Swedish Word Accents Research Articles

Probing effects of lexical prosody on speech-gesture integration in prominence production by Swedish news presenters

This study investigates the multimodal implementation of prosodic-phonological categories, asking whether the accentual fall and the following rise in the Swedish word accents (Accent 1, Accent 2) are varied as a function of accompanying head and eyebrow gestures. Our purpose is to evaluate the hypothesis that prominence production displays a cumulative relation between acoustic and kinematic dimensions of spoken language, especially focusing on the clustering of gestures (head, eyebrows), at the same time asking if lexical-prosodic features would interfere with this cumulative relation. Our materials comprise 12 minutes of speech from Swedish television news presentations. The results reveal a significant trend for larger fo rises when a head movement accompanies the accented word, and even larger when an additional eyebrow movement is present. This trend is observed for accentual rises that encode phrase-level prominence, but not for accentual falls that are primarily related to lexical prosody. Moreover, the trend is manifested differently in different lexical-prosodic categories (Accent 1 versus Accent 2 with one versus two lexical stresses). The study provides novel support for a cumulative-cue hypothesis and the assumption that prominence production is essentially multimodal, well in line with the idea of speech and gesture as an integrated system.

The predictive function of Swedish word accents.

Swedish lexical word accents have been repeatedly said to have a low functional load. Even so, the language has kept these tones ever since they emerged probably over a thousand years ago. This article proposes that the primary function of word accents is for listeners to be able to predict upcoming morphological structures and narrow down the lexical competition rather than being lexically distinctive. Psycho- and neurophysiological evidence for the predictive function of word accents is discussed. A novel analysis displays that word accents have a facilitative role in word processing. Specifically, a correlation is revealed between how much incorrect word accents hinder listeners’ processing and how much they reduce response times when correct. Finally, a dual-route model of the predictive use of word accents with distinct neural substrates is put forth.

Word-initial consonant-vowel coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language.

Previous research has acknowledged the effect of prosody on inter-gestural coordination, but specifically the effect of tones is still understudied. This paper has a two-fold purpose. First, it aims to explore effects of the Swedish word accents on word-initial consonant-vowel (CV) coarticulation. Second, it aims to revisit the existing evidence for tonal integration. Based on Articulatory Phonology, it has been suggested that tones- in tone languages- are integrated in the gestural organization of a syllable-initial CV sequence in the same manner as would an additional consonant (CCV), indicated by a time lag between the gestural onsets of the C and the V gesture (CV onset time lag). However, we argue that the existing evidence is inconclusive, because previous cross-linguistic research has used small-scale data sets (one to seven speakers), and we still lack a well-grounded consensus on how gestural onsets are to be measured. This study uses Electromagnetic Articulography (EMA) to investigate word-initial CV coordination in a lexical pitch-accent language (Swedish) with a binary tonal word accent distinction: a tonal fall and a tonal rise, respectively. A selection of 13 spatial, temporal or coordinative measures of bilabial and tongue body data from 19 speakers, and acoustic fo data, were examined to study the CV sequence /ma/. Mixed effects regression models revealed a longer tongue body movement in the rising tone context and small but significant differences in tongue body height, in the closing and the opening of the lips, as well as in the CV onset time lag between the two tonal contexts. We argue that these effects are biomechanical in nature, due to the physiological connections between the tongue, the jaw, and the larynx. In addition, our results suggest either synchronized CV onsets or a CV onset time lag (as in tone languages), depending on the timing landmarks used. In order to evaluate such results as evidence for or against the integration of tone in CV coarticulation, we argue that future research needs to compare data from a variety of languages using a considerable number of speakers. The present study provides new reference values for such comparisons.

Neural processing of morphosyntactic tonal cues in second-language learners

Abstract The morphosyntactic nature of word accents in Swedish makes them a perfect candidate for the study of predictive processing in language. The association of word stem accents with upcoming suffixes allows native listeners to pre-activate a word's potential ending and thereby facilitate speech processing. Unlike native speakers, second language learners are known to be less able to use prediction in their L2s. This is presumably due in particular to competing information from the learners' L1 and a poorer exposure to the relevant L2 information. Swedish word accents, however, are abundant in the input and rare cross-linguistically, making them ideal for studying the implicit acquisition of linguistic prediction in beginner L2 learners. We therefore recorded learners' electrophysiological brain responses to Swedish word accents and compared them to those of native speakers. In the native speaker group, a pronounced suffix-related PrAN (pre-activation negativity), N400 and a P600-like late positivity indicate predictive processing. The learners, however, only produced a late (400–600 ms) centrally distributed negativity for word accent processing, remarkably similar to the deflection for pure pitch height differences found in the same subject group. Crucially, correlation analysis indicated that this negativity increased (at right-lateral electrode sites) for learners with increased level of Swedish proficiency. We conclude that, to allow L2 tone-suffix association and to enable its predictive capacity, the acquisition of Swedish word accents and their predictive properties might first involve dissociation of word tones from the default L1 tonal patterns as well as sensitisation to pitch height differences.

