Speech Effort Research Articles

"Dante-on-Steroids": "English Terza" and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows

"Dante-on-Steroids":"English Terza" and Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Casa Guidi Windows Oliver Goldstein (bio) When I began to study Italian and had barely familiarized myself with its phonetics and prosody, I suddenly understood that the center of gravity of my speech efforts had been moved closer to my lips, to the outer parts of my mouth. The tip of the tongue suddenly turned out to have the seat of honour. The sound rushed toward the locking of the teeth. And something else that struck me was the infantile aspect of Italian phonetics, its beautiful child-like quality, its closeness to infant babbling, to some kind of eternal dadaism. —Osip Mandelstam, "Conversation about Dante" Why did George Saintsbury consider the history of terza rima in English to have been a failure? Saintsbury's most extended comments on the matter occur in his discussion of R. W. Dixon's Mano (1883) and are worth consideration at length. Dixon's long poem proves a significant exception in the History of English Prosody, in that Saintsbury loves it not for but despite its versification. So he writes: "I cannot say that its verse-vehicle has much part in my love; or if it has, the part is so occasional as hardly to count, while occasionally also it distinctly interferes with my affection."1 Dixon's terza is most distinctive, Saintsbury here suggests, only when it is actively and materially interfering with the constitution of the verse romance for which he otherwise professes such a liking. When it is not doing this, when it is not unhappily impeding the progress of its own story, however, Dixon's terza is hardly even noticeable as terza rima at all: although its end-stopped disposition and refusal of intralinear caesurae bring it "nearer to Dante than most English terza-writers," as Saintsbury writes, it still possesses "the capital defect—almost the unpardonable sin—of suggesting something else: a fault inseparable from English terza ever since the days of Wyatt" (3: 364). This is why it plays only so "occasional" and so minor a part in Saintsbury's pleasure as "hardly to count." [End Page 1] Without "the inevitableness which all great metre possesses when once the single line is outpassed," Dixon's terza in fact most strongly resembles only other forms than itself—whether "blank verse with straggling Lycidas-like rhymes; or two quatrains, the last uncompleted; or a kind of disturbed rhyme-royal" (3: 365). Saintsbury concludes that the best way to enjoy Mano is to pay no heed to meter at all. This analysis usefully concentrates a range of linguistic and metricorhythmic issues that arise for poets intending to write terza rima in English verse. Unlike Laurence Binyon, for whom the verse form "presents no such problem as the attempt to reproduce for English readers the effect of the Greek or the Latin hexameter," and for whom its failed adoption attests only to its "loose handling" by poets "of more romantic temper," Saintsbury suggests that the problem is essentially a linguistic one.2 The repertoire of constraints that arises from the Commedia—end-stopped lines, falling disyllabic rhymes, the syntactic integrity of progressively interlocking tercets, as well as the general avoidance of intralinear stops—is almost impossible to realize in English without sacrificing either metre or syntax for the sake of keeping up the rhyme scheme. It "either discards or neglects, or, while aiming at it, fails to achieve, that remarkable separation of tercet, without abruptness," as Saintsbury puts it, "which is perhaps the dominant prosodic note of the Commedia" (3: 363). And "there are, of course, not enough doubles in English, without a lavishing of inflections which would simply be disgustful" (3: 363). Although it is "therefore no argument per se against the English terza, that it does not produce the effect of Dante's," Saintsbury adds, "it is important historically to point out the fact that it does not" (3: 363). To make things worse, for Saintsbury, English terza fails to disclose any distinctive characteristics of its own. The metricorhythmic properties of the medium neither heighten our awareness of structurally significant elements nor develop "the inevitableness" through which we would otherwise detect...

