Number Of Consonants Research Articles

Speech Sound Development in 18-Month-Old Children With Sex Chromosome Trisomies.

This study aimed to describe speech sound development in a group of 18-month-old children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCTs), compared with a group of typically developing (TD) peers. Concurrent and longitudinal relationships between speech sound abilities and lexical development were examined. A group of 76 children aged 18 months, 38 children prenatally diagnosed with SCTs (12 with XXY, 12 with XYY, and 14 with XXX) and 38 TD children, participated in the study. From video recordings of semistructured naturalistic parent-child play sessions, quantitative and qualitative measures of speech sound development were collected (e.g., the number of consonants, type and place of articulation, and syllable structures used), and group differences were observed. The relationships between the number of consonants produced and vocabulary size at 18 and 24 months were assessed. At 18 months, children with SCTs used a significantly lower number of consonants than TD children. Qualitatively, children with SCTs used significantly fewer articulatory complex consonants (fricative/affricates) and a more restricted inventory of syllable structures. The number of consonants used was significantly correlated with lexical development at 18 months. Moreover, in the SCTs group (but not in the TD group), the children with lower speech sound development at 18 months showed a significantly smaller vocabulary growth between 18 and 24 months than those with higher speech-sound development. Toddlers with SCTs showed a significantly delayed speech sound development pattern rather than an atypical one. Children with SCTs with low speech sound development also showed lower vocabulary growth between 18 and 24 months of age. These results can be clinically relevant for follow-up and treatment planning for children with SCTs.

Lithuanian Syllable: The Hierarchy of Syllable Constituents and Syllable Weight

The article aims to establish the hierarchy of Lithuanian syllable constituents and determine how syllables should be interpreted in terms of syllable weight. The empirical data based on 311 000 syllables show that the variety of consonants in the onset is more significant than in the coda. A vowel and a succeeding approximant form the nucleus of a prosodic syllable, which shows strong coherency between a nucleus and a coda. Therefore, a CVC syllable is interpreted as [syllable Onset [rhyme Nucleus Coda]]. The division of Lithuanian syllables into light and heavy can be based on the realization of pitch accent, and it fully coincides with the traditional classification of long and short syllables in Lithuanian linguistics. Short syllables are light, their nucleus is a short vowel, and the number of consonants in the onset and the coda is unimportant. Such syllables account for almost half of all syllables in the database of this research (45%). Long syllables are heavy, and their nucleus may consist of long vowels (30%), diphthongs (12%), or mixed diphthongs (13%). When stressed, heavy syllables are pronounced in two ways: traditionally known as “acute” and “circumflex”. The stress is not dependent on the syllable weight, as both light (short) and heavy (long) syllables can be stressed. However, it has been observed that heavy (long) syllables are stressed more often than light (short) ones. Heavily stressed syllables constitute 25%, while light stressed syllables comprise 11% of all the syllables in this research database.

A Study of Word Complexity Under Conditions of Non-experimental, Natural Overt Speech Production Using ECoG.

The linguistic complexity of words has largely been studied on the behavioral level and in experimental settings. Only little is known about the neural processes underlying it in uninstructed, spontaneous conversations. We built up a multimodal neurolinguistic corpus composed of synchronized audio, video, and electrocorticographic (ECoG) recordings from the fronto-temporo-parietal cortex to address this phenomenon based on uninstructed, spontaneous speech production. We performed extensive linguistic annotations of the language material and calculated word complexity using several numeric parameters. We orthogonalized the parameters with the help of a linear regression model. Then, we correlated the spectral components of neural activity with the individual linguistic parameters and with the residuals of the linear regression model, and compared the results. The proportional relation between the number of consonants and vowels, which was the most informative parameter with regard to the neural representation of word complexity, showed effects in two areas: the frontal one was at the junction of the premotor cortex, the prefrontal cortex, and Brodmann area 44. The postcentral one lay directly above the lateral sulcus and comprised the ventral central sulcus, the parietal operculum and the adjacent inferior parietal cortex. Beyond the physiological findings summarized here, our methods may be useful for those interested in ways of studying neural effects related to natural language production and in surmounting the intrinsic problem of collinearity between multiple features of spontaneously spoken material.

