Syllable Segmentation Research Articles

Articulatory-based Phonemic Paraphasia in Conduction Aphasia: A Dysfunction in Phoneme-to-Articulation Conversion Uncovered Through Crossed Aphasia.

Phonemic paraphasia, a common characteristic of conduction aphasia, has traditionally been attributed to phonological representation dysfunction. An alternative hypothesis posits that phonemic paraphasia arises from difficulty converting phonemes into their corresponding articulatory maneuvers. However, detailed case studies supporting this theory have been lacking. In this report, we present the case of a 61-year-old right-handed man with right temporo-parietal infarction who exhibited crossed aphasia characterized by typical conduction aphasia symptoms (eg, relatively fluent speech with intact comprehension, frequent phonemic paraphasia, and pronounced difficulties in oral repetition) in the absence of distorted articulation, syllable segmentation, and prosody impairment. Despite the frequent occurrence of phonemic paraphasia and articulatory challenges, our patient's phonological representations remained relatively intact. His phonemic paraphasia was often self-corrected to produce correct responses, a feature known as conduit d'approche. During the oral repetition of individual mora (ie, the smallest unit of speech in Japanese), we observed that the patient consistently traced the corresponding Hiragana phonetic symbol accurately, despite his difficulties in articulation. We substantiated this phenomenon through objective assessment and posit that it resulted from an unusual separation of language functions in crossed aphasia-specifically, a disconnection between phonological representations in the right temporo-parietal cortex and speech articulation engrams in the left hemisphere. In this case of conduction aphasia, articulatory-based phonemic paraphasia may be viewed as an inability to convert phonemes into the appropriate articulatory maneuvers rather than as phonological representation dysfunction or apraxia of speech.

The use of a computer-based program focused on the syllabic method to support early literacy in children with cochlear implants

BackgroundChildren with cochlear implants (CIs) often lag behind children with normal hearing (NH) in early literacy skills. Furthermore, the development of language skills associated with their emergent literacy skills seems to depend on good auditory access. Supporting language acquisition and early literacy in children with CIs may prevent difficulties in primary school. The use of technology may facilitate auditory and speech recovery in children with CIs, but evidence on computer-based early literacy programs is limited. ObjectiveThis study investigates (a) the effects of a computer-based program focusing on the syllabic method on the literacy skills of children with CIs (CIs group), comparing them with the literacy skills of a group of age-matched NH (normal hearing) peers (NHs group); (b) the associations between language and early literacy skills in the NHs group and between language, auditory and early literacy skills in the CIs group. MethodNine prelingually deaf children with CIs (M = 61.11, SD = 6.90) with severe to profound sensorineural hearing loss and nine age-matched NH children participated in the program. Categories of Auditory Performance (CAP) as measures of children's auditory skills were collected. All participants were tested on phonological, morphosyntax (grammatical comprehension and repetition), and early literacy skills (syllable blending and segmentation, syllable and word reading) (T1). Next, all children participated in the computer-based program for 12 weeks. After the program was completed (T2), only early literacy tests were administered to the children. ResultsAlthough, on average, both groups obtained higher scores in all literacy tasks at T2, the CIs group scored lower than the NHs group. In the CIs group, at T2 we found significant improvements in syllable segmentation (p = 0.042) and word reading (p = 0.035). In the NHs group, at T2 we found significant improvements in syllable segmentation (p = 0.034), syllable blending (p = 0.022), syllable reading (p = 0.008), and word reading (p = 0.009). We also found significant associations in both groups between measures of morphosyntax at T1 and measures of early literacy at T2. In addition, for the CIs group, we found significant associations between children's auditory performance at T1 and measures of morphosyntax at T1 and early literacy at T2. Conclusiona computer-based program focused on the syllabic method could support children with CIs in acquiring emergent literacy abilities. The auditory performance of children with CIs seems to influence their morphosyntax and later early literacy skills.

