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Glottal stops have been reported during specific phonetic contexts such as between a word ending in a vowel and a word beginning with a stressed vowel (intervocalic; Umeda, 1978), and [...], Purposes: The purposes of this study were to determine whether the acoustic measures from glottal stops distinguished between controls and patients with unilateral vocal fold paresis/paralysis (UVFP) at initial evaluation and posttreatment/ observation, to explore the types of false vocal fold (FVF) movement during glottal stop production in UVFP, and to assess the agreement between normalization of various measures and reported voice normalization. Method: Patients with UVFP and controls were recorded acoustically and laryngoscopically speaking two sets of five repeated /i/s, controls once and patients with UVFP initially and posttreatment/observation. Averaged intensity differences and slopes for offsets (maximum voicing intensity to minimum glottal stop intensity) and onsets (minimum glottal stop intensity to maximum voicing intensity) were measured. fVf movements were rated separately for paretic and nonparetic sides. Patients were asked to report voice normalization posttreatment/ observation. Cohen&apos;s kappas were calculated for agreements between patientreported voice normalization and normalization of Voice-Related Quality of Life (V-RQOL), translaryngeal flow, four acoustic measures of glottal stop production, and FVF movement. Results: Significant differences (analysis of variance [ANOVA]; p < .014) were found for all acoustic measures between controls and patients with UVFP and between patients with UVFP initially and posttreatment/observation (paired t tests; p < .05). In addition, 78% of UVFP patients had no FVF movement on the paretic side initially, and 42% had bilateral dynamic FVF movement posttreatment/ observation. Cohen&apos;s kappa showed moderate agreement between voice normalization and V-RQOL, slight agreement with offset measures, and fair agreement with onset measures. Conclusion: This study provided proof of concept for using acoustic measures of glottal stops to distinguish between controls and patients with UVFP, both initially and posttreatment/observation.

Children's earliest productions of words sound drastically different from those of adults. Phonetic transcriptions of children's productions show additions, substitutions, omissions, and distortions of phonemes relative to adult forms (Smit, [...], Purpose: We evaluated whether children whose inaccurate /r/ productions showed evidence phonetic differentiation with /w/ at 3.5-4.5 years of age improved in /r/ production over the next year more than children whose inaccurate productions did not show evidence of such differentiation. We also examined whether speech perception, inhibitory control, and vocabulary size predicted growth in /r/. Method: A set of typically developing, monolingual English-speaking preschool children (n = 136) produced tokens of /r/- and /w/-initial words at two time points (TPs), at which they were 39-52 and 51-65 months old. Children&apos;s productions of /r/ and /w/ were narrowly phonetically transcribed. Children&apos;s productions at the earlier time point were rated by naive listeners using a visual analog scale measure of phoneme goodness; these ratings were used to assess the degree of phonetic differentiation between /r/ and /w/. Results: Accuracy for both phonemes varied considerably at both TPs. The growth in accuracy of /r/ between the two TPs was not predicted by any individual-differences measures, nor by the degree of differentiation between /r/ and /w/at the earlier time point. Conclusion: Low vocabulary size, low inhibitory control, poor speech perception, and the absence of early phonetic differentiation are not necessarily limiting factors in predicting /r/ growth in individual children in the age range we studied.

The phonetic change between b and w is analyzed in a new way. The phenomenon can be considered as firmly established in current research and the list of examples is here enriched by further material. The objects of investigation consist of writings of single words, as well as plays on words., Der folgende Beitrag hat sich den agyptischen Lautwandel zwischen b und w als Schwerpunkt gewahlt. (1) In der Vergangenheit ist schon mehrfach uber diesen Lautwandel geschrieben worden. Der Lautwandel von [...]

