Speaker Judgments Research Articles

Native speakers and syllable structure

Abstract Benjamin Macaulay advises us not to diagnose syllable structure, more specifically the distinction between vowel + vowel clusters and diphthongs in the Taiwanese language Budai Rukai, on the basis of speaker judgements. I fully endorse his approach, since much of current work in phonology unwarrantedly takes syllabification for granted, without arguing for its necessity.

Distinguishing two kinds of fictionalism: metaphor, autism, and the imagination

Fictionalist theories of metaphor hold that metaphorical utterances aim at fictionality. Fictionalism successfully explains speaker judgments about the truth and aptness of metaphorical utterances, and it also accurately predicts the data around metaphor and autistic individuals (who have deficits in both imaginative play and metaphor comprehension). But fictionalism is not a viable theory of metaphor, despite these merits, because of (what I call) the problem of semantic entailment: semantic entailments that are normally valid fail under metaphorical interpretation, but fictionalism predicts otherwise. I argue this to ultimately show that theorists of metaphor should reject the linguistic side of the fictionalist story; but this leaves open the possibility of accepting psychological fictionalism, i.e., the hypothesis that fiction/make-believe is central to the cognitive processing of metaphor. Coupling psychological fictionalism with a different theory of metaphorical meaning and content (such as contextualism) promises to keep the explanatory upsides of traditional fictionalism while avoiding the problem of semantic entailment.

Speaker judgments alone cannot diagnose syllable structure

Abstract The ease and consistency with which speakers of many languages provide direct judgments about syllable structure has been taken by scholars as evidence that these judgments are accurate and sufficient argumentation for an analysis of syllable structure in descriptive works. This paper questions whether the results of direct elicitation tasks reliably indicate a prosodic domain that is meaningful in the language’s phonology and provides alternative forms of evidence for syllable structure from intonation. This is done through a case study of Budai Rukai, a Formosan language whose contact relationship with Sinitic languages affects how speakers respond to syllable judgment tasks.

This construction needs understood: An experimental study of the Alternative Embedded Passive (AEP)

The Alternative Embedded Passive (AEP) occurs in the Midland region in variation with the infinitival passive. AEPs may occur with the verbs need, want, and like: The baby needs/wants/likes fed. Murray & Simon (2002) observe a hierarchy of acceptability and usage across the three AEP verbs, with need as the most acceptable and like as the least. Building on an idea in Edelstein (2014), this paper presents evidence that the hierarchy results from lexical semantic properties of need, want, and like. Experiment results reveal that the hierarchy is alive in the judgments of young Pennsylvania speakers, and also emerges partially in the judgments of speakers from New England unfamiliar with the construction. The hierarchy only fully emerges with Pennsylvania speakers when the subject of the sentence is sentient (e.g., the baby). With non-sentient subjects (e.g., the computer), want and like are similar and less acceptable than need. We attribute this to a property of the verb need, which can be either a deontic modal (which does not take a thematic subject) or a thematic subject-taking verb. We discuss how our results support the hypothesis that speakers adapt to novel dialectal constructions by forming analogies to constructions already in their grammars.

Evidentials and dubitatives in Finnish: perspective shift in questions and embedded contexts

Abstract This paper investigates the reportative evidential kuulemma and the dubitative muka in Finnish (Finno-Ugric). Kuulemma typically indicates that the speaker reports information provided by someone else (hearsay) and is not committed to the truth of the proposition, while muka (roughly: ‘supposedly, allegedly, as if’) typically signals that the speaker doubts the truth of the proposition, leaving open the information source. This paper explores perspective-shifting and whether these forms can be anchored to someone other than the speaker. I use corpus data and native speaker judgments to test what happens in questions, under the speech verb ‘say,’ and in free indirect discourse. In questions, both forms appear to stay anchored to the speaker (no interrogative flip). However, when embedded under ‘say,’ dubitative muka remains speaker-oriented, whereas reportative kuulemma can shift to the subject. In free indirect discourse, both can shift to the character whose point-of-view is expressed. I propose that these differences are partially related to subjectivity: Whereas kuulemma can be described in objective terms, it has been suggested that muka can express more nuanced affect such as surprise and irony. I suggest this subjective nature of muka is related to its speaker-oriented nature, echoing the speaker-orientation default of affective expressions (e.g. predicates of personal taste, epithets, interjections).

