Joana Cholin

Effects of syllable frequency in speech production

In the speech production model proposed by [Levelt, W. J. M., Roelofs, A., Meyer, A. S. (1999). A theory of lexical access in speech production. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 22, pp. 1-75.], syllables play a crucial role at the interface of phonological and phonetic encoding. At this interface, abstract phonological syllables are translated into phonetic syllables. It is assumed that this translation process is mediated by a so-called Mental Syllabary. Rather than constructing the motor programs for each syllable on-line, the mental syllabary is hypothesized to provide pre-compiled gestural scores for the articulators. In order to find evidence for such a repository, we investigated syllable-frequency effects: If the mental syllabary consists of retrievable representations corresponding to syllables, then the retrieval process should be sensitive to frequency differences. In a series of experiments using a symbol-position association learning task, we tested whether high-frequency syllables are retrieved and produced faster compared to low-frequency syllables. We found significant syllable frequency effects with monosyllabic pseudo-words and disyllabic pseudo-words in which the first syllable bore the frequency manipulation; no effect was found when the frequency manipulation was on the second syllable. The implications of these results for the theory of word form encoding at the interface of phonological and phonetic encoding; especially with respect to the access mechanisms to the mental syllabary in the speech production model by (Levelt et al.) are discussed.

Planning and Articulation in Incremental Word Production: Syllable-Frequency Effects in English

We investigated the role of syllables during speech planning in English by measuring syllable-frequency effects. So far, syllable-frequency effects in English have not been reported. English has poorly defined syllable boundaries, and thus the syllable might not function as a prominent unit in English speech production. Speakers produced either monosyllabic (Experiment 1) or disyllabic (Experiment 2-4) pseudowords as quickly as possible in response to symbolic cues. Monosyllabic targets consisted of either high- or low-frequency syllables, whereas disyllabic items contained either a 1st or 2nd syllable that was frequency-manipulated. Significant syllable-frequency effects were found in all experiments. Whereas previous findings for disyllables in Dutch and Spanish-languages with relatively clear syllable boundaries-showed effects of a frequency manipulation on 1st but not 2nd syllables, in our study English speakers were sensitive to the frequency of both syllables. We interpret this sensitivity as an indication that the production of English has more extensive planning scopes at the interface of phonetic encoding and articulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

Effects of Syllable Preparation and Syllable Frequency in Speech Production: Further Evidence for Syllabic Units at a Post-Lexical Level.

In the current paper, we asked at what level in the speech planning process speakers retrieve stored syllables. There is evidence that syllable structure plays an essential role in the phonological encoding of words (e.g., online syllabification and phonological word formation). There is also evidence that syllables are retrieved as whole units. However, findings that clearly pinpoint these effects to specific levels in speech planning are scarce. We used a naming variant of the implicit priming paradigm to contrast voice onset latencies for frequency-manipulated disyllabic Dutch pseudo-words. While prior implicit priming studies only manipulated the items form and/or syllable structure overlap we introduced syllable frequency as an additional factor. If the preparation effect for syllables obtained in the implicit priming paradigm proceeds beyond phonological planning, i.e., includes the retrieval of stored syllables, then the preparation effect should differ for high- and low frequency syllables. The findings reported here confirm this prediction: Low-frequency syllables benefit significantly more from the preparation than high-frequency syllables. Our findings support the notion of a mental syllabary at a post-lexical level, between the levels of phonological and phonetic encoding.

When do combinatorial mechanisms apply in the production of inflected words

A central question for theories of inflected word processing is to determine under what circumstances compositional procedures apply. Some accounts (e.g., the dual-mechanism model; Clahsen, 1999) propose that compositional processes only apply to verbs that take productive affixes. For all other verbs, inflected forms are assumed to be stored in the lexicon in a nondecomposed manner. This account makes clear predictions about the consequences of disruption to the lexical access mechanisms involved in the spoken production of inflected forms. Briefly, it predicts that nonproductive forms (which require lexical access) should be more affected than productive forms (which, depending on the language task, may not). We tested these predictions through the detailed analysis of the spoken production of a German-speaking individual with an acquired lexical impairment resulting from a stroke. Analyses of response accuracy, error types, and frequency effects revealed that combinatorial processes are not restricted to verbs that take productive inflections. On this basis, we propose an alternative account, the stem-based assembly model (SAM), which posits that combinatorial processes may be available to all stems and not only to those that combine with productive affixes.

SYLLABARIUM: An online application for deriving complete statistics for Basque and Spanish orthographic syllables

The present article introduces SYLLABARIUM, a new Web tool addressing the needs of linguists, psycholinguists, and cognitive scientists who work with Spanish and/or Basque and are interested in retrieving information about several syllable-related parameters. This new online syllabic database allows the user to generate complete lists of Spanish and Basque syllables with information about the syllable frequency. Among other measures, for a given orthographic syllable, SYLLABARIUM provides its number of occurrences (i.e., the type frequency), the summed lexical frequency of the words that contain this syllable (i.e., the token frequency), and the positional distribution of type and token frequencies. The cross-language feature of SYLLABARIUM is of special interest to researchers aiming to explore the influence of the syllable in bilingualism. The Web tool is available at www.bcbl.eu/syllabarium.

