Trisyllabic Words Research Articles

Orthographic epenthesis and vowel deletion in Welsh

In this paper, we examine the distribution of epenthesis in final clusters and initial syllable deletion in trisyllabic words in Welsh using a corpus of Twitter data (Jones et al. 2015). We show that the generalisations established in Hannahs 2009, Hannahs 2011, and Hannahs 2013 are largely borne out, but there are additional lexical and phonological complications. Specifically, we show that these two processes are subject to lexical frequency effects that go in opposite directions. While this seems at first paradoxical, we go on to show that the frequency effects make sense given what we know about phonological processes generally and what we know about Welsh phonotactics specifically. The organization of this paper is as follows. We first review Hannahs's foot-based account of the facts. We then turn to our Twitter data testing Hannahs's claims, but also considering additional variables. We show that: i) the phenomena are gradient; and ii) that they are subject to lexical frequency effects. We then argue that these effects are, in fact, to be expected and we justify that claim by looking at further data from another corpus. In the first section we review the analysis of final clusters.

Oral diadochokinetic rates for real words and non-words in Greek-speaking children

Abstract This study examined the performance of Greek monolingual typically developing (TD) children on diadochokinetic (DDK) rates in real words and non-words and attempted to establish normative data for Greek. The effects of age, type of stimuli and gender were investigated. A total of 380 children aged 4.0–15.0 years as well as a control group of 313 adults participated in the study. Age significantly affected DDK performance, yet normative data differ from other studies. DDK rates for bisyllabic stimuli were faster than DDK rates for trisyllabic stimuli and real words were articulated faster than non-words. Adolescents aged 13.0–15.0 years were slower than adults both in real word and in non-word /ˈpataka/ repetition. Additionally, overall boys were significantly faster than girls. These findings show the need to: (a) implement real word stimuli in DDK tasks in order to better depict an individual’s oral-motor abilities and (b) establish language-specific normative data for TD children.

Emphatic variation of the labio-velar /w/ in two Jordanian Arabic dialects

Much work on emphatic segments in Arabic dialects has focused on primary emphasis. However, secondary emphasis has been less of a target of study. Our research investigates the emphatic variation of the secondarily emphatic labio-velar /w/ between males and females in two Jordanian Arabic sub-dialects: Rural Jordanian Arabic and Urban Jordanian Arabic. Twenty-four native speakers from the two dialects (equally stratified according to their gender and dialect) were asked to read a carrier phrase that included fifteen tri-syllabic words having the sound /w/ in medial position. Our research confirmed that there is a variation in the degree of emphasis based on gender and dialect. More particularly, males produced stronger emphatic segments than females did, and Urban speakers produced weaker empathic segments than Rural speakers did. Results also revealed that the secondarily emphatic /w/ caused the neighboring vowels to have lowered F2 and raised F1 and F3. These findings suggest that emphasis, whether primary or secondary, tend to have the same acoustic correlates. In closing, the theoretical implications of these finding are discussed.

How prior experience with pitch accents shapes the perception of word and sentence stress

ABSTRACT Listeners perceive high or rising pitch as stressed – at the word and sentence level (high-pitch bias). Since stressed syllables can also be low-pitched, this bias may lead to misinterpretations of word and sentence stress and thus slow down speech comprehension. We investigate the effect of immediate exposure with high- vs. low-pitched stressed syllables on the identification of word and sentence stress. Participants were exposed to utterances containing only high- vs. low-pitched stressed syllables. In experimental trials, they then heard either trisyllabic words with word stress on the second syllable (Experiment 1) or three-word-sentences with sentence stress on the second word (Experiment 2) and indicated the position of word/sentence stress. Stimuli were presented in three intonation conditions (high-pitched first, second, or third syllable/word). Both experiments endorsed the high-pitch bias, with an increase after high-pitch exposure. Our results suggest a speaker-independent re-weighting of acoustic cues to stress, which is driven by experience.