Improving word reading skills of low‐skilled readers: An intervention combining a syllable‐based approach with digital game‐based features

AbstractBackgroundChildren with low reading skills are less frequently engaged in reading activities and therefore the likelihood of improving their reading skills decreases. Digital game‐based interventions have emerged as a promising tool for promoting reading development in children, particularly those with reading difficulties. As syllable‐based reading interventions are likely to increase word reading skills in low‐skilled readers, we developed a new reading intervention application that emphasizes syllable segmentation and integrates proven elements of digital game‐based learning. The intervention aimed to promote phonological recoding and consolidating orthographic representation of syllables.ObjectivesThe present study investigated the effects of the newly developed syllable‐based reading intervention application on general word recognition skills, phonological recoding processes, orthographic decoding processes and text‐level reading comprehension skills in German second graders.MethodsIn a quasi‐experimental design, children with low word recognition skills were randomly assigned to a treatment group (n = 66) or a wait‐list group (n = 66). General word recognition skills, phonological recoding processes, orthographic decoding processes and text‐level reading comprehension were measured with standardized German reading tests before and after the treatment group received the digital reading intervention for 20 sessions.ResultsResults indicated that the children in the treatment group showed significant improvement in general word recognition and in phonological recoding processes compared to equally low‐skilled untreated children in the wait‐list group. Orthographic decoding processes improved only in children with less severe impairments, whereas no significant improvements were found in text‐level reading comprehension.Take AwaysThe digital reading intervention is a promising approach for supporting word reading in low‐skilled reading second graders and can serve as an effective intervention tool for this target group.

An Investigation of the Differences in Phonological Awareness Performance Based on Cognitive Style

Purpose: Research in cognitive style has shown its relevance in predicting reading ability. However, its effect on phonological awareness, which plays a central role in reading acquisition, remains unclear. The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in phonological awareness based on cognitive style. Method: Twenty-nine monolingual English speaking African American and Caucasian 6-year-old 1st grade students from the Washington DC metropolitan area participated in the study. Participants were distributed as follows: 11 females, 18 males, 21 African Americans, and 8 Caucasians. Participants were of middle-class socioeconomic background with no evidence of cognitive, language, phonological, articulation or hearing deficits. Testing occurred over two sessions scheduled on different days. During the first session, participants were individually administered the Cognitive Style Assessment Protocol (CSAP) to measure cognitive style and assigned to either the wholistic or analytic cognitive style group. In the second session, the Phonological Awareness Assessment Protocol (PAAP) was administered to measure the main components of phonological awareness. Raw data consisted of participant scores on the CSAP and PAAP. Data were analyzed using two-tailed t-tests to determine if there were significant group differences between the analytic and wholistic groups in phonological awareness and its components. Results: Results showed that students with an analytic cognitive style performed better than those with a wholistic cognitive style on overall phonological awareness and on the following phonological awareness components: syllable segmentation, phoneme substitution, and phoneme blending. No significant group differences were found on rhyming, phoneme isolation, phoneme deletion, and phoneme segmentation tasks. Conclusion: Findings showed some differences in phonological awareness between analytic and wholistic students with analytic students performing better than wholistic students. These differences in aspects of phonological awareness seem to implicate cognitive style in reading acquisition given the central role that phonological awareness pays in reading development and suggest that wholistic students may experience reading difficulties that stem from their cognitive orientation.

The Influence of Maybrat Accents towards Eleventh Grade Students English Pronunciation

The research was applying qualitative method and instruments to collect data such as reading text which consisted of some words, phrases and sentences. Collecting data carried out by recording twenty students English reading. The students were at the eleventh grade of SMA Negeri 1 Ayamaru, Maybrat Regency, Southwest Papua Province. The student records were used for analyzing English speech sound in both aspects segmental and suprasegmental of the students’ pronunciation. The result of students record exposed the difference between the students English speech sound and the recognizable English speech sound in English standard variety. It was found that the differences were revealed in vowel sounds and was sounded by the students in English single syllable words. The suprasegmental features were different represented by the student speech sound either in words stress, phonemic stressed, length, loudness and intonation or the pitch / tone and sounds inserted and gliding into single syllable segment.

