A grammar of spoken Chinese = 中國話的文法

Surveying the terrain a brief historical perspective on language acquisition research early research on speech perception how speech perception develops in the first year the role of memory and attentional processes in the development of speech perception how attention to sound properties may facilitate learning other elements of linguistic organization relating perception to production wrapping things up. Appendix - methodology used in studies of infant speech perception.

https://www.gendocs.ru/docs/18/17604/conv_1/file1.pdf

The discovery of spoken language

Human infants begin to acquire their native language in the first months of life. To determine which brain regions support language processing at this young age, we measured with functional magnetic resonance imaging the brain activity evoked by normal and reversed speech in awake and sleeping 3-month-old infants. Left-lateralized brain regions similar to those of adults, including the superior temporal and angular gyri, were already active in infants. Additional activation in right prefrontal cortex was seen only in awake infants processing normal speech. Thus, precursors of adult cortical language areas are already active in infants, well before the onset of speech production.

/pdf/functional-neuroimaging-of-speech-perception-in-infants-2sci8ajhv5.pdf

Functional Neuroimaging of Speech Perception in Infants

Research on the exploitation of prosodic information in the comprehension of spoken language is reviewed. The research falls into three main areas: the use of prosody in the recognition of spoken words, in which most attention has been paid to the question of whether the prosodic structure of a word plays a role in initial activation of stored lexical representations; the use of prosody in the computation of syntactic structure, in which the resolution of global and local ambiguities has formed the central focus; and the role of prosody in the processing of discourse structure, in which there has been a preponderance of work on the contribution of accentuation and deaccentuation to integration of concepts with an existing discourse model. The review reveals that in each area progress has been made towards new conceptions of prosody's role in processing, and in particular this has previously held deterministic views of the relationship between prosodic of linguistic structure.

/pdf/prosody-in-the-comprehension-of-spoken-language-a-literature-4hrmky9vrf.pdf

Prosody in the comprehension of spoken language: a literature review.

We propose an approach to phonological representation based on describing an utterance as an organised pattern of overlapping articulatory gestures. Because movement is inherent in our definition of gestures, these gestural ‘constellations’ can account for both spatial and temporal properties of speech in a relatively simple way. At the same time, taken as phonological representations, such gestural analyses offer many of the same advantages provided by recent nonlinear phonological theories, and we give examples of how gestural analyses simplify the description of such ‘complex segments’ as /s/–stop clusters and prenasalised stops. Thus, gestural structures can be seen as providing a principled link between phonological and physical description.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0952675700000658

Towards an articulatory phonology

The purpose of this contribution is to investigate the similarities in form and function of prosody among diverse languages. All speakers, regardless of their specific language, are equipped with the same production and perception apparatus, and consequently have the same capabilities and must face the same physiological constraints. Such similarities should be reflected in the acoustic production of any speaker. The first specific aim of this contribution is to review a number of striking acoustic similarities in the suprasegmental aspects of neutral sentences in different languages, together with possible physiological explanations for them.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00703571/document

Language-Independent Prosodic Features

This paper provides an overview of the role of intonation (prosody) in speech communication, with special focus on the perception of intonation contours. Why there is no complete theory? why is it complex? Syntactical, information, modal, attitudinal, emotional, indexical aspects of ntonation are reviewed. A tentative psychophonetic code is proposed.

http://mathilde.dargnat.free.fr/INTONALE/Vaissiere07.pdf

Perception of Intonation

Following tradition and for the sake of convenience in contrasting French with other languages, much of the research and theory have assumed that French has a stress located on the last full syllable of every lexical word, an “accent de mot intrinseque” (Rousselot, 1924). Lexical words are opposed to function words, such as articles and auxiliaries, which do not have a potentially stressable final syllable (Garde, 1968). In continuous speech, the “accent de mot” or word accent of a number of lexical words is often not fully realized, or not realized at all, due to modifications dictated by the larger patterns of the speech measure or phrase (a phenomenon not particular to French, Heffner, 1950:228). Only the last syllable of the last word in a group of words, lengthened and often superimposed with a fundamental frequency (Fo) rise or a Fo peak as the expression of continuation, is regularly perceived as prominent, giving rise to the so-called “accent de groupe” (Delattre, 1966:75). There is no clear cut definition of this “groupe”. A group generally constitutes a unit of meaning, a sense-group. The same sentence can be chunked into more or less units of meaning, depending on the rate of speaking and on the speaker (Grammont, 1914; Coustenoble and Armstrong, 1934; Delattre, 1966:65; Vaissiere, 1974:216; Vaissiere, 1989; see also Hirst & Di Cristo, 1984). Prominence can be perceived also at the beginning of the word, as a consequence of emphasis (Grammont, 1914), of the “accent intellectuel” (Marouzeau, 1934; Roudet, 1910), as a regular characteristic of professional announcers (Leon, 1971; Fonagy & Fonagy, 1976), and in certain dialects (Fouche, 1936; Carton, 1976).

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00363980/document

Rhythm, accentuation and final lengthening in French

This study was designed to determine which objective acoustic or aerodynamic parameters allowed a homogeneous group of patients with unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) to be distinguished from an age-matched and smoking-matched control group and to search for linear correlations between the objective parameters and the subjective breathiness ratings Eight patients with recent-onset UVFP and 12 controls were prospectively studied The acoustic parameters measured for the vowel /a/ at a comfortable frequency and intensity were: jitter, shimmer, harmonics-to-noise ratio, cepstral peak prominence, the difference between the levels of the first two harmonics and the relative energy above 6 kHz Aerodynamic parameters included the mean flow rate during a sustained /a/ and intraoral pressure during the production of the phoneme /pi/ The long-term average spectrum was calculated for 40 s of text, and the relative average energies in four frequency bands were compared Six judges rated a mid-/a/ sample using a five-parameter scale with four levels of severity Nonparametric statistical analysis revealed significant differences (P<05) between the UVFP group and the control group for 14 of the 19 parameters studied Correlations between the objective parameters and perceived breathiness differed in the two groups Correlations were not always as expected as based on previous literature reports These measurements provided an objective qualification of voice in patients with UVFP and successfully distinguished them from the normal controls The objective acoustic and aerodynamic measurements had generally low linear correlations with breathiness ratings in the control group Higher correlations were seen in the UVFP group, in which breathiness was best correlated with airflow measurements

Objective acoustic and aerodynamic measures of breathiness in paralytic dysphonia

The vertical movement of a sample point of the velum surface in sentences uttered by 2 speakers of English has been investigated. The temporal patterns of velum movement were approximated with a serie

Jacqueline Vaissière

Papers

Language-Independent Prosodic Features

Perception of Intonation

Rhythm, accentuation and final lengthening in French

Objective acoustic and aerodynamic measures of breathiness in paralytic dysphonia

Prediction of Velum Movement from Phonological Specifications