This paper focuses on the practical application of the theory of sound symbolism in brand name development and examines which of the two phonetic dimensions of vowel articulation, the vertical articulatory scale or the horizontal one, is utilised to a higher degree in communicating the size of a vehicle to customers. The methodology used in previous studies on size-sound symbolism did not make it possible to separate the two aspects of vowel articulation. In the present paper, these dimensions were categorised by the use of quantitative methods. Each Received Pronunciation vowel was assigned a numerical value separately on both scales. Then, the correlations between the values obtained for horizontal and vertical articulation of the vowels present in the names of cars sold in Great Britain and the physical attributes of the respective vehicles such as size, weight, and power were calculated. The final results reveal that it is only the vertical scale of vowel articulation which is utilised to signal the physical characteristics of the vehicles examined in this project. Although these findings refer directly to British English, they may also have more universal implications for the theory of magnitude sound symbolism. Keywords: Sound symbolism; phonetic symbolism; phonetic iconicity; phonological iconicity; language of advertising., 1. Background 1.1. Theory of sound symbolism Sound symbolism is a term which covers a vast array of phenomena united by a 'direct linkage between sound and meaning' (Ohala, Hinton [...]

Rhythmic entrainment, operationally defined as the 'spatiotemporal coordination resulting from rhyth-M. V. mic responsiveness to a perceived rhythmic signal' (Phillips-Silver, Aktipis, & Bryant, 2010, p. 5), is a pervasive communication [...], Purpose: The rhythmic entrainment (coordination) of behavior during human interaction is a powerful phenomenon, considered essential for successful communication, supporting social and emotional connection, and facilitating sense-making and information exchange. Disruption in entrainment likely occurs in conversations involving those with speech and language impairment, but its contribution to communication disorders has not been defined. As a first step to exploring this phenomenon in clinical populations, the present investigation examined the influence of disordered speech on the speech production properties of healthy interactants. Method: Twenty-nine neurologically healthy interactants participated in a quasi-conversational paradigm, in which they read sentences (response) in response to hearing prerecorded sentences (exposure) from speakers with dysarthria (n = 4) and healthy controls (n = 4). Recordings of read sentences prior to the task were also collected (habitual). Results: Findings revealed that interactants modified their speaking rate and pitch variation to align more closely with the disordered speech. Production shifts in these rhythmic properties, however, remained significantly different from corresponding properties in dysarthric speech. Conclusion: Entrainment offers a new avenue for exploring speech and language impairment, addressing a communication process not currently explained by existing frameworks. This article offers direction for advancing this line of inquiry. Key Words: rhythm, communication, interaction, entrainment

The cochlear implant (CI) is a widely accepted and effective treatment for rehabilitation of patients with severe-to-profound hearing loss. Speech recognition outcomes have improved since the introduction of the single-channel [...], Purpose: Several acoustic cues specify any single phonemic contrast. Nonetheless, adult, native speakers of a language share weighting strategies, showing preferential attention to some properties over others. Cochlear implant (CI) signal processing disrupts the salience of some cues: In general, amplitude structure remains readily available, but spectral structure less so. This study asked how well speech recognition is supported if CI users shift attention to salient cues not weighted strongly by native speakers. Method: Twenty adults with CIs participated. The /ba/-/wa/ contrast was used because spectral and amplitude structure varies in correlated fashion for this contrast. Adults with normal hearing weight the spectral cue strongly but the amplitude cue negligibly. Three measurements were made: labeling decisions, spectral and amplitude discrimination, and word recognition. Results: Outcomes varied across listeners: Some weighted the spectral cue strongly, some weighted the amplitude cue, and some weighted neither. Spectral discrimination predicted spectral weighting. Spectral weighting explained the most variance in word recognition. Age of onset of hearing loss predicted spectral weighting but not unique variance in word recognition. Conclusion: The weighting strategies of listeners with normal hearing likely support speech recognition best, so efforts in implant design, fitting, and training should focus on developing those strategies. Key Words: cochlear implants, psychoacoustics, speech perception

