Prosodic Grouping Research Articles

Characterizing Speech Errors Across Primary Progressive Apraxia of Speech Subtypes.

Apraxia of speech (AOS) is a motor speech disorder affecting articulatory planning and speech programming. When AOS is the sole manifestation of neurodegeneration, it is termed primary progressive apraxia of speech (PPAOS). Recent work has shown that there are distinct PPAOS subtypes: phonetic, prosodic, and those that do not clearly align with either (mixed). PPAOS subtypes differ with respect to the predominating motor speech difficulties, as well as disease progression and underlying pathology. Because past studies have determined PPAOS subtype based on clinical impression, the goal of the present study was to quantitatively determine the distribution of speech error types across PPAOS subtypes in a word repetition task and to investigate how word complexity affects the type and number of speech errors across PPAOS subtypes. Forty-five patients with PPAOS (13 phonetic, 23 prosodic, and nine mixed) and 45 healthy controls produced multiple repetitions of words that varied in phonetic complexity. Sound additions, deletions, and substitutions/distortions (phonetic errors) and within-word segmentations (prosodic errors) were calculated. All three PPAOS groups produced significantly more errors than controls, but the total number of errors was comparable among subtypes. The phonetic group produced more phonetic-type errors compared to the prosodic group but comparable to the mixed group. The prosodic group produced more segmentations compared to the phonetic and mixed PPAOS groups. As word complexity increased, the total number of errors increased for PPAOS patients. The phonetic and prosodic groups were more likely to produce phonetic- and prosodic-type errors, respectively, as word complexity increased. This study provides novel quantitative data showing that PPAOS subtype can be supported by the type and distribution of speech errors in a word repetition task. This may facilitate earlier, more reliable differential diagnosis and aid in disease prognosis, as PPAOS subtypes have distinct disease trajectories.

Longitudinal flortaucipir, metabolism and volume differ between phonetic and prosodic speech apraxia.

Progressive apraxia of speech (PAOS) is a neurodegenerative motor-speech disorder that most commonly arises from a four-repeat tauopathy. Recent studies have established that progressive apraxia of speech is not a homogenous disease but rather there are distinct subtypes: the phonetic subtype is characterized by distorted sound substitutions, the prosodic subtype by slow and segmented speech and the mixed subtype by a combination of both but lack of predominance of either. There is some evidence that cross-sectional patterns of neurodegeneration differ across subtypes, although it is unknown whether longitudinal patterns of neurodegeneration differ. We examined longitudinal patterns of atrophy on MRI, hypometabolism on 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose-PET and tau uptake on flortaucipir-PET in a large cohort of subjects with PAOS that had been followed for many years. Ninety-one subjects with PAOS (51 phonetic, 40 prosodic) were recruited by the Neurodegenerative Research Group. Of these, 54 (27 phonetic, 27 prosodic) returned for annual follow-up, with up to seven longitudinal visits (total visits analysed = 217). Volumes, metabolism and flortaucipir uptake were measured for subcortical and cortical regions, for all scans. Bayesian hierarchical models were used to model longitudinal change across imaging modalities with PAOS subtypes being compared at baseline, 4 years from baseline, and in terms of rates of change. The phonetic group showed smaller volumes and worse metabolism in Broca's area and the striatum at baseline and after 4 years, and faster rates of change in these regions, compared with the prosodic group. There was also evidence of faster spread of hypometabolism and flortaucipir uptake into the temporal and parietal lobes in the phonetic group. In contrast, the prosodic group showed smaller cerebellar dentate, midbrain, substantia nigra and thalamus volumes at baseline and after 4 years, as well as faster rates of atrophy, than the phonetic group. Greater hypometabolism and flortaucipir uptake were also observed in the cerebellar dentate and substantia nigra in the prosodic group. Mixed findings were observed in the supplementary motor area and precentral cortex, with no clear differences observed across phonetic and prosodic groups. These findings support different patterns of disease spread in PAOS subtypes, with corticostriatal patterns in the phonetic subtype and brainstem and thalamic patterns in the prosodic subtype, providing insight into the pathophysiology and heterogeneity of PAOS.

