语句重音分布模式知觉

在排除语义和句法结构信息的情况下,用统计方法研究听者使用局部的韵律学线索知觉语句重音分布模式的能力;并根据知觉模式,讨论汉语中重音分类、词重音在语流中的变化以及重音在语句组织和语义表达中的作用等问题。     

韵律特征研究

介绍从知觉、认知和语料库分析角度对汉语韵律特征进行的一系列研究。（1）韵律特征知觉：用实验心理学和知觉标注的语料库分析方法,研究汉语语调和音高下倾与降阶问题,语句和语篇中知觉可以区分的韵律层级及相关的声学线索。研究结果支持汉语语调的双线模型理论和语句音高下倾的存在;证明语篇中知觉可以区分的韵律边界是小句、句子和段落,及其知觉相关的声学线索。（2）韵律特征与其他语言学结构的关系：在标注的语料库的基础上,用常规统计方法研究语句常规重音分布规律、语篇信息结构与重音的关系、并用决策树方法研究根据文本信息确定韵律短语边界和焦点的规则。（3）韵律特征在语篇理解中的作用：用实验心理学方法和脑电指标研究韵律对语篇信息整合和指代理解的影响,揭示其作用的认知和神经机制。讨论了这些研究结果对语音工程、语音学理论和心理语言学研究的实践和理论意义     

强调范围对句子重音知觉的影响及其声学表现的研究

通过韵律匹配度知觉实验和声学参数分析,探讨了句子层面上不同强调范围对句子重音知觉的影响。实验材料为精心设计的语料,两名发音人在问答匹配的实验范式下朗读,以自然的方式强调相应内容。20名被试对不同强调范围的问答句进行韵律匹配度知觉判断。结果发现,一些答句和问句之间的匹配可以替换,另一些答句只与对应的问句匹配。句子重音的实现符合节律栅规则。通过对不同语境下音节的时长和音高进行声学参数分析。结果表明,时长延长和音高升高都是重音的声学表现。时长增加涉及的范围没有因句子重音的强调范围不同而不同。     

汉语普通话句子重音在时长方面的声学表现

研究包括2部分。在第一部分,通过对由10个发音人发音的148条句子中的4个词时长方面的声学特征的分析发现：（1）当句子重音强调词时,时长的增加主要集中在这个词的重读音节上;（2）当句子重音强调词的某个音节时,时长的延长主要集中在这个音节上。在第二部分,通过使用上述语句的知觉实验发现,句子重音强调词的语句和句子重音强调这个词的重读音节的语句相对于它们的语境是可以相互替换的, 这种相互可替换性起因于这两种语句声学表现方面的相似性     

普通话韵律词重音知觉

实验一研究了韵律词重音的多个声学相关物,及其对韵律词重音知觉贡献的大小,结果表明,按照贡献大小的次序,影响普通话韵律词重音感知的声学参数是：时长、音高、频谱倾斜和平均能量。实验二研究非声学参数因素对普通话韵律词重音知觉的影响,实验结果表明,听者关于普通话韵律词重音方面的语言学知识对韵律词重音的知觉有显著影响。     

句子重音对汉语同音异义词的解歧作用

通过针对包含两对汉语同音异义词(“qui(4)shi(4)”(“趣事”或“去世”和“sheng(1)xue(2)”(“声学”或“升学”))的10个发音人语料的声学特征分析和知觉实验,结果发现：消除这两对同音异义词歧义的不是词重音而是句子重音。这个研究结果说明：汉语中句子重音能够通过选择强调同音异义词的某个音节来消除它们的歧义。     