The experience of phenomenological ontology in the book of Ivan Štrpka “Where the cloak, there is the wind” (2018)

Based on the material of the poetry book of one of the major modern Slovak poets — Ivan Štrpka, the article examines the features of poetics and author’s world-attitude. A hypothesis is expressed about the fi nal character of the book “Where the cloak, there is the wind”, relying on the genre model of the fi nal book of poems proposed by O. V. Miroshnikova. The complexity of the poetic language is due to the author’s desire to show “what cannot be seen”, to express the feeling of “empty forms”. The key words in the book are emptiness and light. The initial text in the book, which is a “long vers libre”, is analyzed in detail. The seman-tic dominant is defi ned by the allusion to the suprematism of Kazimir Malevich, whose painting “White on White” proclaims pointlessness as a condition of freedom of consciousness. Further, an empty world, “not a place”, is revealed through an attempt to articulate, produce speech and meaning. The subject of speech in the poem is fundamentally lone-ly — it is a “naked” consciousness, trying to realize itself. This is not a person, but a kind of pulsating point from which an attempt at speech comes. Thus, the extremely generalized form of the poetic subject is investigated, the “landscape” of the pointless space is drawn, in which the very possibility of poetry arises. Štrpka conveys the phenomenol-ogy of consciousness of the subject, trying to fi nd himself from himself, and through himself — and the world, the “other”, conveys the eff ort of consciousness to give meaning to the “empty” world. The phenom-enology of consciousness represented by Štrpka is comparable with the categorical apparatus substantiated in Jean-Paul Sartre philosophy. The search for self-identity in a God-given world ends with the image of a comprehensive ocean, with the rhythm of movement of which thespeaker’s breathing and speech eff ort merge. It is concluded that Štrpka retained the role of a “lone runner” in completely new sociocultural circumstances of the fi rst decades of the 21st century.

VARIABILITY OF THE GERMAN PHONEME / r / FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF LINGUOSYNERGETICS

The given article discusses the variability of the German phoneme / r /, the formation of the pronunciation norm, the codification process and the influence of speech reality on it from the point of view of linguosynergetics - the science of self-organization and self-regulation of the language system, which, according to the synergetic approach, is open, dynamic, non-linear, having stable and unstable states. As an example, reflecting these mechanisms, the implementation of the German phoneme / r / is presented, which is represented by a large set of allophones characterized by a reduction in the number of oscillatory movements, the transition of the vibrant into a narrow slot until subsequent vocalization and complete assimilation. The variety of phoneme variants / r / is explained by the specific phonetic nature of these sounds and indicates their greater susceptibility to articulation deformations compared to other consonants of the German language. Vibrants themselves are influenced and unstable due to their complexity, so the implementation of the reduced forms / r / seems more likely and frequent. One of the factors that plays a significant role in the reduction process / r / is the law of convenient articulation, based on the principle of economy - achieving the optimal recognition effect due to the least power (in this case, articulatory) efforts. From the point of view of linguosynergetics, the system, having settled on the optimal form of self-organization, “dumps” the excess energy that is not needed for the formation and functioning of the new structure. In the law of economy of speech efforts, it manifests itself in the emergence of new pronunciation options. Linguosynergetics provides a powerful impetus for studying the dynamic development of linguistic units and offers tools for studying the laws of its behavior and the laws of self-organization.

Intelligibility and Listening Effort of Spanish Oesophageal Speech

Communication is a huge challenge for oesophageal speakers, be it for interactions with fellow humans or with digital voice assistants. We aim to quantify these communication challenges (both human–human and human–machine interactions) by measuring intelligibility and Listening Effort (LE) of Oesophageal Speech (OS) in comparison to Healthy Laryngeal Speech (HS). We conducted two listening tests (one web-based, the other in laboratory settings) to collect these measurements. Participants performed a sentence recognition and LE rating task in each test. Intelligibility, calculated as Word Error Rate, showed significant correlation with self-reported LE ratings. Speaker type (healthy or oesophageal) had a major effect on intelligibility and effort. More LE was reported for OS compared to HS even when OS intelligibility was close to HS. Listeners familiar with OS reported less effort when listening to OS compared to nonfamiliar listeners. However, such advantage of familiarity was not observed for intelligibility. Automatic speech recognition scores were higher for OS compared to HS.

