English Function Words Research Articles

The Influence of Attention to Language Form on the Production of Weak Forms by Polish Learners of English

The paper discusses a study whose aim was to examine the impact of attention to language form and task type on the realisation of English function words by Polish learners of English. An additional goal was to investigate whether style-induced pronunciation shifts may depend on the degree of foreign accent. A large part of the paper concentrates on the issue of defining ‘weakness’ in English weak forms and considers priorities in English pronunciation teaching as far as the realisation of function words is concerned. The participants in the study were 12 advanced Polish learners of English, who were divided into two groups: 6 who were judged to speak with a slight degree of foreign accent and 6 who were judged to speak with a high degree of foreign accent. The subjects’ pronunciation was analysed in three situations in which we assume their attention was increasingly paid to speech form (spontaneous speech, prepared speech, reading). The results of the study suggest that increased attention to language form caused the participants to realise more function words as unstressed, although the effect was small. It was also found that one of the characteristics of English weak forms, the lack of stress, was realised correctly by the participants in the majority of cases. Finally, the results of the study imply that, in the case under investigation, the effect of attention to language form is weakly or not at all related to the degree of foreign accent.

Phonetic Reduction of English Function Words in the Passage Reading by Korean EFL Learners

This paper investigates how Korean EFL learners, whose L1 does not reduce function words, reduce vowels in the production of English function words in...

Voicing of Initial Interdental Fricatives in Early Middle English Function Words

In Modern English, function words such asthis, that, andtheare pronounced with a voiced onset, while content words have the original voiceless onset. A statistical analysis of the distribution of <ð> and <þ> inVices and Virtues, a text preserved in London, British Library, Stowe MS 34 (circa 1200), reveals a distribution, whose most plausible interpretation is that these two letters were used to encode stress-conditioned differences in voicing. This sets the voicing of function words, normally dated to the fourteenth century, back to circa 1200 or earlier.*

Weak function word shift

The fact that object shift only affects weak pronouns in mainland Scandinavian is seen as an instance of a more general observation that can be made in all Germanic languages: weak function words tend to avoid the edges of larger prosodic domains. This generalization has been formulated within optimality theory in terms of alignment constraints on prosodic structure by Selkirk (1996) in explaining the distribution of prosodically strong and weak forms of English function words, especially modal verbs, prepositions, and pronouns. But a purely phonological account fails to integrate the syntactic licensing conditions for object shift in an appropriate way. The standard semantico-syntactic accounts of object shift, however, fail to explain why it is only weak pronouns that undergo object shift. This paper uses an optimality theoretic model of the syntax-phonology interface which determines linear order by the interaction of syntactic and prosodic factors. The account can successfully be applied to further related phenomena in English and German.

Effects of disfluencies, predictability, and utterance position on word form variation in English conversation.

Function words, especially frequently occurring ones such as (the, that, and, and of), vary widely in pronunciation. Understanding this variation is essential both for cognitive modeling of lexical production and for computer speech recognition and synthesis. This study investigates which factors affect the forms of function words, especially whether they have a fuller pronunciation (e.g., thi, thaet, aend, inverted-v v) or a more reduced or lenited pronunciation (e.g., thax, thixt, n, ax). It is based on over 8000 occurrences of the ten most frequent English function words in a 4-h sample from conversations from the Switchboard corpus. Ordinary linear and logistic regression models were used to examine variation in the length of the words, in the form of their vowel (basic, full, or reduced), and whether final obstruents were present or not. For all these measures, after controlling for segmental context, rate of speech, and other important factors, there are strong independent effects that made high-frequency monosyllabic function words more likely to be longer or have a fuller form (1) when neighboring disfluencies (such as filled pauses uh and um) indicate that the speaker was encountering problems in planning the utterance; (2) when the word is unexpected, i.e., less predictable in context; (3) when the word is either utterance initial or utterance final. Looking at the phenomenon in a different way, frequent function words are more likely to be shorter and to have less-full forms in fluent speech, in predictable positions or multiword collocations, and utterance internally. Also considered are other factors such as sex (women are more likely to use fuller forms, even after controlling for rate of speech, for example), and some of the differences among the ten function words in their response to the factors.