Competencia prosódica del alumnado bilingüe universitario en la lectura en voz alta: producción y percepción

The aim of this work is to analyze the prosodic competence of bilingual university students of the Basque Country in two areas of the oral language: production and perception. Once collected and studied the data in the production of reading aloud, perception tests are used in order to know the prosodic group best valued in reading aloud, for this an experimental investigation has been carried out based on the more general characteristics of the prosodic groups. 101 bilingual young people took part in the study. They read news aloud for further phonetic analysis. The result of the data obtained with a Chi-square test in tonal peaks shows that gender is statistically significant. In the case of perception, mother tongue affects significantly in assessing stimuli that are manipulated.

Individual Differences in Early Disambiguation of Prosodic Grouping.

Prosodic cues help to disambiguate incoming information in spoken language perception. In structurally ambiguous coordinate utterances, such as three-name sequences, the intended grouping is marked by three prosodic cues: F0-range, final lengthening, and pause. To indicate that the first two names are grouped together, speakers typically weaken the durational and tonal cues on the first name whereas they are strengthened on the second name, compared with a structure without internal grouping. The current study uses a gating paradigm to test whether listeners can decide about the internal grouping of a coordinate structure by already exploiting prosodic information on the first name. One hundred ninety-two stimuli were cut into seven parts (gates) and presented to naive participants (n = 45) successively (gate by gate) with increasing length of the utterance and amount of prosodic information. In a two-alternative forced-choice decision task, accuracy was above chance level after the second name. However, more than half of the participants could already reliably detect grouping patterns after the first name. These interindividual differences point toward the existence of different subgroups with diverging prosodic parsing strategies. Furthermore, listeners were sensitive to speaker-specific prosodic patterns. Depending on speaker-specific characteristics and individual parsing capacities, it seems possible-at least for a subgroup of listeners-to make predictions about the underlying grouping structure of coordinated name sequences based on early prosodic cues.

Overt and implicit prosody contribute to neurophysiological responses previously attributed to grammatical processing

Recent neurophysiological research suggests that slow cortical activity tracks hierarchical syntactic structure during online sentence processing. Here we tested an alternative hypothesis: electrophysiological activity peaks at constituent phrase as well as sentence frequencies reflect cortical tracking of overt or covert (implicit) prosodic grouping. Participants listened to series of sentences presented in three conditions while electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded. First, prosodic cues in the sentence materials were neutralized. We found an EEG spectral power peak elicited at a frequency that only ‘tagged’ covert, implicit prosodic change, but not any major syntactic constituents. In the second condition, participants listened to a series of sentences with overt prosodic grouping cues that either aligned or misaligned with the syntactic phrasing in the sentences (initial overt prosody trials). Following each overt prosody trial, participants were presented with a second series of sentences lacking overt prosodic cues (instructed prosody trial) and were instructed to imagine the prosodic contour present in the previous, overt prosody trial. The EEG responses reflected an interactive relationship between syntactic processing and prosodic tracking at the frequencies of syntactic constituents (sentences and phrases): alignment of syntax and prosody boosted EEG responses, whereas their misalignment had an opposite effect. This was true for both overt and imagined prosody conditions. We conclude that processing of both overt and covert prosody is reflected in the frequency-tagged neural responses at sentence constituent frequencies. These findings need to be incorporated in any account that aims to identify neural markers reflecting syntactic processing.

ИЗСЛЕДВАНЕ НА КАЗУС: РИТЪМ И ИНТОНАЦИЯ НА КОПУЛАТИВЕН ТИП ПРОСТИ ИЗРЕЧЕНИЯ

The study is focused on the rhythmic and intonational characteristics of simple sentences with the copulative verb to be. The adopted experimental protocol consists of the processing of a corpus of simple sentences collected under the project Rhythm and Intonation of the Bulgarian Sentence (МУ21-ФлФ-013), using Speech Analyzer 3.1, followed by analysis of their melodic graphs and spectrograms with a focus on the pro-sodic grouping of the phrases. The number and type of prosodic units are studied, as well as the type of prosodic grouping in the verb phrase of the copulative verb to be. Keywords: rhythm, intonation, prosody, copulative verb, simple sentences