Emphatic Variation of the Labio-Velar /W/ in Two Jordanian Arabic Dialects

This study is primarily concerned with the variant (emphatic) pronunciations of the labio-velar /w/ in two subdialects of Jordanian Arabic, namely Urban Jordanian Arabic (UJA) and Rural Jordanian Arabic (RJA). It also investigates the effect of gender on the production of this segment. Twenty-four native speakers of UJA and RJA (equally stratified according to their gender and dialect) were asked to read a carrier phrase that included fifteen tri-syllabic words having the sound /w/ in medial position. The tokens were recorded and acoustically analyzed in Praat (version 6.1.04) (Boersma and Weenink, 2019). The results of the study reveal that the acoustic correlates of the secondarily emphatic segments are similar to those of primarily emphatic segments, including raised F1 and F3 and lowered F2 of the vowels that appear in the emphatic context. On the other hand, the results show that there is a discrepancy regarding the degree of emphasis between males and females, on the one hand, and RJA and UJA speakers on the other. Female speakers produced weaker emphatic segments as compared with male speakers. Similarly, UJA speakers (both males and females) produced weaker empathic consonants than RJA speakers do. Finally, RJA speakers (males and females) produced longer emphatic vowels across the board, which is an indication that vowel duration is a robust acoustic correlate of secondary emphasis as opposed to primary emphasis.

Vowel Production in Prelingually Deafened Mandarin-Speaking Children With Cochlear Implants

Purpose The purpose of this study was to characterize the acoustic profile and to evaluate the intelligibility of vowel productions in prelingually deafened, Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs). Method Twenty-five children with CIs and 20 age-matched children with normal hearing (NH) were recorded producing a list of Mandarin disyllabic and trisyllabic words containing 20 Mandarin vowels [a, i, u, y, ɤ, ɿ, ʅ, ai, ei, ia, ie, ye, ua, uo, au, ou, iau, iou, uai, uei] located in the first consonant-vowel syllable. The children with CIs were all prelingually deafened and received unilateral implantation before 7 years of age with an average length of CI use of 4.54 years. In the acoustic analysis, the first two formants (F1 and F2) were extracted at seven equidistant time locations for the tested vowels. The durational and spectral features were compared between the CI and NH groups. In the vowel intelligibility task, the extracted vowel portions in both NH and CI children were presented to six Mandarin-speaking, NH adult listeners for identification. Results The acoustic analysis revealed that the children with CIs deviated from the NH controls in the acoustic features for both single vowels and compound vowels. The acoustic deviations were reflected in longer duration, more scattered vowel categories, smaller vowel space area, and distinct formant trajectories in the children with CIs in comparison to NH controls. The vowel intelligibility results showed that the recognition accuracy of the vowels produced by the children with CIs was significantly lower than that of the NH children. The confusion pattern of vowel recognition in the children with CIs generally followed that in the NH children. Conclusion Our data suggested that the prelingually deafened children with CIs, with a relatively long duration of CI experience, still showed measurable acoustic deviations and lower intelligibility in vowel productions in comparison to the NH children.

Вероятностно-дистрибуционные характеристики гласных фонем в языке орочонов КНР: сопоставительный аспект

The paper analyzes the probability and distribution patterns of vowels in the Oroqen language of the PRC. Six frequency parameters were taken for analysis: 1) syllable types, 2) word form length, 3) consonant and vowel load, 4) long vs short vowels, 5) hard vs soft vowels, 6) labial vs non-labial vowels. Studying syllable type (V, VC, CV, CVC) and the word form length revealed the following discoveries. First, CV-type turned out the most frequent in Oroqen, ac-counting for 47,64 % of all syllables found in the material. Second, disyllabic and trisyllabic words prevailed, accounting for 75,7 % compared to 64,8 % in Evenki and 85,5 % in Kumandin. Additionally, the consonant load vs vowel load was calculated. It was found that in Oroqen, the consonant-vowel proportion (1,5/1) was similar to Evenki and Mansi, a little higher than in Turkic languages, and a little lower than in Khanty. However, this difference proved statistically insignificant. Another finding was that short vowels significantly pre-vailed over long ones, accounting for 68,52–93,11 % of all vowels used. The hard vowels ac-counted for 24,52–46,41 %, neutral ones – 26,8–44,86 %, only slightly exceeding soft vowels in frequency load (17,13–43,51%) of all vowels used. Non-labial vowels proved to be more frequent (65,76–91,78 %) than labial ones (8,22–34,24 %). In general, the results show a high similarity of Oroqen to the Turkic and Ob-Ugric languages with regard to parameters 4 and 6. At the same time, the difference was found with regard to parameters 1–3 and 5.

