Target Syllables Research Articles

The Interplay of Syllable Structure and Consonant Sonority in L2 Speech Segmentation

The present study investigated whether L1 and L2 Spanish speakers show sensitivity to matching/mismatching syllable structure and consonant sonority in lexical segmentation in Spanish. A total of 81 English–Spanish learners and 72 Spanish–English learners completed a fragment-monitoring task. They listened to lists of Spanish words as they saw a CV or CVC syllable (e.g., “pa” or “pal”) and pressed a button when the word began with the syllable shown on the screen. The task manipulated syllable structure (CV or CVC) and consonant sonority (fricative, nasal, or liquid) of target syllables and carrier words. Target syllables either matched or did not match the structure of the first syllable in target carrier words (e.g., “pa—pa.lo.ma”; “pa—pal.me.ra”). The results showed that consonant sonority modulated sensitivity to syllable structure in both groups of participants. Spanish–English learners responded faster to matching syllable structure in words that had a fricative or a nasal as the second consonant, and English–Spanish learners responded faster only with a fricative consonant. Higher L2 Spanish proficiency correlated with faster target-syllable identification, but sensitivity to matching/mismatching structure did not vary as a function of proficiency. The study highlights the influence of phonetic factors in the development of L2 lexical segmentation routines.

The combination of accent method and phonemic contrast: an innovative strategy to improve speech production on post-stroke dysarthria.

Speech production includes segmental and suprasegmental features, which interact and cooperate with each other. Impaired speech production is common in individuals with post-stroke dysarthria. The commonly used phonemic contrast therapy and Accent Method in clinical practice can improve the segmental and suprasegmental aspects, respectively. This study aimed to explore the feasibility and immediate effectiveness of the combination of specific rhythm patterns of the Accent Method and phonemic contrast on speech production. Fifteen poststroke dysarthria patients (12 males and three females) first received accentuation task of three rhythm patterns (Largo-slow, Andante-medium, Allegro-fast) and later received speech task in appropriate rhythm patterns combined with phonemic contrast materials and non-phonemic contrast materials. Speech parameters were analyzed by considering speech clarity and prosody. The results showed that the number of correct target syllables, sentence clarity, and standard deviation of intensity increased significantly, and the average length of pauses and abnormal pause times decreased significantly in Andante (medium) compared to other rhythms. The number of correct target syllables, sentence clarity, and standard deviation of intensity increased significantly compared with those in the non-phonemic contrast in Andante (medium). The combination of phonemic contrast and Accent Method was verified to have an immediate effect on speech production in Mandarin speakers with post-stroke dysarthria and could be further validated in other diseases with impaired speech production in the clinic in the future.

The Effect of Prosodic Timing Structure on Unison Production in People With Aphasia.

Unison production is a common aphasia treatment technique in which the clinician and the person with aphasia (PWA) produce phrases aloud together. It can be implemented using a typical "conversational," syntax-influenced prosodic timing structure, or with a "metrical," beat-based timing structure, but to date no study has directly compared these two approaches. This study compared the effects of metrical versus conversational prosodic timing during unison production on the (a) accuracy of participants' spoken output and (b) timing alignment of participants' productions with the stimuli. PWAs and controls listened to conversationally timed and metrically timed sentences and repeated them in unison with audio recordings. Productions were transcribed and scored in two ways: (a) Accuracy was calculated as the percentage of correctly produced syllables, and (b) timing alignment was determined by extracting the voice onset moment of identical target syllables in the unison stimuli and participant productions in both conditions and comparing the corresponding time points. Metrical timing yielded a greater number of accurate syllables in both groups, with larger effect in PWAs than in controls. Both groups exhibited more anticipatory, less variable timing when speaking along with metrical stimuli, though evidence of such prediction was also present in the conversational condition. Results suggest that unison production works via entrainment-a process that utilizes prediction to guide synchronous production of spoken output. Metrically regular stimuli may facilitate this process as they are more rhythmically predictable. Future work will examine key behavioral variables that predict benefit from unison production and metrical timing.

