Stressed Syllables Research Articles

Temporal-sampling theory and language in Down syndrome: An empirical study

BackgroundTemporal-sampling theory argues that difficulties in the processing of syllable stress auditory markers and in lexical stress discrimination contribute to explaining the language problems of children with developmental language disorder and of those with dyslexia. The theory has not been tested in other developmental disabilities. AimsThis research sought to assess the potential of temporal-sampling theory as a framework to accounting for language difficulties in Down syndrome (DS). Methods and proceduresThresholds for auditory markers of lexical stress, lexical stress discrimination, and receptive vocabulary were studied in teenagers and young adults with DS and in peers with other intellectual disability (ID) of unknown origin matched on chronological age and non-verbal cognition. Outcomes and resultsFrequency and intensity thresholds were higher in participants with DS, and their lexical stress discrimination and receptive vocabulary skills were lower than those of the group with other ID. Lexical stress discrimination was predicted by intensity thresholds and group, while receptive vocabulary was only predicted by lexical stress discrimination. Conclusions and implicationsThe results suggest that temporal-sampling theory is useful to explain language difficulties in individuals with DS or with other ID. This opens up new window opportunities for the design of language intervention programs in such populations.

Stød and stress location in Danish: A nonce word study

Abstract In Danish, the distribution of stød exhibits a pattern related to the position of the stressed syllable. Some phonological theories of stød, e.g. Basbøll (2005), consider stød on the antepenultimate or ultimate syllable, and non-stød on the penultimate syllable, to be the default. This article reports on a production study with nonce words, investigating the distributional pattern of stød in relation to the position of the stressed syllable in monomorphemic nonce words. Ten speakers were asked to pronounce 336 nonce words with stress on either the ultimate, penultimate, or antepenultimate syllable. The results showed that stød on ultimate stressed syllables and non-stød on penultimate stressed syllables replicates in nonce words, but stød on antepenultimate stressed syllables does not. This suggests that stød in antepenultimate stressed words is not the default, but lexical.

Acoustics of the alignment of narrow focus prosody and lexical stress in native and nonnative English productions.

This study examined the acoustic correlates of the alignment between lexical stress and narrow focus prosody in English and investigated how this alignment is learned by second language learners whose native language is prosodically distinct from English. A production experiment was conducted where native English speakers and Korean learners of English were asked to read aloud sentences with a narrow focus on trisyllabic words with various stress patterns (e.g., ánimal, Novémber, submaríne). In the native English productions, the stressed syllables were characterized by either a rising F0 contour (for word-initial stress) or increased periodic energy (for word-medial and -final stress). The Korean speakers (KSs) produced stressed syllables with a rising F0 contour regardless of stress position, differing from the native speakers, and they exhibited greater periodic energy for word-medial and -final stressed syllables, similar to the native speakers. In addition, the KSs with higher English proficiency showed more native-like patterns by exhibiting a post-focus F0 drop immediately after word-initial stressed syllables. These findings are discussed in the context of existing literature and potential factors contributing to the challenges observed in L2 prosody learning.

Immediate auditory feedback regulates inter-articulator speech coordination in service to phonetic structure.

Research has shown that talkers reliably coordinate the timing of articulator movements across variation in production rate and syllable stress, and that this precision of inter-articulator timing instantiates phonetic structure in the resulting acoustic signal. We here tested the hypothesis that immediate auditory feedback helps regulate that consistent articulatory timing control. Talkers with normal hearing recorded 480 /tV#Cat/ utterances using electromagnetic articulography, with alternative V (/ɑ/-/ɛ/) and C (/t/-/d/), across variation in production rate (fast-normal) and stress (first syllable stressed-unstressed). Utterances were split between two listening conditions: unmasked and masked. To quantify the effect of immediate auditory feedback on the coordination between the jaw and tongue-tip, the timing of tongue-tip raising onset for C, relative to the jaw opening-closing cycle for V, was obtained in each listening condition. Across both listening conditions, any manipulation that shortened the jaw opening-closing cycle reduced the latency of tongue-tip movement onset, relative to the onset of jaw opening. Moreover, tongue-tip latencies were strongly affiliated with utterance type. During auditory masking, however, tongue-tip latencies were less strongly affiliated with utterance type, demonstrating that talkers use afferent auditory signals in real-time to regulate the precision of inter-articulator timing in service to phonetic structure.