LINGUISTIC MEANS OF ECONOMY IN THE ENGLISH DRAMATIC DISCOURSE

Some universal tends and trends in the sphere of linguistic economy at the lexical level are considered in the present article based on everyday communication contexts within the stylized colloquial fragments from modern English drama discourse. Moreover discursive markers providing the adequate interpretation of linguistic economy means and ways are discussed in view of the vital necessity to communicate effectively with minimum of speech efforts in the epoch of globalization. The purpose of this work was to identify the language characteristics and composition of the economical linguistic means of the English language in everyday communication, as well as to describe their role in the analyzed type of English discourse. Detailed study of the principle oflinguisticeconomy was made on the material of contemporary English and American playwrights of the end of ХХ the beginning of XXI centuries. The methods of linguistic description, structural-syntactic and semantic-syntactic analysis are used in the article.During the research the following overall findings are revealed: the compression in the modern English language is a highly efficient mean of linguistic economy. At the syntactical level of the linguistic system the concept of economy is implemented in ellipsis, as well as secondary predicative constructions. At the phonetic level, the principle of linguistic economy is reflected in such factors as assimilation, adaptation, qualitative and quantitative reduction. At the morphological level-in the survey. At the syntactical level (the phrase level) the linguistic economy is expressed in abbreviation. The research materials provide a wide field for further investigation on the linguistic economy in constantly changing everyday communication.

Misogynistic Hate Speech and its Chilling Effect on Women's Free Expression during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Campaign

This essay argues that the proliferation of misogynistic hate speech during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign had a dangerous chilling effect on women’s free expression. The gendered slurs aimed at women candidates and journalists, both online and in-person, created a hostile political environment, which made it more difficult for women to fully participate in the process of Democratic self-governance. To address this issue, I recommend allocating state and federal tax dollars to counter speech efforts, and call for social media organizations, such as Facebook and Twitter, to reevaluate their hate speech and harassment policies.

Процесс сокращения хештегов в современной виртуальной коммуникации

The article is devoted to the study of language compression, presented in one lexical unit at two different levels: graphic and semantic. The relevance of the study is due to the need to understand the basic social and political processes presented in the texts of modern virtual communication in order to identify the most important events at the present stage of development of society through linguistic analysis. The novelty of the study is that the analysis of hashtags in the English language is carried out for the first time from the perspective of the contraction process, examples of such linguistic facts are presented. Particular attention is paid to the processes of deciphering hashtags in the English language and the explication of the reduced lexical unit in the target language. It is emphasized that the principle of saving speech effort is most common in the texts of modern virtual communication. The question of the translingual aspect of the functioning of English-speaking hashtags that are subject to the process of contraction in speech is considered. Using statistical analysis, two main ideas have been proved regarding the linguistic nature of these language units: the contraction process is formative when they are created; the use of contracted hashtags in political texts seems to be a common and natural phenomenon in virtual discourse.

Реалізація лінгвістичної економії в німецькій мові за допомогою абсентивних інфінітивних конструкцій

Realisation of linguistic economy in German language using absentive infinitive constructionsThis article is devoted to absentive infinitive construction, main lexical and grammatical features of these construction. Here it was analysed the specific operation features of abscentive infinitive constructions in German grammar from the point of view of linguistic retrenchment. There were de­fined the dependence of grammar language forming from principle of speech efforts retrenchment, the correspondence of absentive constructions to postulates of quantities category of speech maxims of P. Grice.

Communication Supports for People With Motor Speech Disorders

Communication supports for people with motor speech disorders can include strategies and technologies to supplement natural speech efforts, resolve communication breakdowns, and replace natural speech when necessary to enhance participation in all communicative contexts. This article emphasizes communication supports that can enhance participation, as described in the World Health Organization's International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health. The article begins with a discussion of partner and patient-reported assessments to evaluate participation levels and barriers to participation. Then, it provides an overview of communication supports for speakers with motor speech disorders, organized by the status of the disorder as stable, improving, or degenerative. The article includes nine case examples to illustrate principles and provide examples of how to address stable and changing needs.

Vocal comfort and effort in speech: Accommodation to different room acoustic conditions

Background: Vocal effort is a physiological entity that accounts for variation in voice production as loading increases, measured as sound pressure level (SPL). A number of studies have investigated vocal effort and load, but few have considered the role of acoustic clarity (C50), the early to late arriving sound ratio. Method: 20 subjects performed vocal tasks in various room acoustic conditions. Tasks were performed in three styles: soft style, comfortable conversational style, and loud classroom style. C50 in the position of the talker was changed by means of two reflective panels. Two noise levels were used: background noise, and artificial child babble noise. After each task, the subject answered questions addressing their perception of vocal comfort, control and fatigue. SPL and Fundamental Frequency (F0) were measured. Results: When panels were present, talkers perceived the room as being more comfortable to speak in. In particular, in the babble condition and in loud speech, comfort and control tended to increase. Vocal effort (SPL) tended to decrease when panels were present. An assessment of F0 is also reported. The results indicate that even while keeping reverberation time constant, reflective surfaces may be optimized to increase voice comfort and reduce vocal effort.

