Russian Listeners Research Articles

Frequency tagging of syntactic structure or lexical properties; a registered MEG study

A traditional view on sentence comprehension holds that the listener parses linguistic input using hierarchical syntactic rules. Recently, physiological evidence for such a claim has been provided by Ding et al.’s (2016) MEG study that demonstrated, using a frequency-tagging paradigm, that regularly occurring syntactic constituents were spontaneously tracked by listeners. Even more recently, this study's results have been challenged as artifactual by Frank and Yang (2018) who successfully re-created Ding's results using a distributional semantic vector model that relied exclusively on lexical information and did not appeal to any hierarchical syntactic representations. The current MEG study was designed to dissociate the two interpretations of Ding et al.’s results. Taking advantage of the morphological richness of Russian, we constructed two types of sentences of different syntactic structure; critically, this was achieved by manipulating a single affix on one of the words while all other lexical roots and affixes in the sentence were kept the same. In Experiment 1, we successfully verified the intuition that due to almost complete lexical overlap the two types of sentences should yield the same activity pattern according to Frank and Yang’s (2018) lexico-semantic model. In Experiment 2, we recorded Russian listeners' MEG activity while they listened to the two types of sentences. Contradicting the hierarchical syntactic account and consistent with the lexico-semantic one, we observed no difference across the conditions in the way participants tracked the stimuli properties. Corroborated by other recent evidence, our findings show that peaks interpreted by Ding et al. as reflecting higher-level syntactic constituency may stem from non-syntactic factors.

Acoustic and Perceptual Features of the Emotional Speech of Adolescents Aged 14–16 Years

The goal of the study was to describe perceptual and acoustic characteristics of emotional spontaneous speech of adolescents aged 14–16 years. 18 adolescents aged 14–16 years (9 boys and 9 girls, three people in each age) were participants. Perceptual analysis of speech of children by adults (70 Russian speakers and 70 speakers of other languages) was conducted to define the emotional state via voice and speech characteristics. Instrumental and linguistic analysis was used to determine acoustic features and linguistic information on which listeners rely while recognizing the adolescents’ state. It was shown that listeners had difficulty in recognizing the emotional state of adolescents, but Russian-speaking listeners recognized the emotional state better (26% of phrases recognized with probability 0.75–1.0) than speakers of other languages. Adults recognized comfort better than discomfort, Russian listeners better than foreigners. Russian listeners are likely to rely on acoustic and linguistic information, speakers of other languages – on acoustic features of adolescents’ speech. Phrases uttered in comfort are characterized by a wider pitch range vs. phrases uttered in the neutral state. It was revealed that the phrases of girls uttered in comfort have significantly higher average pitch values vs. discomfort. There were no significant differences between boys and girls in acoustic characteristics of emotional speech. Phrase duration and pitch range values can be included in automatic recognition systems of the speaker’s emotional state via speech as additional informative features. The paper discusses the specificity of emotion manifestation in adolescents and the possibility of further use of the results.

Influence of L1 Background on Categorical Perception of Mandarin Tones by Russian and Vietnamese Listeners

This study investigated the influence of L1 background on categorical perception of lexical tones by three language groups, namely native Mandarin, Russian and Vietnamese listeners. Tone identification and discrimination scores of two tone continua (T1-T2 and T1-T4) were measured for each participant. Results showed that the two tone language groups, i.e., Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners, perceived both tone continua categorically whereas the non-tone language group, i.e., Russian listeners, did not. More specifically, while the Russian group exhibited significantly broader identification boundaries and performed near chance level in discrimination tasks, the Mandarin and Vietnamese groups presented sharp slopes in identification curves and corresponding discrimination peaks at the cross-boundary positions. Moreover, Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners showed slightly different discrimination curves, which could be attributed to the effect of their different tone inventories. The current findings suggest that native tone language background, to some extent, can facilitate non-native tone perception.