Language Development in Sex Chromosome Trisomies: Developmental Profiles at 2 and 4 Years of Age, and Predictive Measures

ABSTRACT Purpose Describing language development in children with sex chromosome trisomies (SCT) and testing the predictive value of early language measures on later outcomes. Method Thirteen children with SCT were followed longitudinally. Their developmental profile was assessed, with particular attention to language, at 2 and 4 years. The predictive value of direct (spontaneous speech analysis) and indirect (communicative development inventory) language measures at 2 on performances at 4 was tested. Results Language performances at both ages were lower than non-verbal development. At 2, more than 50% of the group produced less than 50 words. At 4, impaired performances were observed in speech sound development and expressive morpho-syntax. Direct measures of Pre-syntactic development predicted later global language outcomes and Sentence Repetition. The number of consonants used at 2 was significantly related to Nonword Repetition at 4. Conclusions The study highlights the importance of early detection and careful follow-up for children with SCT.

The Capability in Pronouncing the English Final Consonant Clusters by the English Department Students, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University

This study attempts to describe the ability of the English Department students, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University in pronouncing English final consonant clusters. Consonant clusters are groups of consonants that can occur initia lly (onset) and finally (coda) in the syllable structure. The features of consonant clusters in each language are highly dependent on the language itself. In English, the number of consonants at the beginning of a syllable can be up to three such as: structure /strʌktʃə/, spring /sprIŋ/, while the number of consonants that forms a cluster in the coda can be up to four as in sixths /siksθs/, texts /teksθs/. While, Consonant clusters in Indonesian and Balinese as the mother tongue of students are very limited in number and only exist initially in the words. This difference, obviously, creates problems for students in pronouncing English words containing these consonant clusters The knowledge of the English sound system is taught in the English phonetic and phonemic course in the fifth semester at the English Department, Faculty of Humanities, Udayana University. This study examined the ability to pronounce consonant clusters by the second semester students who have not taken English Phonetic and Phonemic courses to be compared with student s who have taken the course, so that it can be seen to what extent the course can change students’ performance in pronouncing the consonant clusters. This research is descriptive qualitative research, supported by quantitative data. The research population was 20 second semester students and 20 sixth semester students randomly taken. The research instrument was a list of English words containing consonant clusters and questionnaires. The data collection technique was done through recording, and the data were analyzed descriptive qualitatively and presented formally and informally.

Schwa Deletion in Word-Initial Syllables of Polysyllabic Words

This study aims to analyse factors that could influence schwa deletion in word-initial syllables of polysyllabic words in continuous French speech. Both phonological and extralinguistic factors were considered: number of consonants, post-lexical context, speech style, sex and profession. Three large corpora covering different speech styles were explored using forced alignment with optional schwa variants. Formal journalistic ESTER corpus, conversational journalistic ETAPE corpus and casual speech NCCFr corpus were used in this study. We observe that schwa tends to be deleted more for 2C-words than for 3C-words. Words preceded by a consonant or a pause tend to prevent schwa deletion whereas words preceded by a vowel tend to facilitate schwa deletion. The less formal the speech style is, the more schwas are deleted. Males tend to delete schwas more frequently than females. Interestingly, journalists tend to delete more schwas than politicians in our data.

A Computational Morphological Model for Arabic Diminutive Generation

This paper presents a computational morphological model which is capable of generating ‎Arabic diminutives. It consists mainly of two parts: a linguistic analysis and implementation. ‎The linguistic analysis follows the Prosodic Morphology theory to account for the templatic ‎formation of Arabic diminutives. In the implementation part, the model employs pushdown ‎automata (PDA) to model diminutive morphology building on the linguistic analysis. The ‎model consists of two components: a lexicon and transformational rules. The lexicon ‎component contains the lexical entries which are classified according to four criteria: their ‎syllabic structure, the number of consonants they have, vowels length in syllables, and the ‎presence of the feminine marker. The core of the grammar is a set of 11 transformational rules ‎which are capable of generating diminutives from the different classes of stems. The model ‎has been implemented in NooJ tool and has been tested on all classes of stems, biconsonantal, ‎triconsonantal, quadri-consonantal and quinque-consonantal. The paper also shows how the ‎challenging problem of Arabic non-concatenative diminutive formation can be efficiently ‎handled using pushdown automata implemented in NooJ tool