Learning Mandarin tones through pitch-time diagrams: A computer-assisted visual approach

Abstract A notable feature of spoken Mandarin by many non-tonal language learners of Mandarin is incorrect or inaccurate tones. This contributes to significant impediments to effective communication by creating confusion, due to the fact that tones in Mandarin serve a lexical purpose. The problem is exacerbated by the relatively small number of Mandarin syllables. Traditionally, tones are taught by the classical aural process of “listen and repeat” in the classroom with the help of a language instructor and supplemented by out-of-classroom practice using model audio recordings. Both modes require learners to aurally detect the differences between tones and to imitate what they hear. With the wide availability of personal computers, computer-aided tone acquisition is an alternative to the “listen and repeat” method. The aim is to display and correlate the phonetic counterpart of tones, namely their pitch-time diagrams (also known as Fo diagrams). This provides visual feedback to guide learners to produce the correct tones through imitation of the correct pitch-time diagrams. While the pitch range of the Mandarin tones is well defined by Chao’s 5-level tone value scale for the four full tones, their corresponding pitch-time diagrams are not exactly the same as Chao’s tone diagrams. With disyllabic and trisyllabic Mandarin words, the pitch-time diagrams of the constituent syllables deviates even more from their tone diagram counterparts due to various coarticulation effects. This paper reports on a quantitative study of the tone values of single syllable, disyllabic and trisyllabic Mandarin words extracted from their pitch-time diagrams. The understanding of the results based on previous phonological studies is also provided. The results point to the effectiveness of pitch-time diagrams as a visual feedback tool for tone acquisition.

Exploring Spelling Errors with Relation to the Phonological Syllable Structure in the Writings of Saudi ESL Learners

Making spelling errors is one of the common issues faced by learners in any language as Second Language (SL) at the early stage of learning. This study investigated the spelling errors in the writings of undergraduate B.A. English students, University of Bisha, Al-Namas, Saudi Arabia. The study explored the spelling errors’ phenomenon with relation to the phonological syllable structure of words where the spelling errors were classified into three categories of words, (1) mono-syllabic, (2) di-syllabic, and (3) tri-syllabic and complex syllabic words. The researcher analyzed the spelling errors with relation to the sounds/phonemes positions in each syllable, (a) onset position, (b) nucleus position, and (c) coda position spelling errors. The results showed that Arabic-speaking learners made more spelling errors in tri-syllabic and complex syllabic words compared to the spelling errors in mono-syllabic words. The results explored that learners made more spelling errors in the nucleus position with 54.85% and fewer errors in the coda position 36.40%. Interestingly learners made a small number of errors than the other groups with 8.75% in the onset position. This suggested that English vowels, being in the nucleus position, are a more problematic position for Arab learners than consonants. The omission and the substitution spelling errors were more frequent and high compared to other categories. The study explored that the spelling errors are attributed to the different orthographical and morpho-phonological systems of L1 and L2 including the letter-to-sound correspondence and sound-to-letter correspondence, homophones, silent letters. The study concluded with some solutions to help learners avoid the spelling errors such as the importance of the phonological awareness of ESL.

Comparison of Speech Perception Abilities of Children using Bimodal Hearing with Children using Cochlear Implant Alone

Abstract Introduction There are very few studies comparing speech perception abilities of children using bimodal hearing over monaural cochlear implant and factors related to benefit of bimodal hearing. The aim of this study is to compare speech perception abilities of children using bimodal fitting versus children using cochlear implant alone and explore factors related to benefit of bimodal hearing. Materials and Methods In the present study, 20 cochlear implantees with the hearing age range of 3 to 8 years were included. Speech perception performance was assessed by means of Parent’s Evaluation of Aural/Oral Performance of Children scale and early speech perception (ESP) test: Pattern Perception Words, Monosyllabic Words, Bisyllabic, and Trisyllabic Words Identification test. ESP test was carried out in two conditions cochlear implant with hearing aid in opposite ear (CIHA), bimodal, and cochlear implant (CI) alone. Aided audiometry was also carried out in above mentioned two conditions. Results and Discussion On aided audiometry test, aided thresholds were improved by 5 to 6 dB in CIHA condition as compared to CI alone condition in 14 out of 20 children. Whereas on speech perception test, there was a significant improvement of 15 to 20% on domains of ESP test in these children. Factors such as implant age, chronological age, and number of hours of hearing aid usage were not significantly associated with benefit. Nevertheless aided threshold at 4,000 Hz was found to be significantly associated with bimodal benefit. Conclusion Bimodal hearing is beneficial in most of the children than monaural hearing through cochlear implant.