Assessing the prosodic licensing of wh-in-situ in Japanese

The relationship between syntactic structure and prosodic structure has received increased theoretical attention in recent years. Richards (2010) proposes that Japanese allows wh-elements to stay in-situ because of a certain aspect of its prosodic system. Specifically, in contrast to some other languages like English, Japanese can prosodically group wh-elements together with their licensers. This prosodic grouping is phonetically signaled by eradication or reduction of the lexical pitch accents of intervening words. In this theory, a question still remains as to whether each syntactic derivation is checked against its phonetic realization, or what allows Japanese wh-elements to stay in-situ is more abstract phonological prosodic structure, whose phonetic manifestations can potentially be variable. This paper reports an experiment which addressed this question, by testing whether there is eradication or reduction of lexical pitch accents based on the detailed analyses of F0 contours. Our analysis makes use of a computational toolkit that allows us to assess the presence of tonal targets on a token-by-token basis. The results demonstrate that almost all speakers produce some wh-sentences which show reduction or eradication of the lexical pitch accents, as well as some that do not. Those tokens that show reduction or eradication directly support the prediction of Richard’s (2010) theory. The variability observed in the results suggest that the property of Japanese that allows their wh-elements to stay in-situ must be abstract, phonological prosodic structure, whose phonetic realizations can vary within and across speakers. We discuss several possible mechanisms through which such phonetic variation can arise. (Less)

Polar responses in Russian across modalities and across interfaces

abstract: This paper investigates gestures and prosody in polar responses in Russian as part of a larger research program of studying meaning as it is expressed through various channels and constrained at various levels of representation and their interfaces. Based on the data on head nods and a gestural–intonational cluster used to question the rationale behind the antecedent speech act in Russian responses, it argues that gestures and intonational contours should be treated on a par with spoken words and their parts when it comes to fitting them into typologies of meaning-encoding expressions in spoken language. It also shows, based on the data on linear placement of gestural and spoken polarity markers in Russian as well as prosodic grouping in Russian (and English) polar responses, that studying gestural content and prosodic properties of utterances can help us reveal various interface constraints in natural language.

Exploring the Similarity Between Implicit and Explicit Prosody: Prosodic Phrasing and Individual Differences.

In recent years, work carried out in the context of the implicit prosody hypothesis (IPH) has called into question the assumption that implicit (i.e., silently generated) prosody and explicit (overtly produced) prosody are similar in form. Focusing on prosodic phrasing, the present study explored this issue using an individual differences approach, and using methods that do not rely on the sentence comprehension tests characteristic of work within the IPH program. A large group of native English speakers participated in a production experiment intended to identify individual differences in average prosodic phrase length, phonologically defined. We then explored whether these (explicit) prosodic differences were related to two other kinds of variation, each with a connection to implicit prosody. First, we tested whether individual differences in explicit prosodic phrase length were predicted by individual differences in working memory capacity, a relationship that has been established for implicit prosody. Second, we explored whether participants' explicit prosodic phrase lengths were predictive of their behavior in a silent-reading task in which they had to identify their own implicit prosodic groupings. In both cases, the findings are argued to be consistent with a similarity between explicit and implicit prosody. First, participants with higher working memory capacity (as estimated by reading spans) were associated with longer prosodic phrases. Second, participants who produced longer explicit prosodic phrases in speech tended to report generating longer prosodic phrases in silent reading. Implications for the nature of implicit prosody, and how it can be studied, are discussed.

Temporal Coordination and Prosodic Structure in Autism Spectrum Disorder: Timing Across Speech and Non-speech Motor Domains.

Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often exhibit disordered speech prosody, but sources of disordered prosody remain poorly understood. We explored patterns of temporal alignment and prosodic grouping in a speech-based metronome repetition task as well as manual coordination in a drum tapping task among Cantonese speakers with ASD and normal nonverbal IQ and matched controls. Results indicate similar group results for prosodic grouping patterns, but significant differences in relative timing and longer syllable durations at phrase ends for the ASD group. Variability on the speech task was significantly correlated with variability on the drumming task, consistent with the view that impairment in both speech and non-speech motor domains can be linked with deficits in temporal processing.

