Lexical Frequency Effects Research Articles

Speech pauses in speakers with and without aphasia: A usage-based approach

Pauses in speech are indicators of cognitive effort during language production and have been examined to inform theories of lexical, grammatical and discourse processing in healthy speakers and individuals with aphasia (IWA). Studies of pauses have commonly focused on their location and duration in relation to grammatical properties such as word class or phrase complexity. However, recent studies of speech output in aphasia have revealed that utterances of IWA are characterised by stronger collocations, i.e., combinations of words that are often used together. We investigated the effects of collocation strength and lexical frequency on pause duration in comic strip narrations of IWA and non-brain-damaged (NBD) individuals with part of speech (PoS; content and function words) as covariate. Both groups showed a decrease in pause duration within more strongly collocated bigrams and before more frequent content words, with stronger effects in IWA. These results are consistent with frameworks which propose that strong collocations are more likely to be processed as holistic, perhaps even word-like, units. Usage-based approaches prove valuable in explaining patterns of preservation and impairment in aphasic language production.

Effects of word length and frequency on word identification in second- and fifth-grade children as a function of language skills

The purpose of the current study was to examine the combined effect of word length and lexical frequency in a lexical decision task in second- and fifth-grade children with varying language skills. The participants, 47 second graders and 55 fifth graders, performed a lexical decision task in which word length and lexical frequency were manipulated orthogonally so that 32 words were short and frequent (e.g., fleur [flower]), 32 words were short and rare (e.g., navet [turnip]), 32 words were long and frequent (e.g., escalier [staircase]), and 32 words were long and rare (e.g., boussole [compass]). Language skills (phonological awareness, reading, vocabulary, and rapid automatized naming skills) were measured using standard language tests. The results showed that word length and, to a lesser extent, lexical frequency influence the speed and accuracy of word identification in different ways, depending on the children’s educational level. Furthermore, language skills were found to influence the effects of word length and frequency, differently in second- and fifth-grade children. The results are interpreted within the dual-route model of visual word recognition. The role of language skills in the implementation of these processes is also discussed.

Frequency effects can modulate the neural correlates of prosodic processing in Mandarin.

In tonal languages, tone perception involves the processing of both acoustic and phonological information conveyed by tonal signals. In Mandarin, in addition to four canonical full tones, there exists a group of weak syllables known as neutral tones. This study aims to investigate the impact of lexical frequency effects and prosodic information associated with neutral tones on the auditory representation of Mandarin compounds. We initially selected disyllabic compounds as targets, manipulating their lexical frequencies and prosodic structures. Subsequently, these target compounds were embedded into selected sentences and auditorily presented to native speakers. During the experiments, participants engaged in lexical decision tasks while their event-related potentials were recorded. The results showed that the auditory lexical representation of disyllabic compounds was modulated by lexical frequency effects. Rare compounds and compounds with rare first constituents elicited larger N400 effects compared to frequent compounds. Furthermore, neutral tones were found to play a role in the processing, resulting in larger N400 effects. Our findings showed significantly increased amplitudes of the N400 component, suggesting that the processing of rare compounds and compounds with neutral tones may require more cognitive resources. Additionally, we observed an interaction effect between lexical frequency and neutral tones, indicating that they could serve as determining cues in the auditory processing of disyllabic compounds.

Phonological syllables allow children with developmental dyslexia to access words.