The interaction of tonal alignment with vowel length and syllable structure in Lebanese Arabic

Research on a variety of languages has shown that tonal alignment in pitch accents can be influenced by segmental factors such as syllable structure, onset type, and phonological vowel length (e.g., Ladd et al., 2000; Maddieson, 1997). However, the majority of work on these topics has been on European languages. The current study examines the interaction of these factors in the Beirut dialect of Lebanese Arabic. Disyllabic words with initial, stressed syllables that were either open or closed and contained either a long or a short vowel and had a simple or complex onset were examined when non-focused and in contrastive focus. Contrastive focus was associated with a wider f0 range. The focus pitch accent was H* or L+H*. In terms of segmental effects, neither vowel length nor syllable structure had a significant effect on tonal alignment. Timing of the f0 peak was found to be consistently about 45 msec from vowel onset. This study contributes to the literature on tonal alignment by examining a variety of Arabic that is understudied in terms of intonation.

On the interaction between vowel confusions (<e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/) and lexical stress in Latin inscriptions from Rome (ca. 119 BCE – ca. 600 CE)

AbstractThe aim of this article is to better define how changes in the Latin vowel system evolved over time in the stressed vs. the unstressed syllables in the Latin of Rome. To this end, the cases of <e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/ in an epigraphic corpus of 6,599 inscriptions from this city have been analysed by comparing the number of epigraphic errors occurring under and out of stress in five different periods. Our results indicate that, until about the 4th cent. CE, cases of <e> for /i/ and <o> for /u/ occur mostly in the unstressed syllables in our inscriptions, which is consistent with the view that the reorganisation of the vocalic qualities in the Latin vowel system affected the unstressed vowels before it affected the stressed ones. However, the same results also indicate that the number of epigraphic deviations concerning the stressed vowels /i/ and /u/ in our corpus increases from about the 4th–5th cent. CE onwards, and that this fact should be linked to the dephonologisation of contrastive vowel quantity (in the stressed syllables).

Pitch changes as the marker of a phrase edge in standard Lithuanian

In many languages, pitch changes at phrase edges are often described as significant cues of juncture. The aim of this study is to analyse pitch changes at the beginning and end of declarative phrases in standard Lithuanian. The study consists of two parts: 1) a pilot study analysing whether the F0 difference is a reliable measure to determine the F0 rise/fall at the end of declarative phrasesand whether such a difference depends on the speaker’s sex; 2) an annotated speech corpus analysis on the tendencies of pitch changes at phrase edges. The pilot study showed that in phrases with a rising F0 at the end, the F0 mean of the last stressed syllable is significantly lower than F0 at the end of a phrase. In phrases with a falling F0, the F0 mean of the last stressed syllable is significantly higher than the F0 at the end of a phrase. The F0 difference is a reliable measure to determine the F0 rise or fall at the end of a phrase, and all the abovementioned tendencies were found in both male and female speakers’ recordings. The annotated speech corpus analysis revealed that both intonational and intermediate phrases usually begin and end in a low tone. Hence, the high and rising or falling tones at the beginning or end of a phrase are the marked members of the phrase edge tone system, and they can help identify phrase junctures. However, it is important to pay attention to other acoustic features such as pauses and intensity, as well as grammatical and semantic aspects.