Psychometric Characteristics of Spanish Monosyllabic, Bisyllabic, and Trisyllabic Words for Use in Word-Recognition Protocols

English materials for speech audiometry are well established. In Spanish, speech-recognition materials are not standardized with monosyllables, bisyllables, and trisyllables used in word-recognition protocols. This study aimed to establish the psychometric characteristics of common Spanish monosyllabic, bisyllabic, and trisyllabic words for potential use in word-recognition procedures. Prospective descriptive study. Eighteen adult Puerto Ricans (M = 25.6 years) with normal hearing [M = 7.8-dB hearing level (HL) pure-tone average] were recruited for two experiments. A digital recording of 575 Spanish words was created (139 monosyllables, 359 bisyllables, and 77 trisyllables), incorporating materials from a variety of Spanish word-recognition lists. Experiment 1 (n = 6) used 25 randomly selected words from each of the three syllabic categories to estimate the presentation level ranges needed to obtain recognition performances over the 10 to 90% range. In Experiment 2 (n = 12) the 575 words were presented over five 1-hour sessions using presentation levels from 0- to 30-dB HL in 5-dB steps (monosyllables), 0- to 25-dB HL in 5-dB steps (bisyllables), and -3- to 17-dB HL in 4-dB steps (trisyllables). The presentation order of both the words and the presentation levels were randomized for each listener. The functions for each listener and each word were fit with polynomial equations from which the 50% points and slopes at the 50% point were calculated. The mean 50% points and slopes at 50% were 8.9-dB HL, 4.0%/dB (monosyllables), 6.9-dB HL, 5.1%/dB (bisyllables), and 1.4-dB HL, 6.3%/dB (trisyllables). The Kruskal-Wallis test with Mann-Whitney U post-hoc analysis indicated that the mean 50% points and slopes at the 50% points of the individual word functions were significantly different among the syllabic categories. Although significant differences were observed among the syllabic categories, substantial overlap was noted in the individual word functions, indicating that the psychometric characteristics of the words were not dictated exclusively by the syllabic number. Influences associated with word difficulty, word familiarity, singular and plural form words, phonetic stress patterns, and gender word patterns also were evaluated. The main finding was the direct relation between the number of syllables in a word and word-recognition performance. In general, words with more syllables were more easily recognized; there were, however, exceptions. The current data from young adults with normal hearing established the psychometric characteristics of the 575 Spanish words on which the formulation of word lists for both threshold and suprathreshold measures of word-recognition abilities in quiet and in noise and other word-recognition protocols can be based.

The processing of rhythmic structures in music and prosody by children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder.

Rhythm perception seems to be crucial to language development. Many studies have shown that children with developmental dyslexia and developmental language disorder have difficulties in processing rhythmic structures. In this study, we investigated the relationships between prosody and musical processing in Italian children with typical and atypical development. The tasks aimed to reproduce linguistic prosodic structures through musical sequences, offering a direct comparison between the two domains without violating the specificities of each one. About 16 Typically Developing children, 16 children with a diagnosis of Developmental Dyslexia, and 16 with a diagnosis of developmental language disorder (age 10-13years) participated in the experimental study. Three tasks were administered: an association task between a sentence and its humming version, a stress discrimination task (between couples of sounds reproducing the intonation of Italian trisyllabic words), and an association task between trisyllabic nonwords with different stress position and three-notes musical sequences with different musical stress. Children with developmental language disorder perform significantly lower than Typically Developing children on the humming test. By contrast, children with developmental dyslexia are significantly slower than TD in associating nonwords with musical sequences. Accuracy and speed in the experimental tests correlate with metaphonological, language, and word reading scores. Theoretical and clinical implications are discussed within a multidimensional model of neurodevelopmental disorders including prosodic and rhythmic skills at word and sentence level.

