshold for the responses to shift tone perception from 25% to 75%. The results show that listeners only needed an average of 19 ms to differentiate between the melodic shapes and as little as 13 ms for one item. Perceptual sensitivity this fine-grained is not expected based on what is known about the Just Noticeable Difference (JND) from previous studies. Results from non-tonal languages report a sensitivity threshold for tonal timing of at least 50 ms at category boundaries. This difference suggests that whether or not subjects speak a tone language may be a determining factor in their JND.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"95-112"},"PeriodicalIF":1.8,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10916342/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9403203","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 : 2024-03-01Epub Date: 2023-05-09DOI: 10.1177/00238309231164972
Frances Blanchette, Erin Flannery, Carrie Jackson, Paul Reed
{"title":"Adaptation at the Syntax-Semantics Interface: Evidence From a Vernacular Structure.","authors":"Frances Blanchette, Erin Flannery, Carrie Jackson, Paul Reed","doi":"10.1177/00238309231164972","DOIUrl":"10.1177/00238309231164972","url":null,"abstract":"<p><p>Expanding on psycholinguistic research on linguistic adaptation, the phenomenon whereby speakers change how they comprehend or produce structures as a result of cumulative exposure to less frequent or unfamiliar linguistic structures, this study asked whether speakers can learn semantic and syntactic properties of the American English vernacular negative auxiliary inversion (NAI) structure (e.g., <i>didn't everybody eat</i>, meaning \"not everybody ate\") during the course of an experiment. Formal theoretical analyses of NAI informed the design of a task in which American English-speaking participants unfamiliar with this structure were exposed to NAI sentences in either semantically ambiguous or unambiguous contexts. Participants rapidly adapted to the interpretive properties of NAI, selecting responses similar to what would be expected of a native speaker after only limited exposure to semantically ambiguous input. On a separate ratings task, participants displayed knowledge of syntactic restrictions on NAI subject type, despite having no previous exposure. We discuss the results in the context of other experimental studies of adaptation and suggest the implementation of top-down strategies via analogy to other familiar structure types as possible explanations for the behaviors observed in this study. The study illustrates the value of integrating insights from formal theoretical research and psycholinguistic methods in research on adaptation and highlights the need for more interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary work in both experimental and naturalistic contexts to understand this phenomenon.</p>","PeriodicalId":51255,"journal":{"name":"Language and Speech","volume":" ","pages":"140-165"},"PeriodicalIF":1.1,"publicationDate":"2024-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10916346/pdf/","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"9444192","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}