Word Position Research Articles

Study of vowel formant data using Gabmap: A pilot analysis of a Lithuanian dialect

Abstract The article reviews the possibilities of applying the web application Gabmap developed by researchers at the University of Groningen to the analysis of vowel formant data based on the results of the study of one Lithuanian dialect. The Western Aukštaitian dialect of Kaunas is traditionally considered the basis of Standard Lithuanian. The study was based on the data of 18 male speakers from six dialectal localities representing distinctive areas. The normalized mean values of the first two vowel formants (F1, F2) were analyzed in certain word positions illustrating distinguishing features, which were processed using Gabmap tools designed for analyzing numeric sequences. Gabmap tools most beneficial for the researchers of experimental phonetics along with the aspects of their application to research were emphasized in the study; it also underlined those tools the use of which requires additional application of other conventional methods of experimental sound analysis, such as sound spectrum analysis, planimetric models, etc. In the study of the Western Aukštaitian of Kaunas, the Gabmap analysis confirmed significant horizontal variation within the dialect area and foregrounded the most tightly related sites sharing the greatest number of common features in their vocalism.

Exploring the flexibility of word position encoding in Chinese reading: the role of transposition effects

ABSTRACT Previous research in the alphabetic writing system has demonstrated that transposition distance (adjacent vs. non-adjacent) modulates word position encoding during sentence reading. To examine the generality of this pattern within a more holistic model of sentence processing, we investigated this effect in the logographic Chinese writing system. We manipulated the number of words intervening between the transposed words, creating four conditions: none, one, two, and three intervening words. Participants performed a rapid grammaticality judgment task. Results showed longer response latencies and higher error rates when words were transposed adjacent to each other compared to non-adjacent transpositions. Furthermore, more errors and longer response times were observed when one word intervened between the transposed words compared to two or three intervening words. However, no significant differences emerged between the two- and three-word interval conditions. These findings suggest that word position encoding exhibits graded, flexible tolerance to transposition distance, constrained by proximity.

Piecewise convolutional neural network relation extraction with self-attention mechanism

The task of relation extraction in natural language processing is to identify the relation between two specified entities in a sentence. However, the existing model methods do not fully utilize the word feature information and pay little attention to the influence degree of the relative relation extraction results of each word. In order to address the aforementioned issues, we propose a relation extraction method based on self-attention mechanism (SPCNN-VAE) to solve the above problems. First, we use a multi-head self-attention mechanism to process word vectors and generate sentence feature vector representations, which can be used to extract semantic dependencies between words in sentences. Then, we introduce the word position to combine the sentence feature representation with the position feature representation of words to form the input representation of piecewise convolutional neural network (PCNN). Furthermore, to identify the word feature information that is most useful for relation extraction, an attention-based pooling operation is employed to capture key convolutional features and classify the feature vectors. Finally, regularization is performed by a variational autoencoder (VAE) to enhance the encoding ability of model word information features. The performance analysis is performed on SemEval 2010 task 8, and the experimental results show that the proposed relation extraction model is effective and outperforms some competitive baselines.

Identifying Acoustic Variability Patterns in Spoken English of Fricative Consonants Among Pakistani Native Punjabi Speakers

This study examines the phonological variance in English pronunciation among elementary students who regularly speak Punjabi. It focuses on the distinctions between the pronunciation of consonant fricatives and Received Pronunciation (RP). Using a quantitative approach, 50 elementary students proficient in Punjabi were selected from public sector schools using judgmental and purposive sampling techniques. Data were collected through audio recordings of fricatives /f/, /v/, /θ/, /ð/, /s/, /z/, /ʃ/, /ʒ/, and /h/ in various word positions. Analysis using PRAAT software assessed intensity and pitch. Results revealed significant variations in fricative intensity and pitch compared to RP. /f/ had greater intensity, /v/ was subdued, and dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ showed reduced intensity. /s/ and /z/ varied extensively, /ʃ/ and /ʒ/ were pronounced with lower intensity and pitch, and /h/ had diminished intensity. Recommendations for educators include focusing on intensity and pitch exercises, using PRAAT for feedback, and emphasizing accurate speech organ placement. This study underscores the need for tailored pronunciation guidance for Punjabi-speaking students. Future research should explore additional phonetic features and employ spectrographic analysis.