‘-ㄹ 법하다’와 ‘-ㄹ 만하다’의 비인식양태 의미에 대한 연구

The purpose of this paper is to identify semantic characteristics of non-epistemic modality realized by ‘-l pephata’ and ‘-l manhata’. Modality can be divided into epistemic modality and root modality, which is non-epistemic modality. Epistemic modality expresses a speaker's judgment on the degree of factuality of the proposition, and root modality expresses the speaker's judgment on the likelihood of the state-of-affair. Some previous studies have seen that ‘-l pephata’ and ‘-l manhata’ express the judgment that it is possible for a situation to occur, which can be seen as pointing out that ‘-l pephata’ and ‘-l manhata’ represent the root modality. Root possibility meaning of ‘-l pephata’ and ‘-l manhata’ is analyzed by three criteria: ‘scope of the modal meaning’, ‘source of possibility’, and ‘potential barrier’. Root possibility expressed by ‘-l pephata’ corresponds to the [general situation possibility], which is wide-scope, has an external source, and has no potential barrier. In addition to the [general situation possibility], ‘-l manhata’ can express [Ability] which is narrow-scope, has an internal source. ‘-l pephata’ and ‘-l manhata’ which express [general situation possibility] differs in that ‘-l pephata’ expresses a judgement based on assimilated knowledge, whereas ‘-l manhata’ expresses a judgement based on unassimilated knowledge.

Acoustic correlates of perceived personality from Korean utterances in a formal communicative setting.

The aim of the present study was to find acoustic correlates of perceived personality from the speech produced in a formal communicative setting-that of Korean customer service employees in particular. This work extended previous research on voice personality impressions to a different sociocultural and linguistic context in which speakers are expected to speak politely in a formal register. To use naturally produced speech rather than read speech, we devised a new method that successfully elicited spontaneous speech from speakers who were role-playing as customer service employees, while controlling for the words and sentence structures they used. We then examined a wide range of acoustic properties in the utterances, including voice quality and global acoustic and segmental properties using Principal Component Analysis. Subjects of the personality rating task listened to the utterances and rated perceived personality in terms of the Big-Five personality traits. While replicating some previous findings, we discovered several acoustic variables that exclusively accounted for the personality judgments of female speakers; a more modal voice quality increased perceived conscientiousness and neuroticism, and less dispersed formants reflecting a larger body size increased the perceived levels of extraversion and openness. These biases in personality perception likely reflect gender and occupation-related stereotypes that exist in South Korea. Our findings can also serve as a basis for developing and evaluating synthetic speech for Voice Assistant applications in future studies.

Age categorization and stereotyping at work

AbstractAge stereotyping at the workplace can lead to discrimination. We investigated stereotype influence on recall. In the who‐said‐what paradigm participants studied older and younger speakers making stereotypical and counterstereotypical statements about their work, followed by memory tests for the statements and speakers. Statements were more likely attributed to a speaker from the same age category than the other age category, replicating earlier findings. Stereotypicality had no effect on statement recognition but participants were more likely to guess a stereotypical speaker even though speakers made equal numbers of stereotypical and counterstereotypical statements (Experiments 1 and 3). When speakers made more counterstereotypical statements (Experiment 2) this bias was reduced but less so than the actual proportion of stereotypical statements warranted. Speaker judgments were also influenced by prior stereotypes. We conclude that participants used prior stereotypes to supplement recall from memory. Measures to reduce stereotypes should include procedures to improve memory accuracy.

A corpus analysis of Swahili’s dual-complementizer system

Abstract Tanzanian Swahili has two complementizers, kuwa and kwamba, both used to introduce finite embedded clauses. We explore whether the complementizers are in free variation, as reported in all descriptive and pedagogical work. Our study primarily relies on corpus data, which we supplement with native speaker judgments. We find that the complementizers are not in free variation, but in fact are affected by a number of factors known to affect embedded clauses cross-linguistically, including predicate class, person features of the main-clause subject, and mood in the embedded clause. We conclude that the complementizers ultimately reflect subtle, pragmatic factors concerning how the truth of the embedded clause should be evaluated. Our study expands on previous work on languages with so-called “dual-complementizer” systems.