Pragmatics via prosody in interaction optimization

The article represents a case study of Joaquin Phoenix’s acceptance speech, aimed at examining the interface of pragmatics and prosody. Relying on research into prosodic-pragmatic relationships and employing auditory prosody analysis combined with methods of pragmatic and discourse analysis, the article explores the interaction of prosody with speech acts, as well as with their related politeness and discursive strategies. Direct expressives are associated with three positive politeness strategies and are prosodically characterized by a normal or slow speech rate, normal or reduced volume, short intonation groups, very short pauses, a narrow pitch range, clear timbre, and a regular rhythm. The illocutionary force of indirect expressives relies on stylistic devices and markers of positive politeness, connoting emotional closeness and “sincerity” as components of felicity conditions for such acts. Indirect expressives are signaled by very short, short, or medium filled pauses, resonant timbre, low fall and stressed syllable, a descending stepping scale followed by a falling nucleus, high fall intonation groups, a rising intonation before key concepts, accelerated speech tempo, increased loudness, and emphasis on key words. The prosodic signals of expressive syntax and positive politeness coincide, except for markers emphasizing commonality. The “ecocentric” part of speech is constructed by representatives-reasoning that stimulates reflection without imposing views. This aligns with the negative politeness of non-imposition, marked by mitigators like hedges, bushes, and shields. The intonational accent on words with denotative or connotative meanings related to “discrimination” contributes to the discursive strategy of group polarization.

The prosody of theme, rheme and focus in Egyptian Arabic: A quantitative investigation of tunes, configurations and speaker variability

This paper investigates the prosody of sentences elicited in three Information Structure (IS) conditions: all-new, theme-rheme and rhematic focus-background. The sentences were produced by 18 speakers of Egyptian Arabic (EA). This is the first quantitative study to provide a comprehensive analysis of holistic f0 contours (by means of GAMM) and configurations of f0, duration and intensity (by means of FPCA) associated with the three IS conditions, both across and within speakers. A significant difference between focus-background and the other information structure conditions was found, but also strong inter-speaker variation in terms of strategies and the degree to which these strategies were applied. The results suggest that post-focus register lowering and the duration of the stressed syllables of the focused and the utterance-final word are more consistent cues to focus than a higher peak of the focus accent. In addition, some independence of duration and intensity from f0 could be identified. These results thus support the assumption that, when focus is marked prosodically in EA, it is marked by prominence. Nevertheless, the fact that a considerable number of EA speakers did not apply prosodic marking and the fact that prosodic focus marking was gradient rather than categorical suggest that EA does not have a fully conventionalized prosodic focus construction.

How word stress is realized in Thai: evidence from the ordering of coordinate compounds

Abstract This study challenges the widespread belief that Thai lacks word stress, demonstrating its pivotal role in morphophonology. Through a Maximum Entropy analysis, we investigated how specific segmental properties statistically influence speakers’ choices of word order in coordinate compounds. Results indicate a significant effect of phonological weight on the ordering patterns. Specifically, the dispreference for stop codas in final positions and the preference for long or low vowels word-finally converge to differentially distribute phonological weight, ensuring that final syllables are heavier in accordance with the Stress-to-Weight Principle. Additionally, a marginal affinity is observed between the final syllable and the (historical) high-register tone, aligning with the well-documented tone-stress interaction where high tones gravitate towards stressed syllables. These findings provide compelling evidence for the existence of word stress in Thai: compound stress necessarily coincides with word stress, as dictated by the Continuous Column Constraint. Thus, this work suggests that relying solely on phonetic cues is insufficient for identifying stress; instead, a comprehensive analysis incorporating “phonological exponents” is essential to capture the greater phonological contrasts licensed in stressed syllables. This study also contributes to a deeper understanding of metrical and prosodic prominence, revealing that word stress can sometimes be masked by higher-level prominence.