韵律对指代歧义的解歧作用及其机制

研究了韵律特征对指代歧义的解歧作用及其机制。所选的指代歧义句先由 33名被试确定其主要意思和次要意思。歧义句由 8名发音人朗读 ,经专家和普通听者评定后选出 1人的语料为实验材料。各有 12名在校大学生参加了重音听辨实验和名词互换语义判断实验。实验 1请被试比较歧义句中切分出来的所指名词与非所指名词的重读程度。实验 2中将不同的名词组合嵌入到主要意思与次要意思的句子框架中 ,请被试判断合成句表达的是主要意思还是次要意思。实验 3对 4名发音人的语料进行了声学分析 ,测量并比较了歧义句中的所指名词和非所指名词的音高、时长和音强。结果表明 ,韵律信息对于指代歧义有较好的解歧效果 ,消解指代歧义的基本手段是在所指名词上设置重音 ,其主要的声学表现是所指名词时长的延长。     

孤独症青少年的情绪韵律注意偏向缺陷:低效率的知觉模式

情绪注意偏向是指与中性刺激相比,情绪刺激会引起个体的优先加工。为了探讨ASD青少年听觉通道的情绪注意偏向是否存在缺陷,并进一步考察目标任务的知觉负载水平是否影响ASD青少年情绪韵律的注意偏向,研究先后采用oddball范式、双任务范式呈现中性、快乐和愤怒韵律。实验1结果发现,ASD被试在不同情绪韵律类别下的反应时均长于TD被试。实验2结果发现,在提供注意指示条件下,即使在高知觉负载水平上,ASD被试的情绪韵律检测能力及错误率也与普通被试相似,但对于情绪韵律的反应时与中性韵律无差异。结果表明,知觉负载对ASD青少年情绪韵律注意偏向的影响是有限度的,该群体听觉通道的情绪注意偏向存在缺陷,主要表现为对情绪韵律知觉效率的相对低下。     

语句中协同发音对音节知觉的影响

采用音节相似度听辨实验,以大学生为被试,对音节间协同发音现象所引起的音节知觉差异进行了考察,结果发现：音节之间的协同发音影响音节音段内容的变化,而这种变化主要取决于相邻前音节末尾韵母部分的差异,以及相邻后音节首辅音发音部位的差异;对于发音相同、语境不同的音节,音节在超音段内容变化所引起的知觉效应明显大于协同发音引起的知觉效应     

汉语“N的V”结构加工的韵律制约

已有研究表明内隐韵律能够促进书面文本的理解,但以往研究多集中在重音节拍语言,而较少关注汉语这类音节节拍语言。为了探究内隐韵律作用的普遍性,研究采用眼动技术探讨了句子阅读中“N的V”结构加工的韵律制约。研究发现,“N的V”结构加工中存在稳定的韵律形式效应：动词为单音节时比动词为双音节时的注视时间更长,回视更多。韵律形式和语义关系之间存在交互作用,表现在受事语义关系条件下,在反映早期加工的凝视时间上,单音节动词条件长于双音节动词条件。但这种交互作用在晚期加工阶段则不受语义关系影响。表明“N的V”结构加工中的韵律形式效应稳定且持续。研究支持内隐韵律假说。     

The use of rhythm in attending to speech

Three experiments examined attentional allocation during speech processing to determine whether listeners capitalize on the rhythmic nature of speech and attend more closely to stressed than to unstressed syllables. Ss performed a phoneme monitoring task in which the target phoneme occurred on a syllable that was either predicted to be stressed or unstressed by the context preceding the target word. Stimuli were digitally edited to eliminate the local acoustic correlates of stress. A sentential context and a context composed of word lists, in which all the words had the same stress pattern, were used. In both cases, the results suggest that attention may be preferentially allocated to stressed syllables during speech processing. However, a normal sentence context may not provide strong predictive cues to lexical stress, limiting the use of the attentional focus.     