The Expressions of Epistemic Modality in English and Vietnamese: A Contrastive on “thấy” and “nghĩ” in Vietnamese and Mental Verbs in English

Epistemic modality is described as the speaker's judgment, assessing the degree of the factual proposition, or the speaker's confidence or non-confidence in the truth value of the proposition. The paper focuses on the expression of “thấy”, “nghĩ” predicates in Vietnamese and compares with mental verbs in English. To achieve the research objectives, the paper uses descriptive, statistical and comparative methods to clarify modality in general and epistemic modality in particular. The paper initially contributes to clarifying the definition, category, and identification of epistemic modality in terms of grammar and vocabulary. Next, the paper points out the similarities and differences in the expression of epistemic modality in English and Vietnamese. The results show that the nature of vocabulary and syntax basically exists value of factuality and non-factuality. The most important feature of epistemic modality is subjectivity and objectivity. The speaker "I/Tôi" clearly expresses or implies commitment for what is said. Understanding and applying modality in general and epistemic modality in particular will help learners acquire language and culture better in the process of communication and translation.

Perceived conscientiousness and openness to experience mediate the relationship between vocal and visual features and hiring decision in the interview

This study used the theory of dispositional attribution and an adapted version of Brunswik's lens model to examine whether the relationship between vocal and visual cues and hiring recommendation is mediated by raters' judgments of speakers' personality traits. The results of mediation analyses suggest that for most of the vocal and visual cues examined, perceptions of interviewees' conscientiousness and openness to experience mediated the relationship between cues and interview performance. This suggests that the vocal and visual cues an interviewee displays convey important information about his or her personality traits to an interviewer.

منظور هاليدي لخطاب النصر الرئاسي لبايدن

The aim of the current study is to investigate the discoursal function of modality in presidential victory speech. The victory speech of Biden in 2020 has been selected as the data source in the present qualitative study. The data of this study has been attained through purposive sampling from ‘The Washington Post’. The analysis is restricted to clauses that are found in the speech by tabulated them and analyzing each type of modality. Modality is used as a linguistic system which reflects the social role, power, and the type of formality relationship. In addition, modality can reflect the speaker judgments toward certain topics. To this end, The Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) 2014 was adopted as a theoretical framework to study language structure and function. Major findings reveal that three types of modality were used in Biden’s speech. Inclination was used (20) times in the speech and probability was used (26) times, and obligation was used only (4) times. In addition, the fourth type (usuality) was not used in Biden’s victory speech.

Exposure to nonnative-accented speech reduces listening effort and improves social judgments of the speaker

Prior research has revealed a native-accent advantage, whereby nonnative-accented speech is more difficult to process than native-accented speech. Nonnative-accented speakers also experience more negative social judgments. In the current study, we asked three questions. First, does exposure to nonnative-accented speech increase speech intelligibility or decrease listening effort, thereby narrowing the native-accent advantage? Second, does lower intelligibility or higher listening effort contribute to listeners’ negative social judgments of speakers? Third and finally, does increased intelligibility or decreased listening effort with exposure to speech bring about more positive social judgments of speakers? To address these questions, normal-hearing adults listened to a block of English sentences with a native accent and a block with nonnative accent. We found that once participants were accustomed to the task, intelligibility was greater for nonnative-accented speech and increased similarly with exposure for both accents. However, listening effort decreased only for nonnative-accented speech, soon reaching the level of native-accented speech. In addition, lower intelligibility and higher listening effort was associated with lower ratings of speaker warmth, speaker competence, and willingness to interact with the speaker. Finally, competence ratings increased over time to a similar extent for both accents, with this relationship fully mediated by intelligibility and listening effort. These results offer insight into how listeners process and judge unfamiliar speakers.