Perceptual attention as the locus of transfer to nonnative speech perception

One’s native language (L1) is known to influence the development of a nonnative language (L2) at multiple levels, but the nature of L1 transfer to L2 perception remains unclear. This study explored the hypothesis that transfer effects in perception come from L1-specific processing strategies, which direct attention to phonetic cues according to their estimated relative functional load (RFL). Using target languages that were either familiar (English) or unfamiliar (Korean), perception of unreleased final stops was tested in L1 English listeners and four groups of L2 English learners whose L1s differ in stop phonotactics and the estimated RFL of a crucial cue to unreleased stops (i.e., vowel-to-consonant formant transitions). Results were, overall, consistent with the hypothesis, with L1 Japanese listeners showing the poorest perception, followed by L1 Mandarin, Russian, English, and Korean listeners. Two exceptions occurred with Russian listeners, who underperformed Mandarin listeners in identification of English stops and outperformed English listeners in identification of Korean stops. Taken together, these findings support a cue-centric view of transfer based on perceptual attention over a direct phonotactic view based on structural conformity. However, transfer interacts with prior L2 knowledge, which may result in significantly different perceptual consequences for a familiar and an unfamiliar L2.

ЭЛИЗИЯ И ЭЛЛИПСИС В РЕЧИ ДЕТЕЙ ТРЁХ ЛЕТ

The current paper focuses on the results of acoustic and perceptual study of elision in the speech of twenty Russian 3-year-olds. 5600 consonant and 2960 vowel tokens in words pronounced in isolation were studied. /lʲ/ and /r/ consonant elisions were among the most frequent. In most cases it was syncope while apocope was much less frequent. Forelingual consonant elisions occurred more often, linguopalatal /j/ and velar consonant elisions were not found. Much more often than eliding, children preferred to substitute «inconvenient» consonants. Vowel elision was not found in the experimental material. Generally, adult Russian listeners could not reconstruct the omitted consonants in the words they listened to, therefore this should be considered phonological elision.

The Ethnic Component in the Russian Mass Music

The article is devoted to an actual problem of the mass musical culture — implementation of folklore material into the mass music fi eld of view. The process of commercialization and “massifi cation” of folklore is accompanied by disappearance of indigenous ethnic traditions and inclusion some of their means of expressiveness into the global, supranational cultural space. The phenomenon of ethnica is regarded as an important participant of the modern popular music industry. The author attempts to classify the ethnic segment, on the basis of a number of parameters: its closeness to/distance from the folklore original, its geographic and stylistic background (jazz, rock, pop). It is noted that the interest in ethnic style was a reaction to the growing integration trends in the world masscult practice and indicated the need to overcome the internal unilateralism and certain stylistic uniformity of the world pop scene. As a result, the Slavic, gypsy and oriental styles, native for the Russian mass music, were complemented by the celtica, latina, reggae, balkanism, and other “alien” styles. With all this, the most creative approach to the folk material is realized by jazz and rock musicians, while the eth-no-pop is limited to certain elements of folklore, used as an original colorful material. The article investigates the mechanisms of implementation of the “alien” traditions into the auditory experience of Russian listeners. There is put out a hypothesis about further dissolution of ethnicity in the popular music, which is adequate to the current multicultural processes.

Acoustic–Phonetic Versus Lexical Processing in Nonnative Listeners Differing in Their Dominant Language

Nonnative listeners have difficulty recognizing English words due to underdeveloped acoustic-phonetic and/or lexical skills. The present study used Boothroyd and Nittrouer's (1988)j factor to tease apart these two components of word recognition. Participants included 15 native English and 29 native Russian listeners. Fourteen and 15 of the Russian listeners reported English (ED) and Russian (RD) to be their dominant language, respectively. Listeners were presented 119 consonant-vowel-consonant real and nonsense words in speech-spectrum noise at +6 dB SNR. Responses were scored for word and phoneme recognition, the logarithmic quotient of which yielded j. Word and phoneme recognition was comparable between native and ED listeners but poorer in RD listeners. Analysis of j indicated less effective use of lexical information in RD than in native and ED listeners. Lexical processing was strongly correlated with the length of residence in the United States. Language background is important for nonnative word recognition. Lexical skills can be regarded as nativelike in ED nonnative listeners. Compromised word recognition in ED listeners is unlikely a result of poor lexical processing. Performance should be interpreted with caution for listeners dominant in their first language, whose word recognition is affected by both lexical and acoustic-phonetic factors.

