Jason Bishop

Prominence in Relative Clause Attachment: Evidence from Prosodic Priming

This chapter presents two experiments utilizing prosodic adaptations of the structural priming paradigm. In each experiment, the goal was to explore the relation between the location of a prosodic boundary and the preferred parsing of a relative clause (RC) with ambiguous attachment to a preceding head noun. In Experiment 1, using read materials, ambiguous target sentences were preceded by prime sentences with RCs of different length: long, medium, and short. RC length was hypothesized to influence the location of an implicit prosodic boundary in the primes. However, no effect for this RC-length manipulation was found. In Experiment 2, the location of a boundary was manipulated in overt (spoken) prime sentences. For these auditorily-presented primes, the location of a prosodic boundary was found to influence attachment preference for targets. Interestingly, the effect was in the opposite direction as predicted: In the configuration NP1 NP2 RC, a boundary after NP2 resulted in more NP2 attachments. We propose that in the experimental materials, which contained equivalent accents on the two noun phrases (NPs), the boundary after NP2 leads to the accent on NP2 being interpreted as the nuclear pitch accent. Consequently, that accent was perceived as being more prominent than the accent on NP1, thus attracting RC attachment. The results suggest a close relationship between prosodic phrasing and prosodic prominence in English, and demonstrate a role for both in sentence processing.

Priming Implicit Prosody: Prosodic Boundaries and Individual Differences

Using the structural priming paradigm, the present study explores predictions made by the implicit prosody hypothesis (IPH) by testing whether an implicit prosodic boundary generated from a silently read sentence influences attachment preference for a novel, subsequently read sentence. Results indicate that such priming does occur, as evidenced by an effect on relative clause attachment. In particular, priming an implicit boundary directly before a relative clause – cued by commas in orthography – encouraged high attachment of that relative clause, although the size of the effect depended somewhat on individual differences in pragmatic/communication skills (as measured by the Autism Spectrum Quotient). Thus, in addition to supporting the basic claims of the IPH, the present study demonstrates the relevance of such individual differences to sentence processing, and that implicit prosodic structure, like syntactic structure, can be primed.

Focus projection and prenuclear accents: evidence from lexical processing

ABSTRACT Theories of Focus Projection claim that a single pitch accent on a verbs argument is sufficient to prosodically mark that verb as part of the focus, negating the need for a prenuclear accent on the verb itself. The present study employed online lexical processing to test this claim empirically. In three cross-modal associative priming experiments, listeners heard English SVO sentences with/without prenuclear accenting on the verb in both broad (VP) and narrow (object) focus contexts. Results showed that the absence of a prenuclear accent in broad focus contexts did not disrupt priming, but the presence of one in narrow focus contexts did. This disruption was found to be somewhat modulated by individual differences in “autistic traits”. Overall, the findings are interpreted as supporting a model that includes both (a) a Focus Projection mechanism and (b) an information structural function for prenuclear accents, with the latter possibly subject to cross-listener variation.

An acoustic study of /w/ in Korean.

This study examines acoustic characteristics of Korean /w/. Modern Korean is claimed to have four /w/ diphthongs: /w/ before two front vowels (/wi, we/) and two back vowels (/wa, wʌ/). The two front diphthongs are a product of a more recent sound change from front rounded monophthongs, high /y/ and mid /o//. However, a pilot study shows that the phonetic realizations of /w/ before front vowels differ from those before back vowels, and also differ whether /w/ comes after a consonant (CwV) or not (wV). It was found that /w/ before front vowels is similar to a labial‐palatal approximant, especially after a consonant, showing a trace of front rounded monophthongs. To confirm this finding, a large set of data was collected from six Korean speakers and the acoustic realizations of Korean /w/ were compared with those of French labial‐palatal and labial‐velar approximants produced by six French speakers. The implication of the results in the phonological system will be discussed.

