Spoken Word Research Articles

Lexical activation in late bilinguals: effects of phonological neighbourhood on spoken word production

ABSTRACT This research explores patterns of lexical activation of both languages of a bilingual when producing spoken words. Specifically, it investigates the influence of within- and cross-language measures of phonological neighbourhood, on the English picture naming performance of a diverse group of French (L1) – English (L2) late bilinguals. A novel phonological neighbourhood density measure was used that took into account the phonological and lexical constraints of this sample of late bilinguals. Results showed that both within- and cross-language neighbours influenced picture naming performance and that the length of exposure to L2 and familiarity of the target modulated these effects, with both facilitatory and inhibitory effects observed. Additionally, the previously well-attested cognate facilitation effect decreased with L2 language exposure. These results support interactive models of word production, within a language non-specific view of lexical access, and show the dynamic nature of a bilingual’s lexical connections.

Формула любви: мифопоэтика цикла К. Симонова «С тобой и без тебя»

The article is devoted to the study of the concept of spiritual and physical love in K. Simonov’s cycle “With you and without you” and reveal the mythopoetic foundations of the images of the cycle. The poet builds a system of binary oppositions formed by two rows: soul — light — visual perception — eyes — sound — written word, on the one hand, and body — darkness — tactile perception — hands and lips — silence — spoken word, on the other. The separate pairs of images based on the Slavic beliefs, but their correlation is the author’s neomyth. A special role belongs to the sacred word, which is understood not as a conventional sign, but as part of the designated entity. The psychophysical dichotomy itself is connected with the duality of the heroine, who either experiences a conflict between the spiritual and the physical, or is endowed with two souls. The latter aspect, as well as the ability of the heroine to incarnate in the vortex elements strengthen her connection with the images of evil spirits. There is a deliberate tension between the subjective assessment of the hero, who sees in the night appearance of the heroine a good essence, and the mythological perception of the night as dangerous, even fatal. In general, fluctuations in the assessment of the image of the heroine and the preference for different faces of love (exalted spiritual, passionate, harmonious “two-component” ones) create the internal dynamics of the cycle.

Rhythms of the unemployed: making art and making do through spoken word in Kisumu, Kenya

AbstractYoung people from the low-income settlements in Kenya's third-largest city, Kisumu, struggling with unemployment refer to their efforts to generate a livelihood as ‘hustling’. At the same time, many of them put art (dance, music, poetry) at the centre of their lives. This article attempts to account for the significant popularity of the arts among Kisumu's youth. It understands the ‘way of the artist’ as an alternative interpretation of work and a framework in which people situate their experiences of unemployment, waiting and insecure work. To examine this framework in action, the article follows Janabii, a poet who has been at the centre of attempts to establish a spoken word scene in Kisumu. Janabii has spent several years in limbo, oscillating between glittering performances and a more discreet daily life, marked by functional homelessness and a refusal to surrender to the violence of Kenya's informal world of work. The article contributes to recent studies about hustling by combining an ethnography of a week in Janabii's life with a literary analysis of excerpts from one of his poems, in order to elucidate how his struggles to get by are narrated and stylized through a spoken word, artistic imaginary that interrelates with his everyday life.

Этика и эстетика русского рока (на примере творчества К. Кинчева)

The paper deals with the analysis of ethical and aesthetic aspects of Russian rock by the example of the work of one of its prominent representatives Konstantin Kinchev. The authors suggest that Russian rock poetry is an organic and distinctive element of the large text of Russian culture, reflecting its deep typological characteristics. This is primarily a synthesis of literature and philosophy with a prevalence of moral issues. The mutual transition between the ethical and the existential, which is characteristic of Russian philosophical culture finds its highest embodiment in the work of K. Kinchev. From this point of view, the paper addresses some important aspects of the rock poet’s creative career, which are characterized by very strong spiritual conflicts, manifested in such topics as a painful search for truth, rushing from darkness to light, immersion in infernal areas, etc. The paper shows that these states are necessary for generating of a full-fledged art world, which is unthinkable without such contradictions. Thus, the authors debunk traditionally reduced and openly negative image of the representative of rock culture as a carrier of aggressive and destructive principles. The feeling that a poetic gift of the creator makes him a part of the divine being, and, accordingly, morally responsible for each word spoken comes to be important for all the work of K. Kinchev. As the paper identifies this is an essentially religious concept of artistic creation, rooted in the ideas of N. V. Gogol.

Polar responses in Russian across modalities and across interfaces

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

An Auditory Stroop Test to Implement in Cognitive Hearing Sciences: Development and Normative Data.