Learning to read is a middle-distance race for children worldwide. Most of them succeed in this acquisition with "normal" difficulties that ensue from the progressive (re)structuring of the phonological and orthographic systems. Evidence accumulated on reading difficulties in children with developmental dyslexia (DYS children, henceforth) shows a pervasive phonological deficit. However, the phonological deficit may not be due to degraded phonological representations but rather due to impaired access to them. This study focused on how and to what extent phonological syllables, which are essential reading units in French, were accessible to DYS children to segment and access words. We tested the assumption that DYS children did not strictly have pervasive degraded phonological representations but also have impaired access to phonological and orthographic representations. We administered a visually adapted word-spotting paradigm, engaging both sublexical processing and lexical access, with French native-speaking DYS children (N = 25; Mage in months = 121.6, SD = 3.0) compared with chronological age-matched peers (N = 25; Mage in months = 121.8, SD = 2.7; CA peers henceforth) and reading level-matched peers (N = 25; Mage in months = 94.0, SD = 4.6; RL peers henceforth). Although DYS children were slower and less accurate than CA and RL peers, we found that they used phonological syllables to access and segment words. However, they exhibit neither the classical inhibitory syllable frequency effect nor the lexical frequency effect, which is generally observed in typically developing children. Surprisingly, DYS children did not show strictly degraded phonological representations because they demonstrated phonological syllable-based segmentation abilities, particularly with high-frequency syllables. Their difficulties are rather interpreted in terms of impaired access to orthographic and phonological representations, which could be a direct effect of difficulties in generalizing and consolidating low-frequency syllables. We discuss these results regarding reading acquisition and the specificities of the French linguistic system.

The Cerebellum Is Sensitive to the Lexical Properties of Words During Spoken Language Comprehension.

Over the past few decades, research into the function of the cerebellum has expanded far beyond the motor domain. A growing number of studies are probing the role of specific cerebellar subregions, such as Crus I and Crus II, in higher-order cognitive functions including receptive language processing. In the current fMRI study, we show evidence for the cerebellum's sensitivity to variation in two well-studied psycholinguistic properties of words-lexical frequency and phonological neighborhood density-during passive, continuous listening of a podcast. To determine whether, and how, activity in the cerebellum correlates with these lexical properties, we modeled each word separately using an amplitude-modulated regressor, time-locked to the onset of each word. At the group level, significant effects of both lexical properties landed in expected cerebellar subregions: Crus I and Crus II. The BOLD signal correlated with variation in each lexical property, consistent with both language-specific and domain-general mechanisms. Activation patterns at the individual level also showed that effects of phonological neighborhood and lexical frequency landed in Crus I and Crus II as the most probable sites, though there was activation seen in other lobules (especially for frequency). Although the exact cerebellar mechanisms used during speech and language processing are not yet evident, these findings highlight the cerebellum's role in word-level processing during continuous listening.

Academic verb knowledge of DHH college students and their hearing peers.

This study addressed the critical gap in research on the academic English vocabulary knowledge of deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) students at the college level, with a specific focus on academic English verbs. An English vocabulary test was developed to assess knowledge of academic verbs at three distinct corpus-defined lexical frequency ranges. The test was administered to the DHH students along with two comparison groups of college peers-students of English as an Additional Language (EAL)1 and hearing native-English-speaking students. Results revealed near-ceiling performance by hearing native speakers but significant vocabulary challenges in the DHH and EAL learner groups, who exhibited parallel lexical knowledge. Learner group performance increased as verb frequency range increased and as overall English proficiency level increased. The findings demonstrate that lexical frequency effects guide English verb acquisition in the targeted populations.2.

Neurophysiological effects of frequency, length, phonological neighborhood density, and iconicity on sign recognition.

Current theories on lexical recognition are mostly based on studies from spoken languages or their written forms. Much less is known about the process of lexical recognition in sign languages. This study aims to examine the neural correlates of sign recognition by investigating the effects of lexical frequency, length, phonological neighborhood density, and iconicity during Chinese Sign Language comprehension. Twenty-two deaf signers viewed a set of sign videos that varied in the 4 lexical properties and decided if they referred to animals, while event-related potential responses were recorded. Data were analyzed through linear mixed-effects models with the lexical variables treated as continuous measures. The results showed that frequency modulated ERP amplitude as early as around 200 ms and in the late N400 time frame. Sign length invoked effects throughout the process, starting from 200 ms and pertaining to the last epoch. Neighborhood density effects were also observed early around 200 ms and later on the N400 and late positive complex (LPC). Iconicity produced robust effects on the N400 and LPC amplitude. Lexical frequency, length, and neighborhood density influence the neural dynamics of sign recognition in a similar way as to spoken words. Iconicity can confer a processing advantage due to closer form-meaning mappings. The results indicate that lexical recognition engages some mechanisms that are universal across the signed and spoken modality, but it can also be regulated by modality-specific properties such as the prevalent iconicity in sign languages.