Lexical properties influencing visual word recognition in Hangul

This study examined how lexical properties, such as word frequency, word length, and morphological features, affect the word recognition of Korean Hangul among adult readers. Ninety-four native Korean students performed a lexical decision task on disyllabic and trisyllabic words and nonwords. Results of cross-classified and hierarchical linear modeling showed a significant frequency effect but null effects of word length and their interactions on word recognition. The null syllable effect might be contributable to the block structure of syllables, which does not require syllabic decomposition in recognition. Given that Chinese-derived Sino-Korean words account for about 70% of the Korean lexicon, morphological features embedded in the word were examined in order to further understand the morphological undercurrent of multisyllabic word recognition. Word type (bound-morphemic words vs. compound words), word origin (native or semi-native words vs. Chinese-derived words), and morphemic transparency (opaque morpheme vs. transparent morpheme) were significant predictors of the speed of visual word recognition. An analysis of frequency split showed that compound words and morpheme transparency facilitated word recognition for high frequency words, while the number of morphemes within the word, Korean native and semi-native words, and morphemic transparency facilitated word recognition for low frequency words. These results suggest that high and low frequency words function differently according to morphological information available within the multisyllabic word in visual word recognition in Hangul.

The acoustic correlates of stress and tone in Chácobo (Pano): A production study.

This paper investigates the acoustic correlates of word initial prominence and tone in Chácobo, a southern Pano language of the northern Bolivian Amazon. This paper reports the results of a production study with five speakers producing trisyllabic words with a word final high tone. It tests a claim found in the literature that there is an additional word-initial prominence in such forms and determines its acoustic correlates compared with high tone. This study used trisyllabic forms in morphophonological contexts where these forms would appear with a final high tone. In such forms, high tone and word-initial prominence do not overlap (e.g., "panaß̞í" "asaí"). The paper takes into account five acoustic correlates across the three syllables of these words: F1, F2, F0, duration, intensity. The paper finds that the initial syllable in these words shows a statistically significant increase in intensity. There is significant speaker variation with respect to whether duration is a correlation of initial stress and the results do not provide clear evidence that initial stress is marked with duration. The final high-tone marked syllables are distinguished based on an increase in F0 and secondarily with vowel duration. Whether pitch is also a correlate of stress requires future research. The paper interprets these results as suggesting that Chácobo is a language in which tone and stress co-exist. The study thus provides instrumental evidence for a phenomenon suggested to occur in some Pano languages. The limitations of this study, including the fact the results have more than one interpretation in light of current discussions concerning stress and tone, are also discussed.

Lexical stress contrastivity in Italian children with autism spectrum disorders: an exploratory acoustic study.

We investigated production of lexical stress in children with and without autism spectrum disorders (ASD), all monolingual Italian speakers. The mean age of the 16 autistic children was 5.73 years and the mean age of the 16 typically developing children was 4.65 years. Picture-naming targets were five trisyllabic words that began with a weak-strong pattern of lexical stress across the initial two syllables (WS: matita) and five trisyllabic words beginning with a strong-weak pattern (SW: gomito). Acoustic measures of the duration, fundamental frequency, and intensity of the first two vowels for correct word productions were used to calculate a normalised Pairwise Variability Index (PVI) for WS and SW words. Results of acoustic analyses indicated no statistically significant group differences in PVIs. Results should be interpreted in line with the exploratory nature of this study. We hope this study will encourage additional cross-linguistic studies of prosody in children's speech production.

Knowledge of word stress patterns in English in Korean Learners: The case of English trisyllabic nouns

This study aims to explore Korean learner knowledge of word stress patterns in English trisyllabic nouns. Building upon the previous findings from Guion (2005), further studies should look at data regarding more syllabically complex words. While the stress placement rules in English require at least three syllables to be applied, the study (Guion, 2005) only observed the individuals’ stress placement patterns in English disyllabic words. The prevalence of longer polysyllabic words in the English language necessitates observation of Korean learner speech patterns in English trisyllabic words. A total of 16 Korean learners of English participated in the experiments that explore the distributional patterns of stress placement based on word type (i.e., nonwords and real words) and syllable stress position on English trisyllabic nouns. Compared to that of native English speakers, Korean learners of English showed significantly higher error rate on stress placement rules in English nouns—particularly higher error rates on production and perception of nonwords, compared to that of English real words. The predictive factors (word type, syllable structure, and syllable weight) had a significant effect on the stress placement on both groups. Based on the results, our goal is to discuss how the learners use their previous language learning experience when they decide on which syllable to apply stress.