배경소음상황에 따른 성인 말더듬화자의 발화 관련 변수 비교

This study was mainly aimed at investigating on the effects of background noises (i.e., white noise, multi-speaker conversational babble) on stuttering rate and other speech-related measures (i.e., articulation rate, speech effort). Nine Korean-speaking adults who stutter participated in the study. Each of the participants was asked to read a series of passages under each of four experimental conditions (i.e., typical solo reading (TR), choral reading (CR), reading under white noise presented (WR), reading with multi-speaker conversational babble presented (BR). Stuttering rate was computed based on a percentage of syllables stuttered (%SS) and articulation rate was also assessed as another speech-related measure under each of the experimental conditions. To examine the amount of physical effort needed to read, the speech effort was measured by using the 9-point Speech Effort Self Rating Scale originally employed by Ingham et al. (2006). Study results showed that there were no significant differences among each of the passage reading conditions in terms of stuttering rate, articulation rate, and speech effort. In conclusion, it can be argued that the two different types of background noises (i.e., white noise and multi-speaker conversational babble) are not different in the extent to which each of them enhances fluency of adults who stutter. Self ratings of speech effort may be also useful in measuring speech-related variables associated with vocal changes induced under each of the fluency enhancing conditions.

Relationship between speech intelligibility and listener effort in Malayalam-speaking individuals with hypokinetic dysarthria

Several attempts have been made to describe the perceptual characteristics of dysarthria. However, a large majority of these studies are in English, and hence there is a need to investigate dysarthric characteristics in other languages which have a rhythmic structure different than English. The objectives of this study were multifold. First, to describe the perceptual characteristics of hypokinetic dysarthria (HD) in Malayalam- (mora-timed language) speaking individuals. Second, to examine the effect of HD on the listeners' ratings of speech intelligibility and listener effort. Third, to investigate the relationship between speech intelligibility and listener effort, and fourth to study the effect of listeners' experience on the ratings of speech intelligibility and listener effort. Five sentences were recorded from eight Malayalam speakers with HD, and eight control speakers. These sentences were played to 10 naïve and 10 expert listeners. Listeners performed the following tasks: describing perceptual characteristics of HD, rating sentence intelligibility, and listener effort. Results showed that the most deviant perceptual characteristics were those related to articulation and rhythm. Lower speech intelligibility and increased listener effort were observed for individuals with HD than control speakers. Speech intelligibility proved to be a strong predictor of listener effort. Experience of the listener had no effect on speech intelligibility ratings, but showed a significant effect for listener effort ratings.

Masking release, processing speed and listening effort in adults with traumatic brain injury

Purpose: This preliminary study explored differences between adults with and without traumatic brain injury (TBI) for speech processing accuracy, processing speed and effort in various conditions of interference.Methods: Ten adults with TBI and six adults without TBI participated. Speech processing was studied using sentence repetition in six listening conditions with different types of interference, including noise and two simultaneous talkers. Participants repeated sentences and rated effort. Participants also completed standardized tests of cognition, including working memory and processing speed measures.Results: Sentence repetition accuracy did not differ between groups. However, the TBI group demonstrated slower processing speed than the control group and also reported significantly greater effort in the two-talker condition. Faster processing speed was also correlated with higher accuracy in the two-talker condition.Conclusions: Results of this study show group similarities in repetition accuracy across listening conditions, but group differences in speed and effort. This preliminary finding, as well as the relationship between processing speed and repetition accuracy, suggests that it is only in the most complex listening conditions that the effects of brain injury may be detectable.