Automatic Birdsong Splitting and Syllabic Analysis of Jalak Suren

The study of birdsong has received relatively limited attention in the field of artificial intelligence, despite its long-standing intrigue and the question of whether birds possess a form of language. Previous research has provided evidence suggesting the presence of structurally organized words recognized by birds, such as the strong reactions observed in Japanese tits and Pied babblers when exposed to specific sequences of artificially played calls. Altering the speed of a sequence also influences the birds' responses, further supporting the existence of organized linguistic units in avian vocalizations. In this study, we propose a novel approach for analyzing birdsong by employing automatic syllable segmentation and syllabic similarity analysis. Our focus is on the Jalak Suren species (Sturnus contra), renowned for its melodious song. Through the identification and categorization of distinct syllabic units in birdsong recordings, we investigate the statistical occurrence of these syllables within the sequence of birdsong. Our findings reveal remarkable similarities between the statistical occurrence of syllables in birdsong and those found in human language passages

Orthographic and phonological processing effects on the reading abilities of young children learning to read Malayalam alphasyllabary

Background Learning to read is a complex process that involves phonological and orthographic processing abilities, broader language skills and cognitive processes across all writing systems. Although these components remain common, the pace of acquisition of phonological and orthographic processing and reading abilities differ across writing systems. Methods This study aimed to understand the developmental pattern of reading and phonological processing, assess their interrelationship and study the predictors of reading ability among 175 children, learning to read Malayalam and attending Grades 1–3. They completed various reading (akshara reading, word and nonword reading) and phonological processing (rhyme recognition, syllable deletion, syllable segmentation, phoneme deletion, phoneme substitution, rapid naming and nonword repetition) tasks. Results Grade and reading level-based analysis was performed to collate the results. Results revealed a significant overlap of phonological processing and reading abilities among children in Grades 2 and 3. Reading scores demonstrated a weak-to-moderate significant correlation with the phonological processing tasks. Although skilled readers performed significantly better on all phonological processing tasks, their scores did not reach ceiling. Syllable-level tasks were easier compared to phoneme-level tasks, and they significantly predicted the reading abilities of children. Conclusions The findings contribute to the existing body of evidence for akshara writing systems, specifically in Malayalam alpha-syllabary. The development of phonological processing and reading in Malayalam extends beyond the third grade, and syllable processing contributed to increased variance in reading accuracy among inexperienced readers.

Effects of syllable boundaries in Tibetan reading

Interword spaces exist in the texts of many languages that use alphabetic writing systems. In most cases, interword spaces, as a kind of word boundary information, play an important role in the reading process of readers. Tibetan also uses alphabetic writing, its text has no spaces between words as word boundary markers. Instead, there are intersyllable tshegs (“”), which are superscript dots. Interword spaces play an important role in reading as word boundary information. Therefore, it is interesting to investigate the role of tshegs and what effect replacing tshegs with spaces will have on Tibetan reading. To answer these questions, Experiment 1 was conducted in which 72 Tibetan undergraduates read three-syllable-boundary conditions (normal, spaced, and untsheged). However, in Experiment 1, because we performed the experimental operations of deleting tshegs and replacing tshegs, the spatial information distribution of Tibetan sentences under different operating conditions was different, which may have a certain potential impact on the experimental results. To rule out the underlying confounding factor, in Experiment 2, 58 undergraduates read sentences for both untsheged and alternating-color conditions. Overall, the global and local analyses revealed that tshegs, spaces, and alternating-color markers as syllable boundaries can help readers segment syllables in Tibetan reading. In Tibetan reading, both spaces and tshegs are effective visual syllable segmentation cues, and spaces are more effective visual syllable segmentation cues than tshegs.