“NP的XP”結構小考 - 以“X”为中心 -

The article is focused on “NP De XP” construction from three aspects: rhythm, semantics and grammar. For rhythm, no matter verbs or adjectives, two-syllable words are more likely to enter the “NP De XP” construction than monosyllabic and trisyllabic words. For semantics, N is usually the case concerned of X. N can be agent, theme or tool, time, place, method which is related to X. From the grammar point of view, in “NP De XP” construction, some original combination abilities of X is limited. Verbs can’t coexist with tense or aspect marks, and also can’t coexist with objects. As well adjectives can’t coexist with degree adverbs, and also can’t overlap. The function of X is consistent with the function of the “NP De XP” construction and does not violate the theory of endocentric construction.

Phonetic acquisition in cortical dynamics, a computational approach.

Many computational theories have been developed to improve artificial phonetic classification performance from linguistic auditory streams. However, less attention has been given to psycholinguistic data and neurophysiological features recently found in cortical tissue. We focus on a context in which basic linguistic units–such as phonemes–are extracted and robustly classified by humans and other animals from complex acoustic streams in speech data. We are especially motivated by the fact that 8-month-old human infants can accomplish segmentation of words from fluent audio streams based exclusively on the statistical relationships between neighboring speech sounds without any kind of supervision. In this paper, we introduce a biologically inspired and fully unsupervised neurocomputational approach that incorporates key neurophysiological and anatomical cortical properties, including columnar organization, spontaneous micro-columnar formation, adaptation to contextual activations and Sparse Distributed Representations (SDRs) produced by means of partial N-Methyl-D-aspartic acid (NMDA) depolarization. Its feature abstraction capabilities show promising phonetic invariance and generalization attributes. Our model improves the performance of a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier for monosyllabic, disyllabic and trisyllabic word classification tasks in the presence of environmental disturbances such as white noise, reverberation, and pitch and voice variations. Furthermore, our approach emphasizes potential self-organizing cortical principles achieving improvement without any kind of optimization guidance which could minimize hypothetical loss functions by means of–for example–backpropagation. Thus, our computational model outperforms multiresolution spectro-temporal auditory feature representations using only the statistical sequential structure immerse in the phonotactic rules of the input stream.

/l/ velarisation as a continuum.

In this paper, we present a production study to explore the controversial question about /l/ velarisation. Measurements of first (F1), second (F2) and third (F3) formant frequencies and the slope of F2 were analysed to clarify the /l/ velarisation behaviour in European Portuguese (EP). The acoustic data were collected from ten EP speakers, producing trisyllabic words with paroxytone stress pattern, with the liquid consonant at the middle of the word in onset, complex onset and coda positions. Results suggested that /l/ is produced on a continuum in EP. The consistently low F2 indicates that /l/ is velarised in all syllable positions, but variation especially in F1 and F3 revealed that /l/ could be “more velarised” or “less velarised” dependent on syllable positions and vowel contexts. These findings suggest that it is important to consider different acoustic measures to better understand /l/ velarisation in EP.

Rhythmic Abilities Correlate with L2 Prosody Imitation Abilities in Typologically Different Languages.

While many studies have demonstrated the relationship between musical rhythm and speech prosody, this has been rarely addressed in the context of second language (L2) acquisition. Here, we investigated whether musical rhythmic skills and the production of L2 speech prosody are predictive of one another. We tested both musical and linguistic rhythmic competences of 23 native French speakers of L2 English. Participants completed perception and production music and language tests. In the prosody production test, sentences containing trisyllabic words with either a prominence on the first or on the second syllable were heard and had to be reproduced. Participants were less accurate in reproducing penultimate accent placement. Moreover, the accuracy in reproducing phonologically disfavored stress patterns was best predicted by rhythm production abilities. Our results show, for the first time, that better reproduction of musical rhythmic sequences is predictive of a more successful realization of unfamiliar L2 prosody, specifically in terms of stress-accent placement.