The mental syllabary in speech production: An integration of different approaches and domains

Background: The assumption of independently stored syllable motor programs has become an inherent part of the speech production model by Levelt and colleagues (Levelt, 1989, 1992; Levelt, Roelofs, & Meyer, 1999; Levelt & Wheeldon, 1994). In this model a mental syllabary is assumed to be located between the levels of phonological and phonetic encoding and is thought to contain the (high‐frequency) syllables of a given language as ready‐made whole gestural scores. The retrieval of precompiled syllable programs allows for rapid and fluent articulation and reduces the computational load relative to a segment‐by‐segment online assembly. A second online assembly is assumed to generate syllable programs for low‐frequency and new syllables. The author wishes to thank Karen Croot, Wolfram Ziegler, Ingrid Aichert, Ansgar Hantsch, Alissa Melinger, and Jeremiah W. Bertz for helpful comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Aims: The aim of the current paper is to analyse and compare the findings from two different lines of research that investigated the notion of a mental syllabary in speech production: psycholinguistic studies on the one hand and clinical studies on the other hand. Both lines of research rest on the assumption that high‐ and low‐frequency syllables involve different retrieval or assembly mechanisms: If high‐frequency syllables are stored and can be retrieved as whole entities, retrieval times should both be faster and more accurate compared to low‐frequency syllables that need to be assembled. Main Contribution: The joint analysis of these two lines of research might reveal insights into the underlying mechanisms of phonological/phonetic encoding. Whereas there seems to be converging evidence for the assumption that high‐frequency syllables are stored, the mechanisms that generate low‐frequency syllables are less clear. Conclusion: Taken altogether, the emerging picture shows that further research is needed in order to fully understand how the mental syllabary and related representations and processes interact. The integration of results from the two different domains, psycholinguistics and clinical research, might offer means for a deeper understanding, helping to further specify the mental syllabary theory.

The Interface between Morphology and Phonology: Exploring a Morpho-Phonological Deficit in Spoken Production.

Morphological and phonological processes are tightly interrelated in spoken production. During processing, morphological processes must combine the phonological content of individual morphemes to produce a phonological representation that is suitable for driving phonological processing. Further, morpheme assembly frequently causes changes in a words phonological well-formedness that must be addressed by the phonology. We report the case of an aphasic individual (WRG) who exhibits an impairment at the morpho-phonological interface. WRG was tested on his ability to produce phonologically complex sequences (specifically, coda clusters of varying sonority) in heteromorphemic and tautomorphemic environments. WRG made phonological errors that reduced coda sonority complexity in multimorphemic words (e.g., passed→[pæstıd]) but not in monomorphemic words (e.g., past). WRG also made similar insertion errors to repair stress clash in multimorphemic environments, confirming his sensitivity to cross-morpheme well-formedness. We propose that this pattern of performance is the result of an intact phonological grammar acting over the phonological content of morphemic representations that were weakly joined because of brain damage. WRG may constitute the first case of a morpho-phonological impairment-these results suggest that the processes that combine morphemes constitute a crucial component of morpho-phonological processing.

Premonitory Awareness in Stuttering Scale (PAiS)

Anticipation of stuttering events in persistent developmental stuttering is a frequent but inadequately measured phenomenon that is of both theoretical and clinical importance. Here, we describe the development and preliminary testing of a German version of the Premonitory Awareness in Stuttering Scale (PAiS): a 12-item questionnaire assessing immediate and prospective anticipation of stuttering that was translated and adapted from the Premonitory Urge for Tics Scale (PUTS) (Woods, Piacentini, Himle, & Chang, 2005). After refining the preliminary PAiS scale in a pilot study, we administered a revised version to 21 adults who stutter (AWS) and 21 age, gender and education-matched control participants. Results demonstrated that the PAiS had good internal consistency and discriminated the two speaker groups very effectively, with AWS reporting anticipation of speech disruptions significantly more often than adults with typical speech. Correlations between the PAiS total score and both the objective and subjective measures of stuttering severity revealed that AWS with high PAiS scores produced fewer stuttered syllables. This is possibly because these individuals are better able to adaptively use these anticipatory sensations to modulate their speech. These results suggest that, with continued refinement, the PAiS has the potential to provide clinicians and researchers with a practical and psychometrically sound tool that can quantify how a given AWS anticipates upcoming stuttering events.

Is the homophone advantage influenced by post-lexical effects? Commentary on Biedermann & Nickels (2008a; b)

Britta Biedermann , Joana Cholin , Annett Jorschick , Karen Croot , Sol ene Hameau b,f and Lyndsey Nickels b,f a School of Occupational Therapy, Social Work and Speech Pathology, Curtin University, Australia b ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders, Macquarie University, Australia c Department of Linguistics, Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany d Department of Linguistics, Bielefeld University, Germany e School of Psychology, University of Sydney, Australia f Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Syllable frequency effects in immediate but not delayed syllable naming in English

ABSTRACT Syllable frequency effects in production tasks are interpreted as evidence that speakers retrieve precompiled articulatory programs for high frequency syllables from a mental syllabary. They have not been found reliably in English, nor isolated to the phonetic encoding processes during which the syllabary is thought to be accessed. In this experiment, 48 participants produced matched high- and novel/low-frequency syllables in a near-replication of Laganaro and Alario’s [(2006) On the locus of the syllable frequency effect in speech production. Journal of Memory and Language, 55(2), 198–196, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2006.05.001] production conditions: immediate naming, naming following an unfilled delay, and naming after delay filled by concurrent articulation. Immediate naming was faster for high frequency syllables, demonstrating a robust syllable frequency effect in English. There was no high frequency advantage in either delayed naming condition, leaving open the question of whether syllable frequency effects arise during phonological or phonetic encoding.