A Challenge to Whole-word Phonology? A Study of Japanese and Mandarin

ABSTRACT Phonological models of early word learning often assume that child forms can be understood as structural mappings from their adult targets. In contrast, the whole-word phonology model suggests that on beginning word production children represent adult targets as holistic units, reflecting not the exact sound sequence but only the most perceptually salient elements or those that align with their own vocal patterns. Here we ask whether the predictions of the whole-word model are supported by data from children learning Japanese or Mandarin, both languages with phonotactic structures differing from any so far investigated from this perspective. The Japanese child word forms are found to include some characteristics suggestive of whole-word representation, but in Mandarin we find little or no such evidence. Instead, some children are found to make idiosyncratic use of whole syllables, substituting them for target syllables that they match in neither onset nor rime. This result, which neither model anticipates, forces reconsideration of a key tenet of the whole-word model – that early word production is based on word-size holistic representations; instead, at least in some languages, the syllable may serve as the basic representational unit for child learners.

The combined effects of contextual predictability and noise on the acoustic realisation of German syllables.

Speakers tend to speak clearly in noisy environments, while they tend to reserve effort by shortening word duration in predictable contexts. It is unclear how these two communicative demands are met. The current study investigates the acoustic realizations of syllables in predictable vs unpredictable contexts across different background noise levels. Thirty-eight German native speakers produced 60 CV syllables in two predictability contexts in three noise conditions (reference = quiet, 0 dB and -10 dB signal-to-noise ratio). Duration, intensity (average and range), F0 (median), and vowel formants of the target syllables were analysed. The presence of noise yielded significantly longer duration, higher average intensity, larger intensity range, and higher F0. Noise levels affected intensity (average and range) and F0. Low predictability syllables exhibited longer duration and larger intensity range. However, no interaction was found between noise and predictability. This suggests that noise-related modifications might be independent of predictability-related changes, with implications for including channel-based and message-based formulations in speech production.

Tracing the Phonetic Space of Prosodic Focus Marking.

Focus is known to be expressed by a wide range of phonetic cues but only a few studies have explicitly compared different phonetic variables within the same experiment. Therefore, we presented results from an analysis of 19 phonetic variables conducted on a data set of the German language that comprises the opposition of unaccented (background) vs. accented (in focus), as well as different focus types with the nuclear accent on the same syllable (broad, narrow, and contrastive focus). The phonetic variables are measures of the acoustic and articulographic signals of a target syllable. Overall, our results provide the highest number of reliable effects and largest effect sizes for accentuation (unaccented vs. accented), while the differentiation of focus types with accented target syllables (broad, narrow, and contrastive focus) are more subtle. The most important phonetic variables across all conditions are measures of the fundamental frequency. The articulatory variables and their corresponding acoustic formants reveal lower tongue positions for both vowels /o, a/, and larger lip openings for the vowel /a/ under increased prosodic prominence with the strongest effects for accentuation. While duration exhibits consistent mid-ranked results for both accentuation and the differentiation of focus types, measures related to intensity are particularly important for accentuation. Furthermore, voice quality and spectral tilt are affected by accentuation but also in the differentiation of focus types. Our results confirm that focus is realized via multiple phonetic cues. Additionally, the present analysis allows a comparison of the relative importance of different measures to better understand the phonetic space of focus marking.

Effects of Word Length on Articulatory Accuracy in Children with Speech Sound Disorders

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate the word length effects in a 1-2-3 syllable string test in children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) and to examine whether the accuracy in the 1-2-3 syllable string test could differentiate subgroups of SSDs classified by linguistic symptomatology.Methods: The 1-2-3 syllable string test was administrated to a total of 161 children with SSDs from 3 years to 9 years 11 months of age. The children with SSDs were classified into four subgroups, articulatory disorders, phonological delay, consistent phonological disorder, and inconsistent phonological disorder. Accuracy in the 1-2-3 syllable string test was measured at word, phoneme, vowel, consonant, and target syllables; and compared among SSD subgroups.Results: The main effects of SSD subgroups and word length exhibited significances at word, phoneme, consonant, and target syllables levels. The interaction effect between subgroups and word length was also significant. Phonological delay and inconsistent phonological disorder revealed significant effects of word length; and in particular, children with inconsistent phonological disorders showed a significant increase of errors as the number of syllable in the test words increased.Conclusion: The results support the possibility that subgroups of SSDs can be differentiated based on accuracy and word length effect in a 1-2-3 syllable string test, which can be useful in identifying children showing inconsistent productions and sequencing difficulties.