Improving Third Year English Students’ Translation of Text Genres by Using The Method of Comparing the Position of Words in Phrases or Sentences in the Text Genres

This article presents an action research study undertaken at the Faculty of Education, Souphanouvong University during the 2020-2021 academic year. The aim was to determine whether teaching a method of comparing the position of words in the source language (English) and the target language (Lao) could improve third-year English students’ translation of text genres, and whether they were able to learn new vocabulary using this procedure. The sample comprised the 19 students from class 3ENT who studied English as their major. Research instruments included a pre-test, post-test, and questionnaire. Both pre-test and post-test consisted of English to Lao and Lao to English translation, and the questionnaire included 12 closed and open-ended questions. For the experimental method of teaching-learning translation, specific instruction for comparing the position of words between English and Lao was provided for three hours, followed by further practice in translating text genres for two hours per week over 16 weeks. This was implemented in-class and online. Finally, the pre-test and post-test scores of the 19 students were compared to see the difference in students’ translation ability. SPSS version 20 was used to calculate all the data. The results of this study showed the mean of the pre-test was 13.5263 with SD = 5.30585, and the mean of the post-test was 28.5263 with SD = 5.95696, while the t-test = -8.652 and p = 0.000. Before learning this technique for translation, 37% of students did not know how to translate English phrases or sentences into the Lao language by themselves, 47% of them knew a few ways, and 16% of students knew and understood how to use many techniques by themselves. After the experimental method was taught, 63% of students felt they knew how to translate English to Lao by themselves. In addition, 84% of students indicated they could learn new vocabulary from text genres, while 16% said they could learn a little new vocabulary from them.

Flexible word position coding in reading: Roles for attention and memory.

Readers may fail to notice the error in 'Do love you me?': this is the recently established transposed-word (TW) phenomenon. Word position coding is a novel cognitive construct, and researchers are presently debating the underlying mechanisms. Here I investigated roles for attention and memory. Participants (N = 54) made grammaticality judgements to four-word sequences that formed correct sentences ('The man can run', 'The dog was here'), TW sentences ('The can man run', 'The was dog here'), or ungrammatical control sentences ('The man dog run', 'The was can here'). Sequences were replaced by post-masks after 200ms, and that post-mask was accompanied by a 50-ms retro-cue in the form of an 'X' presented at a critical location (where one could have locally inferred grammaticality; e.g., between the first and second word of 'The was dog here') or a non-critical location (e.g., between the third and fourth word of 'The was dog here'). TW sentences were harder to reject than control sentences - the classic TW effect - and crucially, this effect was modulated by cue validity, with valid cues attenuating TW effects compared to invalid cues. The present results suggest that focused attention aids the process of binding words to locations. Furthermore, as cues appeared after sentence offset, these results suggest that word position coding may take place in memory.

LEXICAL AND POST-LEXICAL PROSODIC DOCUMENTATION OF EMBALOH LANGUAGE

This research investigated the prosody of the Embaloh language, which has yet to be widely explored, to document and preserve the language. The method used is data collection of spontaneous and non-spontaneous speeches from 12 native speakers. Prosodic analysis was then carried out based on visualising and observing speech sound waves using the autosegmental-metrical theory (AM) framework. The results show that prominence tends to be on the right edge at both lexical and post-lexical prosodic levels. The findings show that the Embaloh language is outside the mainstream of Austronesian languages, which places word stress at the penultimate syllable. At the post-lexical level in interrogative intonation, phrases with a question word are marked by the pitch accent located at the target question word in the nuclear contour of the phrase. The pitch accent follows the position of the question word in the intonation phrase, forward or backward, with one of the following tones: H* (high), LH* (low-high), or LHL* (low-high-low). The intonation of the question is indicated by the H(high) tone at the end of the phrase. The H (high) tone also acts as a boundary tone represented by H*% (high).