Imperatives in Heritage Spanish: Lexical Access and Lexical Frequency Effects

Along with declaratives and interrogatives, imperatives are one of the three major clause types of human language. In Spanish, imperative verb forms present poor morphology, yet complex syntax. The present study examines the acquisition of (morpho)syntactic properties of imperatives in Spanish among English-speaking heritage speakers of Spanish. With the use of production and acceptability judgment tasks, this study investigates the acquisition of verb morphology and clitic placement in canonical and negative imperatives. The results indicate that the acquisition of Spanish imperatives among heritage speakers is shaped by the heritage speakers’ productive vocabulary knowledge, lexical frequency and syntactic complexity. Indeed, most of the variability in their knowledge was found in their production of negative imperatives: heritage speakers show a rather stable receptive grammatical knowledge while their production shows signs of variability modulated by the heritage speakers’ productive vocabulary knowledge and by the lexical frequency of the verb featured in the test items.

A usage-based account of paragogic /e/ in 20th century New Mexican Spanish

Abstract This study tests if New Mexican Spanish speakers’ productions of words that variably display paragogic /e/ (rincón ∼ rincon e ‘corner’) are predictable from their lexical frequency, utterance position, and the frequency with which these words occur in an utterance position that conditions paragoge. In the study, the variable that measures the frequency with which words occur in the conditioning context is referred to as the FCC. The analysis of 77 word types and 2,235 tokens produced by 24 speakers demonstrates that the likelihood that a speaker produces paragogic /e/ increases when words are produced at the end of an utterance. The study also finds novel evidence for the mediating effect of lexical frequency on the effect of the FCC variable: the influence of the frequency with which words are produced in utterance-final position on the likelihood of paragogic /e/ is strengthened as lexical frequency decreases. Together with research on reductive phonological processes (e.g., Forrest, John. 2017. The dynamic interaction between lexical and contextual frequency: A case study of (ING). Language Variation and Change 29(2). 129–156), it seems that the effect of the FCC variable is amplified by lexical frequencies that already harbor the phonological process. These novel findings invite scholars to reconsider the assumption that such effects require many exemplars to shape lexical representation and speech production.

Effects of lexical frequency on the post-exposure magnitude of recalibration in lexically guided perceptual learning: An explorative analysis.

Listeners use lexical information to guide the mapping between acoustic signals and representations of speech sound. This process is known as perceptual learning and results in recalibration of phonetic categories. The current work examines the effect of lexical frequency of exposure words on the magnitude of recalibration. Results showed comparable levels of perceptual learning for listeners exposed to high-frequency vs low-frequency critical words, in line with empirical findings that suggest that if frequency affects recalibration, such effects may be difficult to detect. These findings warrant further empirical probing and theoretical characterization of the role of lexical frequency in perceptual learning.

The congruency effect in L2 collocational processing: The underlying mechanism and moderating factors

AbstractThe congruency effect—that is, faster and more accurate processing of congruent multiword units, has been demonstrated in multiple studies. It is still unclear, however, what its underlying mechanism is, and how congruency may interact with other factors. Using an acceptability judgement task, this study examined the congruency effect in immersive (Experiment 1) and nonimmersive (Experiment 2) L2 learners’ collocational processing while taking into account L2 collocation frequency, immersive learners’ L2 use, their length and starting age of immersion, nonimmersive learners’ length of instruction, and their L2 proficiency. The study also tested whether L1 counterparts of words in L2 collocations were activated. Nonmmersive learners showed a congruency effect in both processing speed and accuracy. In contrast, immersive learners were affected by congruency only in processing accuracy. Higher L2 collocation frequency, greater length of instruction, and higher L2 proficiency did not reduce the congruency effect, whereas longer duration of immersion improved the processing of incongruent items. An effect of L1 lexical frequency was found, an indication of L1 activation. Results were discussed in light of how L2 proficiency and experiences changed the amount of L1 influence in L2 collocational processing.