SUBJECTIVE CRITERIA OF SELF-ACTIVITY CONTROL OF THE RUSSIAN AND SLOVENIAN MANAGERS: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCE

Aim . The results of the first stage of the Russian-Slovenian crosscultural research are provided in the present article; the purpose is identification of the key factors that have an impact on the choice of control criteria of a management activity by the Russian and Slovenian leaders. Methods . Empirical information acquisition was made on the basis of the questionnaire «Subjective criteria of monitoring of activities performance» by G. Miroljubova and F. Ismagilova. The correlation analysis using nonparametric criteria (Kendall’s tau-b and Spearman’s rho), Mann – Whitney U-test and a method of descriptive statistics were used to process the received results of the research. Calculation of data was performed by means of a software package SPSS Statistics 17,0. Results . The research unit which is stated in the publication has comparative character and includes three stages. The difference of managers’ positions in Russia and Slovenia concerning self-checking of managerial activities was studied at the first stage. When researching the Russian managerial activity, listeners and graduates of the Presidential program of preparation of a managerial personnel provided by the Business School of the Ural State Federal University named after B. N. Yeltsin (Ekaterinburg) were engaged. The research has showed that both groups of measurable and weakly-measurable parameters are equally presented in the structure of subjective control criteria among managers. The significant differences are revealed between average values of the measured criteria of all types (natural, binary, criteria of a ratio and fitting) in the Russian (56,11) and Slovenian (60,39) samples. Scientific novelty . Activities control is a capability of a person to influence on the process and result of own work that is an extremely important aspect of professional competence of leading experts and managers. This aspect should be considered in programs of managerial professional training; unfortunately, it is poorly considered when training the Russian managers. The research confirmed and expanded theoretical theses on national cultural differences in managerial processes of work evaluation efficiency. Practical significance. The proposed diagnostic model which has confirmed its practical consistency, and the questionnaire developed on its basis can be considered as working tools for monitoring of the content of activity and measurement of indicators of its control among managers of various organizations. The results of diagnostics can serve as the material for correction of educational programs for training of managers in higher educational institutions, and the academic content of further vocational training courses.

Development of the Russian matrix sentence test

Objective: To develop the Russian matrix sentence test for speech intelligibility measurements in noise. Design: Test development included recordings, optimization of speech material, and evaluation to investigate the equivalency of the test lists and training. For each of the 500 test items, the speech intelligibility function, speech reception threshold (SRT: signal-to-noise ratio, SNR, that provides 50% speech intelligibility), and slope was obtained. The speech material was homogenized by applying level corrections. In evaluation measurements, speech intelligibility was measured at two fixed SNRs to compare list-specific intelligibility functions. To investigate the training effect and establish reference data, speech intelligibility was measured adaptively. Study sample: Overall, 77 normal-hearing native Russian listeners. Results: The optimization procedure decreased the spread in SRTs across words from 2.8 to 0.6 dB. Evaluation measurements confirmed that the 16 test lists were equivalent, with a mean SRT of − 9.5 ± 0.2 dB and a slope of 13.8 ± 1.6%/dB. The reference SRT, − 8.8 ± 0.8 dB for the open-set and − 9.4 ± 0.8 dB for the closed-set format, increased slightly for noise levels above 75 dB SPL. Conclusions: The Russian matrix sentence test is suitable for accurate and reliable speech intelligibility measurements in noise.

