Voice Alternations Research Articles

Vocal dysfunction following thyroid surgery: a multidimensional subjective and objective study

Background and objectiveFollowing thyroid surgery, vocal changes are a common complication and well-known morbidity that may be linked to neuronal and non-neuronal voice breakdown. Nevertheless, their effects on different voice characteristics are not fully understood, and their bases are still poorly characterized. In order to determine the diagnostic indicators that address the nature of such post-thyroidectomy voice alternations, this study was designed to provide a multidimensional assessment of vocal function after thyroid surgery.MethodsThis research was a 1-year prospective cohort study conducted on 100 adult patients aged 40.19 (± 12.82) years who were recruited from the outpatient clinic of Phoniatric Unit, Assiut University Hospital, and scheduled to undergo thyroid surgery during the period from November 2020 to November 2021. All subjects underwent vocal assessment preoperatively and 15 days, 1 month, and 2 months postoperatively by filled in subjective evaluation of voice complaints via voice handicap index (VHI-30), auditory perceptual assessment (APA) of the voice, and videolaryngoscopy in addition to acoustic analysis using computerized speech lab (CSL). Statistical analysis was performed to compare multi-parameter voice assessment tools across different assessment time points.ResultsThe voice changes were significantly decreased from 51.0% after 15 days postoperatively to 33.0% after 2 months of follow-up. Among these cases, 35.0% cases developed vocal fold paralysis and complained of a breathy voice (27% developed unilateral vocal fold paralysis, and 8% developed bilateral focal fold lesions), and the remaining 16.0% cases had no paralytic manifestations. Also, only one case developed gross lesion “bilateral vocal fold nodules.” The subjective evaluation of voice outcome after thyroidectomy showed significant improvement in VHI subscales and total score from 15 days postoperatively to 2 months of follow-up (P < 0.001). All of the acoustic parameters except HNR showed a significant difference across the different assessment settings (P < 0.001).ConclusionThyroidectomy can result in significant vocal alterations, even in cases where the laryngeal nerve is unharmed. These changes should be taken into consideration in patient having thyroid surgery, especially a total thyroidectomy because of malignant lesions. More efforts are needed in order to determine the extent and pathophysiological reasons for the vocal alterations following thyroid surgery in order to reduce the morbidity associated with one of the most popular surgical procedures performed globally.

Semantic field SEARCH in Amguema Chukchi: From morphosyntax to semantics and back

The study describes the semantic field of search in Amguema Chukchi within the frame-based approach to lexical typology. I discuss lexical items of the macroframe of seeking an object (‘search for something’): the verb qərirək and the lexical affixes ‑rerək and ‑ɣiɬik; verbs of the macroframe of searching space (‘search some place’): ojpətkok и rəritɬʔewək; and the verb enarerək, which covers both macroframes and can also describe objectless search. In addition to unveiling semantic oppositions within each macroframe, the study examines in detail the interaction of morphosyntax, etymology, and semantics of the items of the field. First, a historical explanation is provided for the properties of the verb enarerək, unique with respect to valency expression, which yields its broad semantics. The explanation is based on the historical presence of the antipassive prefix in this verb and, at the same time, on the fact that this voice alternation has been lost in the Amguema dialect. Secondly, differences in the behavior of independent lexemes and lexical affixes that compete in the macroframe of searching for an object are considered. I conclude that there is a correlation between the referentiality of the searched object and the degree of boundedness of the morpheme with the meaning ‘to search’. Noticeably, the correlation within the semantic field of search manifests itself in the form of combinability restrictions that are not obligatory for independent verbs or lexical affixes outside the field. Thirdly, for the macroframe of searching space, I trace the transmission of semantic restrictions on combinability from the source field.

Dependent Case for Mongolian: Unifying accusative subjects

In Modern Mongolian, the subjects of many subordinate clauses, both complements and adjuncts, may be marked with the accusative case (von Heusinger, Klein &amp;amp; Guntsetseg 2011; Guntsetseg 2016). This study argues that the full empirical picture of these marked subjects necessitates an analysis based on Dependent Case Theory (Marantz 1991; Baker &amp;amp; Vinokurova 2010; Baker 2015), which additionally provides an account of case assignment more broadly in the language, including in differential object marking. Prior syntactic analyses (Bao et al. 2015; Fong 2019) rely on Agree-based case-licensing from v, resulting in ECM-like accounts. However, the appearance of accusative on subjects of adjoined clauses, as well as in clauses with no canonical accusative-assigning verbs (intransitives, passives) rules out v as the case assigner. Instead, following Baker &amp;amp; Vinokurova (2010), this account argues that accusative case is assigned configurationally. Once established that a configurational approach to case-assignment handles subjects, as well as direct objects, the approach is applied to Mongolian-specific issues including voice alternations and converbial adjuncts, showing that the theory predicts case-assignment patterns there. Finally, the study examines data from dative marking and scrambling in ditransitives to refine Baker &amp;amp; Vinokurova’s (2010) original theory, obviating the need for case-stacking by restricting the timing of application of the Dependent Case algorithm.