Reading Skills in Malay Language Literacy of Dyslexic Students

Problems in literacy is the most significant aspect in the learning process of dyslexic students. This study was conducted to analyze the reading skills in Malay language literacy among dyslexic students. The sample of this study was 10 dyslexic students who were selected from the Malaysia Dyslexia Association. A mixed-method approach was conducted to identify reading problems according to the LINUS 2.0 construct, which was developed by the Special Education Division, Ministry of Education Malaysia. Reading problems according to the LINUS 2.0 were measured based on the construct in the Malay Language Reading Skills Literacy Diagnostic for Dyslexics. This diagnostic was used to assess 12 reading skills in the reading achievement of dyslexic students' literacy constructs. Each reading skill has 5 items to read. This diagnostic focuses on 12 reading skills that were analyzed according to the dyslexic students' level of learning. The findings of this study prove that dyslexic students have a poor level of literacy skills in reading Malay. From this study, the researcher has produced a new approach to literacy construct that is suitable for dyslexic students. Based on the reading ability of the subjects in this study, the researcher concludes that the knowledge of graphemes-phonemes and syllable segmentation is unsatisfactory. The findings of this study have an impact on the Special Education Division, Ministry of Education Malaysia, in that curriculum planning for dyslexic students can be examined. The findings of this study also have an impact on dyslexic teachers in that they can plan their teaching and learning to suit the level of mental development of dyslexic students in Malaysia.

Cicada Species Recognition Based on Acoustic Signals

Traditional methods used to identify and monitor insect species are time-consuming, costly, and fully dependent on the observer’s ability. This paper presents a deep learning-based cicada species recognition system using acoustic signals to classify the cicada species. The sound recordings of cicada species were collected from different online sources and pre-processed using denoising algorithms. An improved Härmä syllable segmentation method is introduced to segment the audio signals into syllables since the syllables play a key role in identifying the cicada species. After that, a visual representation of the audio signal was obtained using a spectrogram, which was fed to a convolutional neural network (CNN) to perform classification. The experimental results validated the robustness of the proposed method by achieving accuracies ranging from 66.67% to 100%.

Phonological awareness digital program: a randomized controlled study

The purpose of this study is to analyze the efficacy of the Phonological Awareness Digital Program (PADP) in typically developing preschool children aged 4 to 6 years. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with a total of 49 children assigned to two groups: the experimental group, EG (n=25) and the delayed control group, CG (n=24). Both groups were assessed before and after the implementation of the PADP. A follow-up study for the experimental group was also performed after two months. Outcome measures of phonological awareness skills (task 1: Syllable segmentation task; task 2: Syllable identification task; task3: Syllable omission task; task 4: Onset-rime units segmentation task; task 5: Phoneme segmentation task; task 6: Phoneme blending task) were evaluated at three separate moments.
 The results showed significant improvement in phonological awareness skills for the EG between the first and the second assessments for all the tasks considered. Between the second and third assessment, the results showed a significant improvement for the CG.
 The follow-up study also demonstrated the PADP’s efficacy. The PADP has shown to be an effective program in promoting the development of phonological awareness in children. These findings provide evidence for different professionals to use PADP with preschool children. 

Chinese Syllable Segmentation Algorithm with Logarithmic Envelope

Chinese Syllable Segmentation Algorithm with Logarithmic Envelope

Database of word-level statistics for Mandarin Chinese (DoWLS-MAN).

In this article we present the Database of Word-Level Statistics for Mandarin Chinese (DoWLS-MAN). The database addresses the lack of agreement in phonological syllable segmentation specific to Mandarin by offering phonological features for each lexical item according to 16 schematic representations of the syllable (8 with tone and 8 without tone). Those lexical statistics that differ per phonological word and nonword due to changes in syllable segmentation are of the variant category and include subtitle lexical frequency, phonological neighborhood density measures, homophone density, and network science measures. The invariant characteristics consist of each items' lexical tone, phonological transcription, and syllable structure among others. The goal of DoWLS-MAN is to provide researchers both the ability to choose stimuli that are derived from a segmentation schema that supports an existing model of Mandarin speech processing, and the ability to choose stimuli that allow for the testing of hypotheses on phonological segmentation according to multiple schemas. In an exploratory analysis we illustrate how multiple schematic representations of the phonological mental lexicon can aid in hypothesis generation, specifically in terms of phonological processing when reading Chinese orthography. Users of the database can search among over 92,000 words, over 1600 out-of-vocabulary Chinese characters, and 4300 phonological nonwords according to either Chinese orthography, pinyin, or ASCII phonetic script. Users can also generate a list of phonological words and nonwords according to user-defined ranges and categories of lexical characteristics. DoWLS-MAN is available to the public for search or download at https://dowls.site .

