Is it or isn’t it: Listeners make rapid use of prosody to infer speaker meanings

A visual world experiment examined the time course for pragmatic inferences derived from visual context and contrastive intonation contours. We used the construction It looks like an X pronounced with either (a) a H^* pitch accent on the final noun and a low boundary tone, or (b) a contrastive L + H^* pitch accent and a rising boundary tone, a contour that can support contrastive inference (e.g., It LOOKS_L+H*like a zebra_L-H%… (but it is not)). When the visual display contained a single related set of contrasting pictures (e.g. a zebra vs. a zebra-like animal), effects of LOOKS_L+H* emerged prior to the processing of phonemic information from the target noun. The results indicate that the prosodic processing is incremental and guided by contextually-supported expectations. Additional analyses ruled out explanations based on context-independent heuristics that might substitute for online computation of contrast.     

论元结构的焦点和重音关系对话语理解的影响

本研究采用韵律合适度判断和理解任务,通过两个实验探讨论元结构的焦点和重音之间的关系对话语理解的影响。实验通过操纵答句中的论元是否出现在问句中,变化问句的信息状态;通过操纵答句不同句子成份重读,变化答句的重读位置。实验结果发现:新论元负载焦点必须重读;重读论元将焦点投射到句子的高一级单元上,但动词必须重读;旧论元不负载焦点不必重读,但负载焦点的动词必须重读。     

Dialectal differences in hemispheric specialization for Japanese lexical pitch accent

Language experience can alter perceptual abilities and the neural specialization for phonological contrasts. Here we investigated whether dialectal differences in the lexical use of pitch information lead to differences in functional lateralization for pitch processing. We measured cortical hemodynamic responses to pitch pattern changes in native speakers of Standard (Tokyo) Japanese, which has a lexical pitch accent system, and native speakers of ‘accentless’ dialects, which do not have any lexical tonal phenomena. While the Standard Japanese speakers showed left-dominant responses in temporal regions to pitch pattern changes within words, the accentless dialects speakers did not show such left-dominance. Pitch pattern changes within harmonic-complex tones also elicited different brain activation patterns between the two groups. These results indicate that the neural processing of pitch information differs depending on the listener’s native dialect, and that listeners’ linguistic experiences may further affect the processing of pitch changes even for non-linguistic sounds.     

Predicting lexical accent perception in native Japanese speakers: An investigation of acoustic pitch sensitivity and working memory

Spoken language perception may be constrained by a listener's cognitive resources, including verbal working memory (WM) capacity and basic auditory perception mechanisms. For Japanese listeners, it is unknown how, or even if, these resources are involved in the processing of pitch accent at the word level. The present study examined the extent to which native Japanese speakers could make correctness judgments on and categorize spoken Japanese words by pitch accent pattern, and how verbal WM capacity and acoustic pitch sensitivity related to perception ability. Results showed that Japanese listeners were highly accurate at judging pitch accent correctness (M = 93%), but that the more cognitively demanding accent categorization task yielded notably lower performance (M = 61%). Of chief interest was the finding that acoustic pitch sensitivity significantly predicted accuracy scores on both perception tasks, while verbal WM had a predictive role only for the categorization of a specific accent pattern. These results indicate first, that task demands greatly influence accuracy and second, that basic cognitive capacities continue to support perception of lexical prosody even in adult listeners.     

重读对语篇表征中的信息的激活的影响

考察在口语语篇表征中重读是如何影响新信息和旧信息的激活.结果表明,与无重读的基线条件相比,重读条件下,新信息和旧信息在语篇表征中的激活水平都提高.无论其信息结构如何,重读会提高它所标识的概念节点在语篇表征中的激活.     

Relative Difficulty of Understanding Foreign Accents as a Marker of Proficiency

Foreign‐accented speech is generally harder to understand than native‐accented speech. This difficulty is reduced for non‐native listeners who share their first language with the non‐native speaker. It is currently unclear, however, how non‐native listeners deal with foreign‐accented speech produced by speakers of a different language. We show that the process of (second) language acquisition is associated with an increase in the relative difficulty of processing foreign‐accented speech. Therefore, experiencing greater relative difficulty with foreign‐accented speech compared with native speech is a marker of language proficiency. These results contribute to our understanding of how phonological categories are acquired during second language learning.     

汉语高功能自闭症儿童代词加工:利用提及顺序和重读线索的表现

采用句子理解任务分别探究了5~7岁的汉语高功能自闭症儿童在单独提及顺序线索,提及顺序线索和重读线索共现两种条件下代词加工的表现。研究结果表明,汉语高功能自闭症儿童不像智商和工作记忆广度匹配的同龄典型发展儿童一样能够单独利用提及顺序线索加工代词,即倾向于选择首先提及的实体作为代词的指称对象,而表现为随机选择代词所指。当提及顺序线索和重读线索共现时,典型发展儿童在两条线索一致和冲突时都倾向于依靠重读线索加工代词,而汉语高功能自闭症儿童对两条线索都不敏感,表现为随机选择代词所指。这表明5~7岁的汉语高功能儿童不能够利用这两条线索加工代词,在利用语篇突显性线索加工代词方面存在困难。     

The legitimizing role of accent on discrimination against immigrants

This article analyses the influence of accent on discrimination against immigrants by examining the hypothesis that accent leads to discrimination only in more prejudiced individuals, merely because people speaking with a native accent are perceived to be better qualified than those whose accent is non‐standard. In Study 1 (N = 71), we found that only prejudiced individuals use accent to discriminate against immigrants. In Study 2 (N = 124), we replicated this effect and found that the influence of accent on discrimination is mediated by the perceived quality of the accent. Study 3 (N = 105) replicated the previous results even after controlling for the effect of stereotyping. These results are the first experimental illustration of the hypothesis that accent triggers intergroup discrimination only among prejudiced individuals because they evaluate native accents as being qualitatively better than accents of immigrants, thereby legitimizing ingroup bias.     

Individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology

Perceptual training was employed to characterize individual differences in non-native speech sound learning. Fifty-nine adult English speakers were trained to distinguish the Hindi dental–retroflex contrast, as well as a tonal pitch contrast. Training resulted in overall group improvement in the ability to identify and to discriminate the phonetic and the tonal contrasts, but there were considerable individual differences in performance. A category boundary effect during the post-training discrimination of the Hindi but not of the tonal contrast suggests different learning mechanisms for these two stimulus types. Specifically, our results suggest that successful learning of the speech sounds involves the formation of a long-term memory category representation for the new speech sound.     

Name‐changes in post‐war France: The traumatic experiences of the Shoah and its consequences on the second and third generation with reference to the example of name‐changes

Starting from our collective initiative to work on the theme of ‘The strength of the name’, which has given rise both to a conference as well as a documentary called: And their name, they have changed it, I have sought to draw attention in this article to the difference between proper names, patronymic names, and the so‐called Name‐of‐the‐father. Pronouncing names involves designating the languages of names, which also refer to the accents of names, since I have proposed the idea that each name is evocative of a language, and that changing it also modifies the language of the name. I have approached the question of the name by considering cases of name‐changes, essential with regard to Ashkenazi Jewish families who changed their name after the Shoah, along with the trauma that numerous Jewish families suffered after the war. French jurisprudence does not permit reversion to the original name, once it has been changed to a more French‐sounding name, owing to the immutability of the name and the foreign sound of the names of origin.