.Objective: This study developed and gained insight in an auditory Stroop test, implementable in cognitive hearing sciences. Methods: An auditory Stroop test was developed and performed in 178 participants, aged between 18 and 69 years. This Auditory Stroop test consisted of two tests: Stroop-tones and Stroop-words whereby the pitch of pure-tones and spoken words (i.e., the words high and low) had to be identified by high or low, respectively. An interference score was calculated as a measure of verbal executive functioning. Regression models were conducted to examine the effect of age, sex, education, awakeness, hearing, as well as visual and verbal working memory, and processing speed on the auditory Stroop scores. Normative data were obtained per age decade. Results: Compared to the visual counterparts, the auditory Stroop outcomes were better predicted by verbal working memory and processing speed. A trend was observed showing a decrease in performances with increasing age. No other participant-related variables had a significant relationship with the auditory Stroop test. Conclusion: This auditory Stroop test was considered a good test for measuring executive functioning using auditory stimuli. Implementing this auditory Stroop test within cognitive hearing sciences will contribute to unravel the auditory-cognitive perspective of speech understanding.

Children's language abilities predict success in remote communication contexts.

Remote communicative contexts are part of everyday social, familial, and academic interactions for the modern child. We investigated the ability of second-graders to engage in remote discourse, and we determined whether language ability, theory of mind, and shy temperament predicted their success. Fifty 7-to-9-year-old monolingual English speakers with a wide range of language abilities participated in standardized testing and an expository discourse task in which they taught two adults to solve the Tower of London, one in an audiovisual condition to simulate video chat and a second in an audio-only condition to simulate phone communication. The discourse was scored with a rubric of 15 items deemed relevant to the explanation. Children included 27% to 87% of the items, with more items communicated via gesture than spoken word in both conditions. Gesture scores and spoken scores were highly correlated. Children specified more rubric items overall in the audio condition and more rubric items in the spoken modality when in the audio condition than the audiovisual condition. Performance in both conditions was positively associated with scores on independent measures of language ability. There was no relationship between performance and theory of mind, shy temperament, ability to solve the Tower of London, age, or sex. We conclude that 7-to-9-year-olds adjust the modality and content of their message to suit their remote partner's needs, but their success in remote discourse contexts varies significantly from individual to individual. Children with below-average language skills are at risk for functional impairments in remote communication.

Cuvântul rostit de actor. Idei care emoționează

The word spoken by the actor on stage can be caught beyond the beauty, clarity, precision of the soundtrack. We thus discover its deepness, the essence of the logos that convey ideas and emotions. Therefore, it cuts the verbal instrument's thought and soul and forms a connection between the inner universes belonging to the artist and the spectator. We are talking about a word born from a necessity and which acquires the quality of being organic, invading the inside of the receiver.

Cuvântul rostit de actor. De la cuvântul scris la cuvântul celuilalt

Exceeding the level of everyday speech, the word spoken by the actor on stage aims to become a superior form of expression. Thus, we will follow a double approach of the word starting from the original word found in the dramatic text. On the one hand, we will look for that word which, taken from the written plan, is uttered following an act of creation, and the other hand, by inner assumption, we will follow the word that exceeds the level of auditory pleasure and is uttered under the imprint of a internal content.

Tradicionalni i inovativni modeli organizacije nastave u uslovima trajanja pandemije kovida 19

Tradicionalni i inovativni modeli organizacije nastave u uslovima trajanja pandemije kovida 19

Le sous-psychodrame de Jean-Luc Lagarce : une toute nouvelle forme dramatique et discursive du théâtre contemporain

It is exactly by a neologism of a « sub-psychodrama » that the playwright and French director Jean-Luc Lagarce (1957-1995) defined one of his plays. The similarities between psychodramatic practices and Lagarce's dramatic works are obvious. As in the context of psychodramatic practice, Lagarce's characters take on roles and identify with them from a carnal as well as linguistic point of view. The situation in which Lagarce's characters meet is very close to that which is, among others, treated by psychodramatists: the dialogue is not initialized, the individuals are stuck in their reproaches and focus only on their own points of view. Lagarce's characters use the theatricalization, the putting in voice of a dramatic text of one of them in order to launch the speech that awaited this moment of expression. The sub-psychodrama, while being a poetic and dramatic concept of Lagarce, reveals the dialogical malaise in the contemporary society that the sub-psychodrama quotes while highlighting the complex mechanisms of the intersubjective perception as well as the mechanisms of our individual and collective memory. Both reflective self-perception, which goes from oneself to oneself, and transitive perception, which goes from oneself to the other or from the other to oneself - in the context of a speech act. The sub-psychodrama presents itself, therefore, as a dialogical and perceptive field of battle where the spoken word is in search of its answer. The sub-psychodrama invented and developed by Lagarce puts the concept of paper beings - linguistic puppets - at the same level, while promoting the coalition of puppet theater and word drama.