Acoustic Analysis of Taiwanese Tones in Esophageal Speech and Pneumatic Artificial Laryngeal Speech.

This study examined the acoustic properties of Taiwanese (Southern Min) lexical tones produced in esophageal speech (ES) and pneumatic artificial laryngeal speech (PAL), including onset fundamental frequency (F0), slope of F0 contour, duration, and amplitude (intensity) of the vowel portion of syllables carrying seven Taiwanese tones. Seven ES speakers, seven PAL speakers, and 18 normal laryngeal (NL) speakers (all male) read aloud target syllables carrying the tones in monosyllables, disyllables, and sentences. Acoustic features were measured with Praat. Acoustic analysis revealed (a) no significant effects of linguistic level on acoustic parameters except for duration, which generally significantly decreased from monosyllables to disyllables to sentences for Tones 1 and 5; (b) significant differences across the speaker groups in onset F0 (PAL > ES > NL), duration (PAL > NL and PAL > ES for all tones), and mean amplitude (PAL > NL > ES); and (c) no significant difference in mean slope of F0 contour across the speaker groups. These preliminary data on acoustic properties of Taiwanese tones produced by ES and PAL speakers could facilitate the design of therapeutic strategies for improving the intelligibility of alaryngeal lexical tones. Further studies are recommended to examine the relative perceptual importance of the acoustic parameters.

Acoustic Identification of Sentence Accent in Speakers with Dysarthria: Cross-Population Validation and Severity Related Patterns.

Dysprosody is a hallmark of dysarthria, which can affect the intelligibility and naturalness of speech. This includes sentence accent, which helps to draw listeners’ attention to important information in the message. Although some studies have investigated this feature, we currently lack properly validated automated procedures that can distinguish between subtle performance differences observed across speakers with dysarthria. This study aims for cross-population validation of a set of acoustic features that have previously been shown to correlate with sentence accent. In addition, the impact of dysarthria severity levels on sentence accent production is investigated. Two groups of adults were analysed (Dutch and English speakers). Fifty-eight participants with dysarthria and 30 healthy control participants (HCP) produced sentences with varying accent positions. All speech samples were evaluated perceptually and analysed acoustically with an algorithm that extracts ten meaningful prosodic features and allows a classification between accented and unaccented syllables based on a linear combination of these parameters. The data were statistically analysed using discriminant analysis. Within the Dutch and English dysarthric population, the algorithm correctly identified 82.8 and 91.9% of the accented target syllables, respectively, indicating that the capacity to discriminate between accented and unaccented syllables in a sentence is consistent with perceptual impressions. Moreover, different strategies for accent production across dysarthria severity levels could be demonstrated, which is an important step toward a better understanding of the nature of the deficit and the automatic classification of dysarthria severity using prosodic features.

Vowel Context Effect on the Perception of Stop Consonants in Malayalam and Its Role in Determining Syllable Frequency.

Background and ObjectivesThe study investigated vowel context effects on the perception of stop consonants in Malayalam. It also probed into the role of vowel context effects in determining the frequency of occurrence of various consonant-vowel (CV) syllables in Malayalam.Subjects and MethodsThe study used a cross-sectional pre-experimental post-test only research design on 30 individuals with normal hearing, who were native speakers of Malayalam. The stimuli included three stop consonants, each spoken in three different vowel contexts. The resultant nine syllables were presented in original form and five gating conditions. The consonant recognition in different vowel contexts of the participants was assessed. The frequency of occurrence of the nine target syllables in the spoken corpus of Malayalam was also systematically derived.ResultsThe consonant recognition score was better in the /u/ vowel context compared with /i/ and /a/ contexts. The frequency of occurrence of the target syllables derived from the spoken corpus of Malayalam showed that the three stop consonants occurred more frequently with the vowel /a/ compared with /u/ and /i/.ConclusionsThe findings show a definite vowel context effect on the perception of the Malayalam stop consonants. This context effect observed is different from that in other languages. Stop consonants are perceived better in the context of /u/ compared with the /a/ and /i/ contexts. Furthermore, the vowel context effects do not appear to determine the frequency of occurrence of different CV syllables in Malayalam.