Arabic speaker recognition system based on phoneme fusion

With the increasing number and popularity of smart devices in the past few decades, especially those that execute different types of health-related applications, their security is a growing concern. Biometric authentication can be used for device security, and speaker recognition (SR) is one of its elegant forms. In this study, an SR system is developed for the security of smart devices, which identifies a person from the shortest utterance of Arabic language, achieving the highest SR rate, by using the benchmark Linguistic Data Consortium (LDC) Arabic dataset. This study focuses on the use of the consonants and vowels of the Arabic language. It is observed that certain consonants or a fusion of certain consonants in Arabic language helps to ascertain the speaker’s identity efficiently. The shortest utterance that better presents the speaker’s identity by using such consonants is revealed. The system was analyzed by using different numbers of consonants and achieved the maximum (100%) SR rate using a fusion of only three consonants of the Arabic language. These consonants or their combinations can be used to develop text for any speaker-based authentication system.

Cues to stress in English spelling

Abstract How do skilled readers of English decide which syllable of a word to stress? In four behavioral studies, we examined this issue using disyllabic nonwords that varied in number of initial and final consonants. The tasks included oral reading of sentences that contained the nonwords, pronunciation of isolated nonwords, and metalinguistic judgments about stress. Contrary to the influential view within linguistics that onsets are irrelevant to stress assignment, the rate of first-syllable stress increased with the number of consonants in the onset of the first syllable. Also influential were the number of consonants at the end of the nonword, the presence of letter strings that are potential prefixes, and the syntactic context of the nonword in a sentence. In our final study, which involved 3061 English words with the same general structure as the nonwords in the experiments, we found that stress could be predicted with a high degree of accuracy based on the same factors that influenced performance in the behavioral studies. The results are consistent with a statistical-learning view of reading according to which skilled readers have internalized cues to stress that exist in the language but less consistent with Rastle and Coltheart’s (2000) rule-based model of stress assignment in nonword reading.

Речевое взаимодействие в триадах «мать—дизиготные близнецы» в 4—6-летнем возрасте детей

The longitudinal study of mother speech interaction with 4-6-years-old dizygotic twins (n=5 triads) was performed. The characteristics of maternal speech addressed to twins, characteristics of children’ speech development due to the order of the birth are investigated. The first-born child in pair have a higher level of speech development as compared to the second-born child by syntactic structure of sentences in dialogue, number of consonants, meanings of pitch in vowels. Correlation between characteristics of maternal speech and the level of twin’s speech development is revealed. When mothers interact with the second-born twins they stimulate them to communication more then the first-born twins.

The relations between phonotactics and speech rhythm in Czech

The main objective of this study is to explore the relationships between the phonotactic structure of the Czech stress-group and rhythm of speech. Three most frequent consonantal-vocalic (CV) structures of Czech two-syllable stress-groups were selected for the purpose of this study: CVCV, CVCCV, and CCVCV. In an auditory experiment, which contained the mutual comparison of stress-groups or the comparison of a stress-group and a low-frequency shadow of a stress-group, the respondents established how similar the rhythmic pattern of each couple of stress-groups sounded. The results indicate that the position of a consonantal cluster within the stress-group is the strongest phonotactic factor in perception of the rhythmic similarity. The number of consonants within a consonantal cluster and the presence of a long vowel in both stress-groups are considered weaker factors for perceiving the rhythmic similarity by the respondents. Possibilities for a follow-up research are proposed for the factors that did not reach statistical significance, i.e., the difference in sonority or voicing of consonants.

The Interaction of Poetic Text and Music in Opus 49 by J. Brahms

The Interaction of Poetic Text and Music in Opus 49 by J. Brahms

Reducing language to rhythm: Amazonian Bora drummed language exploits speech rhythm for long-distance communication.