Tense-aspect conditioned agent marking in Kanakanavu, an Austronesian language of Taiwan

Abstract This article examines two types of lexical effects in the voice system of Kanakanavu, an Austronesian language of Taiwan. The first concerns a well-attested phenomenon in the Austronesian literature: interactions between the semantic transitivity of verbs and their ability (or lack thereof) to undergo voice alternation. The second concerns a phenomenon that is typologically and areally rare in the western Austronesian context – differential agent marking. The pronominal agent in Kanakanavu’s patient-/undergoer-voice construction is differentially case-marked depending on the tense-aspect value of the clause. However, lexical effects are found in how the differentially marked agent is interpreted. When dynamic verbs are used, omitted agents in perfective clauses are interpreted as coreferential with a specific referent mentioned in prior discourse, but those in non-perfective clauses are interpreted as having generic reference, backgrounded, and/or not centrally involved in the situation expressed by the verb. When stative verbs are used, alternation between perfective and imperfective verb forms may have various effects on the interpretation of the agent. In some stative verbs, the agent is interpreted as a prototypical semantic agent in the perfective, but as a semantic experiencer in the imperfective. In other stative verbs, the perfective/non-perfective alternation has to do with whether a change of state is involved, without having any effects on agent interpretation. This study explores how lexical effects manifest across both elicited and natural discourse data. It also presents the phenomenon of differential agent marking in Kanakanavu as neither typical nor representative in the western Austronesian context.

Examining voice choice in Tagalog: A corpus of web-based Tagalog

This study is a corpus-based analysis of web-based Tagalog (Austronesian) investigating how different prominence features influence voice in basic, declarative, transitive clauses. A large sample of these structures were extracted from a web-based corpus of Tagalog. The arguments were annotated for animacy, definiteness, and other factors proposed to influence voice choice. Preliminary results suggest that despite the morphosyntactic symmetry in voice alternations in the language, the Undergoer voice appears to be the preferred structure regardless of these factors in Tagalog. Moreover, there may be highly constrained contexts in which the Actor Voice is used when describing two-participant, transitive events. This work has implications for how we understand the notion of prominence more generally and how languages might have specific requirements for the mappings between different prominence hierarchies.

Physicians’ Perception about the Role of Speech and Language Pathologist in Dysphagia

Introduction: Dysphagia is characterised as having trouble digesting food from the mouth to the stomach. It is the sensation of the hindrance of food when it’s passing from the mouth through the oesophagus. Dysphagia can be caused due to or pharyngeal or oesophageal etiologist. Objective: To determine the physician perception about speech-language pathologists' role in dysphagia. Methodology: To achieve this goal, the researcher surveyed physicians including otolaryngologists, neurologist and gastroenterologists about their perception about the involvement of SLP in the management of dysphagia. A cross-sectional survey was conducted in Lahore, Pakistan. Data for the study was collected from the public and private hospitals and clinics by convenient sampling technique. 97 Doctors completed a questionnaire created by the researcher that had two sections, each of which captured the participant's demographics, closed ended questions regarding physician’s perception (15 items). Results: The results depict that 40.2% of physicians thinks that speech and language pathologist rarely become a part of the team when patient reports difficulty during Preparatory and Pharyngeal phase of swallowing with the mean±SD = .92 ± .909. While 37.1% of the physician thinks that SLPs frequently becomes a part of team when patient complaints about voice alternations with the mean±SD = 2.43 ± 1.117, 53.6% of the physician thinks that SLPs frequently becomes a part of team when patient complaints about Drooling with the mean±SD = 2.59 ± .887, 53.6% of the physician thinks that SLPs frequently becomes a part of team when patient complaints about Poor tongue movements with the mean±SD = 2.74 ± .916 , 50.5% of the physician thinks that SLPs frequently becomes a part of team when patient complaints about asymmetrical facial musculature with the mean±SD = 2.97 ± .847. Practical Implication: The field of speech and language pathology has the main domain of dealing with dysphagia patients but the physicians have yet to understand the scope of speech language pathologists and the role they play in the diagnosis and management of dysphagia, this research will serve to point out the gap of knowledge and awareness of the physicians and the areas that need to be addressed to narrow this gap and increase patient care quality. Conclusion: This study concluded that most of the physicians had insufficient knowledge about the involvement of Speech and language pathologist in the multidisciplinary team for the management of dysphagia. Keywords: Speech and language pathologist, Dysphagia, Swallowing disorders, Feeding disorder.