Improving prospective memory with contextual cueing.

Prospective memory (PM) involves remembering to perform an intended action in the future. Researchers have demonstrated that, under certain conditions, contextual information about when PM performance opportunities are likely to occur can support PM performance while decreasing the cognitive demands of the PM task. The current study builds upon prior work to investigate whether warning participants that a PM-relevant context was approaching would improve the efficiency of PM control processes and benefit PM accuracy. Participants completed an ongoing lexical decision task with an embedded PM task of responding to a target syllable. For context conditions, targets only appeared on trials where letter strings were colored red (PM-relevant context), while PM-irrelevant trials were green. The warning in Experiment 1 was embedded in the ongoing task (trials preceding PM-relevant contexts were colored yellow). In Experiment 2 the warning was separate from the ongoing task (1-s pre-trial red fixation preceding PM-relevant contexts). Context improved PM control efficiency and PM accuracy in both experiments. Context always improved PM accuracy for targets in the second and third trial positions of PM-relevant contexts; however, only the Experiment 2 warning generated an accuracy benefit for targets in the first trial position. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of Experiments 1 and 2 and also confirmed that color change without associated context was not responsible for the current results.

The roles of lexical tone and rime during Mandarin sentence comprehension: An event-related potential study

This study used event-related potential (ERP) recording to examine the role of lexical tone and rime in Mandarin Chinese spoken sentence comprehension. A violation paradigm was adopted, such that selected target syllables in the sentences were replaced with tone-violated, rime-violated, or double-violated syllables. Participants judged whether each sentence was congruent. The behavioral results confirmed previous findings: Tone violation was more difficult to detect than rime violation. The ERP results showed that rime and double violations, but not tone violation, elicited a larger N400 than the original condition. Similarly, tone and rime violations elicited a larger P600 than the original condition, and the effect started and ended 50 ms earlier in the tone-violation type. Interestingly, the double-violation type differed significantly from the original type only in the posterior electrodes, suggesting a weaker P600 effect than the tone- and rime-violation types. The differences in ERP effects between rime and tone processing indicate that rime played a more important role in semantic access, while tone played a more important role in error recovery. A model of Chinese speech perception was proposed to accommodate the different roles of lexical tone and rime at different processing stages during sentence comprehension.

Optimal spectral templates for triggered feedback experiments.

In the field of songbird neuroscience, researchers have used playback of aversive noise bursts to drive changes in song behavior for specific syllables within a bird's song. Typically, a short (~5-10 msec) slice of the syllable is selected for targeting and the average spectrum of the slice is used as a template. Sounds that are sufficiently close to the template are considered a match. If other syllables have portions that are spectrally similar to the target, false positive errors will weaken the operant contingency. We present a gradient descent method for template optimization that increases the separation in distance between target and distractors slices, greatly improving targeting accuracy. Applied to songs from five adult Bengalese finches, the fractional reduction in errors for sub-syllabic slices was 51.54±22.92%. At the level of song syllables, we use an error metric that controls for the vastly greater number of distractors vs. target syllables. Setting 5% average error (misses + false positives) as a minimal performance criterion, the number of targetable syllables increased from 3 to 16 out of 61 syllables. At 10% error, targetable syllables increased from 11 to 26. By using simple and robust linear discriminant methods, the algorithm reaches near asymptotic performance when using 10 songs as training data, and the error increases by <2.3% on average when using only a single song for training. Targeting is temporally precise, with average jitter of 3.33 msec for the 16 accurately targeted syllables. Because the algorithm is concerned only with the problem of template selection, it can be used as a simple and robust front end for existing hardware and software implementations for triggered feedback.