Sounds of Lengilo based on the Swadesh List

The Lengilo is a small indigenous group who live in northern Sarawak and Malinau on Kalimantan Island of the Republic of Indonesia. They generally identify themselves as Lun Bawang in Sarawak and Lun Dayeh in Indonesia because of assimilation into these larger speech communities. This preliminary study examines phonetic aspects of the Lengilo language, focussing on vowels, consonants and diphthongs. To collect the data, a Swadesh list of 100 words was used. The informant interviewed was an 80-year-old native speaker of Lengilo. The results show that the Lengilo language has six types of consonants, three types of vowels and diphthongs. The six consonants are plosive, nasal, fricative, trill, lateral, and partial vowel. The Lengilo consonants do not occupy all the initial, middle and final positions of words. For example, velar plosive [g], alveolar fricative [s], glottal fricative [h], and lateral-alveolar [l]. The eight vowels in Lengilo are narrow front vowel [i], semi-narrow front vowels [e], semi-wide front vowels [ɛ], wide front vowels [a], semi-wide middle vowel [ə], narrow back vowel [u], semi-narrow back vowel [o], and semi-wide back vowel [ͻ]. The three types of diphthongs in Lengilo are [ai], [ui] and [oi]. The diphthong [ai] appears to be more productive than the diphthong [ui] and [oi] which are quite limited in number. The initial description of the Lengilo language is important for comparison with languages of indigenous groups in the Lun Bawang category.

Rapid Serial Visual Presentation of transposed-word sequences in the grammatical decision task: an examination of the roles of temporal and spatial cues to word order

ABSTRACT Transposing two words in a sentence (e.g. “cat” and “was” in “the white cat was big”) creates a sequence that is harder to classify as ungrammatical than control sequences (e.g. “the white was cat slowly”), suggesting that word position coding is noisy and can be affected by syntactic expectations. In the present research, this transposed-word effect was examined more closely using Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) formats which provided either clear temporal cues to word order but no spatial cues, or both types of cues. Compared to when all words were presented simultaneously, the two RSVP formats reduced the transposed-word effect to the same degree while having no parallel impact on another ungrammatical comparison condition involving no transposition. These results are discussed in the context of serial and parallel models of reading as well as models that propose a later processing stage for the locus of the transposed-word effect.

Iraqi Students' English Consonant Pronunciation Mistakes: An Analytical Study

In order to determine what kind of training is required for second language (L2) learners, it is helpful to diagnose the challenges they have with pronunciation. This study aimed to fill a gap in our understanding of Arab students' English pronunciation challenges by determining which English consonant phonemes and clusters Iraqi EFL students struggle with, and by exploring the ways in which the students' degrees of language proficiency impact their performance on these tests. The research included forty Iraqi female college students, twenty from each of two groups with varying degrees of English ability (20 from lower-intermediate to intermediate). A four-part productive pronunciation exam helped them see where they were going wrong while pronouncing certain clusters of consonants in different word positions. The participants' largest proportion of mistakes while pronouncing the following sounds were found in the data analysis: /ŋ/, /ʒ/, /p/, /ɹ/ and/ʧ/; /t/ and /d/ of the regular past tense morpheme -ed; and the three and four consonant clusters. In addition, students at the lower-intermediate level were more likely to make a mistake when pronouncing clusters and consonant sounds than those at the intermediate level. What's more, mistakes made by learners were more likely to vary in initial positions than in medial or final ones in words. According to the research, consonants which are located at the beginning or end of words are more likely to be problematic for pronunciation than those that are located in the middle of words.