Many drum communication systems around the world transmit information by emulating tonal and rhythmic patterns of spoken languages in sequences of drumbeats. Their rhythmic characteristics, in particular, have not been systematically studied so far, although understanding them represents a rare occasion for providing an original insight into the basic units of speech rhythm as selected by natural speech practices directly based on beats. Here, we analyse a corpus of Bora drum communication from the northwest Amazon, which is nowadays endangered with extinction. We show that four rhythmic units are encoded in the length of pauses between beats. We argue that these units correspond to vowel-to-vowel intervals with different numbers of consonants and vowel lengths. By contrast, aligning beats with syllables, mora or only vowel length yields inconsistent results. Moreover, we also show that Bora drummed messages conventionally select rhythmically distinct markers to further distinguish words. The two phonological tones represented in drummed speech encode only few lexical contrasts. Rhythm thus appears to crucially contribute to the intelligibility of drummed Bora. Our study provides novel evidence for the role of rhythmic structures composed of vowel-to-vowel intervals in the complex puzzle concerning the redundancy and distinctiveness of acoustic features embedded in speech.

Intuitions for phonological constraints in binomials: A psycholinguistic investigation

Binomials (e.g., spic and span; hanky-panky) are lexicalized sequences of two or more constituents whose irreversible order is determined by semantic and phonological factors (Benor and Levy, 2006; Cooper and Ross, 1975). As an extension of early psycholinguistic work (Pinker and Birdsong, 1979) the present experimental study examines speakers' sensitivities to proposed phonological constraints on constituent ordering in binomials. Intuitions for preferred constituent order by native English and French speakers, and those of advanced L2 English and L2 French speakers, were elicited with a computer-based judgment task, using pairs of nonsense sequences, structured in such a way that one expression conforms to a specific constraint, and the other violates it (e.g., rigster and ragster vs. *ragster and rigster). The constraints in question involve quality and number of consonants, and quality and length of vowels in constituent elements of binomials. Experimental results revealed that the intuitions of native English speakers were generally more in line with the proposed constraints than those of native French speakers. Further, the intuitions of advanced nonnative speakers of both languages were overall not significantly different from those of natives, suggesting that subtle nativelike sensitivities to the phonological constraints in question may be acquired. A planned analysis revealed that intuitions are similar for coordinated type (e.g., wheeling and dealing) and hyphenated (reduplicative) type (e.g., razzle-dazzle) items, a heretofore unexplored distinction. A further analysis showed that participants displayed sensitivities to vowel quality and coda complexity. The result partially concords with accounts on invariable word order that derive from principles of phonoiconicity and markedness (Birdsong, 1979; Sobkowiak, 1993).

Correlations between vocabulary and phonological acquisition: number of words produced versus acquired consonants.

To verify the probable correlations between the number of word types and the number of consonants in the general phonological system in children with typical language development. Study participants were 186 children aged one year and six months to five years, 11 months and 29 days who were monolingual Brazilian Portuguese speakers with typical language development. Data collection involved speech, language and hearing assessments and spontaneous speech recordings. Phonology was assessed with regard to the number of acquired consonants in the general phonological system, in each syllable structure and in Implicational Model of Feature Complexity (IMFC) levels. Vocabulary was assessed with regard to number of word types produced. These data were compared across age groups. After that, correlations between the word types produced and the variables established for the phonological system were analyzed. The significance level adopted was 5%. All phonological aspects evaluated presented gradual growth. Word types produced showed a similar behavior, though with a small regression at the age of five years. Different positive correlations occurred between the spoken word types and the variables analyzed in the phonological system. Only one negative correlation occurred with respect to the production of complex onset in the last age group analyzed. The phonology and vocabulary of the study participants present similar behaviors. There are many positive correlations between the word types produced and the different aspects of phonology, except regarding complex onset.

A multinomial logistic regression model for text in Albanian language

In this paper we present a multinomial logistic regression model for authorship identification in the Albanian language texts. In the model fitted the dependent variable is categorical which takes different values from 1 to 10 for each of the author and the independent variables are number of words, number of letters, number of vowels, number of consonants, number of punctuations and number of sentences for each text. The model was applied with success in the set of ten authors, each of them being represented by a set of one hundred texts they authored. As results first, second and the third authors have the higher correct predicted percentage and the highest overall correct predicted probability taken was 0.738. As conclusion adding in the model number of consonants, number of punctuations and number of sentences as independent variables the overall correct predicted percentage is increased.

