The Processing of Linguistic Prominence

Auditory Processing of Intonational Rises and Falls in German: Rises Are Special in Attention Orienting

This article investigates the processing of intonational rises and falls when presented unexpectedly in a stream of repetitive auditory stimuli. It examines the neurophysiological correlates (ERPs) of attention to these unexpected stimuli through the use of an oddball paradigm where sequences of repetitive stimuli are occasionally interspersed with a deviant stimulus, allowing for elicitation of an MMN. Whereas previous oddball studies on attention toward unexpected sounds involving pitch rises were conducted on nonlinguistic stimuli, the present study uses as stimuli lexical items in German with naturalistic intonation contours. Results indicate that rising intonation plays a special role in attention orienting at a pre-attentive processing stage, whereas contextual meaning (here a list of items) is essential for activating attentional resources at a conscious processing stage. This is reflected in the activation of distinct brain responses: Rising intonation evokes the largest MMN, whereas falling intonation elicits a less pronounced MMN followed by a P3 (reflecting a conscious processing stage). Subsequently, we also find a complex interplay between the phonological status (i.e., accent/head marking vs. boundary/edge marking) and the direction of pitch change in their contribution to attention orienting: Attention is not oriented necessarily toward a specific position in prosodic structure (head or edge). Rather, we find that the intonation contour itself and the appropriateness of the contour in the linguistic context are the primary cues to two core mechanisms of attention orienting, pre-attentive and conscious orientation respectively, whereas the phonological status of the pitch event plays only a supplementary role.

Focus Effects on Immediate and Delayed Recognition of Referents in Samoan

This paper looks at the effect of focus-marking on the immediate and delayed recognition of referents in Samoan. Focus-marking on a word can imply the presence of alternatives to that word which are relevant to the interpretation of the utterance. Consistent with this, psycholinguistic evidence is growing that alternatives to focus-marked words are selectively activated in the immediate processing of an utterance and longer term memory. However, most of this research is on Western Germanic languages which primarily use prosodic prominence to mark focus. We explore this in two experiments using immediate and delayed probe recognition tasks in the under-studied language Samoan, which primarily uses syntactic focus-marking. Participants heard short narratives ending in a critical sentence in which the object word was either focused or not, using a cleft-like construction. In the first experiment, probe recognition, alternatives to the object word which were either mentioned or unmentioned in the narrative were responded to more slowly if the object was focus-marked. In the second experiment, delayed recognition, participants were faster to correctly recognize mentioned alternatives, and slower to reject unmentioned, if the object was focus-marked. Both results are consistent with immediate and longer-term activation of focus alternatives. There was no significant effect of focus-marking on recognition of the object word itself.

The Role of Prominence in Activating Focused Words and Their Alternatives in Mandarin: Evidence from Lexical Priming and Recognition Memory

When a sentence is produced with contrastive prosodic prominence, the word that carries the prominence becomes more salient, and alternatives to that word are usually implied. In processing, this implies that focused words and their alternatives should be more strongly activated. Previous research on focus processing has primarily been confined to Germanic languages. The current paper reports on two experiments investigating the role of prosodic prominence in immediate (Experiment 1) and long-term processing (Experiment 2) of focused words and focus alternatives in Mandarin. Prosodic prominence was effective in activating focused words and their alternatives. In the memory task, this facilitation effect was only found toward the beginning of the experiment. We attribute this difference to task-related adaptive use of prosodic prominence in utterance processing. This research sheds light on whether, when, and how listeners use prosodic prominence to identify important information and to evoke alternatives during sentence comprehension.

More on Sibilant Devoicing in Spanish Diachrony: An Initial Phonetic Approach

The devoicing of sibilants took place in Early Modern Spanish, a phenomenon which has been considered problematic to account for due to its occurrence context (medial intervocalic position). Traditional explanations invoked Basque influence or a structural reorganization in search for a more balanced system. However, phonetically based reasons were proposed by some scholars. This research is a preliminary attempt to support these proposals with experimental data from a comparative grammar perspective. The Catalan sibilant system, which is very similar to the Medieval Spanish one, is acoustically and perceptively studied in order to investigate the acoustic cues of voicing and to determine if devoicing is possible. Results indicate that (a) voicing relies mainly in the proportion of unvoiced frames of the segments, on its duration, and, to a lesser extent, on its intensity; (b) sibilant devoicing occurs in all voiced categories; (c) auditorily, confusion between voiced and voiceless segments can be attested for every sibilant pair, and (d) the misparsings are more common in affricate and in palatal sibilants, [d͡ʒ] being the most prone to be labelled as unvoiced. These findings prove that the historical process in Spanish could have a phonetic basis.