Spatial release of the cognitive effort of understanding speech in multi-talker environments

Ervin Hafter was prescient in recognizing the need for taking into account top-down cognitive processing for understanding the interaction between auditory perception and cognition. His insight, that signal processing such as noise reduction may modify cognitive demands without changing auditory performance, led to a seminal study in collaboration with the Starkey Hearing Research Center which showed that hearing aid technology can reduce the cognitive effort of understanding noisy speech. Inspired by Erv’s insight, we are studying if increasing the spatial separation between competing talkers reduces the cognitive effort needed to listen in multi-talker environments. Following the lead of Erv’s seminal study, performance on a simultaneous secondary task, in our case visual tracking, is a measure of the cognitive effort consumed by the primary task of understanding target speech. Our results show that spatial separation can reduce cognitive effort even when it does not give further improvement in speech intelligibility over existing segregation cues. These results suggest that a measure of cognitive effort is useful for assessing the benefit of hearing technology that improves spatial segregation. This is an important finding because the measure addresses benefit along a dimension that is not captured in standard assessment of speech reception performance.

Examining the relationship between room acoustics parameters and the cafe effect in restaurants

It is well known that the so-called café effect, the progressive increase in speech effort as an enclosed space becomes more crowded with talkers, is related to the reverberant characteristics of the room. This study attempts to correlate specific room acoustics parameters (total absorption, reverberation time, etc.) to the café effect through analysis of several existing restaurants. At each establishment, noise monitoring was conducted over the course of a busy weekend, followed by corresponding impulse response measurements in the empty room. Results and conclusions from the study will be presented.

Prediction of the spatial decay of speech in open-plan offices

Most office workers work in open-plan offices. Distraction caused by irrelevant speech and lack of speech privacy are very typical problems in this work environment. Proper room acoustic design reduces these problems. However, the effectiveness of a specified room acoustic solution is difficult to predict exactly, because the most important room acoustic variables, i.e. ceiling absorption, furnishing absorption, screen height, masking sound level, speech effort and room dimensions, interact in a very complex way. The aim of this study is to present a model that can be used to predict the spatial decay of speech. The model represents a situation in which speech is produced at a single workstation and decay of speech is evaluated at different distances. The regression model is based on the measurement data of 16 different open-plan offices [9]. It takes into account the above-mentioned room acoustic variables. The predicted results are spatial decay curves of the A-weighted sound pressure level of speech and the speech transmission index, STI. The curves are used to determine the single-number quantities: the spatial decay rate of the A-weighted sound pressure level of speech, D2,S, the A-weighted sound pressure level of speech at 4m from the speaker, LA,S,4m, and the distraction distance, rD. The prediction accuracy of the single-number quantities was determined in 10 new offices. The prediction errors of D2,S, LA,S,4m and rD were less than 1.5dB, 3.0dB, and 2.5m in most cases, respectively. This accuracy is sufficient for most practical purposes. The model was programmed into a prediction tool, which is freely available on the internet and delivered with the electronic version of this journal.

The effect of speech rate on stuttering frequency, phonated intervals, speech effort, and speech naturalness during chorus reading

PurposeThis study examined the effect of speech rate on phonated intervals (PIs), in order to test whether a reduction in the frequency of short PIs is an important part of the fluency-inducing mechanism of chorus reading. The influence of speech rate on stuttering frequency, speaker-judged speech effort, and listener-judged naturalness was also examined. An added purpose was to determine if chorus reading could be further refined so as to provide a perceptual guide for gauging the level of physical effort exerted during speech production. MethodsA repeated-measures design was used to compare data obtained during control reading conditions and during several chorus reading conditions produced at different speech rates. Participants included 8 persons who stutter (PWS) between the ages of 16 and 32years. ResultsThere were significant reductions in the frequency of short PIs from the habitual reading condition during slower chorus conditions, no change when speech rates were matched between habitual reading and chorus conditions, and an increase in the frequency of short PIs during chorus reading produced at a faster rate than the habitual condition. Speech rate did not have an effect on stuttering frequency during chorus reading. In general, speech effort ratings improved and naturalness ratings worsened as speech rate decreased. ConclusionThese results provide evidence that (a) a reduction in the frequency of short PIs is not necessary for fluency improvement during chorus reading, and (b) speech rate may be altered to provide PWS with a more appropriate reference for how physically effortful normally fluent speech production should be. Future investigations should examine the necessity of changes in the activation of neural regions during chorus reading, the possibility of defining individualized units on a 9-point effort scale, and if there are upper and lower speech rate boundaries for receiving ratings of “highly natural sounding” speech during chorus reading.Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to: (1) describe the effect of changes in speech rate on the frequency of short phonated intervals during chorus reading, (2) describe changes to speaker-judged speech effort as speech rate changes during chorus reading, (3) and describe the effect of changes in speech rate on listener-judged naturalness ratings during chorus reading.