Influence of the Covering Area of Major Connectors of Mandibular Dentures on the Accuracy of Speech Production: A Pilot Study

Background/Objectives: Speech impairment during the initial phase of removable partial denture (RPD) treatment can prevent patient adaptation to RPDs. This quasi-experimental study aimed to investigate the influence of the covering area of major connectors located in the mandibular anterior region on the accuracy of speech production. Methods: Fifteen adults (12 men and 3 women aged 26–40 years) with healthy dentition were recruited. Four target syllables were used for the assessments: [ʃi], [ʧi], [çi], and [ki]. There were four speaking conditions: without a connector (control), wearing lingual bar (5 mm width), wearing lingual plates (12 mm width), and wearing connectors covering the occlusal surface of lower dentition (16 mm width; CO). The accuracy of speech production was evaluated by mean appearance ratio of correct labels (MARC) and incorrect labels (MARIC) of the phonetic segments which were calculated with a speech evaluation system (VoiceAnalyzer). Results: The MARC in the 3 target syllables [ʃi], [ʧi], and [ki] significantly decreased with CO. For the target syllable [ʃi], the MARICs of [ʧi], [ʤi], and [çi] with CO were significantly lower than that in the control. For the target syllable [ʧi], the MARIC of [ki] with CO was significantly higher than that in the control. For the target syllable [çi], the MARIC of [gi] with CO was significantly higher than that in the control. Conclusion: RPDs with major connectors covering the lower dentition could disturb speech production during the initial phase of RPD treatment. Prosthodontic treatment with such RPD designs requires further consideration regarding the information given to patients before starting the treatment.

Lack of Syllable Duration as a Post-Lexical Acoustic Cue in Spanish in Contact with Maya

This paper focuses on the duration of stressed syllables in broad versus contrastive focus in Yucatecan Spanish and examines its connection with Spanish–Maya bilingualism. We examine the claim that phonemic vowel length in one language prevents the use of syllable duration as a post-lexical acoustic cue in another. We study the duration of stressed syllables of nouns in subject and object position in subject-verb-object (SVO) sentences (broad and contrastive focus) of a semi-spontaneous production task. One thousand one hundred and twenty-six target syllables of 34 mono- and bilingual speakers were measured and submitted to linear mixed-effects models. Although the target syllables were slightly longer in contrastive focus, duration was not significant, nor was the effect of bilingualism. The results point to duration not constituting a cue to focus marking in Yucatecan Spanish. Finally, it is discussed how this result relates to the strong influence of Yucatec Maya on Yucatecan Spanish prosody observed by both scholars and native speakers of Yucatecan Spanish and other Mexican varieties of Spanish.

Effects of focus and tone on vowel space in Chongming Chinese

The formant frequencies of vowels are prone to change according to contexts, but the effects of focus on vowel space are rarely studied. This study attempts to investigate how focus and tone may influence the vowel space in Chongming Chinese with a production experiment. Chongming Chinese is a Chinese dialect with a complex tonal system. Twelve syllables with the vowel /ae/ were chosen and the syllables spread over eight lexical tones (two level tones, four contour tones, and two checked tones). The target syllables were embedded in carrier sentences with different preceding and following syllables. Four focus conditions were manipulated: broad focus, initial focus, medial focus, and final focus. During the experiment, twelve participants were elicited with precursor questions to produce sentences with different focus locations. The frequencies of the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted over the middle 50 ms of the vowel interval for each target syllable. Formant tracks were calculated with the Burg algorithm in Praat. F1 and F2 values under each focus condition and tone will be compared. It is hypothesized that F1 and F2 will be increased under focus because focus might make the vowels more open and front. The formant frequencies of vowels are prone to change according to contexts, but the effects of focus on vowel space are rarely studied. This study attempts to investigate how focus and tone may influence the vowel space in Chongming Chinese with a production experiment. Chongming Chinese is a Chinese dialect with a complex tonal system. Twelve syllables with the vowel /ae/ were chosen and the syllables spread over eight lexical tones (two level tones, four contour tones, and two checked tones). The target syllables were embedded in carrier sentences with different preceding and following syllables. Four focus conditions were manipulated: broad focus, initial focus, medial focus, and final focus. During the experiment, twelve participants were elicited with precursor questions to produce sentences with different focus locations. The frequencies of the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted over the middle 50 ms of the vowel interval for each target syllable. Formant tracks were calculated with the B...

Syllable retrieval precedes sub-syllabic encoding in Cantonese spoken word production.