The duration component of the stress effect in stuttering

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether there is a relationship between stuttering on stressed syllables and the duration of these syllables. Sixteen adults who stutter read a text consisting of 226 syllables. The relative stress of each syllable was rated, and syllables were categorized into long- and short-stressed syllables, unstressed syllables and intermediate syllables lying in-between. In order to isolate effects caused by within-word position from those caused by linguistic stress, syllables in initial and in subsequent positions were analyzed separately. In both word position categories stressed syllables were stuttered more often than unstressed syllables. Stuttering frequency of intermediate syllables seems to be in-between stressed and unstressed syllables, just as their stress level is rated in-between. Results regarding the duration of stressed syllables do not allow final conclusions.

Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to describe (1) language factors related with stuttering events, (2) the stress effect in adults who stutter, and (3) methods to control for its confounding variables.     

Linguistic stress, within-word position, and grammatical class in relation to early childhood stuttering

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether the link that has been established between stuttering and linguistic stress in adolescents and adults (the so-called stress effect) can also be observed in childhood stuttering. To account for confounding variables, both within-word position and grammatical class were measured, because these factors covary with linguistic stress. Speech samples of 22 preschool children (mean time of 9 months since onset of stuttering) were analyzed. The relative stress of each syllable was rated and syllables were categorized into long and short stressed, unstressed, and intermediately stressed syllables. Results showed that 97.8% of stuttering events occurred on first syllables of words and 76.5% on the first sound of syllables, that means a clear word-initial effect. Stuttering frequency on first syllables of function words was 16.9% and significantly higher than the frequency of stuttered first syllables of content words (11.5%). In function words short stressed syllables and intermediately stressed syllables were stuttered more often than unstressed syllables. The analysis for individual disfluency types revealed that, for function words, stuttering on short stressed syllables was associated with prolongations and syllable repetitions. However, in intermediately stressed syllables stuttering coincided most often with one-syllable word repetitions. This differentiation of the stress effect may suggest different causal mechanisms underlying these disfluency types. Educational objectives: The reader will learn about and be able to: (1) describe how within-word position, grammatical class, and linguistic stress effect stuttering frequency in preschool children who stutter; (2) explain how the occurrence of individual disfluency types depends on linguistic stress; (3) discuss how patterns of adults and preschool children who stutter differ in regard to these aspects.     

Listeners’ perception of compensatory shortening

English exhibits compensatory shortening, whereby a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable is measured to be shorter than the same stressed syllable alone. This anticipatory shortening is much greater than backward shortening, whereby an unstressed syllable is measured to shorten a following stressed syllable. We speculated that measured shortening reflects not true shortening, but coarticulatory hiding. Hence, we asked whether listeners are sensitive to parts of stressed syllables hidden by following or preceding unstressed syllables. In two experiments (Experiments 1A and 1B), we found the point of subjective equality—that is, the durational difference between a stressed syllable in isolation and one followed by an unstressed syllable—at which listeners cannot tell which is longer. In a third experiment (Experiment 2), we found the point of subjective equality for stressed monosyllables and disyllables with a weak-strong stress pattern. In all of the experiments, the points of subjective equality occurred when stressed syllables in disyllables were measured to be shorter than those in monosyllables, as if the listeners heard the coarticulatory onset or the continuation of a stressed syllable within unstressed syllables.     

Stuttering and syllable stress

Eighteen adult stutterers read two lists each of 16 bisyllabic words. In one list, stress appeared on the first syllable; in the second, the “same” words carried second syllable stress. There proved to be no significant difference in proportion between stressed and unstressed syllables associated with stuttering. This investigation appears to dispute the proposition that stressed syllables provide the focal points of stuttering (Wingate, 1976).     

The prosodic property of lexical stress affects eye movements during silent reading

The present study examined lexical stress in the context of silent reading by measuring eye movements. We asked whether lexical stress registers in the eye movement record and, if so, why. The study also tested the implicit prosody hypothesis, or the idea that readers construct a prosodic contour during silent reading. Participants read high and low frequency target words with one or two stressed syllables embedded in sentences. Lexical stress affected eye movements, such that words with two stressed syllables took longer to read and received more fixations than words with one stressed syllable. Findings offer empirical support for the implicit prosody hypothesis and suggest that stress assignment may be the completing phase of lexical access, at least in terms of eye movement control.     