Emergent literacy skills of Saudi Arabic speaking children with and without developmental language disorder

ABSTRACT Research with English-speaking populations has shown that there is a relationship between developmental language disorder (DLD) and emergent literacy skills in children. A small number of Arabic studies have indirectly investigated this relationship in typically developing (TD) children, and children with reading difficulties, and demonstrated the important role of morphosyntactic skills in Arabic reading acquisition. However, none of the previous work has examined the relationship between oral language and emergent literacy skills in children with and without DLD. The aims of this study are twofold: to investigate the language and emergent literacy skills of Saudi Arabic children with DLD aged between 4;0– 6;11 years of age; to compare their performance to age and socioeconomic status matched TD children, and to investigate the relationship between language and emergent literacy skills in both groups. A comprehensive Arabic language and emergent literacy battery was administered. Findings demonstrated that the TD group significantly outperformed the DLD group on most emergent literacy tasks. The DLD group was significantly less accurate than the TD group on syllable segmentation, and phoneme awareness skills. There were significant associations between oral language skills and emergent literacy skills in the DLD group. In the TD group, vocabulary knowledge and syntactic skills were associated with some emergent literacy skills. Syntactic skills were found to have moderately significant relationship with all emergent literacy skills in both groups. This might suggest the important role of morphosyntactic skills to literacy development in Arabic. Overall, findings were consistent with existing literature, and demonstrated strong relationships between oral language and emergent literacy skills in the Arabic language.

Effect of Natural Background Noise and Man-Made Noise on Automated Frog Calls Identification System

Frog identification based on their calls becomes important for biological research and environmental monitoring. However, identifying particular frog calls becomes challenging particularly when the frog calls are interrupted with noises either in natural background noise or man-made noise. Hence, an automatic identification frog call system that robust in noisy environment has been proposed in this paper. Experimental studies of 675 audio obtained from 15 species of frogs in the Malaysian forest and recorded in an outdoor environment are used in this study. These audio data are then corrupted by 10dB and 5dB noise. A syllable segmentation technique i.e. short time energy (STE) and Short Time Average Zero Crossing Rate (STAZCR) and feature extraction, Mel-Frequency Cepstrum Coefficients (MFCC) are employed to segment the desired syllables and extract the segmented signal. Subsequently, the Local Mean k-Nearest Neighbor with Fuzzy Distance Weighting (LMkNN-FDW) are employed as a classifier in order to evaluate the performance of the identification system. The experimental results show both of natural background noise and man-made noise outperform by 95.2% and 88.27% in clean SNR, respectively.

Analisis Segmentasi Silabel dan Fonem dalam Kalimat Perintah (Kajian Fonologi)

This study aims to explain and analyze the segmentation of syllables and phonemes in command sentences using phonological studies. This research uses descriptive quantitative method. The data collection technique used was the analysis of data interpretation and the data source used came from an informant who then segmented the voice of the informant using the PRAAT application. The six data discussed in this study are: (1) images of the annotation results of sound segmentation using the PRAAT application, (2) the number of words, syllables, and syllable patterns in each sentence, (3) description of the number of phonemes in each sentence, (4) sentence duration , (5) the whole syllable, and (6) the whole phoneme. The results of this study indicate that a sentence can be analyzed and segmented using technology-based applications, from this analysis can be seen the duration, syllable, phonemes, and words. Segmentsai analysis is carried out in accordance with what the informant pronounces, so that the sound produced by the informant must be clear.

On loss functions and CNNs for improved bioacoustic signal classification

Frog population has been experiencing rapid decreases worldwide, which is regarded as one of the most critical threats to global biodiversity. Therefore, large volumes of frog recordings have been collected for assessing this decline. Most previous studies focused on the syllable segmentation based frog call classification, which is sensitive to the background noise. Our recent study has used 1D-CNN and cross-entropy loss for frog call classification. However, the use of 1D-CNN is sensitive to the background noise and the imbalance of the number of different frog species is not considered. Therefore, this study aims to investigate loss functions and imbalance learning for bioacoustic signal classification in continuous recordings. Specifically, four types of loss functions are compared including cross-entropy loss, weighted cross-entropy loss, focal loss, and twin loss, which are combined with three CNN architectures: 1D-CNN, 2D-CNN, and 1D-2D-CNN. In addition, random oversampling is used for improving the classification performance of two imbalanced datasets. Experimental results show that (1) 1D-2D-CNN model can achieve the performance for classifying both Australia and Brazil frog calls. (2) Focal loss is the best among four loss functions for classifying low SNR recordings. (3) The highest macro F1-score for classifying both Australia and Brazil frog recordings are 89.26%±0.36% and 93.47%±0.28%.