Perception of incompletely neutralized voicing cues in word-final obstruents: The role of differences in production context

AbstractExperimental data on final devoicing in languages such as German and Russian usually show that speakers produce incompletely neutralized acoustic differences between words ending in phonologically voiced versus voiceless obstruents (e.g., /kod/ ‘code’ vs. /kot/ ‘cat’ in Russian) and that listeners can use these differences to identify the underlying specification of final consonants at an above-chance level. The current study examines how the seemingly successful perceptual identification of voicing varies across stimulus items recorded in reading vs. non-reading procedures and with and without full minimal pairs present in the experimental list. Results of a series of identification tasks reveal that Russian listeners’ identification responses are more in line with underlying voicing for the stimuli recorded during word-reading and with minimal pairs included among the experimental items. This shows that voicing judgments are strongly influenced by the acoustic differences produced when speakers encounter orthographic forms or lexical competition. At the same time, perceptual neutralization is also not complete for the items recorded without such exposure, which indicates that listeners’ ability to recover underlying voicing is not limited to the production contexts involving written forms or minimal pairs.

Acoustic Cues to Perception of Word Stress by English, Mandarin, and Russian Speakers

This study investigated how listeners' native language affects their weighting of acoustic cues (such as vowel quality, pitch, duration, and intensity) in the perception of contrastive word stress. Native speakers (N = 45) of typologically diverse languages (English, Russian, and Mandarin) performed a stress identification task on nonce disyllabic words with fully crossed combinations of each of the 4 cues in both syllables. The results revealed that although the vowel quality cue was the strongest cue for all groups of listeners, pitch was the second strongest cue for the English and the Mandarin listeners but was virtually disregarded by the Russian listeners. Duration and intensity cues were used by the Russian listeners to a significantly greater extent compared with the English and Mandarin participants. Compared with when cues were noncontrastive across syllables, cues were stronger when they were in the iambic contour than when they were in the trochaic contour. Although both English and Russian are stress languages and Mandarin is a tonal language, stress perception performance of the Mandarin listeners but not of the Russian listeners is more similar to that of the native English listeners, both in terms of weighting of the acoustic cues and the cues' relative strength in different word positions. The findings suggest that tuning of second-language prosodic perceptions is not entirely predictable by prosodic similarities across languages.

Transfer effects in perception of a familiar and unfamiliar language

Second-language (L2) speech perception is typically worse than first-language (L1) perception, a disparity often attributed to negative transfer (interference) from the L1 of L2 listeners. The current study investigated the hypothesis that L1 transfer is not always negative, but variable depending on the nature of L1 perceptual biases. In Experiment 1, four groups of L2 English speakers whose L1s (Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, and Russian) differ in the relative informativeness of vowel-to-consonant transition cues were tested on their perception of English segments that rely crucially on these cues: final unreleased voiceless stops. In comparison to L1 English listeners, L1 Japanese, Russian, and Mandarin listeners performed significantly worse, whereas L1 Korean listeners performed significantly better. In Experiment 2, when the same groups were tested on similar Korean stimuli, L1 Russian listeners outperformed all other groups except the Korean group. These results provide evidence that L1 transfer effects are diverse and suggest that they are diverse for two reasons: variability in the information value of relevant phonetic cues in the L1, as well as variability in the degree to which linguistic expectations associated with a target L2 (or the lack thereof) predispose the listener to make effective use of these cues.

The lexical representation of word stress in Russian

This paper explores the processing of metrical structure in Russian, a language with free lexical stress. According to the existing theoretical accounts, not all Russian stems are specified for accent in the lexicon. The present study employs event-related potentials (ERPs) to find evidence to support the underlying distinction into accented and unaccented stem types. The results of two EEG experiments using a stress violation paradigm reveal that Russian listeners are highly sensitive to changes of metrical structure and that prosodic manipulations may impede lexical retrieval. In the first experiment, in which the stimuli were not given prior to auditory presentation, metrical violations evoked a pronounced N400 effect for all stem types, and a late positivity for one of the stem types, indicating a difference in stress processing. In the second experiment in which the stimuli were visually introduced before auditory presentation, stress shifts to the second syllable induced late positive component (LPC) indicating an ease in the evaluation of the metrical form. Overall, the present findings partially support the division into lexically specified and unspecified Russian accent types. In addition, the results show a strong correlation between the patterning of ERP components and the direction of stress shift, suggesting a trochee to be the default foot type in Russian.