Phonation interval modification and speech performance quality during fluency-inducing conditions by adults who stutter

PurposeTo relate changes in four variables previously defined as characteristic of normally fluent speech to changes in phonatory behavior during oral reading by persons who stutter (PWS) and normally fluent controls under multiple fluency-inducing (FI) conditions. MethodTwelve PWS and 12 controls each completed 4 ABA experiments. During A phases, participants read normally. B phases were 4 different FI conditions: auditory masking, chorus reading, whispering, and rhythmic stimulation. Dependent variables were the durations of accelerometer-recorded phonated intervals; self-judged speech effort; and observer-judged stuttering frequency, speech rate, and speech naturalness. The method enabled a systematic replication of Ingham et al. (2009). ResultsAll FI conditions resulted in decreased stuttering and decreases in the number of short phonated intervals, as compared with baseline conditions, but the only FI condition that satisfied all four characteristics of normally fluent speech was chorus reading. Increases in longer phonated intervals were associated with decreased stuttering but also with poorer naturalness and/or increased speech effort. Previous findings concerning the effects of FI conditions on speech naturalness and effort were replicated. ConclusionsMeasuring all relevant characteristics of normally fluent speech, in the context of treatments that aim to reduce the occurrence of short-duration PIs, may aid the search for an explanation of the nature of stuttering and may also maximize treatment outcomes for adults who stutter.Learning outcomes: The reader will be able to (1) understand the differential effects of four well established fluency-inducing conditions on the quality of fluency of adult PWS and controls, (2) learn how intervals of phonation are modified during these conditions and (3) how the duration of specific intervals of phonation may be identified for their potential application in stuttering treatment.

Pupil-BLAH-metry: Cognitive effort in speech planning reflected by pupil dilation

In reading research, a longstanding question is whether any stages of lexical processing require central attention, and whether such potential demands are frequency-sensitive. In the present study, we examined the allocation of cognitive effort in lexical processing by examining pupil dilations and naming latencies in a modified delayed naming procedure. In this dual-task/change procedure, participants read words and waited for various delays before being signaled to issue a response. On most trials (80%), participants issued a standard naming response. On the remaining trials, they were cued to abandon the original speech plan, saying "blah" instead, thereby equating production across different words. Using feature-matched low- and high-frequency words, we observed the differences in pupil dilations as a function of word frequency. Indeed, frequency-sensitive cognitive demands were seen in word processing, even after naming responses were issued. The results suggest that word perception and/or speech planning requires the frequency-sensitive allocation of cognitive resources.

Basic parameters of articulatory movements and acoustics in individuals with Parkinson's disease.

It has long been recognized that lesions of the basal ganglia frequently result in dysarthria, in part because many individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) have impaired speech. Earlier studies of speech production in PD using perceptual, acoustic, and/or kinematic analyses have yielded mixed findings about the characteristics of articulatory movements underlying hypokinetic dysarthria associated with PD: in some cases reporting reduced articulatory output, and in other instances revealing orofacial movement parameters within the normal range. The central aim of this experiment was to address these inconsistencies by providing an integrative description of basic kinematic and acoustic parameters of speech production in individuals with PD. Recordings of lip and jaw movements and acoustic data were collected in 16 individuals with PD and 16 age- and sex-matched neurologically healthy older adults. Our results revealed a downscaling of articulatory dynamics in the individuals with PD, evidenced by decreased amplitude and velocity of lower lip and jaw movements, decreased vocal intensity (dB sound pressure level [SPL]), and reduced second formant (F2) slopes. However, speech rate did not differ between groups. Our finding of an overall downscaling of speech movement and acoustic parameters in some participants with PD provides support for speech therapies directed at increasing speech effort in individuals with PD.