Acoustic characterization and machine prediction of perceived masculinity and femininity in adults

Previous research has found that human voice can provide reliable information to be used for gender identification with a high level of accuracy. In social psychology, perceived masculinity and femininity (masculinity and femininity rated by humans) has often been considered an important feature when investigating the influence of vocal features on social behaviours. While previous studies have characterized the acoustic features that contributed to perceivers’ judgements of speakers’ masculinity or femininity, there is limited research on developing a machine masculinity/femininity scoring model and characterizing the independent acoustic factors that contribute to perceivers’ masculinity and femininity judgements. In this work, we first propose a machine scoring model of perceived masculinity/femininity based on the Extreme Random Forest and then characterize the independent and meaningful acoustic factors that contribute to perceivers’ judgements by using a correlation matrix based hierarchical clustering method. Our results show that the machine ratings of masculinity and femininity strongly correlated with the human ratings of masculinity and femininity when we used an optimal speech duration of 7 s, with a correlation coefficient of up to .63 for females and .77 for males. Nine independent clusters of acoustic measures were generated from our modelling of femininity judgements for female voices and eight clusters were found for masculinity judgements for male voices. The results revealed that, for both genders, the F0 mean is the most important acoustic measure affecting the judgement of acoustic-related masculinity and femininity. The F3 mean, F4 mean and VTL estimators were found to be highly inter-correlated and appeared in the same cluster, forming the second most significant factor in influencing the assessment of acoustic-related masculinity and femininity. Next, F1 mean, F2 mean and F0 standard deviation are independent factors that share similar importance. The voice perturbation measures, including HNR, jitter and shimmer, are of lesser importance in influencing masculinity/femininity judgements.

Differential Object Marking, Scrambling and Choice Functions: The Case of Sinhala

This paper investigates the role of choice functions on specificity realization of indefinite noun phrases mainly by way of differential object marking, scrambling and pragmatics in Sinhala. Languages use different strategies to mark what is called specificity of noun phrases. Differential object marking and scrambling are some such operations employed by languages such as Spanish, Turkish, Hindi, and Japanese. Sinhala employs at least three strategies to mark specificity: scrambling; differential object marking and pragmatics. In the literature attempts have been made to establish a relationship between morphology (differential object marking) and syntax (short scrambling) with respect to specificity marking in languages. This paper, based on the evidence that short scrambling in Sinhala does not influence specificity marking, argues that such a link between morphology and syntax of specificity marking cannot be established cross-linguistically. It claims that an account based on choice functions is able to account for specificity marking of indefinites in Sinhala. Relevant data retrieved from the existing literature and new data introduced by the author based on native speaker judgements were considered for testing the hypothesis. The data were analyzed in light of the existing theories, frameworks and methods, thus following the deductive approach to draw the conclusions. The paper concludes that a choice functions-based analysis enables us to account for the specificity marking of not only the deferentially marked objects but also scrambled and pragmatically marked object noun phrases in Sinhala. As evident, the conclusions were drawn based on testing analysis, and evaluation of data from Sinhala, which is a less studied language in linguistics. It is suggested that the findings in this study be taken up for further investigation with similar data from other less studied languages in the world in order to make finer cross-linguistic generalisations.

РЕКРУТСКИЕ ПЕСНИ СЕЛА БЕЗГОЛОСОВО АЛЕЙСКОГО РАЙОНА АЛТАЙСКОГО КРАЯ

The article reveals recruitment songs that exist locally in the singing traditions of the village of Bezgolosovo, Aleysky district, Altai Territory, recorded by folklore expedition of the Children’s Art School “Tradition” in August 2022. Features of the recorded songs revealed, their themes, musical and poetic language: comments and judgments of song speakers about the content of the works are given.