A Graph-Based Keyword Extraction Method for Academic Literature Knowledge Graph Construction

In this paper, we construct an academic literature knowledge graph based on the relationship between documents to facilitate the storage and research of academic literature data. Keywords are an important type of node in the knowledge graph. To solve the problem that there are no keywords in some documents for several reasons in the process of knowledge graph construction, an improved keyword extraction algorithm called TP-CoGlo-TextRank is proposed by using word frequency, position, word co-occurrence frequency, and a word embedding model. By combining the word frequency and position in the document, the importance of words is distinguished. By introducing the GloVe word-embedding model, which brings the external knowledge of documents into the TextRank algorithm, and combining the internal word co-occurrence frequency in the documents, the word-adjacency relationship is transferred non-uniformly. Finally, the words with the highest scores are combined into phrases if they are adjacent in the original text. The validity of the TP-CoGlo-TextRank algorithm is verified by experiments. On this basis, the Neo4j graph database is used to store and display the academic literature knowledge graph, to provide data support for research tasks such as text clustering, automatic summarization, and question-answering systems.

Capturing word positions does help: A multi-element hypergraph gated attention network for document classification

Over the last few years, graph-based methods have manifested a significant enhancement in document mining applications such as spam detection, news recommendation, and legal document classification. However, existing graph-based methods have a limited ability to utilize word position and multi-element information within the documents, limiting their effectiveness in practical application. To mitigate this limitation, we propose a novel multi-element hypergraph gated attention network that can capture word position and multi-element information for accurate document classification. Specifically, a new multi-element hypergraph is first proposed to describe the word position, sentence, and full content within the document. Then, a new multi-element homogenization module is applied to mitigate heterogeneity of constructed hypergraph. Meantime, a new hypergraph gated attention module is proposed to filter noise in the constructed hypergraph and derive various element representations that incorporate word position information. Finally, a new block-wise read-out module is designed to fuse learned element representations into comprehensive document representations for classification. Extensive experiments conducted on several real-world datasets demonstrate that the proposed method not only outperforms related state-of-the-art methods but is also faster, making it suitable for a wide range of practical applications. For instance, our method achieved an accuracy improvement of 1.1 % over the best comparative method on some datasets while also operating at a faster speed. Additionally, it demonstrated an impressive 14 % improvement in accuracy over the well-known Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3.5 (GPT-3.5) on one dataset.

Перцептивно разпознаване на трайността на африкатите и фрикативите в сръбския език

The acoustic features are the phonetic system’s inherent features of the language. The characteristics of each speech sound have their variation field within which its realizations are perceived as typical. Sound is perceived as atypical pronunciation out-side the acoustic feature typical boundaries. The objectives of this study were to determine the boundaries on the typical/atypical basis of the identification functions of the probability of perceptual recognition of the duration and their comparison between voicing and voiceless speech sounds in the group of affricate and fricatives. Based on the analysis of the selected speech sounds: / c /, / č /, / dž /, / š /, / ž /, the boundaries of typical and atypical were defined, and they served for the synthesis of stimuli used in perceptive experiments. According to the given procedure, 6300 stimuli were formed. Then they presented to the listeners, who were asked to identify and mark the stimulus based on typical and atypical (extended/shortened) duration. The data analysis found the identification functions of the probability of perceptual recognition of the typical/atypical duration for the examined speech sounds at the initial position in words, by which the limits of the typical/atypical duration of the stated speech sounds were determined. The results have shown the existence of categorical perception through the emergence of a higher sensitivity of the perceptive mechanism to a reduction in duration (a greater inclination of the identification function of the probability of perceptual recognition of typical/atypical duration) than of prolonging the duration of the voice, which demonstrated that the label of duration could be a good indicator of deviation in articulation. In addition, it has been shown that there have been differences in the function of the probability of perceptual recognition of the duration of voicing and voiceless speech sounds, which explanation requires further research.