Vowel Epenthesis in Arabic Loanwords in Hausa

<p>Vowel epenthesis is discussed in this paper as a phonological process utilized to avoid codas in Arabic loanwords in Hausa language in light of Optimality Theory (OT), as an analytical framework, even though this language permits codas in heavy syllables of the form CVC (Caron, 2011). This process results in having disyllabic, trisyllabic, or qadri-syllabic words (words with four syllables) depending on the forms of Arabic loanwords as well as mono-syllabic words with final bi-consonant clusters. This study primarily relies on extant literature including theses, books, articles. Furthermore, the authors’ intuition is crucially deemed the judge on the facts of the data . This paper concludes that codas in Arabic loanwords in Hausa motivate vowel epenthesis either once or twice, depending on the forms of words; i.e. disyllabic or monosyllabic. Also, the number of vowel insertion depends on the number of consonants in the coda postion, i.e. /CVCC/→ vowel epenthesis→ [CVC.C<strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">V</span></strong>] or [CV.C<strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">V</span></strong>.C<strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">V</span></strong>].</p>

Longer words or shorter words: Which one is more effective in distinguishing between self-identified gay and heterosexual male speakers?

Prior research demonstrated that listeners relied primarily on vowels to determine a male speaker’s sexual orientation (Tracy and Satariano, 2011). Additionally, listeners became more confident in their sexual orientation judgments if the utterance included more vowels (Tracy, 2013). Since multisyllabic utterances also contain more consonants, are listeners’ judgments based on the number of vowels or consonants in an utterance? To investigate this question, monosyllabic, bisyllabic, and trisyllabic words were selected. Within each group of words, the number of phones varied. For example, a trisyllabic word contained either seven phones (“division”) or nine phones (“contribute”). Listeners became more confident of the speaker’s sexual orientation if the word included more vowels. With respect to the monosyllabic and bisyllabic items, listeners were less confident if the number of consonants in the word increased. Ratings were more confident for “have” compared to “help”. The results for the trisyllabic words differed. Listeners became more confident if the word contained more consonants. “Contribute” resulted in more confident ratings than “division”. The results demonstrated that listeners were more confident in the speaker’s sexual orientation if the word included more vowels, but under certain conditions, confidence ratings did not improve if the utterance included additional consonants.

Word onset patterns and lexical stress in English

Theories of English phonology regard syllable onset patterns as irrelevant to the assignment of lexical stress. This paper describes three studies that challenge this position. Study 1 tested whether stress patterns on a large sample of disyllabic English words varied as a function of word onset. The incidence of trochaic stress increased significantly with the number of consonants in word onset position. This overall pattern was replicated when various subsets of the database were examined separately, thus demonstrating its robustness and generality. In Study 2, English speakers assigned trochaic stress to disyllabic pseudowords more often when they began with two consonants (e.g., “plonveen) rather than one (e.g., “ponveen”). Study 3 examined implications of these results for monosyllabic words and the rhythmic structure of English poetry. An analysis of Milton’s Paradise Lost found that monosyllabic words beginning with two consonants (e.g., “stay”) appeared in stressed positions in Milton’s verse more often than matched words beginning with one consonant (e.g., “say”). These studies indicate that syllable weight, and consequently word stress is affected by onset as well as rime structure.

Using Mnemonics to Increase Early Literacy Skills in Urban Kindergarten Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of an integrated mnemonics strategy on consonant letter naming and consonant sound production on three kindergarten students at-risk for academic failure. Flashcards were developed where the target capital letter was enhanced and imbedded as part of the known picture (e.g., the letter D as the doorknob on a door, the letter F as the flag and flagpole). The mnemonic strategy was assessed using a multiple baseline across students design. Results showed that all three students increased in both the number of consonants named and the number of consonant sounds produced. In addition, all three students maintained performance at the 1 and 3 week followup. Also, based on a pre- and post-assessment, 2 students demonstrated generalization to the ability to name words beginning with consonants letter-sound learned.