Introduction: Prosody in the Nordic languages

The initiative for this special issue on prosody in the Nordic languages developed in connection with an international symposium on prosody which took place in Lund on 2–3 June 2014 (http://konferens.ht.lu.se/en/bruce-2014/). The symposium commemorated the life and work of Gösta Bruce (1947–2010), our friend, teacher, mentor, and colleague during many years. Gösta's contributions to the field of prosody have been of utmost significance to the development of prosody research, in particular his work on modelling the structure and function of Swedish word accents ‘in sentence perspective’.

A neurolinguistic study of South Swedish word accents: Electrical brain potentials in nouns and verbs

The brain response to words with correct and incorrect word accent–suffix combinations in South Swedish was investigated using electroencephalography (EEG). Accent 1 yielded an increased brain response (‘preactivation negativity’) that has previously been interpreted as reflecting preactivation of suffixes. Preactivation is greater for accent 1 due to its association with a limited set of suffixes, whereas accent 2 is default for compound words. The tonal realization of the word accent opposition in South Swedish is practically the mirror image of that in Central Swedish, where a similar preactivation negativity has been found. Therefore, the brain response is unlikely to result from a difference in acoustic features between the word accents. Invalidly cued suffixes yielded brain response pattern showing increased processing load of the unexpected suffix (negative electric potential) followed by its reprocessing (positivity ‘P600’).

Word tones cueing morphosyntactic structure: Neuroanatomical substrates and activation time-course assessed by EEG and fMRI

Previous studies distinguish between right hemisphere-dominant processing of prosodic/tonal information and left-hemispheric modulation of grammatical information as well as lexical tones. Swedish word accents offer a prime testing ground to better understand this division. Although similar to lexical tones, word accents are determined by words’ morphosyntactic structure, which enables listeners to use the tone at the beginning of a word to predict its grammatical ending. We recorded electrophysiological and hemodynamic brain responses to words where stem tones matched or mismatched inflectional suffixes. Tones produced brain potential effects after 136ms, correlating with subject variability in average BOLD in left primary auditory cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus. Invalidly cued suffixes activated the left inferior parietal lobe, arguably reflecting increased processing cost of their meaning. Thus, interaction of word accent tones with grammatical morphology yielded a rapid neural response correlating in subject variability with activations in predominantly left-hemispheric brain areas.

Processing morphologically conditioned word accents

The present response time study investigated the influence Central Swedish word accents have on the interpretation of inflectional morphology. Effects of stem tone match/mismatch on the interpretation of Swedish present and past tense suffixes were tested. Both Accent 1 and Accent 2 were found to influence listeners’ response times related to decisions on verb tense. It thus seems that both word accents can facilitate online interpretation of words. Previous studies where tasks have not required suffix interpretation have only found an effect of Accent 1 patterns on Accent 2-associated suffixes. Accent 2 suffixes further yielded generally greater response times than Accent 1-associated suffixes. Different possible explanations for this are discussed.

The role of Swedish tonal word accents in children with language impairment

The present study was designed to examine the production of the Swedish tonal accents in children with language impairment and normal controls in order to verify previous findings. The productions of 25 children with linguistic impairment and their matched controls, aged 4;4–10;0 (mean age 5;11) were evaluated by ratings of fundamental frequency patterns, and by perceptual analysis by ten linguistically naive listeners to assess the distinctiveness of the accents. These methods give a more detailed description of the children's productions of tonal word accents. The results show that 60.8% of the children with language impairment have difficulties to produce the contrast of tonal word accents according to the F0 patterns. The difference in the rating of the F0 curves between the children with LI and their matched controls was significant. There is a significant positive correlation between the perceptual results and the F0‐rating, indicating that the better a child was perceived, the better his/her F0 production was rated. We conclude that the distinction between the tonal word accents is a difficult feature to acquire for Swedish children, which is shown both by acoustic and perceptual evaluations.

Tonal alignment in Seoul Korean

Bruce found that a local F0 peak is aligned very precisely in time with the segmental material in Swedish [Swedish word accents in sentence perspective (1977)]. Alternatively, it is possible that such F0 peaks may function as edge markers, and hence not necessarily be aligned with any particular aspect of the word-internal structure. This study investigates how an initial high tone is aligned in time with the segmental material in Standard Korean. Recordings of two speakers of Seoul Korean producing three-syllable words with various syllable structure combinations in two prosodic conditions were digitized and analyzed. One speaker shows no apparent pattern of alignment with the segmental material; peaks are simply reached at a fixed duration from the beginning of the utterance regardless of the structure of the word. Another speaker, however, shows that initial high tones fall into two distinct groups, ones aligned with initial syllables and ones aligned with second syllables. This syllable association is statistically related to syllable composition. These results suggest that Korean tone alignment is currently in a state of fluctuation between durationally fixed edge tones and tones associated with internal syllables according to a stochastic rule.