Phonological Variation of /r/ in Selected Arabic Dialects

The present study offers a descriptive examination of the Arabic phoneme /r/, renowned for its intricate and diverse nature within the Arabic phonological system. This research investigates the varied manifestations of the phoneme /r/ in different regional dialects, with a specific emphasis on its pronunciation in the initial, middle, and final positions of words. The paper's significance is rooted in its contribution to the comprehension of the Arabic /r/ phoneme, a multifaceted and diverse sound within Arabic phonological systems. The paper illuminates the phonetic variability of the /r/ by analyzing its distinct manifestations across diverse Arabic dialects and regions. This can potentially facilitate language acquisition and instruction. The investigation conducted by the authors pertains to the marked and unmarked characteristics of the phonological /r/ in Arabic. The population under investigation comprises a randomly selected group of Arabic-speaking individuals aged 18 years and older, encompassing both genders and hailing from diverse countries and regions. The study employs a descriptive-analytical methodology, utilizing a unique features matrix and the Audacity Sound Recording and Analysis Application to examine the gathered data. The findings of the research enhance the comprehension of the phonetic variability that typifies the Arabic /r/ phoneme and elucidate its manifestation in diverse contexts and geographical locations. Furthermore, the outcomes of this investigation hold significance for the domain of language education and acquisition, and the techniques utilized were designed to guarantee the precision and dependability of the gathered information.

Losing ground?: Towards a description of palatal lateral variation in Breton

Traditional Breton descriptions and grammars attest that [j] is an often-pronounced variant of /ʎ/ (Hemon, 1995), however, little is known about what factors influence this phoneme’s realization. This study aims to elucidate what linguistic and social factors affect Breton /ʎ/ pronunciations. Given that Breton new speakers are often militant in promoting Breton revitalization (Jones, 1995) and their pronunciations, unlike those of traditional speakers, are strongly influenced by French (Hornsby, 2015), we predicted new speakers will produce [j] more than traditional speakers. We elicited 125 tokens that contain /ʎ/ from eight Breton-speaking participants in a wordlist task—the only categorical [j]-producer was the sole traditional Breton speaker to participate. Focusing on new speakers, we use mixed-effects regression and find older speakers produce [ʎ] more often than younger speakers (p < 0.0001), and gender is not a significant predictor. For linguistic factors, word position does not play a significant role, but [j] is more frequent in intervocalic tokens when the following vowel is palatal (p = 0.0249). Although /ʎ/ variation does not exhibit effects of prestige, our results suggest a potential change in progress whereby [ʎ] is being lost in favor of [j] and is particularly gaining momentum intervocalically when the following vowel is palatal.

The velarized lateral [ɫ] in East Austrian base dialects

Abstract This paper is concerned with the velarized lateral [ɫ] as a possible realization of the lateral phoneme /l/ in the rural Central Bavarian base dialects of German in Austria. So far, velarized laterals in Austrian German have mainly been described as a socially marked realization of /l/ in Vienna. However, descriptions of Austrian dialects mostly lack detailed acoustic analyses. Therefore, we analyzed the first two formants of alveolar laterals from dialect speakers in seventeen locations around Vienna that fall into the Central and South Central Bavarian dialect areas. Recordings were taken from the ‘German in Austria’ Corpus, from four speakers per location (two old, two young, each one male, one female), with thirty-two items per speaker with laterals in word-initial and twenty-two in word-final position. We asked whether the degree of velarization as measured by the difference between F2 and F1 (the smaller the more velarized) depends on this linguistic factor of position in the word – as has been shown for other Germanic languages – or social factors including the recording location’s distance from Vienna, age and gender of the speakers. Results showed that velarization was most frequently but not exclusively found in the Eastern region closest to Vienna (Central Bavarian dialects). Non-velarized and velarized laterals tended towards a complementary distribution in initial versus final word position and male speakers showed more velarization overall. Specifically, old speakers in locations close to Vienna tended towards more velarization in word-initial position compared to other regions, matching descriptions of Viennese dialect.

Neural correlates of processing active and passive sentences: proficiency-dependent event-related potential evidence in Chinese English foreign language learners.

