1,720,984 research outputs found
How prior experience with pitch accents shapes the perception of word and sentence stress
No full textListeners 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.publishe
Pitch accent type affects stress perception in German : Evidence from infant and adult speech processing
No full textThis thesis focuses on explicit segmentation in infants and lexical activation in adults – processes of word recognition that are crucial for the respective target group (e.g., Cutler, 2012). Specifically, we examine how pitch accent type affects stress processing in segmentation and lexical activation. Pitch accents generally mark words and stressed syllables therein as prominent at the utterance level, mostly for information-structural purposes (e.g., Ladd, 2008). Broadly speaking, pitch accents differ in where – in regard to the stressed syllable – the fundamental frequency (f0) peak is realized, i.e., the f0 peak can precede or follow the stressed syllable, or it can be realized on the stressed syllable. Consequently, utterance-level intonation guides the status of f0 on a stressed syllable (either high-pitched or low-pitched, or rising or falling) and renders f0 an unreliable cue to the position of lexical stress for listeners.Using the Head-Turn Preference Paradigm with infants and the Visual-World Eye-Tracking Paradigm with adults, this thesis studied how (phonological) alignment differences in different pitch accent types affect lexical stress processing in German infants and adults. Our experimental results showed that both German infants and adults were influenced by the position of the f0 peak in regard to the stressed syllable when processing lexical stress. In particular, German infants extracted trochaic units only when the stressed syllable was high-pitched. When naturally produced, infants furthermore mistook high-pitched unstressed syllables as word onset cues; the isolated f0 cue (resynthesized), however, did not lead to mis-segmentation. German adults, in turn, were influenced by different pitch accent types, such that f0 peaks on unstressed initial syllables led to the temporary activation of stress competitors with initial stress. To account for the observed effects of pitch accent type on stress-based segmentation and lexical activation, we proposed two underlying mechanisms in the thesis: Option 1 is that high-pitched syllables stand out perceptually (salience account). Option 2 is that listeners learned to associate high-pitched sylla- bles with metrical stress, because of a frequent occurrence of H*-accents in the ambient language (frequency account). In an exposure-test paradigm (exposure phase with low-pitched accents and subsequent eye-tracking study) with German adults, we put the frequency account to test and examined whether the weighting of the f0 cue for stress processing is affected by the frequency of occurrence of high- and low-pitched stressed syllables in the immediate input. Results showed a reduced competitor activation, indicating that the frequency with which different pitch accent types occur in spoken communication modulate the cue weights for acoustic cues to stress, here high f0.In conclusion, this dissertation is relevant to both psycholinguistic research and the interface between phonetics and phonology. From a psycholinguistic perspective, it contributes towards unravelling the influence of intonation on lexical processing by showing that high f0 guides the perception of lexical stress in infant metrical segmentation and adult lexical activation. The perception of metrical strength relations in a word can be shifted if the f0 peak and the metrically stressed syllable are not aligned. Hence, pitch accent type influences lexical processing in intonation languages, in which pitch is not contrastively used. Furthermore, the manipulation of the occurrence frequency of different pitch accent types, in particular, allows for important theoretical conclusions at the phonetics-phonology interface. In this regard, our findings speak in favour of a phonological basis of the association between high f0 and lexical stress. More precisely, we argue that it is not (only) the phonetic cues (here the acoustic cue high f0) that guide the perception of lexical stress. Rather, the learned association between high f0 and lexical stress gen- erates expectations on which cues make a syllable appear to be stressed.publishe
Geschlechterrollenbild und phonetische Variation: Ein Vergleich zwischen Sprecher*innen im Osten (Jena) und Westen (Trier) Deutschlands (JETRI)
Full text linkThe Distribution and Prosodic Realization of Verb Forms in German Infant-Directed Speech
No full textInfant-directed speech is often seen as a predictor for infants' speech processing abilities, for instance speech segmentation or word learning. In this paper, we examine the syntactic distribution (position), accentuation and prosodic phrasing of German verb forms and discuss that many verb forms are prime candidates for early segmentation: they frequently appear at the start or end of prosodic phrases; if they are not phrase-initial, they are often preceded by closed-class word forms and they are frequently accented (imperative verb forms: 72% of the cases, infinitive verb forms: 82% of the cases). It thus appears that German infants ought to be able to extract verbs as early as nouns, given appropriate stimulus materials.publishe
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Alignment of f0 peak in different pitch accent types affects perception of metrical stress
No full textIn intonation languages, pitch accents are associated with stressed syllables, therefore accentuation is a sufficient cue to the position of metrical stress in perception. This paper investigates how stress perception in German is affected by different pitch accent types (with different f0 alignments). Experiment 1 showed more errors in stress identification when f0 peaks and stressed syllables were not aligned – despite phonological association of pitch accent and stressed syllable. Erroneous responses revealed a response bias towards the syllable with the f0 peak. In a visual-world eye-tracking study (Experiment 2), listeners fixated a stress competitor with initial stress more when the spoken target, which had penultimate stress, was realized with an early-peak accent (f0 peak preceding stressed syllable), compared to a condition with the f0 peak on the stressed syllable. Hence, high-pitched unstressed syllables are temporarily interpreted as stressed – a process directly affecting lexical activation. To investigate whether this stress competitor activation is guided by the frequent co-occurrence of high f0 and lexical stress, Experiment 3 increased the frequency of low-pitched stressed syllables in the immediate input. The effect of intonation on competitor fixations disappeared. Our findings are discussed with respect to a frequency-based mechanism and their implications for the nature of f0 processing.publishe
The limits of metrical segmentation : intonation modulates infants' extraction of embedded trochees
No full textWe tested German nine-month-olds’ reliance on pitch and metrical stress for segmentation. In a headturn-preference paradigm, infants were familiarized with trisyllabic words (weak–strong–weak (WSW) stress pattern) in sentence-contexts. The words were presented in one of three naturally occurring intonation conditions: one in which high pitch was aligned with the stressed syllable and two misalignment conditions (with high pitch preceding vs. following the stressed syllable). Infants were tested on the SW unit of the WSW carriers. Experiment 1 showed recognition only when the stressed syllable was high-pitched. Intonation of test items (similar vs. dissimilar to familiarization) had no influence (Experiment 2). Thus, German nine-month-olds perceive stressed syllables as word onsets only when high-pitched, although they already generalize over different pitch contours. Different mechanisms underlying this pattern of results are discussed.publishe
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