Understanding native Russian listeners’ errors on an English word recognition test: Model-based analysis of phoneme confusion

Objective: Word recognition is a basic component in a comprehensive hearing evaluation, but data are lacking for listeners speaking two languages. This study obtained such data for Russian natives in the US and analysed the data using the perceptual assimilation model (PAM) and speech learning model (SLM). Design: Listeners were randomly presented 200 NU-6 words in quiet. Listeners responded verbally and in writing. Performance was scored on words and phonemes (word-initial consonants, vowels, and word-final consonants). Study sample: Seven normal-hearing, adult monolingual English natives (NM), 16 English-dominant (ED), and 15 Russian-dominant (RD) Russian natives participated. ED and RD listeners differed significantly in their language background. Results: Consistent with the SLM, NM outperformed ED listeners and ED outperformed RD listeners, whether responses were scored on words or phonemes. NM and ED listeners shared similar phoneme error patterns, whereas RD listeners’ errors had unique patterns that could be largely understood via the PAM. RD listeners had particular difficulty differentiating vowel contrasts /i-I/, /æ-ε/, and /ɑ-Λ/, word-initial consonant contrasts /p-h/ and /b-f/, and word-final contrasts /f-v/. Conclusions: Both first-language phonology and second-language learning history affect word and phoneme recognition. Current findings may help clinicians differentiate word recognition errors due to language background from hearing pathologies.

English and Russian listeners perceive cues to lexical pitch accent differently.

This study examines the difference in perception of the fundamental acoustic cue to Japanese lexical pitch‐accent—a sharp F0 fall following the F0 maximum—by native listeners of two stress languages, English and Russian. In both languages, F0 fall is not a cue to stress, but intonational high‐low pitch accents exist. Previous work showed that English listeners were sensitive to the F0 fall in a discrimination task; however, they did not use the F0 fall information in a pitch pattern categorization task [Shport and Guion‐Anderson, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 2024 (2010)]. Similar results were expected for native Russian listeners. Preliminary data suggest that Russian and English listeners differ in their perception of Japanese pitch patterns. Russian listeners are slightly less sensitive to the F0 fall in a discrimination task than English listeners; however, they appear to employ this acoustic cue for pattern categorization. Specifically, patterns without the F0 fall tend to be perceived as having a prominent first syllable as compared to patterns with the F0 fall. This response tendency is the reverse of Japanese listeners. The difference between English and Russian listeners is discussed in terms of native‐language prosody shaping the perception of foreign‐language prosody.

Phonetic, phonemic, and phonological factors in cross-language discrimination of phonotactic contrasts.

Previous research indicates that multiple levels of linguistic information play a role in the perception and discrimination of non-native phonemes. This study examines the interaction of phonetic, phonemic and phonological factors in the discrimination of non-native phonotactic contrasts. Listeners of Catalan, English, and Russian are presented with an initial #CC-#CəC contrast in a discrimination task. For the Catalan group, the phonemes and their phonetic implementation were native, but the #CC phonotactics were not. For Russian listeners, the phonemes and phonetic implementation were not native but Russian allows a large number of #CC sequences. For English listeners, none of the phonetics, phonemes, nor phonotactics are native. Two task variables, stimuli length and order of presentation, were also manipulated. Results showed that the Russian listeners were most accurate overall, suggesting that the presence of the phonotactic structure in the listeners' native language may be more important than either phonemic or phonetic information. The interaction between the task manipulations and the linguistic variables is also addressed.

Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by inexperienced Russian listeners

In a perceptual assimilation task, 16 Russian speakers categorized American English (AE) vowels [i[see text], I, epsilon, ae[see tedxt], a[see text], u[see text]] in /Vp/ disyllables into Russian (RU) response categories and rated their perceived goodness on a 9-point Likert scale. Cross-language discriminant analysis established acoustic similarities to Russian vowels. For all but AE [epsilon], acoustic similarity predicted modal assimilation responses. Russian listeners consistently assimilated AE point vowels to their Russian counterparts, whereas assimilation of the remaining vowels was less consistent. These acoustic and perceptual similarity patterns provide a baseline for future studies of AE vowel discrimination by Russian learners of English.

Accessing psycho-acoustic perception and language-specific perception with speech sounds

AbstractIn this paper we review the results of four speech perception experiments that explore the difference between language-specific perception and psycho-acoustic auditory perception. The first two experiments examine this difference with voiceless fricatives by American English and Dutch listeners. The second series of experiments explores the perception of consonant palatalization by American English and Russian listeners. These experiments examine this processing difference through two tasks: speeded AX discrimination (“same” or “different” response) and similarity rating. The fast-paced nature of the AX discrimination task is designed to bypass linguistic processing and hone in on pure auditory similarity. The similarity rating task asks listeners to compare two stimuli at a more leisurely pace and language-specific perception is evaluated. The results of these experiments suggest that psycho-acoustic perception can be evaluated apart from linguistic perception. Other work using this experimental paradigm, however, has found language effects in both AX discrimination and rating tasks (Boomershine et al., The impact of allophony vs. contrast on speech perception, Mouton de Gruyter, 2008; McGuire, Phonetic category learning, The Ohio State University, 2007). We reconcile our findings with the contrary results by demonstrating that language effects tend to appear in the longer response latencies that naturally allow for linguistic processing and are attenuated in the fast responses.

Perception of consonant length by Russian and American listeners.

An experimental investigation of Russian geminates revealed that intervocalic, post‐stress, and word‐initial geminates have an earlier perceptual boundary in relation to the average singleton duration in these positions. This provides an articulatory and perceptual advantage for geminate production and discrimination, which may explain cross‐linguistic preference for these types of geminates. The proximity of the boundary to the average singleton means that a smaller articulatory effort is needed to reach the geminate status; its greater distance from the average geminate means that fewer intended geminates are misperceived as singletons, hence less danger of perceptually driven neutralization. To confirm that this generalization holds across languages a group of monolingual American English listeners was tested in addition to Russian listeners. The results strongly suggest that perception of the contrast between geminates and singletons has a linguistically universal basis. Speakers of American English—a language without phonemic consonant length—showed a pattern of responses very similar to that of the Russian listeners, in particular for post‐stress and intervocalic geminates. The consistency of the results in both languages further supports the hypothesis that the observed shift in perceptual boundary is responsible for cross‐linguistic dominance of intervocalic and post‐stress geminates.

Discrimination of American vowels in disyllables mixed in speech babble by experienced Japanese and Russian learners of English.

Previous studies in this laboratory examining speeded discrimination of American English (AE) vowels in quiet by Japanese (JP) and Russian (RU) late L2 learners indicated differences in relative difficulty of non‐native contrasts that were predictable from L1 phonological differences. Response latencies were a sensitive measure of continuing L2 perceptual difficulties. In the present study, the same task (a speeded categorial ABX task with disyllabic stimuli) was administered to Japanese and Russian listeners, with stimuli mixed in speech babble at three levels (SNR 0, 6, 12). Eight experimental contrasts (four with spectral plus duration differences and four with spectral differences only) and four control contrasts were tested in lists with both vowel contrast and noise level varying randomly. Results indicated that both L2 groups performed more poorly than native AE control subjects on many of the experimental contrasts, including those differentiated by duration as well as spectral differences. Again differences in relative perceptual difficulty across L2 groups emerged. Perceptual assimilation patterns and performance on a test of English fluency and pronunciation (versant) were correlated with discrimination performance across individuals. [Work supported by NSF.]