Вариативност при реализацията на българска интонация

The study presents the intonational phonology of Contemporary Standard Bulgarian (CSB) and the BG_ToBI annotation system. CSB uses the following pitch accents: L*, L*+H, L+H*, H*, H+!H*; phrase accents: L-, H-, and !H-; and boundary tones: %H, L%, H%, !H%. In the realization of the pitch accents, there is often variable alignment between the tonal target and the boundaries of the lexically stressed syllable. This variability is due to both speaker-specific speech strategies and the position of the stressed syllable within the utterance. For example, when the H* pitch accent is near the beginning of the utterance, the high target is usually reached towards the end of the stressed syllable. When it is near the end of the utterance, the high target is reached towards the beginning of the stressed syllable. In rising accents (L*+H and L+H*), the high tone can be delayed up to three syllables after its original target. In signaling the information structure of the utterance, there is no one-to-one correspondence between the type of focus and the choice of pitch accent: the same type of focus can be ex-pressed with different accent types, and the same accent can signal different types of focus. For example, H* can signal broad focus, narrow focus, and contrastive focus; L+H* can signal narrow focus and contrastive focus. Thematic material is not necessarily deaccented. From a pragmatic and functional perspective, four different tunes associated with the various vocative types in Bulgarian are presented: neutral vocative (L+H* L-%), insistent vocative (L+<H* L-% [+long]), challenging chant (L* H-L% [+long]), and vocative chant (L+H* !H-% [+long]). When the final syllable is lengthened, the vowel in it is not fully reduced, which contradicts the phonological pattern of vowel reduction in CSB.

Analysing the acoustic evidence of consonant productions among students at the university level

Learners of English as a second language (L2) whose first language (L1) is Indonesian tend to struggle to produce aspirated consonants. This study investigates whether the difficulties came from the interference of the L1 for the production of these sounds: [k], [b], [d], [g] in the final positions, and [p] and [t] in the stressed syllable. This study involved two cohorts of English department university students with different levels of fluency in L2 speech production. The L2 learners were asked to pronounce 25 words from a textbook previously used to teach them. The L2 learners were exposed to a British English-speaking speech model, which became a benchmark for the L2 learners’ pronunciation by asking them to imitate the pronunciation. Annotation of data was conducted twice by a second annotator to ensure the objectivity of the scores given to the L2 learners which was analised using paired sample t-test. Findings suggest that the sounds with the lowest success rate of production were [p] in the stressed syllable, [k], and [g] in the final position. The production was unsuccessful because the L2 learners did not have phonological awareness of how the L2 consonant sounds were produced near-natively and were affected by their L1. The lack of awareness led to the failure to produce [p], [k], and [g] sounds because these sounds did not exist in their L1 and interference of the L1 was embed to the L2 speech production. The format analysis results using PRAAT indicate that there is an improvement in the participants’ pronunciation after exposure to the native speaker’s speech sound. The implication of this research is paramount for L2 learners and lecturers in highlighting the importance of targeted instruction and intervention to address the challenges in speech production. Contrasting the phonetic features of L1 and L2 sounds helped the learners to defer interference in their L2 speech production. This study encourages continuous assessment of L2 learners to ensure that they maintain the consistency of speech production to sound near-native.

Early or synchronized gestures facilitate speech recall-a study based on motion capture data.

Temporal co-ordination between speech and gestures has been thoroughly studied in natural production. In most cases gesture strokes precede or coincide with the stressed syllable in words that they are semantically associated with. To understand whether processing of speech and gestures is attuned to such temporal coordination, we investigated the effect of delaying, preposing or eliminating individual gestures on the memory for words in an experimental study in which 83 participants watched video sequences of naturalistic 3D-animated speakers generated based on motion capture data. A target word in the sequence appeared (a) with a gesture presented in its original position synchronized with speech, (b) temporally shifted 500 ms before or (c) after the original position, or (d) with the gesture eliminated. Participants were asked to retell the videos in a free recall task. The strength of recall was operationalized as the inclusion of the target word in the free recall. Both eliminated and delayed gesture strokes resulted in reduced recall rates compared to synchronized strokes, whereas there was no difference between advanced (preposed) and synchronized strokes. An item-level analysis also showed that the greater the interval between the onsets of delayed strokes and stressed syllables in target words, the greater the negative effect was on recall. These results indicate that speech-gesture synchrony affects memory for speech, and that temporal patterns that are common in production lead to the best recall. Importantly, the study also showcases a procedure for using motion capture-based 3D-animated speakers to create an experimental paradigm for the study of speech-gesture comprehension.