The prosodic accent advantage in phoneme detection: Importance of local context

Previous research (e.g., Cutler, Perception & Psychophysics, 20, 55-60, 1976) has shown that detection of the initial phoneme of a word is speeded when the word is pronounced with a focal accent. This "accent advantage" is also observed when the accented word is replaced by a neutrally accented one. The present two experiments were designed to identify what aspect of the context preceding the target word is the source of this advantage. Both indicated that the advantage can be ascribed to the syllable immediately preceding the target word, rather than some possibly global but more distal attribute of the context. The first experiment used the recordings that had been used by Cutler Perception & Psychophysics, 20, 55-60, (1976) with the addition of a between-subjects manipulation of the local context. In one condition, the syllable immediately before the target word was the one that had been recorded in the sentence context (preceding an accented or an unaccented target word). In the other, cross-spliced, condition, the preceding syllable was exchanged between accented and unaccented contexts. The second (pre-registered) experiment used new recordings and a within-subject manipulation of the pre-target syllable. The studies confirmed and extended the observation that the pre-target syllable rather than some other prosodic aspect of the preceding context is the source of the faster phoneme detections.

The Influence of Focus Marking on Pronoun Resolution in Dialogue Context

Using visual world eye-tracking, we examined whether adults (N = 58) and children (N = 37; 3;1-6;3) use linguistic focussing devices to help resolve ambiguous pronouns. Participants listened to English dialogues about potential referents of an ambiguous pronoun he. Four conditions provided prosodic focus marking to the grammatical subject or to the object, which were either additionally it-clefted or not. A reference condition focussed neither the subject nor object. Adult online data revealed that linguistic focussing via prosodic marking enhanced subject preference, and overrode it in the case of object focus, regardless of the presence of clefts. Children's processing was also influenced by prosodic marking; however, their performance across conditions showed some differences from adults, as well as a complex interaction with both their memory and language skills. Offline interpretations showed no effects of focus in either group, suggesting that while multiple cues are processed, subjecthood and first mention dominate the final interpretation in cases of conflict.

Prosodic Prominence and Focus: Expectation Affects Interpretation in Samoan and English

This paper looks at the perception of prosodic prominence and the interpretation of focus position in the unrelated languages, Samoan and English. In many languages, prosodic prominence is a key marker of focus, so it is expected that prosodic prominence would affect judgments of focus position. However, it is shown that focus position, in turn, influences the perception of prosodic prominence according to language-specific expectations about the alignment between focus position and nuclear accent placement. Two sets of parallel perception experiments in Samoan and English are reported. In the first, participants judged the most prosodically prominent word in sentences which varied in syntactic construction (cleft/canonical) and intended stress position (subject/object). In both languages, participants were more likely to choose the intended stressed word if it was in the focus position. However, this effect was much larger in Samoan, which fits with its relatively lower functionality of prosodic prominence. In the second experiment, participants were asked to choose which question had been asked, consistent with subject or object focus. It was found that in both languages, participants weighted syntactic and prosodic cues to focus in line with expectations from their language. These findings have implications for how we conceive the role of prosodic prominence in speech processing across languages.

Prosodic Prominence - A Cross-Linguistic Perspective

This paper is concerned with the contributions of signal-driven and expectation-driven mechanisms to a general understanding of the phenomenon of prosodic prominence from a cross-linguistic perspective. It serves as an introduction to the concept of prosodic prominence and discusses the eight papers in the Special Issue, which cover a genetically diverse range of languages. These include Djambarrpuyŋu (an Australian Pama-Nyungan language), Samoan (an Austronesian Malayo-Polynesian language), the Indo-European languages English (Germanic), French (Romance), and Russian (Slavic), Korean (Koreanic), Medumba (Bantu), and two Sino-Tibetan languages, Mandarin and Taiwanese Southern Min.