The Semantics of Grammaticalization


 
 
 The primary meaning of the Danish verb prøve is “to use one’s best ability to do a certain activity or to reach something; make an attempt”; nevertheless, it is also used about activities that do not require one’s best ability. In these cases, it can be argued, the verb has been grammaticalized. The first aim of this paper is to describe the relationship between the literal and the grammaticalized meanings of the verb using NSM (natural semantic metalanguage), based on corpus examples and speaker judgements. Data have shown that the grammaticalized meaning of prøve is reduced when used in the imperative, because it does not contain the assumptions of the speaker as does the non- grammaticalized meaning. On the other hand, the grammaticalized meaning has acquired a new pragmatic feature, namely the friendly attitude of the speaker. The second aim is to describe how the grammaticalized meaning of prøve is related to the Danish “meaning universe”. The analysis has shown that the grammaticalized meaning of prøve includes the element “the speaker wants the conversational partner to feel something good”, which is in accordance with Danish cultural values
 
 

Sind Sie noch bei der Arbeit oder schon am Arbeiten? Regionale Spielarten von Progressivität im Deutschen

Progressivity in German can be expressed not only by lexical means but also by various periphrastic structures, e. g. the am-periphrasis, the prepositions bei and in combined with nominalized infinitives or the periphrastic infinitival construction with the auxiliary verb tun. However, the use of these structures can vary considerably from region to region, especially in oral communication, often also in connection with significant diastratic, diaphasic and diamesic variation. This paper investigates native speaker judgments of different progressive markers in German (i. e. am-periphrasis, beim- and im-periphrases as well as tun-periphrasis) regarding their acceptability, use, familiarity and distribution in a particular geographical area or social group. The present study essentially focuses on regional differences between three distinct dialectal regions of the German-speaking area (Middle Bavarian, South Bavarian and Rhenish-Westphalian). Results indicate a tendency towards successive advancement of the am-peri-phrasis, even though the actual usage of this specific progressive construction still shows clear diatopic and diaphasic variation.

Epistemic Modality in English-Medium Artificial Intelligence Research Articles: A Systemic–Functional Perspective

Epistemic modality is a crucial tool for describing the speaker's judgment—or request for the judgment of the listener—that has gained broad recognition and been widely investigated in academic writing. This research investigates the use of epistemic modality in 50 English-medium artificial intelligence (AI) research articles (RAs) from a systemic–functional perspective. Our research focuses on the frequency and function of the value, orientation, and polarity of epistemic modality in AI RAs. The results reveal that these AI RA writers tend to use both high- and low-value modality with explicitly objective orientation and positive polarity and that the epistemic modality performs the interpersonal function. This indicates that AI RA writers tend to ensure the objectivity of their results and that these writers adopt varying attitudes and hold differing views toward AI technology and thus have not yet achieved consensus. The study furthers the understanding of scholars’ attitudes toward AI statements in recent years.

The at-issue status of ideophones in German: An experimental approach

Formal linguistics generally assumes that form-meaning relations in spoken language are arbitrary and not iconic. Ideophones, such as the English splish-splash have been considered exceptions to this rule of arbitrariness. Recently, however, researchers have begun to examine iconicity in spoken language more closely. Following work which established the default not- at-issue status of iconic co-speech gestures, here we discuss the crosslinguistic evidence for the (not-)at-issueness of ideophones and the factors that may have an influence upon this. We also present what we believe to be the first experimental work on the at-issue status of ideophones, conducted with German speakers. Although German may not be a prototypical ideophonic language, we argue that German ideophones follow crosslinguistic patterns in terms of at-issueness and provide initial evidence for the not-at-issue status of sentence- medial adverbial ideophones in German. This evidence comes from sentence-context matching tasks, where the mismatch effect was significantly larger for sentences containing standard adverbials than those containing sentence-medial adverbial ideophones. We presume that speaker judgements concerning how well target sentences match discourse contexts should be more impaired by mismatches induced by material relevant to the Question Under Discussion (QUD), i.e. at-issue material, than those induced by material irrelevant to the QUD, i.e. not-at- issue material. We thus argue that speakers’ ratings indicate that sentence-medial adverbial ideophones in German are not at-issue. This paper suggests a starting point for investigating the pragmatic status of ideophones crosslinguistically and also allows for comparison to previous research on other iconic enrichments, in particular gestures. This then has implications for our understanding of the at-issue status of iconic enrichments and how these enrichments interact with each other.