Is prosodic information alone sufficient for guiding early grammatical acquisition?

An infant perceptual experiment investigated the role of prosody. All-nonsense-word sentences (e.g., Guin felli crale vur ti gosine), each in structure 1 ([[Determiner + Adjective + Noun] [Verb + Determiner + Noun]]) and structure 2 ([[Determiner + Noun] [Verb + Preposition + Determiner + Noun]]), were recorded (by mimicking real-word French sentences) with disambiguating prosodic groupings matching the two major constituents. French-learning 20- and 24-month-olds were familiarized with either structure 1 or structure 2. All infants were tested with noun-use trials (e.g., Le crale "the crale-Noun") versus verb-use trials (Tu crales "You crale-Verb"). Structure-2-familiarized infants, but not structure-1-familiarized infants, discriminated the test trials, demonstrating that prosody alone guides verb categorization. Noun categorization requires determiners, as shown in earlier work [S. Massicotte-Laforge and R. Shi, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 138(4), EL441-EL446 (2015)].

The role of language means in exerting a manipulative impact on the audience (on the example of BBC radio text)

The article touches upon the concept of manipulation, its basic characteristics, and its role in the modern informational society. The authors point out that alongside the informational function, media texts carry out the pragmatic function, namely, they manipulate the public opinion. According to the authors, manipulation is a more negative than positive phenomenon. Besides, there is a definition of radiotext and some considerations concerning its specific features as compared to other types of mediatexts, namely, wide audience, no video, but only audio, etcetera. British Broadcasting Corporation radiotexts have been chosen by the authors as the object of analysis. The authors have considered some historical aspects that determine the manipulative character of radio news. Also, special attention is paid to their structural and linguistic (grammatical, lexical, prosodic) features which are aimed at forming listeners’ opinion about current events. A number of examples from radiotexts are given and their analysis is conducted. The authors state that alongside the text structure and the choice of material itself much attention should be paid to linguistic means, among which prosody is of the greatest importance. Such elements of prosody as tempo, loudness, the use of various tones in final and non-final prosodic groups and the speaker’s timber influence the audience view of the world and draw the listeners’ attention to particular aspects. At the end of the article the authors make a conclusion that taking into consideration the specific features of radiotexts, linguistic, mainly prosodic means play the leading role in the process of manipulation.

The Prosodic Characteristics of Non-referential Co-speech Gestures in a Sample of Academic-Lecture-Style Speech.

Many studies have documented a close timing relationship between speech prosody and co-speech gesture, but some studies have not, and it is unclear whether these differences in speech-gesture alignment are due to different speaking tasks, different target gesture types, different prosodic elements, different definitions of alignment, or even different languages/speakers. This study contributes to the ongoing effort to elucidate the precise nature of the gesture–speech timing relationship by examining an understudied variety of American English, i.e., academic-lecture-style speech, with a focus on an understudied type of gesture: Non-Referential gestures, which make up the majority of this corpus. Results for the 1,334 Stroke-Defined Gestures in this 20-min sample suggest that the stroke phase of a Non-Referential gesture tends to align with a pitch-accented syllable, just as reported in studies of other gesture types (e.g., deictic gestures) and in other speaking styles (such as narration). Preliminary results are presented suggesting that trajectory shapes of these Non-Referential gestures are consistent across a higher-level prosodic grouping, supporting earlier proposals for kinematic constancy across spoken prosodic constituents (Kendon, 1972, 1980, 2004). Analysis also raises the possibility that the category of Non-Referential gestures is not solely made up of ‘beats,’ defined as simple bi-phasic flick-like movements that beat out the rhythm of the speech, but includes gestures with multiple phases and various types of rhythmicity. Taken together, the results of this analysis suggest (1) a wide range of gesture configurations within the undifferentiated category of Non-Referential gestures or ‘beats,’ which requires further investigation, and (2) a close coordination between co-speech gestures and the prosodic structure of spoken utterances across speaking styles and gesture referentiality, which has profound implications for modeling the process of planning an utterance.