The Effect of Cue-specific Lexical Competitors on Hyperarticulation of VOT and F0 Contrasts in Korean Stops

As is known, the fundamental frequencies (F0) of the vowels following aspirated or lenis stops have become associated with the aspirated~lenis stop contrast while Voice Onset Time (VOT) values of them became merged in Seoul Korean. Previous studies found the effects of age, gender, lexical frequency, and vowel height. However, although lexical competition has been demonstrated to affect the trajectory of sound change regarding contrastivity, it has not been considered in this context. The present study examines the effects of lexical competition on this sound change. Through a production experiment, analyses demonstrate that the aspirated~lenis contrast is hyperarticulated in minimal pairs for both VOT and F0, but only in aspirated stops with following high vowels. Moreover, speakers advanced in the sound change produce lower F0 values for lenis stops with following non-high vowels if an aspirated competitor exists. We find that the F0 distinction in lenis stops is more hyperarticulated in speakers advanced in the sound change, but that speakers appear to hyperarticulate VOT regardless of how much of a VOT contrast they normally produce themselves. This may be related to the fact that VOT is still a robust cue to the aspirated~lenis distinction in much of the speech community.

Frequency effects and aspect morphology with state verbs in heritage Spanish

Abstract A total of 54 HS and 17 Spanish-dominant participants completed an elicited production task (EPT) and a forced choice task (FCT) to explore how proficiency, frequency of use, age of acquisition of English, morphological regularity, and lexical frequency affected their production and selection of preterit morphology with states. Results showed that HS’ production of preterit with states was negatively correlated with lexical frequency, such that these bilinguals were more likely to use the preterit with less-frequent verbs. Higher-proficiency speakers were less susceptible to the effects of lexical frequency in production. In contrast, proficiency modulated HS’ responses in the FCT. HS were more likely to select the preterit in the FCT than to produce it in the EPT. Together, these results support theories of heritage language acquisition that emphasize the role of activation of linguistic features and asymmetries between production and comprehension.

Multilingual spoken word recognition: A megastudy approach

Bilingualism research has primarily focused on the perception and processing of individual sounds or word learning. Many studies have investigated how bilingual listeners perceive sound contrasts that don't create lexical distinctions in their native language. There is substantially less research that has investigated how word-level properties impact L2 auditory processing. The present study examines how auditory lexical processing differs between monolingual and bilingual listeners with different language backgrounds. We collected lexical decision accuracies and latencies for 26,793 words and 9600 pseudowords from the Massive Auditory Lexical Decision database from native and non-native listener responses. We compare the language backgrounds of our 1028 listeners and group them into four groups: native speakers, early, early-late, and late bilinguals. We report the findings of an analysis investigating how language background and proficiency modulate lexical effects to understand how language background influences spoken word recognition. We find differences in the effects of lexical frequency, phonological neighborhood density, and phonological uniqueness point between the different listener groups. We discuss the impact of bilingualism in a word recognition task and how these results inform models of spoken word recognition and second language acquisition.