We explored whether and to what extent the neural mechanisms of second language sentence processing resemble those of native speakers by investigating the temporal dynamics of syntactic processing in terms of active or passive voice in reading English sentences by Chinese English Foreign Language (EFL) learners with high or low English proficiency. Participants were divided into two groups based on their proficiency levels in English. Three types of sentences (active, passive and ungrammatical) were presented to participants when their event-related potential responses were recorded at the verbs and the final words. The results showed that high-proficiency participants exhibited a greater anterior negativity at the verb position for ungrammatical sentences compared to active sentences. Furthermore, passive sentences elicited a larger frontal positivity than active sentences at the final word position. Additionally, greater P600 effects were observed for both passive and ungrammatical sentences than active sentences at the final word. The low-proficiency group exhibited a greater anterior negativity at the verb (but not the final word) position. In conclusion, these findings emphasize the role of proficiency as a modulating factor in the processing of English active and passive sentences among Chinese EFL learners. Furthermore, the processing of English active and passive sentences by these learners can be conceptualized as a three-stage process: prediction, correction and integration, representing the underlying cognitive mechanisms. This study provides novel insights into the understanding of the cognitive mechanism involved in second language sentence processing.

Neural correlates of compound head position in language control: Evidence from simultaneous production and comprehension

Abstract Compound words consist of two or more words which combine to form a single word or phrase that acts as one. In English, the head of compound words is usually, but not always, the right-most root (e.g., “paycheck” is a noun because the head, “check,” is a noun). The current study explores the effects of head position on language control by examining language switching performance through electroencephalography (EEG). Twenty-one pairs of Chinese (L1)–English (L2) bilinguals performed cued language switching in a simultaneous production and comprehension task. The results showed that bilinguals recognized the head position earlier both in production and comprehension. However, the language control of the head position during production occurred in the middle stage (N2), but in the late stage (LPC) during comprehension. These findings indicate that the head position in compound words exerts differential influences on language control.

Text clustering based on pre-trained models and autoencoders.

Text clustering is the task of grouping text data based on similarity, and it holds particular importance in the medical field. sIn healthcare, medical data clustering is a highly active and effective research area. It not only provides strong support for making correct medical decisions from medical datasets but also aids in patient record management and medical information retrieval. With the development of the healthcare industry, a large amount of medical data is being generated, and traditional medical data clustering faces significant challenges. Many existing text clustering algorithms are primarily based on the bag-of-words model, which has issues such as high dimensionality, sparsity, and the neglect of word positions and context. Pre-trained models are a deep learning-based approach that treats text as a sequence to accurately capture word positions and context information. Moreover, compared to traditional K-means and fuzzy C-means clustering models, deep learning-based clustering algorithms are better at handling high-dimensional, complex, and nonlinear data. In particular, clustering algorithms based on autoencoders can learn data representations and clustering information, effectively reducing noise interference and errors during the clustering process. This paper combines pre-trained language models with deep embedding clustering models. Experimental results demonstrate that our model performs exceptionally well on four public datasets, outperforming most existing text clustering algorithms, and can be applied to medical data clustering.

Boosting or inhibiting - how semantic-pragmatic and syntactic cues affect prosodic prominence relations in German.

In this exploratory study, we investigate the influence of several semantic-pragmatic and syntactic factors on prosodic prominence production in German, namely referential and lexical newness/givenness, grammatical role, and position of a referential target word within a sentence. Especially in terms of the probabilistic distribution of accent status (nuclear, prenuclear, deaccentuation) we find evidence for an additive influence of the discourse-related and syntactic cues, with lexical newness and initial sentence position showing the strongest boosting effects on a target word's prosodic prominence. The relative strength of the initial position is found in nearly all prosodic factors investigated, both discrete (such as the choice of accent type) and gradient (e.g., scaling of the Tonal Center of Gravity and intensity). Nevertheless, the differentiation of prominence relations is information-structurally less important in the beginning of an utterance than near the end: The prominence of the final object relative to the surrounding elements, especially the verbal component, is decisive for the interpretation of the sentence. Thus, it seems that a speaker adjusts locally important prominence relations (object vs. verb in sentence-final position) in addition to a more global, rhythmically determined distribution of prosodic prominences across an utterance.