The recurring collocation of vreiðr and vega in Old Norse poetry

Poetry in early Germanic vernaculars exhibits variations on a metrical form predicated on a pattern of alliterating stressed syllables linking two halves of a line (in contrast to syllabic metres in which scansion requires a fixed number of syllables per line). This gave rise to the phenomenon of recurring alliterative collocations: the repeated combination of alliterating words or word-roots within a given poetic corpus. It is likely that such collocations originated, like formulae in oral-formulaic theory developed by Milman Parry and A.B. Lord, as building blocks for extempore composition during performance. However, there is strong evidence that Old Norse poetry was composed deliberatively and memorized for performance. Recurring collocations in Old Norse verse therefore reflect conscious artistic design rather than compositional expediency. This article focuses on one such collocation—the adjective vreiðr (angry) and the verb vega (to fight, to strike)—as a case study of the way in which composers of Old Norse eddic verse exploited the traditional resonances of certain collocations to shape audience understanding of character and plot.

Generalization of inter-articulator timing control: Evidence from tongue-jaw and lip-jaw kinematics using electromagnetic articulography

Recent research in speech production indicates that talkers reliably control the relative timing of articulator movement onsets across variation in production rate, syllable stress, and segmental makeup and that this precision of inter-articulator timing control instantiates phonetic structure. To date, these timing relations have been highly reliable for tongue-jaw kinematics. In the present study, we address the generality of these timing relations to lip-jaw kinematics. Eleven talkers recorded 240 /tV#Cat/ and 240 / bV#Cab/ utterances using electromagnetic articulography, with alternative V (/ɑ/-/ɛ/) and C (/t/−/d/ or /p/−/b/), across changes in production rate (fast-normal) and stress (first syllable stressed-unstressed). To quantify inter-articulator temporal coordination, the timing of either tongue-tip or lower-lip raising onset for the intervocalic C, relative to the jaw opening-closing cycle for V, was obtained. Results indicate that the same kinematic pattern occurred among both sets of articulators: any manipulation that shortened the jaw opening-closing cycle reduced the latency of either tongue-tip or lower-lip movement onset, relative to the onset of jaw opening. Furthermore, the movement onset latencies of the tongue-tip and lower-lip were both highly differentiated by utterance type, bolstering the view that inter-articulator timing relations instantiate phonetic structure in the resulting acoustic signal.

Unraveling the contributions of prosodic patterns and individual traits on cross-linguistic perception of Spanish sentence modality.

Cross-linguistic perception is known to be molded by native and second language (L2) experiences. Yet, the role of prosodic patterns and individual characteristics on how speakers of tonal languages perceive L2 Spanish sentence modalities remains relatively underexplored. This study addresses the gap by analyzing the auditory performance of 75 Mandarin speakers with varying levels of Spanish proficiency. The experiment consisted of four parts: the first three collected sociolinguistic profiles and assessed participants' pragmatic competence and musical abilities. The last part involved an auditory gating task, where participants were asked to identify Spanish broad focus statements and information-seeking yes/no questions with different stress patterns. Results indicated that the shape of intonation contours and the position of the final stressed syllable significantly impact learners' perceptual accuracy, with effects modulated by utterance length and L2 proficiency. Moreover, individual differences in pragmatic and musical competence were found to refine auditory and cognitive processing in Mandarin learners, thereby influencing their ability to discriminate question-statement contrasts. These findings reveal the complex interplay between prosodic and individual variations in L2 speech perception, providing novel insights into how speakers of tonal languages process intonation in a non-native Romance language like Spanish.

Constraints on Acceleration in Bilingual Development: Evidence from Word Segmentation by Spanish Learning Infants.