Chinese-English Speakers' Perception of Pitch in Their Non-Tonal Language: Reinterpreting English as a Tonal-Like Language

Changing the F0-contour of English words does not change their lexical meaning. However, it changes the meaning in tonal languages such as Mandarin. Given this important difference and knowing that words in the two languages of a bilingual lexicon interact, the question arises as to how Mandarin-English speakers process pitch in their bilingual lexicon. The few studies that addressed this question showed that Mandarin-English speakers did not perceive pitch in English words as native English speakers did. These studies, however, used English words as stimuli failing to examine nonwords and Mandarin words. Consequently, possible pre-lexical effects and L1 transfer were not ruled out. The present study fills this gap by examining pitch perception in Mandarin and English words and nonwords by Mandarin-English speakers and a group of native English controls. Results showed the tonal experience of Chinese-English speakers modulated their perception of pitch in their non-tonal language at both pre-lexical and lexical levels. In comparison to native English controls, tonal speakers were more sensitive to the acoustic salience of F0-contours in the pre-lexical processing due to top-down feedback. At the lexical level, Mandarin-English speakers organized words in their two languages according to similarity criteria based on both F0 and segmental information, whereas only the segmental information was relevant to the control group. These results in perception together with consistently reported production patterns in previous literature suggest that Mandarin-English speakers process pitch in English as if it was a one-tone language.

Uncovering Tonal and Temporal Correlates of Phrasal Prominence in Medʉmba

Characterizing prosodic prominence relations in African tone languages is notoriously difficult, as typical acoustic cues to prominence (changes in F0, increases in intensity, etc.) can be difficult to distinguish from those which mark tonal contrasts. The task of establishing prominence is further complicated by the fact that tone, an important cue to syllable prominence and prosodic boundaries cross-linguistically, plays many roles in African languages: tones often signal lexical contrasts, can themselves be morphemes, and can also interact in key ways with prosody. The present study builds on phonological generalizations about tonal patterns in Medʉmba, a Grassfields Bantu language, and uses the speech cycling paradigm to investigate relative timing of syllables varying in phrase-level prominence. Specifically, we investigate timing asymmetries between syllables hypothesized to occur at the edge of a phonological phrase, which carry a high phrase accent, and those in phrase-medial position, which do not. Results indicate significant differences in the temporal alignment of accented versus non-accented syllables, with accented syllables occurring significantly closer to positions established as prominence-attracting in previous speech cycling research. We show that these findings cannot be attributed to differences in tone alone. Findings demonstrate the importance of relative temporal alignment as a correlate of prosodic prominence. Findings also point to increased duration as a phonetic property which distinguishes between syllables bearing phrasal prominence from those which do not.

Prosodic focus marking in clefts and syntactically unmarked equivalents: Prosody-syntax trade-off or additive effects?

Two experiments quantitatively investigated the interaction of prosody and syntax in marking focus in English. A production study with 28 participants (analyzing 919 utterances) found that the acoustic marking of subject focus vs broad focus, induced through a preceding context question, was generally the same in clefts as in sentences with unmarked syntax. Thus, results suggested that prosody is independent from syntax rather than showing a trade-off (weaker prosodic marking for clefts). Focus was marked with f0 range, f0 maxima, f0 minima, duration, and intensity. Maxima of focused subjects were not significantly higher, but they were earlier than in broad focus. In a perception experiment, 230 participants rated the suitability of 24 auditorily presented stimuli as answers to preceding context questions inducing subject focus or broad focus. Clefts and sentences prosodically marking the subject as focused were rated higher in subject focus than in broad focus contexts. Syntax and prosody did not interact, again suggesting the absence of a trade-off. Thus, both studies suggest an additive use of syntax and prosody: Prosodic focus marking was equally extensive and effective in the presence of syntactic focus marking as without.

Universals of listening: Equivalent prosodic entrainment in tone and non-tone languages

In English and Dutch, listeners entrain to prosodic contours to predict where focus will fall in an utterance. Here, we ask whether this strategy is universally available, even in languages with very different phonological systems (e.g., tone versus non-tone languages). In a phoneme detection experiment, we examined whether prosodic entrainment also occurs in Mandarin Chinese, a tone language, where the use of various suprasegmental cues to lexical identity may take precedence over their use in salience. Consistent with the results from Germanic languages, response times were facilitated when preceding intonation predicted high stress on the target-bearing word, and the lexical tone of the target word (i.e., rising versus falling) did not affect the Mandarin listeners' response. Further, the extent to which prosodic entrainment was used to detect the target phoneme was the same in both English and Mandarin listeners. Nevertheless, native Mandarin speakers did not adopt an entrainment strategy when the sentences were presented in English, consistent with the suggestion that L2 listening may be strained by additional functional load from prosodic processing. These findings have implications for how universal and language-specific mechanisms interact in the perception of focus structure in everyday discourse.