A Neural Joint Model with BERT for Burmese Syllable Segmentation, Word Segmentation, and POS Tagging

The smallest semantic unit of the Burmese language is called the syllable. In the present study, it is intended to propose the first neural joint learning model for Burmese syllable segmentation, word segmentation, and part-of-speech ( POS ) tagging with the BERT. The proposed model alleviates the error propagation problem of the syllable segmentation. More specifically, it extends the neural joint model for Vietnamese word segmentation, POS tagging, and dependency parsing [28] with the pre-training method of the Burmese character, syllable, and word embedding with BiLSTM-CRF-based neural layers. In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed model, experiments are carried out on Burmese benchmark datasets, and we fine-tune the model of multilingual BERT. Obtained results show that the proposed joint model can result in an excellent performance.

Effects of Verb Network Strengthening Treatment on Sound-Level and Speech Production Errors in Individuals With Aphasia and Acquired Apraxia of Speech.

Purpose This retrospective pilot study investigated whether sound-level and speech production errors decreased in confrontation naming following Verb Network Strengthening Treatment (VNeST) for four participants with acquired apraxia of speech (A-AOS) and aphasia for whom lexical retrieval was previously reported. Specifically, we investigated a potential increase in correct number of syllables per word and posttreatment changes across three domains of speech: segmental production, fluency, and prosody. It was hypothesized that treatment shown to increase lexical retrieval in persons with aphasia and A-AOS could potentially facilitate a reduction in sound-level and speech production errors consistent with dual diagnoses of A-AOS and aphasia. Method Naming responses from four participants with aphasia and A-AOS who previously participated in VNeST studies were investigated for correct number of syllables per word and measures of segmental speech, fluency, and prosody. Results Significant gains in at least one measure of speech production were reported for three of the participants. One participant demonstrated decreased segmental speech errors, two showed significant reduction on syllable segmentation, and two demonstrated a significant reduction on false starts and pauses. Significant gains in production of correct number of syllables were limited to one participant, and one participant did not demonstrate increased accuracy on any measure of speech production. Conclusions While speech production errors consistent with motor speech impairment cannot always be definitively distinguished from the confound of aphasia, two participants produced significantly decreased segmentation of syllables, a characteristic unique to A-AOS. The sound-level and speech production changes recorded may be attributed to a combination of interacting motor and language processes and resource allocation. In addition, specific components of VNeST may have contributed to speech production changes. Future work will focus on a prospective study of effects of language therapy (e.g., VNeST) on measures of speech production with investigation beyond the single-word level.

Training of Word Recognition with Willy Wordbear: A Syllable-Based Reading Promotion Program for Elementary School

Training of Word Recognition with Willy Wordbear: A Syllable-Based Reading Promotion Program for Elementary School Being able to read words fluently and accurately is an important milestone in learning to read but not all children reach it. For weak readers, it is often difficult to make the transition from letter-by-letter reading to visual word recognition through orthographic comparison processes using larger (sub-)lexical units. The syllable seems to provide a bridge to orthographic decoding for children who learn to read German. Against this background, this replication study investigated the effectiveness of a syllable-based reading training on the visual word recognition and reading comprehension of second graders in an experimental pre-post design. To this end, 101 children whose word recognition performance in a standardized reading test was below the mean value in comparison to the classroom norm were randomly assigned to the experimental group or a waiting control group. Linear models revealed significant improvements in orthographic decoding in the experimental group after completion of the 24-session small group training. Children who received the training of repeated reading and segmentation of frequent syllables were able to recognize words faster and more accurately. These findings are further evidence of the effectiveness of the training for promoting the recognition of written words.