The structure of repetition strings in the Switchboard corpus

An investigation of reduction in the ten most frequent English function words in Switchboard, to be presented at ICSLP’98, found that repetition or following silence or filled pause, which were taken as symptoms of planning problems, were strongly associated with longer durations and lack of reduction, extending earlier results for the definite article [J. E. Foxtree and H. H. Clark, Cog. 62, 151–167 (1997)]. As a followup to this study, the structure of unplanned repetition strings is examined more closely. The study is based on an analysis of the lexical transcriptions of the repetitions of words and short phrases from over 100 h of recorded conversations from the Switchboard corpus. Detailed information about the phonetic form and contexts of repetitions a retaken from a phonetically transcribed sample of 4 h of conversation [S. Greenberg et al., ICSLP 96 Proc. (1996)]. Repetitions are overwhelmingly unplanned; are overwhelmingly function words; and are mostly single repetitions of words, although complex strings with multiple repetitions of words, and short phrases combined with silences and filled pauses are not uncommon. The form of repetition strings, including internal and overall durations, are related to variables of rate and context.

Recall of English function words and inflections by skilled and average deaf readers.

This study examined whether skilled deaf readers sustain a more complete memory trace of English function words and inflections compared to average deaf readers and whether this is related to processing that has a phonological component. The superior accuracy of skilled readers on a verbatim recall task indicated that they are more able than average deaf readers to sustain a record of English function words and inflections. Elevations in processing time under the recall versus a comprehension condition were highly correlated with recall accuracy. On a separate task, the relative speed of skilled readers when making lexical decisions about phonologically similar word pairs indicated greater access to phonological information during word reading. However, the phonological facilitation measure did not correlate highly with recall accuracy nor increments in processing under the recall condition.

Prominence of leading functors in function morpheme sequences as evidenced by letter detection.

Our previous work indicated that the increased difficulty in detecting letters in function in comparison with content morphemes derives from the role of functors in supporting phrase structure. Presumably, letters disappear in the transition from structure to content. Here the effect was most powerful for leading functors in a sequence of function morphemes (e.g., «that» in «that from the»). This pattern was found for Hebrew function prefixes that can be appended as a sequence to a content word (e.g., SMHGN, meaning «that from the garden»; Experiments 1 & 2) and also for sequences of Hebrew and English function words (Experiments 3 & 4)

Hemispheric specialization for the perception of speech sounds: The influence of intonation and structure

The present report investigates the effect of various cues to phrase structure upon the hemispherically lateralized processing of phonetic structure. Meaningless sequences were paired for dichotic presentation and were delivered under two different conditions termed structured and semistructured. The dichotic sequences in the two conditions contained the same nonsense syllable stems, English bound morphemes, and English function words. Also each of the sequences in both conditions were grammatically ordered in the sense that if the nonsense stems were replaced by English stems, a grammatical sentence would result. The conditions differed with respect to prosody, however: the structured sequences were characterized by the acoustic correlates of constituent structure; the semistructured sequences were delivered in a monotone. A significant right-ear superiority was observed in the structured condition, but not in the semistructured condition. These perceptual laterality differences are discussed in relation to cerebral dominance for language and in relation to speech processing generally.

The role of syntax in dichotic listening

This study compared identification of dichotically presented pairs of meaningless sequences presented under two different conditions, respectively termed structured and unstructured. The dichotic sequences in both conditions contained the same nonsense syllable stems, English bound morphemes, and English function words. The sequences in the structured condition were grammatically ordered in the sense that if the nonsense stems were replaced by English stems a grammatical sentence would result; as well, the structured sequences were characterized by the acoustic correlates of constituent structure. In contrast, the elements of the unstructured sequences were randomly rearranged and delivered in list form containing none of the overt rhythms of speech. Total accuracy of recognition was found to be significantly superior in the structured condition. In addition, although right-ear superiority was observed in both conditions, the laterality effect was significant only in the structured condition.