LexTALE-Korean의 개발과 타당성 검증: 효율적인 한국어 어휘 평가 도구

This study aimed to develop the Korean-version LexTALE and examine its effectiveness in estimating Korean learners’ proficiency. 41 advanced and intermediate Korean learners participated in a web-based lexical decision task in which 120 Korean words and nonwords were tested. They also took part in a reading comprehension task and a cloze task. The results from a series of logistic mixed-effect models revealed that first, the LexTALE-Kr accuracy significantly differed between language groups in a way that Korean natives obtained higher scores than Korean learners, and advanced Korean learners gained higher scores than intermediate Korean learners. Second, the effect of lexical frequency on lexical decision accuracy was significant, and its effect was the biggest in advanced Korean learners. Third, the scores obtained from the reading and cloze tasks significantly accounted for the accuracy variances of Korean learners. Taken together, our results supported the claim that the simple and low-cost online test evaluating learners’ lexical knowledge is adequate to estimate the goodness of learners’ proficiency as much as complex and high-cost comprehensive examinations like TOPIK.

Lexical Frequency Effects on the Acquisition of Syntactic Properties in Heritage Spanish: A Study on Unaccusative and Unergative Predicates

Abstract This study investigates the acquisition of subject placement in unergative and unaccusative predicates among heritage speakers of Spanish by addressing two constraints ruling the distribution of subject placement (i.e., verb type and focus) as well as by examining whether lexical frequency impacts their acquisition. Sixty-three heritage speakers and twenty-five Spanish-dominant bilinguals completed an oral elicited production task and an acceptability judgment task. Results show that verb type constraints in the heritage speakers are shaped by their proficiency and self-reported lexical frequency: more proficient heritage speakers rated VS sentences higher than their lower-proficient counterparts, and more instances of VS sentences were produced with more frequent unaccusative verbs. Focus constraints only impact the heritage speakers’ acceptability: in narrow focus contexts, heritage speakers rate SV higher than VS sentences. Lexical frequency effects in unaccusative predicates are argued to be the result of spell-outs favoring compatible linear orders as a way to reduce computational costs.

The effects of lexical frequency and homophone neighborhood density on incomplete tonal neutralization.

We investigated the effects of lexical frequency and homophone neighborhood density on the acoustic realization of two neutralizing falling tones in Dalian Mandarin Chinese. Monosyllabic morphemes containing the target tones (Tone 1 and Tone 4) were produced by 60 native speakers from two generations (middle-aged vs. young). The duration of tone-bearing syllable rhymes, as well as the F0 curves and velocity profiles of the lexical tones were quantitatively analyzed via linear mixed-effects modeling and functional data analysis. Results showed no durational difference between T1 and T4. However, the F0 contours of the two falling tones were incompletely neutralized for both young and middle-aged speakers. Lexical frequency showed little effect on the incomplete tonal neutralization; there were significant differences in the turning point of the two falling tones in syllables with both high and low lexical frequency. However, homophone neighborhood density showed an effect on the incomplete neutralization between the two falling tones, reflected in significant differences in the slope and turning point of the F0 velocity profiles between the two tones carried by syllables with low density but not with high density. Moreover, homophone neighborhood density also affected the duration, the turning point of F0 curves, and velocity profiles of the T1- and T4-syllables. These results are discussed with consideration of social phonetic variations, the theory of Hypo- and Hyper-articulation (H&H), the Neighborhood Activation Model, and communication-based information-theoretic accounts. Collectively, these results broaden our understanding of the effects that lexical properties have on the acoustic details of lexical tone production and tonal sound changes.

Damage to temporoparietal cortex is sufficient for impaired semantic control.