Processing of Transitivity Alternations and Frequency-Based Accounts in Greek Adult Language

The processing and resolution of syntactically ambiguous structures is accounted for by serial autonomous and multiple constraint satisfaction models differently. We investigated the extent to which frequency affects native speakers’ processing and interpretation of ‘voice (non)-alternating’ anticausative Greek verbs which differ in the availability or lack of voice alternation on the verb when it appears in intransitive structures. The accessibility of interpretations was measured with an online self-paced reading (SPR) task and an offline acceptability judgment (AJ) task addressed to 45 monolingual Greek-speaking adults. In order to investigate whether processing load is affected by statistical records in the parser, we compared empirical data with the frequency of the available readings that these verbs receive in formal and informal registers (ILSP, Web-Based Corpus). The online processing study indicated that the parser is sensitive to morphological cues ((N)ACT voice marking), while semantic factors such as animacy are integrated in subsequent stages of processing. A frequency effect was found in accordance with ‘coarse-grained’ models of sentence processing, while more ‘fine-grained’ models could not be validated with respect to frequency alone. The majority of acceptability judgements attributed to the verbs investigated correlated with the most frequent interpretations of verb forms in intransitive structures in corpora.

The origin of dative subjects and psych predicate constructions in Japanese

AbstractThere is considerable literature on dative subject or non-canonical subject marking constructions in Japanese, and yet they have been studied mainly from a synchronic point of view. This paper investigates the diachronic dimension of non-canonical case marking constructions in Japanese. FollowingYanagida and Whitman (2009), I assume that Old Japanese (700–800 A.D.) displays split active alignment. This paper argues that dative subjects arose as a byproduct of a change occurring from active-inactive to accusative alignment. A factor triggering this change was the reanalysis of some particular object experiencer predicates as intransitives due to the loss of the vestigial causative suffix associated with the predicate. Synchronically, these constructions involve a voice alternation of the type identified as the psych causative alternation byAlexiadou and Iordăchioaia (2014): object experiencer verbs behave parallel to causative verbs whereas alternating subject experiencer verbs behave parallel to anticausative verbs.

Semantic typology of voice systems in Western Malayo-Polynesian languages

AbstractWestern Malayo-Polynesian (WMP) languages exhibit inner diversity with regard to voice systems. While some lack verbal morphology encoding voice alternations, others demonstrate so-calledsymmetrical voicealternations. This paper discusses the internal typological grouping within the latter classification of languages, which are further categorized as being either Indonesian-type and Philippine-type. There are, however, certain languages that do not exhibit all the criteria of either category, but do displaysymmetrical voicealternations. These languages can be viewed as having ‘transitional’ features. With a focus on two languages from Indonesia, this paper aims to provide a new semantic perspective for describing one of these transitional features by examining voice alternations and categorizing the languages as having either aderivational voice systemor aninflectional voice system.

Corpus linguistic and experimental studies on the meaning-preserving hypothesis in Indonesian voice alternations

Abstract One essential feature of voice alternation is that active and passive clauses centred around a given verb express the same meaning: the “meaning-preserving” hypothesis. One effect of the alternation is the different linking of grammatical relations and semantic roles, which affects the identity of the subject. This paper investigates the meaning-preserving hypothesis in voice alternation in Indonesian from a quantitative usage-based perspective by combining corpus-based data with sentence-production experiment data. It analysed Indonesian caused forward/backward motion verbs and the distribution of their (non-)metaphoric senses in active and passive. The findings demonstrate the frequency effects and sense-sensitivity of voice alternation, such that a given voice type of a verb is strongly associated with certain senses. This finding provides initial support for a previous study on voice alternation in an Austronesian language, predicting that the verb’s semantic properties may condition the statistical bias of the verb towards a particular voice. Some convergence between experimental and corpus findings indicates that participants demonstrate some representation of the strong association between a given voice form of the verb and the sense predominantly expressed in that form, highlighting the notion of item-specific representations of linguistic knowledge as found in construction grammar.