Metrical Grouping and Cliticisation in Middle Dutch: Evidence From Verse

AbstractThe syntax‐phonology mapping is rarely isomorphic. In Germanic, there is a strong tendency for weak (function) words to encliticise rather than to procliticise. Synchronic and diachronic evidence of encliticisation is available from a number of West and North Germanic languages (cf. Lahiri & Plank ). Our goal was to examine metrical grouping in Middle Dutch iambic and trochaic verse, in conjunction with orthographic contractions. Two of our texts, Mellibeus and Saladijn, are from Ms Marshall 29 (c. 1375) and the Lutgart (c. 1300). We asked, to what extent are orthographic contractions isomorphic with cliticisation, and how do they interact with metrical grouping? Furthermore, a close examination of the metre showed, that when properly scanned orthographic sequences of function words need not represent regular cliticisation patterns. First, words can be broken up in prosodic grouping and this holds also for orthographic contractions of function and/or lexical words (alsic < als ic) or (laetti < laet ghi). Second, contractions may not reflect cliticisation. They can be split across feet and the second element can be head of a foot; e.g. dade ic > dadic where ic can head the trochaic foot. Finally, we find that encliticisation is preferred to procliticisation in verse.

Detection of Sentence Modality on French Automatic Speech-to-text Transcriptions

This article analyzes the detection of sentence modality in French when it is applied on automatic speech-to-text transcriptions. Two sentence modalities are evaluated (questions and statements) using prosodic and linguistic information. The linguistic features consider the presence of discriminative interrogative patterns and two log-likelihood ratios of the sentence being a question rather than a statement: one based on words and the other one based on part-of-speech tags. The prosodic features are based on duration, energy and pitch features estimated over the last prosodic group of the sentence. The classifiers based on linguistic features outperform the classifiers based on prosodic features. The combination of linguistic and prosodic features gives a slight improvement on automatic speech transcriptions, where the correct classification performance reaches 72%. A detailed analysis shows that small errors in the determination of the segment boundaries are not critical.

Comparing two types of explicit pronunciation instructions on second language accentedness

Jang, Juhyun and Junkyu Lee. 2015. Comparing two types of explicit pronunciation instructions on second language accentedness. Linguistic Research 32 (Special Edition), 15-32. This study aims to compare the effect of two types of explicit pronunciation instructions, i.e., explicit prosody (EP) instruction and explicit segmental (ES) instruction, on second language (L2) accentedness. This study used a pretest-treatment-posttest design. Sixty two Korean EFL 5 th and 6 th graders of comparable English proficiency were randomly assigned into three groups (i.e., EP instruction group, ES instruction group, and Control group). Prior to pronunciation-focused activities, English teachers taught explicit linguistic information to the EP instruction group and the ES instruction group. The control group participated in a meaning-oriented activity in which explicit linguistic instruction was not provided. The instructions lasted for five weeks. The improvement of accentedness by each group was estimated by the performance of a reading task in which participants were asked to read aloud a series of narrative sentences. From the recorded data of the learners, foreign accents and pitch accents were analyzed into the sequential phases: a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed posttest. Repeated measure ANOVA analyses revealed that the EP instruction group yielded a strong improvement of L2 accentedness (i.e., foreign accent and prosodic grouping with accent types: pitch accent, phrase accent, and intonational boundary) while the ES instruction group showed the positive results in relation to L2 accentendess as well. (Hankuk University of Foreign Studies)

Executives' speech expressiveness: analysis of perceptive and acoustic aspects of vocal dynamics.

To analyze speech expressiveness in a group of executives based on perceptive and acoustic aspects of vocal dynamics. Four male subjects participated in the research study (S1, S2, S3, and S4). The assessments included the Kingdomality test to obtain the keywords of communicative attitudes; perceptive-auditory assessment to characterize vocal quality and dynamics, performed by three judges who are speech language pathologists; perceptiveauditory assessment to judge the chosen keywords; speech acoustics to assess prosodic elements (Praat software); and a statistical analysis. According to the perceptive-auditory analysis of vocal dynamics, S1, S2, S3, and S4 did not show vocal alterations and all of them were considered with lowered habitual pitch. S1: pointed out as insecure, nonobjective, nonempathetic, and unconvincing with inappropriate use of pauses that are mainly formed by hesitations; inadequate separation of prosodic groups with breaking of syntagmatic constituents. S2: regular use of pauses for respiratory reload, organization of sentences, and emphasis, which is considered secure, little objective, empathetic, and convincing. S3: pointed out as secure, objective, empathetic, and convincing with regular use of pauses for respiratory reload and organization of sentences and hesitations. S4: the most secure, objective, empathetic, and convincing, with proper use of pauses for respiratory reload, planning, and emphasis; prosodic groups agreed with the statement, without separating the syntagmatic constituents. The speech characteristics and communicative attitudes were highlighted in two subjects in a different manner, in such a way that the slow rate of speech and breaks of the prosodic groups transmitted insecurity, little objectivity, and nonpersuasion.