We have previously shown that bilingual Spanish and English-learning infants can segment English iambs, two-syllable words with final stress (e.g., guiTAR), earlier than their monolingual peers. This is consistent with accelerated development in bilinguals and was attributed to bilingual infants' increased exposure to iambs through Spanish; about 10% of English content words start with an unstressed syllable, compared to 40% in Spanish. Here, we evaluated whether increased exposure to a stress pattern alone is sufficient to account for acceleration in bilingual infants. In English, 90% of content words start with a stressed syllable (e.g., KINGdom), compared to 60% in Spanish. However, we found no evidence for accelerated segmentation of Spanish trochees by Spanish-English bilingual infants compared to their monolingual Spanish-learning peers. Based on this finding, we argue that merely increased exposure to a linguistic feature in one language does not result in accelerated development in the other. Instead, only the acquisition of infrequent patterns in one language may be accelerated due to the additive effects of the other language.

Prominence Analysis of President Jokowi's Speeches on the Palestine–Israel Conflict: Acoustic Phonetic Study

The aim of this research is to represent the prominence contained in President Jokowi's statements regarding the Palestinian and Israeli conflicts, as well as to find the values of frequency, duration, and intensity as characteristics of the sound. This research is quantitave research with an instrumental approach. The research data is an audiovisual form, and it is analyzed using the Praat application. The result shows that the prominence of President Jokowi's statement is found in the words 'indonesia' and 'war', namely in the rightmost syllables: -sia and -rang. When communicating, speakers tend to pay more attention to words that they think are important. It has also been proven that the factors that influence the formation of prominence are pitch, loudness, and duration, with values of F0, intensity, and duration for stressed syllables is higher than unstressed syllables. Apart from that, prominence can also occur when speakers want to highlight words that are considered important.

Lexical Stress Identification in Cochlear Implant-Simulated Speech by Non-Native Listeners.

This study investigates whether a presumed difference in the perceptibility of cues to lexical stress in spectro-temporally degraded simulated cochlear implant (CI) speech affects how listeners weight these cues during a lexical stress identification task, specifically in their non-native language. Previous research suggests that in English, listeners predominantly rely on a reduction in vowel quality as a cue to lexical stress. In Dutch, changes in the fundamental frequency (F0) contour seem to have a greater functional weight than the vowel quality contrast. Generally, non-native listeners use the cue-weighting strategies from their native language in the non-native language. Moreover, few studies have suggested that these cues to lexical stress are differently perceptible in spectro-temporally degraded electric hearing, as CI users appear to make more effective use of changes in vowel quality than of changes in the F0 contour as cues to linguistic phenomena. In this study, native Dutch learners of English identified stressed syllables in CI-simulated and non-CI-simulated Dutch and English words that contained changes in the F0 contour and vowel quality as cues to lexical stress. The results indicate that neither the cue-weighting strategies in the native language nor in the non-native language are influenced by the perceptibility of cues in the spectro-temporally degraded speech signal. These results are in contrast to our expectations based on previous research and support the idea that cue weighting is a flexible and transferable process.

Prominence effects in vocal iconicity: Implications for lexical access and language changea).

This paper explores how three cognitive and perceptual cues, vocal iconicity, resemblance-based mappings between form and meaning, and segment position and lexical stress, interact to affect word formation and language processing. The study combines an analysis of the word-internal positions that iconic segments occur in based on data from 245 language families with an experimental study in which participants representing more than 30 languages rated iconic and non-iconic pseudowords. The pseudowords were designed to systematically vary segment and stress placement across syllables. The results for study 1 indicate that segments used iconically appear approximately 0.26 segment positions closer toward the beginning of words compared to non-iconic segments. In study 2, it was found that iconic segments occurring in stressed syllables and non-iconic segments occurring in the second syllable were rated as significantly more fitting. These findings suggest that the interplay between vocal iconicity and prominence effects increases the predictive function of iconic segments by foregrounding sounds, which intrinsically carry semantic information. Consequently, these results contribute to the understanding of the widespread occurrence of vocal iconicity in human languages.