Predicting voice choice in symmetrical voice languages

AbstractWestern Austronesian symmetrical voice languages exhibit at least two basic transitive constructions. This paper investigates what factors influence speakers’ choice of one voice over another in natural spoken discourse. It provides a thorough assessment of all factors that have been proposed to be relevant for voice choice in the literature on symmetrical voice systems. Using the Indonesian language Totoli as a case study, we show that unlike in languages with asymmetrical voice alternations, argument-related properties such as topicality, activation state, animacy, etc. do not play a major role in voice choice in symmetrical voice languages. We argue that for symmetrical voice alternations other factor groups are relevant than for asymmetrical voice alternations and that the clear structural differences between the two alternation types are mirrored in functional differences.

Indefinite expressions and accessibility hierarchy to core argument functionsin a sample of Austronesian languages(and beyond)

Abstract In many languages, indefinite expressions are known to have restricted access to core argument functions. This article focuses on the accessibility hierarchy of indefinite expressions to subject and object functions in a sample of Austronesian languages. Aiming at some comparative analysis, some cross-linguistic perspectives on the differential encoding of ± definite core arguments and other types of restrictions are discussed. The questions addressed are: (i) What type of indefinite nouns have core argument function? (ii) If barred from core argument function, how are indefinite arguments circumvented? (iii) Does existence or lack of indefinite articles correlate with access to core argument function, and in what way? In Austronesian languages, one finding is that languages with indefinite articles display fewer restrictions on the access of indefinite NPs to core argument function. Another finding is that differences of definiteness, individuation and specificity of arguments tend to be expressed by distinct domains: the noun phrase in languages with indefinite articles, the verb phrase in languages without indefinite articles (via valency, voice alternations, alignment changes), with an intermediate situation in some Micronesian languages.

ЗАЛОГОВЫЕ АЛЬТЕРНАЦИИ НЕФИНИТНЫХ ФОРМ ГЛАГОЛА В ХЕТТСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

ЗАЛОГОВЫЕ АЛЬТЕРНАЦИИ НЕФИНИТНЫХ ФОРМ ГЛАГОЛА В ХЕТТСКОМ ЯЗЫКЕ

Syntax and processing in Seediq: an event-related potential study

In many languages with subject-before-object as a syntactically basic word order, transitive sentences in which the subject precedes the object have been reported to have a processing advantage over those in which the subject follows the object in sentence comprehension. Three sources can be considered to account for this advantage, namely, syntactic complexity (filler-gap dependency), conceptual accessibility (the order of thematic roles), and pragmatic requirement. To examine the effect of these factors on the processing of simple transitive sentences, the present study conducted two event-related potential experiments in Seediq, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, by manipulating word orders (basic VOS vs. non-basic SVO), the order of thematic roles (actor vs. goal voice), and discourse factors (presence/absence of visual context). The results showed that, compared to VOS, SVO incurred a greater processing load (reflected by a P600) when there was no supportive context, irrespective of voice alternation; however, SVO did not incur a greater processing load when there was supportive context and the discourse requirement was satisfied. We interpreted these results as evidence that the processing difficulty of the non-basic word order in Seediq is associated with a discourse-level processing difficulty.

Western Austronesian Voice

Over the past four decades, the nature of western Austronesian voice—typically subcategorized as Philippine-type and Indonesian-type—has triggered considerable debate in the typological and syntactic literature. Central questions in these debates have been concerned with how voice alternations in western Austronesian languages interact with grammatical relations, transitivity, and syntactic alignment. In this review, we reassess the syntactic properties of voice alternations in western Austronesian languages, in some cases focusing on more controversial alternations, including the putative antipassive and applicative constructions in Philippine-type languages and the passive constructions in Indonesian-type languages. We discuss reasons that favor a valency-neutral approach to western Austronesian voice and evidence against a valency-changing and/or ergative approach to the analysis of these languages.