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the time course of syllabic and sub-syllabic processing in Cantonese spoken word production by using the picture-word interference task. Cantonese-speaking participants were asked to name individually presented pictures aloud and ignore an auditory word distractor. The targets and distractors were either phonologically related (i.e., sharing two identical word-initial phonemes) or unrelated. In Experiment 1, the target syllables were all consonant-vowel (CV)-structured. The phonological distractor was either a CV syllable (i.e., Full Syllable Overlap) or a CVC (consonant-vowel-consonant) syllable (i.e., Sub-syllable Overlap). Relative to the unrelated control, Full Syllable Overlap distractors facilitated naming in all stimuli onset asynchronies (SOAs) (-175, 0, or +175 ms) whereas Sub-syllable Overlap distractors exhibited facilitation only at 0-ms and +175-ms SOAs. Experiment 2 adopted a similar design to examine the possible influence of syllabic structure similarity on the results of Experiment 1. The target syllables were all CVC-structured. The phonological distractor was either a CVC (i.e., Syllable-structure Consistent) or CV (i.e., Syllable-structure Inconsistent) syllable. Comparable priming was observed between the two distractor conditions across the three SOAs. These results indicated that an earlier priming effect was observed with full syllable overlap than sub-syllabic overlap when the degree of segmental overlap was held constant (Experiment 1). The earlier syllable priming observed in Experiment 1 could not be attributed to the effect of syllabic-structure (Experiment 2), thereby suggesting that the syllable unit is important in Cantonese and is retrieved earlier than sub-syllabic components during phonological encoding.

Production of neutral tones in three Mandarin dialects

Neutral tone (NT) in Mandarin refers to syllables with shorter duration and whose pitch realisations depend on preceding syllables (Chao 1968; Lee and Zee 2008). There are few acoustic studies on NT in Mandarin dialects outside the standard, and on how NT interacts with sentence modality and prosodic position. We report results from a reading task with 3 speakers each from Chongqing, Kunming, and Nanjing (N = 9). A set of 8 syllables with potential NT and control lexical tones are placed in phrase-medial and final positions and in statements and echo questions. Pitch contours of entire utterances are analysed to determine the variation in pitch height, slope and tonal coarticulatory influence on target syllables. We find NT-like behaviour in Chongqing and Kunming, despite the longstanding claim of their absence (Luo and Wang 1981; Zhai 1996): e.g., in Chongqing, NT syllables are high-falling medially, but undergo more pitch reduction than control and exhibit obligatory tonal spreading from preceding tone regardless of speech rate. Nanjing NT interacts strongly with modality: statement-final NT is almost invariably realised as strong creak if preceding tone is mid-falling. We also report hitherto unreported variation and hypothesise on the impact of standard Mandarin on NT in these dialects.

Complete tonal neutralization in Taiwan southern Min

This study reported the result of a production experiment on the tonal neutralization of context unchecked 21 tone and checked 21 tone with a glottal stop coda in Taiwan Southern Min, which are said to be realized the same as a high falling sandhi tone 51 on surface when occurring in context positions. Speakers of two age groups, younger and older, were recruited for the production experiments to examine whether the neutralization is complete. The comparison between the f0 contours was conducted with smoothing spline analysis of variance, and it showed a case of complete neutralization for both age groups, where the two f0 contours were simply overlapped. As reported by linear mixed effects modeling, the durations of the target syllables with underlying checked and unchecked 21 tones were not significantly different from each other.

Effect of Phonotactic Constraints on Second Language Speech Processing.

In this study, we examined whether phonotactic constraints of the first language affect speech processing by Japanese learners of English and whether their proficiency of the second language influences it. Native English speakers and second language speakers with a high level of language proficiency and those with a low level took part in a monitoring task. They were given two kinds of sound stimuli as target syllables (i.e., consonant–vowel and consonant–vowel–consonant) and were asked to detect them in lists of words that have stress on the first or second syllable (e.g., biscuit and beside). The results showed that both stress and phonotactics facilitated segmentation strategies by the three groups. The Japanese groups did not rely on either phonotactics or morae to segment the target syllables. They rather used stress to detect the target syllables in the English words, which is a different segmentation strategy from their first language. This study showed that phonotactic constraints did not interfere with second language processing by native Japanese speakers and provided evidence that second language speakers use the segmentation strategy that is used by native speakers of the target language.