Variation In Spoken Language Research Articles

Embracing multidimensionality in phonological analysis

AbstractWe pursue the idea, implicit in much current phonological research, that understanding the multiple factors that shape speech production and perception is within the purview of phonology. In particular, increased access to naturalistic data has highlighted the multidimensional reality of variation in spoken language. At the same time, longstanding methods of doing phonology – including impressionistic analysis, and laboratory and experimental studies – remain crucial to understanding native speaker competence and grammar. We advocate for an expanded methodological toolbox in phonological analysis, using an iterative approach that crucially includes naturalistic corpus data. Integrating across multiple data sources offers fuller insight into the nature of the phonological system and native speaker-hearer ability. Several case studies highlight findings gained through linked, iterative studies, showing the importance of naturalistic data for a richer understanding of phonological phenomena, and leading us to reflect on desiderata for corpora to reveal speaker-specific patterns in fine phonetic detail and variability, which we argue are part of a speaker-hearer’s phonological competence. Phonological analysis that embraces the full spectrum of variation in spoken language data (from categorical to gradient, and systematic to sporadic) contributes to a deeper understanding of phonology in this richer sense.

How the Probabilistic Structure of Grammatical Context Shapes Speech.

Does systematic covariation in the usage patterns of forms shape the sublexical variance observed in conversational speech? We address this question in terms of a recently proposed discriminative theory of human communication that argues that the distribution of events in communicative contexts should maintain mutual predictability between language users, present evidence that the distributions of words in the empirical contexts in which they are learned and used are geometric, and thus support this. Here, we extend this analysis to a corpus of conversational English, showing that the distribution of grammatical regularities and the sub-distributions of tokens discriminated by them are also geometric. Further analyses reveal a range of structural differences in the distribution of types in parts of speech categories that further support the suggestion that linguistic distributions (and codes) are subcategorized by context at multiple levels of abstraction. Finally, a series of analyses of the variation in spoken language reveals that quantifiable differences in the structure of lexical subcategories appears in turn to systematically shape sublexical variation in speech signal.

ERP Responses to Regional Accent Reflect Two Distinct Processes of Perceptual Compensation.

Humans possess a robust speech-perception apparatus that is able to cope with variation in spoken language. However, linguists have often claimed that this coping ability must be limited, since otherwise there is no way for such variation to lead to language change and regional accents. Previous research has shown that the presence or absence of perceptual compensation is indexed by the N400 and P600 components, where the N400 reflects the general awareness of accented speech input, and the P600 responds to phonological-rule violations. The present exploratory paper investigates the hypothesis that these same components are involved in the accommodation to sound change, and that their amplitudes reduce as a sound change becomes accepted by an individual. This is investigated on the basis of a vowel shift in Dutch that has occurred in the Netherlands but not in Flanders (the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium). Netherlandic and Flemish participants were presented auditorily with words containing either conservative or novel vowel realizations, plus two control conditions. Exploratory analyses found no significant differences in ERPs to these realizations, but did uncover two systematic differences. Over 9 months, the N400 response became less negative for both groups of participants, but this effect was significantly smaller for the Flemish participants, a finding in line with earlier results on accent processing. Additionally, in one control condition where a “novel” realization was produced based on vowel lengthening, which cannot be achieved by any rule of either Netherlandic or Flemish Dutch and changes the vowel's phonemic identity, a P600 was obtained in the Netherlandic participants, but not in the Flemish participants. This P600 corroborates a small number of other studies which found phonological P600s, and provides ERP validation of earlier behavioral results that adaptation to variation in speech is possible, until the variation crosses a phoneme boundary. The results of this exploratory study thus reveal two types of perceptual-compensation (dys)function: on-line accent processing, visible as N400 amplitude, and failure to recover from an ungrammatical realization that crosses a phoneme boundary, visible as a P600. These results provide further insight on how these two ERPs reflect the processing of variation.

A Corpus of Regional American Language from YouTube

Recent years have seen an increase in the number of corpora of regional language variation for English, allowing new types of aggregate analysis to be conducted. While the creation of a corpus from written language material is relatively straightforward, transcribing speech is time-consuming, and thus there are no large corpora of transcribed American speech with broad geographic coverage. This paper describes the creation of a new corpus of regional American English from the automatically generated captions of videos from YouTube channels with a local American focus – mainly channels of regional and local government entities or civic organizations. The corpus, which consists of transcripts of over 29,267 hours of spoken language, will enable the analysis of regional patterns of lexical, morphosyntactic, and other types of variation in spoken American English. Exploratory analysis and mapping of the corpus data indicates regional variation in spoken language is evident.