Research on laryngeal behavior in normal and disordered voice production and in speech emphasizes the vocal folds as the cause of diverse phenomena. This is true for phonetic models of [...], Purpose: Physiological and phonetic studies suggest that, at moderate levels of epilaryngeal stricture, the ventricular folds impinge upon the vocal folds and influence their dynamical behavior, which is thought to be responsible for constricted laryngeal sounds. In this work, the authors examine this hypothesis through biomechanical modeling. Method: The dynamical response of a low-dimensional, lumped-element model of the vocal folds under the influence of vocal-ventricular fold coupling was evaluated. The model was assessed for F0 and cover-mass phase difference. Case studies of simulations of different constricted phonation types and of glottal stop illustrate various additional aspects of model performance. Results: Simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling lowers F0 and perturbs the mucosal wave. It also appears to reinforce irregular patterns of oscillation, and it can enhance laryngeal closure in glottal stop production. Conclusion: The effects of simulated vocal-ventricular fold coupling are consistent with sounds, such as creaky voice, harsh voice, and glottal stop, that have been observed to involve epilaryngeal stricture and apparent contact between the vocal folds and ventricular folds. This supports the view that vocal-ventricular fold coupling is important in the vibratory dynamics of such sounds and, furthermore, suggests that these sounds may intrinsically require epilaryngeal stricture. Key Words: vocal folds, ventricular folds, vocal-ventricular fold coupling, epilaryngeal stricture, constricted phonation, glottal stop, biomechanical model

Current working theories of phonation describe it as the result of the interaction of acoustics, solid dynamics, and aerodynamics below, in, and above the larynx. The mechanical vibration of the [...], Purpose: Previous studies have confirmed the influence of dehydration and an altered mucus (e.g., due to pathologies) on phonation. However, the underlying reasons for these influences are not fully understood. This study was a preliminary inquiry into the influences of mucus architecture and concentration on vocal fold oscillation. Method: Two excised human larynges were investigated in an in vitro setup. The oscillations of the vocal folds at various airflow volume rates were recorded through the use of high-speed imaging. Engineered mucus containing polymers (interconnected polymers and linear polymers) was applied to the vocal folds. From the high-speed footage, glottal parameters were extracted through the use of objective methods and were compared to a gold standard (physiological saline solution). Results: Variations were found for all applications of mucus. Fundamental frequency dropped and the oscillatory behavior (speed quotient [SQ], closing quotient [CQ]) changed for both larynges. The 2 applied mucus architectures displayed different effects on the larynges. The interconnected polymer displayed clear low-pass filter characteristics not found for the linear polymer. Increase of polymer concentration affected parameters to a certain point. Conclusion: The data confirm results found in previous studies. Furthermore, the different effects--comparing architecture and concentration--suggest that, in the future, synthetic mucus can be designed to improve phonation. Key Words: phonation, voice, voice disorders, adults, viscosity, mucus, human

There is mounting evidence that language users are sensitive to the distributional properties of multi-word sequences. Such findings expand the range of information speakers are sensitive to and call for [...]

Prior to production of words, infants develop syllables--potential components of words (Koopmans-van Beinum & van der Stelt, 1986; Oller, 1980; Stark, Bernstein, & Demorest, 1993). When caregivers identify these babbled [...], Purpose: The prelinguistic infant&apos;s babbling repertoire of syllables-the phonological categories that form the basis for early word learning--is noticed by caregivers who interact with infants around them. Prior research on babbling has not explored the caregiver&apos;srole in recognition of early vocal categories as foundations for word learning. In the present work, the authors begin to address this gap. Method: The authors explored vocalizations produced by 8 infants at 3 ages (8,10, and 12 months) in studies illustrating identification of phonological categories through caregiver report, laboratory procedures simulating the caregiver&apos;s natural mode of listening, and the more traditional laboratory approach (phonetic transcription). Results: Caregivers reported small repertoires of syllables for their infants. Repertoires of similar size and phonetic content were discerned in the laboratory by judges who simulated the caregiver&apos;s natural mode of listening. However, phonetic transcription with repeated listening to infant recordings yielded repertoire sizes that vastly exceeded those reported by caregivers and naturalistic listeners. Conclusions: The results suggest that caregiver report and naturalistic listening by laboratory staff can providea newway to explore key characteristics of early infant vocal categories, a way that may provide insight into later speech and language development. Key Words: infant vocal development, phonological templates, caregiver-infant interaction, prelinguistic development