Prosodic patterning in distal speech context: Effects of list intonation and f0 downtrend on perception of proximal prosodic structure

Prosodic structure is often perceived as exhibiting regularities in the patterning of tone sequences or stressed syllables. Recently, prosodic regularities in the distal (non-local) context have been shown to influence the perceived prosodic constituency of syllables. Three experiments tested the nature of distal prosodic patterns influencing perceptions of prosodic structure, using eight-syllable items ending in ambiguous lexical structures (e.g., tie murder bee, timer derby). For distinct combinations of distal fundamental frequency (f0) and/or timing cues, two patterns were resynthesized on the initial five syllables of experimental items; these were predicted to favor prosodic grouping of final syllables such that listeners would hear a final disyllabic or monosyllabic word, respectively. Results showed distal prosodic patterning affected perceived prosodic constituency when (1) patterns consisted of regularity in timing cues, f0 cues, or both (Experiments 1–2); (2) items ended with either a low–high (Experiment 1) or a high–low (Experiment 2) tonal pattern; and (3) tonal patterns consisted of alternating low and high-pitched syllables with progressive f0 decrease, i.e., a ‘downtrend’ (Experiment 3). The results reveal that a variety of prosodic patterns in the distal context can influence perceived prosodic constituency and thus lexical processing, and provide a perceptually-motivated explanation for the organization of acoustic speech input into prosodic constituents.

Effects of compatible versus competing rhythmic grouping on errors and timing variability in speech.

In typical speech words are grouped into prosodic constituents. This study investigates how such grouping interacts with segmental sequencing patterns in the production of repetitive word sequences. We experimentally manipulated grouping behavior using a rhythmic repetition task to elicit speech for perceptual and acoustic analysis to test the hypothesis that prosodic structure and patterns of segmental alternation can interact in the production planning process. Talkers produced alternating sequences of two words (top cop) and non-alternating controls (top top and cop cop), organized into six-word sequences. These sequences were further organized into prosodic groupings of three two-word pairs or two three-word triples by means of visual cues and audible metronome clicks. Results for six speakers showed more speech errors in triples, that is, when pairwise word alternation was mismatched with prosodic subgrouping in triples. This result suggests that the planning process for the segmental units of an utterance interacts with the planning process for the prosodic grouping of its words. It also highlights the importance of extending commonly used experimental speech elicitation methods to include more complex prosodic patterns, in order to evoke the kinds of interaction between prosodic structure and planning that occur in the production of lexical forms in continuous communicative speech.

Standing alone with prosodic help

Two partially independent issues are addressed in two auditory rating studies: under what circumstances is a sub-string of a sentence identified as a stand-alone sentence, and under what circumstances do globally ill-formed but ‘locally coherent’ analyses emerge? A new type of locally coherent structure is established in Experiment 1, where a that-less complement clause is at least temporarily analysed as a stand-alone sentence when it corresponds to a prosodic phrase. In Experiment 2, reduced relative-clause structures like those in studies by Tabor and colleagues were investigated. As in Experiment 1, the root sentence (mis-)analyses emerged most frequently when the locally coherent clause corresponded to a prosodic phrase. However, a substantial number of locally coherent analyses emerged even without prosodic help, especially in examples with for-datives (which do not grammatically permit a reduced relative-clause structure for some speakers). Overall, the results suggest that prosodic grouping of constituents encourages analysis of a sub-string as a root sentence, and raise the question of whether all local coherence structures involve analysis of an utterance-final sub-string as a root sentence.