Effects of Language Background on the Development of Sociolinguistic Awareness: The Perception of Accent Variation in Monolingual and Multilingual 5- to 7-Year-Old Children

As a result of complex international migration patterns, listeners in large urban centres such as London, UK, likely encounter large amounts of variation in spoken language. However, although dealing with variation is crucial to communication, relatively little is known about how the ability to do this develops. Still less is known about how this might be affected by language background. The current study investigates whether early experience with variation, specifically growing up bilingually in London, affects accent categorization. Sixty children (30 monolingual, 30 bilingual) aged 5–7 years, were tested in their ability to comprehend and categorize talkers in 2 out of 3 accents: a home, unfamiliar regional and unfamiliar foreign-accented variety. All children demonstrated high, above-chance performance in the comprehension task, but language background significantly affected the children’s ability to categorize talkers. Bilinguals were able to categorize talkers in all accent conditions, but although all children were able to understand the talkers, monolingual children were only able to categorize talkers in the home-foreign accent condition. Overall, the results are consistent with an approach in which gradient representations of accent variation emerge alongside an understanding of how variation is used meaningfully within a child’s environment.

Training for English-Medium Instruction in French Higher Education: Keeping Pronunciation in Focus

English-Medium Instruction (EMI) is spreading in French higher education and this paper argues that appropriate support for teachers willing to teach their subject in English should focus on both language and content, and on the pedagogical specificities of combining the two. More specifically, I argue that the pronunciation component of any such training must go beyond improving a teacher’s intelligibility. Training in the specificities of spoken English – for both teachers and students, as interchangeable speakers and listeners – should aim to improve two things: attitudes toward variation of spoken language and awareness of the cognitive impact of foreign-accented speech (FAS) (speech which exhibits acoustic features from a speaker’s mother tongue(s)). In this paper, I start by describing pronunciation as a subject in English language teacher training in the English-speaking world and second language pronunciation as an international research field. This is followed by a brief description of EMI teacher training in France and the presentation of a few key findings of research into the social and cognitive impact of FAS. I then outline what is involved for both listeners and speakers, if we want to modify their attitudes to spoken language variation and to improve their cognitive comfort in processing FAS. Example training exercises are outlined, and in the conclusion a greater role is advocated for English language teachers within the internationalisation of French higher education.

Experience, attention, and context in the processing of systematic variation in spoken language

The acoustic speech signal is characterized by enormous variability. Characteristics of individual speakers and groups of speakers profoundly change the way in which linguistic structure is realized. A substantial body of research suggests that language users track, retain, and use systematic variation to restructure linguistic representation and processing in order to maximize intelligibility of spoken language. Less clear is whether sources of variation differ in relevance during speech processing and how relevance changes as a function of experience and context. Research will be presented examining talker-, task-, and listener-related factors that mediate memory and learning of systematic variation in spoken language. The findings suggest that although listeners dynamically adapt to systematic changes in linguistic structure as a function of experience, this adaptation depends on the characteristics and frequency of particular sources of variations, the modulation of attention driven by the structure of the learning environment, and expectations and subsequent sensitivity to socially relevant variation. The considerable behavioral and representational plasticity that is characteristic of speech perception and spoken language processing may depend in part on the social, linguistic, and contextual relevance of the variation associated with both individual talkers and classes of talkers.

Spoken syntax in a comparative perspective: The dative and genitive alternation in varieties of English

This paper introduces a new resource designed to facilitate the quantitative investigation of syntactic variation in spoken language from a comparative perspective. The datasets comprise homogeneously annotated collections of “interchangeable” (i.e. competing) genitive and dative variants in four varieties of English: American English, British English, Canadian English, and New Zealand English. To showcase the empirical potential of the data source, we present a suggestive analysis that investigates the extent to which the probabilistic grammar of genitive and dative variant choice differs across varieties. The statistical analysis reveals that while there are a number of subtle probabilistic contrasts between the regional varieties under study, there is overall a striking degree of cross-varietal homogeneity. We conclude by outlining directions for future research. This article is part of the Special Collection: Probabilistic grammars: Syntactic variation in a comparative perspective

Lexical representation of phonological variation in spoken word recognition

There have been a number of mechanisms proposed to account for recognition of phonological variation in spoken language. Five of these mechanisms were considered here, including underspecification, inference, feature parsing, tolerance, and a frequency-based representational account. A corpus analysis and five experiments using the nasal flap (found in a production of gentle in American English) both in isolation and in biasing sentential context failed to fully support any of these accounts. The results support a strong phonological representation for the [nt] form and a gradient strength representation in the lexicon for the nasal flap that is influenced by production frequency. The results are discussed in terms of orthographic and phonological experience with word forms in the formation of lexical representations.