The definition of apraxia of speech (AOS) and of its underlying impairment has given rise to much debate and discussion. In particular, the differential diagnosis with its 'bordering' diagnostic categories [...], Purpose: One reason why the diagnosis of apraxia of speech (AOS) and its underlying impairment are often debated may lie in the fact that most patients do not display pure patterns of AOS. Mixed patterns are clearly acknowledged at other levels of impairment (e.g., lexical-semantic and lexical-phonological), and they have contributed to debate about the degree of interaction between encoding levels; by contrast, mixed impairments and mechanisms of interaction are less acknowledged at the levels of phonological and phonetic processes. Here, the author aims at bringing together empirical evidence in favor of an interaction between phonological and phonetic encoding and of the predominance of mixed patterns of impairment over pure phonetic impairment. Method: The author reviews empirical results from acoustic and psycholinguistic studies, both with healthy speakers and speakers with brain damage, favoring independent phonological and phonetic encoding and separable impairments as well as recent research pointing to an interaction between phonological and phonetic encoding processes and overlapping patterns of impairments. Conclusions: Acknowledging interaction between phonological and phonetic processing has clear consequences on the definition of patterns of impairment. In particular, phonetic errors have not necessarily a phonetic origin, and most patterns of impairment are bound to display both phonological and phonetic features. Key Words: phonological encoding, phonetic encoding, apraxia of speech, phonetic errors

Nasalization is realized physiologically by lowering the velum to open the velopharyngeal port (VP) so that the nasal and oropharyngeal tracts are coupled at the VP opening, and sound energy [...], Purpose: With the goal of using articulatory adjustments to reduce hypernasality, this study utilized an articulatory synthesis model (Childers, 2000) to simulate the adjustment of articulatory configurations with an open velopharynx to achieve the same acoustic goal as normal speech simulated with a closed velopharynx. Method: To examine the effect of articulatory adjustment on perceived nasality, this study used an articulatory synthesis model (Childers, 2000) to synthesize 18 oral /i/ vowels, 18 nasal /i/ vowels, and 18 nasal /i/ vowels with computer-generated articulatory adjustments; these vowels were then presented to 7 listeners for perceptual ratings of nasality following the direct magnitude estimation method. Results: Comparisons of nasality ratings of nasal vowels showed a significant reduction of perceived nasality after articulatory adjustment. Moreover, the acoustic features associated with nasal resonances were attenuated and the oral formant structures changed by nasalization were restored after articulatory adjustment, which confirmed findings in Rong and Kuehn (2010). Conclusion: Appropriate articulatory adjustments are able to reduce the nasality of synthetic nasal /i/ vowels by compensating for the acoustic deviations caused by excessive velopharyngeal opening. Such compensatory interarticulator coordination may have an application in using articulatory adjustments to reduce hypernasality in clinical speech therapies. Key Words: hypernasality, articulatory adjustment, velopharyngeal inadequacy, articulatory model

Roughness is an important dimension of dysphonic voice quality and may be defined as the psycho1 % acoustic impression of irregularity of vocal fold vibrations (Hirano, 1981). Perceptual evaluation of [...], Purpose: Perceptual estimates of voice quality obtained using rating scales are subject to contextual biases that influence how individuals assign numbers to estimate the magnitude of vocal quality. Because rating scales are commonly used in clinical settings, assessments of voice quality are also subject to the limitations of these scales. Instead, a matching task can be used to obtain objective measures of voice quality, thereby facilitating model development and tools for clinical use. Method: Twenty-seven individuals participated in a rating task or at least 1 of 3 matching tests (named after their modulation functions: SINE, SQUARE, POWER) to quantify the degree of roughness in dysphonic voice stimuli. Participants evaluated the roughness of 34 voice samples using an amplitude-modulated complex carrier. Results: The matching thresholds were highly correlated with the ratings estimates. Reliability of thresholds did not significantly differ across tasks, but linear regressions showed that the POWER test resulted in larger perceptual distances. Conclusions: A matching task can be used to obtain reliable estimates of roughness in dysphonic voices. The POWER comparison is recommended because the variability in matching thresholds across the range of roughness was evenly distributed, and the perceptual distances between stimuli were maximized. Key Words: voice quality, roughness, rating scale, matching, amplitude modulation