Semantic control allows us to focus semantic activation on currently relevant aspects of knowledge, even in the face of competition or when the required information is weakly encoded. Diverse cortical regions, including left prefrontal and posterior temporal cortex, are implicated in semantic control, however; the relative contribution of these regions is unclear. For the first time, we compared semantic aphasia (SA) patients with damage restricted to temporoparietal cortex (TPC; N=8) to patients with infarcts encompassing prefrontal cortex (PF+; N=22), to determine if prefrontal lesions are necessary for semantic control deficits. These SA groups were also compared with semantic dementia (SD; N=10), characterised by degraded semantic representations. We asked whether TPC cases with semantic impairment show controlled retrieval deficits equivalent to PF+cases or conceptual degradation similar to patients with SD. Independent of lesion location, the SA subgroups showed similarities, whereas SD patients showed a qualitatively distinct semantic impairment. Relative to SD, both TPC and PF+SA subgroups: (1) showed few correlations in performance across tasks with differing control demands, but a strong relationship between tasks of similar difficulty; (2) exhibited attenuated effects of lexical frequency and concept familiarity, (3) showed evidence of poor semantic regulation in their verbal output - performance on picture naming was substantially improved when provided with a phonological cue, and (4) showed effects of control demands, such as retrieval difficulty, which were equivalent in severity across TPC and PF+groups. These findings show that semantic impairment in SA is underpinned by damage to a distributed semantic control network, instantiated across anterior and posterior cortical areas.

Palatalization of /d/ across word boundaries in UK English

In many spoken varieties of English, the coronal stop /d/ may palatalize or affricate before /j/, including at word boundaries; e.g., “did you” [ˈdɪdʒu], “would you” [ˈwʊdʒu]. We study this process in the large, naturalistic Audio BNC (http://www.phon.ox.ac.uk/AudioBNC). Previous studies have found that coronal fricatives /s, z/ palatalize preceding /j/ in predictable contexts and at increased speech rates, implying that palatalization results from coarticulatory gestural overlap. However, analysis of /t/ shows that palatalization to [tʃ] is a categorical stylistic variant, which is instead selected in formal contexts at slower speech rates. To determine whether [dʒ] results from gestural overlap or as a stylistic variant, we analyze /d/’s rate of palatalization using approximately 8000 tokens of /d#j/ gathered from the force-aligned Audio BNC. Tokens were impressionistically coded as palatalized to [dʒ], released as [d], or unreleased/deleted. With multinomial logistic regressioni, we test whether effects of lexical frequency, speech rate and duration, phonological context, discourse, or speaker characteristics (e.g., region, gender) predict the realization of /d#j/ in naturalistic speech. In line with previous findings, we hypothesize that [dʒ] is more likely in frequent collocations and at high speech rates, but style-driven effects of region, formality, or gender may also predict this variant.

The role of frequency in the acquisition of structured variation: The case of Basque ergativity

Aims and objectives: This study examines the extent to which new speakers use the Basque ergative case marking ( –k) in the nominal inflection. I specifically ask whether frequency-based factors (language use and lexical frequency) play a role in its use by also considering speakers’ self-claimed Basque identities. Design/methodology/approach: The spontaneous speech of 39 Basque–Spanish bilinguals was collected by means of sociolinguistic interviews. Participants were self-stratified according to categories of Basque speakerhood ( euskaldunberri “new speaker”; euskaldun “Basque speaker”; euskaldunzahar “native speaker”). We also considered their proficiency, language use, and sex. Data and analysis: In total, 2,755 tokens were extracted for the presence/absence of ergative –k and coded for the following four linguistic factors: verb type, animacy person and number, phonological context, and type of NP. Lexical frequency was operationalized in terms of overall token frequency of lexical verb. Data were analyzed using mixed-effects models in R. Findings and conclusions: Results indicate that despite higher incidence of ergative omissions among new speakers, they show (1) consistent mastery of core internal constraints (verb type, phonological context) and (2) gradual structuring based on lexical frequency effects. These omissions occur in pragmatically structured conditions (topic shift, emphasis, and introducing self in narrative) alongside extensions of –k to unaccusative contexts (focus and topicalization). No independent effects of language use were found. Originality: This study is the first to examine of Basque ergativity among adult Basque speakers, taking also into account discourse factors, lexical frequency, and speakers’ social identities and proficiencies. Significance and implications: First, the mediating effects of lexical frequency are indicative that that sociolinguistic variation is acquired in a piece-meal fashion and that such patterns emerge from discourse as they are used in context. Second, it is argued that the new speakers’ kind of social practices hold key in explaining the reallocation of linguistic constraints in their variable production.