Phonetic factors in letter detection: A reevaluation

Three experiments in which subjects searched for the letter e in printed text were conducted to examine the effects of phonetic factors in silent reading. In Experiment 1, subjects made more errors on silent es than on pronounced es, but silent es always occurred at the ends of words, whereas pronounced es occurred in the middle of words. In Experiment 2, all instances of the letter e occurred in the penultimate location in the words, and no effects of letter voicing were obtained. In Experiment 3, subjects made more errors on es in unstressed syllables than on es in stressed syllables in three-syllable words. However, this effect occurred only for es in the second and third syllables and only for the more common words. All three experiments yielded large effects of word frequency, which were reduced in passages printed in alternating typecase. It was concluded that letter detection is affected by syllable stress but not by letter voicing and that the stress effect depends on whether the subject is able to form reading units at the syllable level.     

Tracking independence and merging of prosodic and phonemic processing across infancy

Recent evidence suggests division of labor in phonological analysis underlying speech recognition. Adults and children appear to decompose the speech stream into phoneme‐relevant information and into syllable stress. Here we investigate whether both speech processing streams develop from a common path in infancy, or whether there are two separate streams from early on. We presented stressed and unstressed syllables (spoken primes) followed by initially stressed early learned disyllabic German words (spoken targets). Stress overlap and phoneme overlap between the primes and the initial syllable of the targets varied orthogonally. We tested infants 3, 6 and 9 months after birth. Event‐related potentials (ERPs) revealed stress priming without phoneme priming in the 3‐month‐olds; phoneme priming without stress priming in the 6‐month‐olds; and phoneme priming, stress priming as well as an interaction of both in 9‐month‐olds. In general the present findings reveal that infants start with separate processing streams related to syllable stress and to phoneme‐relevant information; and that they need to learn to merge both aspects of speech processing. In particular the present results suggest (i) that phoneme‐free prosodic processing dominates in early infancy; (ii) that prosody‐free phoneme processing dominates in middle infancy; and (iii) that both types of processing are operating in parallel and can be merged in late infancy.     

词切分的韵律学线索

本文是关于汉语普通话词切分的一个实验报告。用无意文重复句和合成句作语音材料,探讨音节时长分布、基频曲线、音节强度以及共振峰等韵律学线索在词切分中的作用。得到的主要结果是,在排除语义和音段层面信息的条件下,听者能够根据句子的韵律学特征进行句子结构的判断和词的切分;在对切分有效的韵律学线索中,最重要的是音节的时长分布模式,其次是基频曲线,音节的强度和共振峰变化对切分没有贡献。     

At 11 months,prosody still outranks statistics

English‐learning 7.5‐month‐olds are heavily biased to perceive stressed syllables as word onsets. By 11 months, however, infants begin segmenting non‐initially stressed words from speech. Using the same artificial language methodology as Johnson and Jusczyk (2001 ), we explored the possibility that the emergence of this ability is linked to a decreased reliance on prosodic cues to word boundaries accompanied by an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues. In a baseline study, where only statistical cues to word boundaries were present, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for statistical words. When conflicting stress cues were added to the speech stream, infants exhibited a familiarity preference for stress as opposed to statistical words. This was interpreted as evidence that 11‐month‐olds weight stress cues to word boundaries more heavily than statistical cues. Experiment 2 further investigated these results with a language containing convergent cues to word boundaries. The results of Experiment 2 were not conclusive. A third experiment using new stimuli and a different experimental design supported the conclusion that 11‐month‐olds rely more heavily on prosodic than statistical cues to word boundaries. We conclude that the emergence of the ability to segment non‐initially stressed words from speech is not likely to be tied to an increased reliance on syllable distribution cues relative to stress cues, but instead may emerge due to an increased reliance on and integration of a broad array of segmentation cues.