Synthetic vocal fold models have long been used to explore the complex, coupled aerodynamic-acoustic-structural physics of voice production. Some of the models have been rigid and motionless, and some have [...], Purpose: The purpose of this study was to create synthetic vocal fold models with nonlinear stress-strain properties and to investigate the effect of linear versus nonlinear material properties on fundamental frequency ([F.sub.0]) during anterior-posterior stretching. Method: Three materially linear and 3 materially nonlinear models were created and stretched up to 10 mm in 1-mm increments. Phonation onset pressure ([P.sub.on]) and [F.sub.0] at [P.sub.on] were recorded for each length. Measurements were repeated as the models were relaxed in 1-mm increments back to their resting lengths, and tensile tests were conducted to determine the stress-strain responses of linear versus nonlinear models. Results: Nonlinear models demonstrated a more substantial frequency response than did linear models and a more predictable pattern of [F.sub.0] increase with respect to increasing length (although range was inconsistent across models). [P.sub.on] generally increased with increasing vocal fold length for nonlinear models, whereas for linear models, [P.sub.on] decreased with increasing length. Conclusion: Nonlinear synthetic models appear to more accurately represent the human vocal folds than do linear models, especially with respect to [F.sub.0] response. Key Words: voice production, vocal fold modeling, fundamental frequency response, phonation onset pressure, nonlinear stress-strain

The plural suffix -en (noot+en, 'nuts') is pronounced differently by speakers coming from different regions of the Netherlands. In this study, we compared the pronunciation of the plural suffix -en [...]

The present study is concerned with lax /u/-fronting in Standard British English and in particular with whether this sound change in progress can be attributed to a waning of the [...]

A lexical decision task was used with a masked priming procedure to investigate whether and to what extent neighborhood distribution influences the effect of prime duration in masked orthographic priming. [...]

Previous research has argued that fundamental frequency is a critical component of phonetic accommodation. We tested this hypothesis in an auditory naming task with two conditions. Participants in an Unfiltered [...]

This study investigates the phonetic implementation of stress in American English compounds by measuring the interaction of stress cues with different intonation patterns. Participants in an experiment produced compounds and [...]

The empirical focus of this paper is a conversational turn-taking phenomenon in which conjunctions produced immediately after a point of possible syntactic and pragmatic completion are treated by co-participants as [...]

Fragmentation between formal and functional approaches to prosodic variation is an ongoing problem in linguistic research. In particular, the frameworks of the Phonetics of Talk-in-Interaction (PTI) and Empirical Phonology (EP) [...]

In grammar books, the various functions of and as phrasal coordinator and clausal conjunction are treated as standard knowledge. In addition, studies on the uses of and in everyday talk-in-interaction [...]

This overview paper provides an introduction to work on naturally-occurring speech data, combining techniques of conversation analysis with techniques and methods from phonetics. The paper describes the development of the [...]

Starting from the Humboldtian characterization of Chinese writing as a 'script of thoughts,' this article makes an attempt to show that notwithstanding the important role played by phonetic elements, the Chinese script also relies on visual-graphical means in its constitution of meaning. In point of structure, Chinese characters are made up predominantly of components that are sensible or even tangible in nature. Out of these sensible components, not only physical objects or empirical states of affairs can be expressed, but also the most subtle and abstract concepts, such as [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII], attesting to what Humboldt says about the Chinese script as having 'embraced philosophical work within itself.' Humboldt's idea of 'analogy of script' throws light on the mechanism behind this structure to stimulate new reflections on the traditional theory of the 'Six Ways' ([TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII]) of character formation to provide a productive platform for interpretation., Foreword: Humboldt as an Empirically Based 'Idealist' In a paper that I presented in Berlin in 2005, (1) I argued that Wilhelm von Humboldt, widely acclaimed as the father of [...]

There is a body of evidence that children tend to classify words sharing phonetic features as similar (Snowling, Hulme, Smith, & Thomas, 1994). Some researchers argue that this reflects a [...], Purpose: Preschool children often have difficulties in word classification, despite good speech perception and production. Some researchers suggest that they represent words using phonetic features rather than phonemes. In this study, the authors examined whether there is a progression from feature-based to phoneme-based processing across age groups and whether responses are consistent across tasks and stimuli. Method: In Study 1, 120 three- to five-year-old children completed 3 tasks assessing use of phonetic features in classification, with an additional 58 older children completing 1 of the 3 tasks. In Study 2, all of the children, together with an additional adult sample, completed a nonword learning task. Results: In all 4 tasks, children classified words sharing phonemes as similar. In addition, children regarded words as similar if they shared manner of articulation, particularly word finally. Adults also showed this sensitivity to manner, but across the tasks, there was a pattern of increasing use of phonemic information with age. Conclusions: Children tend to classify words as similar if they share phonemes or if they share manner of articulation word finally. Use of phonemic information becomes more common with age.