Predicting voice alternation across academic Englishes

Abstract Academic writing in the second half of the twentieth century witnesses a notable decrease in be-passives in British and American English (AmE). This trend is more advanced in the soft than in the hard sciences; with the exception of AmE, moreover, regional variation is not highly significant. This paper aims to discover whether the use of passives is conditioned by the same factors across seven different varieties of English (both as a first and as an institutionalized second language). For this purpose, we automatically retrieve central be-passives and active transitives from syntactically annotated International Corpus of English corpora and code for factors that are likely to play a role in the choice between active and passive (such as the semantics of the participant roles or the length of the constituents). Our results show that, while the same factors predict the choice of a passive over an active verb phrase across first- and second-language varieties, subtle differences are found in the effect size that some factors (animacy, givenness and length of passive subject) have, notably in Hong Kong and Philippine English. Some (but not all) of these find an explanation in substrate influence.

Voice Alternation and Authorial Presence: Variation across Disciplinary Areas in Academic English

This paper examines voice alternation, that is, variation between the active and passive voice in academic Englishes. The focus is on differences regarding degrees of author involvement. A previous study on the use of be-passives in fifteen varieties of academic English (Hundt, Schneider & Seoane 2016) found voice alternation to be very similar in both contact and native (ENL) varieties of English, with only American English showing a pronounced tendency towards a more frequent use of actives. A more fine-grained analysis, however, revealed highly significant interdisciplinary variation: whereas in the hard sciences the default option to express a transitive event is the passive voice, in the soft sciences, preference is often given to the active. In this paper we do not compare varieties of English but concentrate on ENL data from the entire academic sections of ICE corpora (International Corpus of English) as a whole in order to uncover the functional role of actives and passives across disciplinary areas with regard to authorial presence. The results indicate that the differences attested do not correlate with differences in authorial involvement (We discovered this versus This was discovered) since texts remain equally impersonal. Other factors, such as the increasing informalization observed in various genres, will have to be contemplated in any comprehensive study of the rhetoric of science.

Italian causatives and the grammar of (in)direct causation

This paper tackles the issue of the relation between syntax and semantics in causative structures, and it concentrates on the empirical case offered by syntactic causative constructions in Italian. Italian exhibit two types of causative constructions (so-called faire-par and faire-infinitive constructions) that have been the subject of extensive inquiry in the literature. I argue that, in order to capture the semantic similarities and differences between the two types of syntactic causatives in Italian, it is necessary to relate their properties to the underlying causative structure that they express. This approach leads to the rejection of previous accounts that distinguish the two structural types based on the selectional properties of the first causative verb. An account in terms of Voice alternation is retained, and I present new empirical evidence for this approach, drawn from comparison with other causative constructions in Italian and from the discussion of the transitive/anticausative alternation in the infinitive clause.

Basic valency orientation in Homeric Greek

AbstractIn a number of recent works, verbs and expressions encoding causative alternations have been regarded as a possible test for measuring the basic valency orientation of a language. This paper focuses on the basic orientation of valency in Homeric Greek. The test applied for determining this parameter is that proposed by Nichols et al. (2004, Transitivizing and detransitivizing languages.Linguistic Typology8(2). 149–211), focusing on 18 causative alternations. The investigation carried out in this paper shows that Homeric Greek belongs to the detransitivizing type, showing an active-middle alternation as the preferred pattern for expressing causative alternations. This study aims to enrich the typological literature on this topic and positions itself among other studies of valency orientation in ancient Indo-European languages, such as Old Hittite, Old Indo-Aryan, Proto-Germanic, and Proto-Slavic, which show transitivizing strategies along with voice alternation patterns.

Tipologia da interação entre pessoa e voz, com ênfase em Sikuani e Katukina-Kanamari

As mudanças de voz respondem a duas motivações, funcional vs. formal. Interlinguisticamente, tais fenômenos gramaticais recorrem a uma variedade de dispositivos formais, seja a motivação principal ora funcional, como é a demoção de um participante prescindível embora em si central na estrutura semântica do verbo, ora formal como é a promoção com fins de acessibilidade. Obviamente, uma promoção não pode acontecer sem uma demoção concomitante. Um dispositivo predileto − e um dos mais simples formalmente − consiste em intervir sobre a codificação do participante a ser demovido, particularmente, tendo o verbo uma morfologia o suficientemente explícita, graças à manipulação da referencialidade das marcas de pessoa. Como ilustram as duas línguas a serem abordadas em este texto, além de uma pequena amostra de outras, a manipulação da pessoa é uma ferramenta amplamente adequada para servir às mudanças de voz, independentemente do alinhamento básico dos argumentos e do tipo de motivação que induz a voz derivada.