Isolated spoken word recognition using packed-MFCC on padded-voice signal for unscripted languages

Isolated spoken word recognition using packed-MFCC on padded-voice signal for unscripted languages

Analysis of the frequency of verbal and vocal signs in true and false statements

The paper presents research aimed at analysing the frequency of verbal and vocal signs in a situation of false and true statements, by introducing a secondary task. The research involved 100 students (47 men and 53 women) of the master's studies of criminal investigation at the University of Criminal Investigation and Police Studies, aged 23-44. Students had the task, based on the observation of twenty selected videos (10 true statements and 10 false statements), to mark the frequency of each individual verbal and vocal sign, on a previously generated and prepared list. The results show that there is a statistically significant difference in terms of the frequency of all verbal and vocal signs in a false or true statement: response latency, speech hesitation, speech errors, speech rate, number of spoken words in the utterance, and length of utterance. Response latency, speech hesitation, and speech errors have higher median values in false utterances than in true ones, while speech rate, number of words spoken, and length of utterance show higher median values in true than false utterances.

Isolated Spoken Word Recognition Using One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network

Isolated Spoken Word Recognition Using One-Dimensional Convolutional Neural Network

Acoustic properties of word and phrasal prominence in Uzbek

Based on a large-scale corpus of experimental data produced by 8 native speakers of Tashkent Uzbek, we assess the presence of canonical word-final stress in real words spoken in three dialogue types: without focus, with contrastive focus, and with new information focus on the target. The first context provides baseline information regarding the manifestation of stress, in the absence of additional focus properties. By comparing the latter two contexts with the former, we are also able to assess the acoustic manifestation of the two types of focus. The most noteworthy properties of the final syllable are its relatively long duration and sharp falling contour, potentially serving as the cues to lexical stress, and enhanced by both types of focus. Due to the word-final position of stress, however, the patterns we observe could also be consistent with boundary properties, a possibility we consider as well. In addition, we briefly compare the prosodic patterns we observe in Uzbek with similarly collected data in Turkish. We find that the prominence patterns in Uzbek, while not particularly strong, are nevertheless stronger than those in Turkish, and also exhibit crucial differences. Implications for Turkic prosody more generally are also suggested.

Bad Vibes: Images of Communication, Emotional Balance and Health in East German Television, 1970s-1980s

Analysing health education films from the German Democratic Republic broadcast on TV during the 1970s and 1980s, this paper explores how emotions were framed as health risks and how this framing corresponded with socialist ideas on communication and media theory. I argue that television offered an ideal medium for updating traditions of social hygiene and that it served as a means to the socialist concept of “emotional education”. Television and public health met in highlighting socialist ideas on social interaction: health education aimed at cultivating trust to reduce organic diseases. At the same time, creating trust and intimacy was one of the main promises of the new medium, a function bolstered by its location in the home. To achieve these, they turned to the emotional effects of the spoken word.

Review: Put Your Hands Together: A Review of Javon Johnson’s Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities

Review: Put Your Hands Together: A Review of Javon Johnson’s <i>Killing Poetry: Blackness and the Making of Slam and Spoken Word Communities</i>

Rhotic Environments

This study examines if a listener’s exposure to nonrhotic dialects of English affects how they perceive rhoticity in words spoken in a Boston English accent. Listener judgments on the rhoticity of both nonce words and words in phrases were elicited through a 120-question survey. The results suggest that listeners from the United States who grew up in regions where nonrhotic dialects are prevalent perceived /ɹ/ in certain nonrhotic articulations more than their counterparts did.

Swamp, Sound, Sign: Reflections on interspecies difference in compositional practice

Soundscape composition and environmental sound art already imply critiques and negotiations of nature/culture divide and human/non-human difference. This article, along with the composition it frames, thinks through a vision of environmental sound art that completes a link between sonic practice and its object. As a project, it navigates human/animal difference through a sonic knowing which is founded on life’s shared constitution in signs. Sounds beyond spoken words, like the signs that dominate non-human life, are foundationally non-symbolic, and the ability of environmental sound art to resemble and evoke networks of icons and indices is in some respects a privileged position of electroacoustic music. The article presents a non-dualistic sonic thinking within the decentred perspective of the environment, which emerges as a plural product of its engagements and participants. A vision for soundscape composition is presented, along with a frame for its interpretation as sonic thought, or phonosophy.

“The Revolution Will Be Televised (With Apologies to Gil Scott-Heron)”

I use the iconic spoken word poem, “The Revolution Will Not be Televised” by Gil Scott-Heron to chart a series of reflections on my childhood engagement of the piece for high speech tournaments. Then ground the reflection in current day commentary on the nature of revolution, protest, civil rights protest, the Black Lives Matter movements, issues of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), and the notion of antiracism.