One of the continuing needs in the fields of developmental phonology and speech-language pathology is for accurate, sensitive, and viable measures of speech production for research and clinical practice (Flipsen, [...], Purpose: To develop a system for numerically quantifying a speaker's phonetic accuracy through transcription-based measures. With a focus on normal and disordered speech in children, the authors describe a system for differentially weighting speech sound errors on the basis of various levels of phonetic accuracy using a Weighted Speech Sound Accuracy (WSSA) score. The authors then evaluate the reliability and validity of this measure. Method: Phonetic transcriptions were analyzed from several samples of child speech, including preschoolers and young adolescents with and without speech sound disorders and typically developing toddlers. The new measure of phonetic accuracy was validated against existing measures, was used to discriminate typical and disordered speech production, and was evaluated to examine sensitivity to changes in phonetic accuracy over time. Reliability between transcribers and consistency of scores among different word sets and testing points are compared. Results: Initial psychometric data indicate that WSSA scores correlate with other measures of phonetic accuracy as well as listeners' judgments of the severity of a child's speech disorder. The measure separates children with and without speech sound disorders and captures growth in phonetic accuracy in toddlers speech over time. The measure correlates highly across transcribers, word lists, and testing points. Conclusion: Results provide preliminary support for the WSSA as a valid and reliable measure of phonetic accuracy in children s speech.

Speech sounds are traditionally divided into consonants and vowels. When only vowels or only consonants are replaced by noise, listeners are more accurate understanding sentences in which consonants are replaced but vowels remain. From such data, vowels have been suggested to be more important for understanding sentences; however, such conclusions are mitigated by the fact that replaced consonant segments were roughly one-third shorter than vowels. We report two experiments that demonstrate listener performance to be better predicted by simple psychoacoustic measures of cochlea-scaled spectral change across time. First, listeners identified sentences in which portions of consonants (C), vowels (V), CV transitions, or VC transitions were replaced by noise. Relative intelligibility was not well accounted for on the basis of Cs, Vs, or their transitions. In a second experiment, distinctions between Cs and Vs were abandoned. Instead, portions of sentences were replaced on the basis of cochlea-scaled spectral entropy (CSE). Sentence segments having relatively high, medium, or low entropy were replaced with noise. Intelligibility decreased linearly as the amount of replaced CSE increased. Duration of signal replaced and proportion of consonants/vowels replaced fail to account for listener data. CSE corresponds closely with the linguistic construct of sonority (or vowel-likeness) that is useful for describing phonological systematicity, especially syllable composition. Results challenge traditional distinctions between consonants and vowels. Speech intelligibility is better predicted by nonlinguistic sensory measures of uncertainty (potential information) than by orthodox physical acoustic measures or linguistic constructs. auditory perception | speech perception | phonetics | linguistics | efficient coding doi/10.1073/pnas.0913625107

Do all components of a sign contribute equally to its recognition? In the present study, misperceptions in the sign-spotting task (based on the word-spotting task; Cutler & Norris, 1988) were analyzed to address this question. Three groups of deaf signers of British Sign Language (BSL) with different ages of acquisition (AoA) saw BSL signs combined with nonsense signs, along with combinations of two nonsense signs. They were asked to spot real signs and report what they had spotted. We will present an analysis of false alarms to the nonsense-sign combinations--that is, misperceptions of nonsense signs as real signs (cf. van Ooijen, 1996). Participants modified the movement and handshape parameters more than the location parameter. Within this pattern, however, there were differences as a function of AoA. These results show that the theoretical distinctions between form-based parameters in sign-language models have consequences for online processing. Vowels and consonants have different roles in speech recognition; similarly, it appears that movement, handshape, and location parameters contribute differentially to sign recognition.