Information structure guides prominence perception

The present study investigates the effect of information structure on the perception of prosodic prominence in English. In particular, we probed for top-down effects related to the size of the focus constituent (broad VP focus versus narrow object focus) in simple subject-verb-object sentences using a naive prosody “transcription” task. In this task, listeners heard the same productions of a sentence, but in different information structural (i.e., question) contexts, and provided self-report decisions about the prominence of words using a Likert scale. Two primary questions were asked. First, does information structural interpretation produce expectation-based prominence perception? In this case, it was predicted that the presence of focus would induce perceived prominence independent of the signal (via expectations based on experience with production patterns). Second, does information structural interpretation modulate signal-based prominence perception? In this case, it was predicted that the presence ...

Voice quality as a cue to location in a speaker’s fundamental frequency f0 range: A perceptual study of English and Mandarin.

Recent research shows that listeners can locate a specific f0 within a speaker’s individual range without prior experience with the speaker’s voice [Honorof and Whalen, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 2193–2200 (2005)], suggesting that perhaps some acoustic parameters co‐vary with f0 range and are available to listeners. Here we tested Honorof and Whalen’s hypothesis that this information lies in voice quality. English‐ and Mandarin‐speaking listeners heard brief, steady‐state /ɑ/ tokens from various locations throughout the f0 ranges of ten English and ten Mandarin voices and were asked to identify where in the speaker’s pitch range a given token came from. To test for listeners’ use of voice quality in the task, we compared mixed effect linear models of responses that included three acoustic measures of the stimuli associated with voice quality: H1‐H2, H2‐H4, and cepstral peak prominence. Preliminary findings show (1) each of the voice quality measures contributed significantly to the models, although they acc...

The production and perception of prenuclear second occurrence focus.

Semantic focus in English is typically marked by intonational prominence, most canonically by a pitch accent. One case that has been presented as an exception to this generalization, however, is that of second occurrence (SO) focus. An SO focus is a repeated but focused item, usually associated with a focus sensitive operator such as “only” or “even.” Previous studies have suggested that SO foci lack pitch accents for phonological rather than information structural reasons, in most cases examining such foci in the postnuclear domain. We present acoustic and phonological data that demonstrate that SO foci also lack considerably in intonational prominence (particularly in terms of F0) when prenuclear, although they show increased duration. Additionally, the perceptibility of prenuclear SO focus is tested. Perceptually weak prosodic marking would suggest an important role for pragmatics in a focal interpretation, as has been suggested previously for SO focus.

The effects of coarticulatory timing and lexical frequency on vowel nasalization in English: An aerodynamic study.

Recently it has been suggested that a certain degree of variability in coarticulatory vowel nasalization is due to variation in the temporal alignment of nasal and oral gestures for N. In particular, the extent of vowel nasalization in VNC sequences is shown to be inversely related to the duration of the oral gesture for the nasal. Beddor [nasals and nasalization: the relation between segmental and coarticulatory timing, ICPhS (2007) present acoustic data which suggests this to be the case in English; in environments where nasals are shorter, such as VNC[−voice] versus VNC[+voice], anticipatory nasalization is longer. The present study examines vowel nasalization in such environments and attempts to corroborate the aforementioned acoustic findings with aerodynamic data. Additionally, other possible sources of variation in the extent of anticipatory nasalization are explored, namely, the effects of lexical frequency, which has been claimed to correlate negatively rather than positively with coarticulation ...

Auditory distinctiveness and the perception of voiceless stop consonants in continuous speech

Explaining the way in which listeners cope with the apparent lack of acoustic invariance as well as the phonetic ambiguity frequently encountered in continuous speech has remained problematic for models of speech perception. The voiceless stop consonants /p t k/, for example, are frequently unreleased word‐finally. Despite the reduction in articulation and presumably in the distinctiveness of the acoustics signal, listeners appear quite accurate in identifying the correct stop consonant during conversation. Sets of words such as {shop, shot, shock} and {cheap, cheat, cheek} should, given the absence of release of the final stops, be difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish in isolation. In this study, listeners were presented with such lexical stimuli (in isolation as well as in semantically priming sentences) and tested for their perception of the word‐final [p t k]. It was found that the amount of distinctive information carried in the acoustic signal for this class of sounds in the environment of i...