Byline: Dorit Ravid; Rachel Schiff Abstract The study analyzes command of noun plurals and phonological awareness of Hebrew-speaking children at the beginning and end of the first year of formal schooling. Our aims were to trace the development of noun plurals during a crucial year in children's life, when they are exposed to a considerable amount of spoken and written language; to determine the impact of different morphophonological plural categories on pace of acquisition; and to determine the relationship between morphological awareness (as measured in the Plural Task) and phonological awareness. Research population consisted of 110 Hebrew-speaking first graders aged 6-7, who were tested twice on pluralization and phonological awareness at the beginning and the end of the school year. Results show that learning of noun plurals is still under way in first grade, side by side with clear improvement in phonological skills. Plural acquisition is paced by morphophonological category: Nouns with nonchanging stems and regular suffixes are already at ceiling at age 6 and are not correlated with phonological skills; but nouns with nonchanging stems and irregular suffixes and both categories of changing stems improve significantly, and are correlated with phonology. These results are discussed in terms of different models of morphological processing and acquisition. Article History: Date received: September 07, 2005 Date revision received: May 15, 2006

The definition of lenition remains problematic, with several competing and at times incompatible definitions being current. What is more, some of these definitions seem to lead to paradoxes. In this paper, some of these paradoxes are considered, and a revised definition of lenition is suggested which, while being compatible with the spirit of earlier definitions, arguably avoids the problems to which those other definitions give rise. The relationship of lenition to assimilation is considered, as is the relationship between lenition and position. An argument is made that position, while important in determining where lenition might occur in individual cases, is not in itself causally linked with the processes of lenition. The question of whether strength can be equated with resistance to change is also considered, and answered in the negative.

THE ARTICLE challenges educators to rethink reading instruction practices for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The authors begin with a discussion of the role of phonology in reading, then summarize the evidence of phonological coding among skilled deaf readers and investigate alternative routes for acquiring phonologically related skills such as the use of speechreading, articulatory feedback, Visual Phonics, and Cued Speech. Finally, they present recent intervention studies and proposed procedures to employ phonics-based instruction with students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The authors conclude with the assertion that the teaching of phonologically related skills by means of instructional tools such as Visual Phonics and Cued Speech can and should be incorporated into reading instruction for students who are deaf or hard of hearing. The authors recommend additional research in this important area.

Adults can learn new artificial phonotactic constraints by producing syllables that exhibit the constraints. The experiments presented here tested the limits of phonotactic learning in production using speech errors as an implicit measure of learning. Experiment 1 tested a constraint in which the placement of a consonant as an onset or coda depended on the identity of a nonadjacent consonant. Participant speech errors reflected knowledge of the constraint but not until the 2nd day of testing. Experiment 2 tested a constraint in which consonant placement depended on an extralinguistic factor, the speech rate. Participants were not able to learn this constraint. Together, these experiments suggest that phonotactic-like constraints are acquired when mutually constraining elements reside within the phonological system. Keywords: phonotactic learning, speech errors, language production

Five experiments were conducted to investigate how subsyllabic, syllabic and prosodic information is processed in Cantonese monosyllabic word production. A picture-word interference task was used in which a target picture and a distractor word were presented simultaneously or sequentially. In the fast 3 experiments with visually presented distractors, null effects on naming latencies were found when the distractor and the picture name shared the onset, the rhyme, the tone, or both the onset and tone. However, significant facilitation effects were obtained when the target and the distractor shared the rhyme + tone (Experiment 2), the segmental syllable (Experiment 3), or the syllable + tone (Experiment 3). Similar results were found in Experiments 4 and 5 with spoken rather than visual distractors. Moreover, a significant facilitation effect was observed in the rhyme-related condition in Experiment 5, and this effect was not affected by the degree of phonological overlap between the target and the distractor. These results are interpreted in an interactive model, which allows feedback sending from the subsyllabic to the lexical level during the phonological encoding stage in Cantonese word production. Keywords: Cantonese word production, phonological encoding, lexical tone, segmental processing

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of phonotactic probability, which is the frequency of different sound segments and segment sequences, on the overall fluency with [...]

The forms of words as they appear in text and speech are central to theories and models of lexical processing. Nonetheless, current methods for simulating their learning and representation fail to approach the scale and heterogeneity of real wordform lexicons. A connectionist architecture termed the sequence encoder is used to learn nearly 75,000 wordform representations through exposure to strings of stress-marked phonemes or letters. First, the mechanisms and efficacy of the sequence encoder are demonstrated and shown to overcome problems with traditional slot-based codes. Then, two large-scale simulations are reported that learned to represent lexicons of either phonological or orthographic wordforms. In doing so, the models learned the statistics of their lexicons as shown by better processing of well-formed pseudowords as opposed to ill-formed (scrambled) pseudowords, and by accounting for variance in well-formedness ratings. It is discussed how the sequence encoder may be integrated into broader models of lexical processing. Keywords: Large-scale connectionist modeling; Sequence encoder; Simple recurrent network; Lexical processing; Orthography; Phonology; Wordforms

In 4 picture-word interference experiments, speakers named a target object that was presented with a context object. Using auditory distractors that were phonologically related or unrelated either to the target object or the context object, the authors assessed whether phonological processing was confined to the target object or not. Phonological activation of the context objects was reliably observed if the target and context objects were embedded in a conceptually coherent scene (e.g., if the picture showed a mouse eating some cheese), regardless of whether the target was cued by its thematic role (agent vs. patient) or by color. However, this activation dissipated if the two objects were presented in an arbitrary object array (e.g., if the cheese was presented along with a finger). These findings suggest that conceptual coherence among multiple objects affects the information flow in the conceptual-lexical system during speech planning. Keywords: speech production, phonological encoding, lexical access, picture naming, picture-word interference paradigm

Do speakers know universal restrictions on linguistic elements that are absent from their language? We report an experimental test of this question. Our case study concerns the universal restrictions on initial consonant sequences, onset clusters (e.g., bl in block). Across languages, certain onset clusters (e.g., lb) are dispreferred (e.g., systematically under-represented) relative to others (e.g., bl). We demonstrate such preferences among Korean speakers, whose language lacks initial [C.sub.1][C.sub.2] clusters altogether. Our demonstration exploits speakers' well known tendency to misperceive ill-formed clusters. We show that universally dispreferred onset clusters are more frequently misperceived than universally preferred ones, indicating that Korean speakers consider the former cluster-type more ill-formed. The misperception of universally ill-formed clusters is unlikely to be due to a simple auditory failure. Likewise, the aversion of universally dispreferred onsets by Korean speakers is not explained by English proficiency or by several phonetic and phonological properties of Korean. We conclude that language universals are neither relics of language change nor are they artifacts of generic limitations on auditory perception and motor control--they reflect universal linguistic knowledge, active in speakers' brains. optimality theory | phonology | sonority | syllable

This article investigates the types of palatal nasal decomposition from the perspective of three Slavic languages: Slovene, Upper Sorbian and Polish. The prepalatal nasal exhibits three different patterns of behaviour: retention, decomposition and depalatalization. Decomposition results in a cluster of the glide [j] and a nasal consonant. The details of this process are different in each of the three phonological systems considered, for instance, the process can yield either [jn] or [nj], and it can occur either in the onset or in the coda. Also the drivers for decomposition are different and include constraints defining permissible inventories as well as constraints governing assimilation. From the theoretical perspective, nasal decomposition raises the question of whether IDENT constraints should be bidirectional or unidirectional. It is concluded that the latter are indispensable.

The phonological priming paradigm provides an interesting methodological tool for studying various components of the speech recognition process. However, concerns about response biases distorting the effects have been repeatedly voiced. This article reviews the main studies on priming and airas to distinguish effects under automatic processes from those under some level of strategic control. Both controlled and automatic processes appear to be responsible for the effects observed in phonological priming experiments. Nonetheless, with careful procedures, it is possible to separate them. Keywords: phonological priming, response biases, automatic processes Le paradigme d'amorcage phonologique se revele un outil methodologique interessant lorsque vient le temps d'etudier diverses composantes du processus de reconnaissance de la parole. Toutefois, on s' inquiete depuis longtemps des biais dans les reponses qui risquent d'avoir un effet de distorsion. Le present article, qui s'appuie sur les principales etudes portant sur l'amorcage, a pour objet de distinguer les effets produits pendant les processus automatiques de reconnaissance de la parole et ceux entraines lorsqu'on exerce une certaine strategie de controle. Autant les processus controles que les processus automatiques semblent causer les effets de distorsion observes pendant les experiences portant sur l'amorcage phonologique. Cependant, si on utilise des procedures adequates, il est possible de les separer.