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Effects of phonetically variable input (PVI) for processing instruction (PI) training and the number of training items were tested with a picture-selection eye-tracking task. Intermediate second language (L2) learners of French (n = 174) were tested before and after they received either a short (24 items), medium (48), or long (96) training on the causative structure with either single- or multivoice input. PI improved picture-selection accuracy from about 10% to above 50% regardless of the training size. Eye-tracking data showed a reduction in looks to the incorrect picture only after the short and medium training: it surfaced regardless of voice variability after the short training, whereas multivoice training led to a greater reduction after the medium training. Long training did not yield a reliable reduction of incorrect looks regardless of voice variability. Taken together, PVI does not hinder L2 syntactic learning. Learners may benefit more from a relatively shorter training with PVI.

To test the effects of talker variability and explicit instruction on the statistical learning of lexical tone, 80 monolingual English listeners were taught an artificial language that mimicked Mandarin's asymmetric distribution of syllable-tone co-occurrences. Training stimuli consisted of either speech from one talker or speech from four talkers. Participants were either never instructed or explicitly taught associations between phonemes (CVs), tones, and nonce symbols across four consecutive days. Learning was assessed by the accuracy of mouse clicks and eye movements to visual nonce symbols. Critical trials induced competition between the target symbol, which matched the acoustic input, and a competitor symbol that had a statistically more probable tone (but mismatched the acoustic input). Eye fixations indicated that participants were sensitive to syllable-tone co-occurrence probabilities even without explicit instruction of tone. The degree to which statistical knowledge was used to recognize words appeared to increase when participants processed more variable speech.

This study examines the putative benefits of explicit phonetic instruction, high variability phonetic training, and their effects on adult nonnative speakers' Mandarin tone productions. Monolingual first language (L1) English speakers (n = 80), intermediate second language (L2) Mandarin learners (n = 40), and L1 Mandarin speakers (n = 40) took part in a multiday Mandarin-like artificial language learning task. Participants were asked to repeat a syllable--tone combination immediately after hearing it. Half of all participants were exposed to speech from 1 talker (low variability) while the other half heard speech from 4 talkers (high variability). Half of the L1 English participants were given daily explicit instruction on Mandarin tone contours, while the other half were not. Tone accuracy was measured by L1 Mandarin raters (n = 104) who classified productions according to their perceived tonal category. Explicit instruction of tone contours facilitated L1 English participants' production of rising and falling tone contours. High variability input alone had no main effect on participants' productions but interacted with explicit instruction to improve participants' productions of high-level tone contours. These results motivate an L2 tone production training approach that consists of explicit tone instruction followed by gradual exposure to more variable speech.

Two eye-tracking experiments tested (a) whether L2 learners benefit from the consistency of input modality (auditory instead of written processing instruction [PI] training) and (b) whether they benefit from training using the same voice as the test voice. Results confirmed a robust effect of PI training on picture-selection accuracy, yet the improvement did not differ between training modalities. Eye-tracking data revealed resilient looks to the incorrect (first noun = agent) picture even after training, demonstrating the challenge in tuning to the grammatical forms while processing auditory L2 input. The effect of voice familiarity was larger for the male voice, which had longer duration for the later cue ("à Marie/Pierre") than the female voice. Auditory PI training can be as effective as written PI training, but it does not immediately enhance learners' sensitivity to grammatical cues. However, learners may benefit from hearing a salient grammatical cue toward the end of the sentence.

While previous research has shown that processing instruction (PI) can more effectively facilitate the acquisition of target structures than traditional drill practice, the processing mechanism of PI has not been adequately examined because most assessment tasks have been offline. Using eye-tracking, this two-experiment study compared changes in processing patterns between two types of training: PI and traditional instruction (TI) on intermediate-level L2 learners' acquisition of the French causative. Both experiments used a pretraining/posttraining design involving a dichotomous scene selection eye-tracking task to measure eye-movement patterns and accuracy in picture selection while participants processed auditory sentences. Neither group received explicit information (EI) in Experiment 1 while both experimental groups in Experiment 2 received EI before processing sentences. Results of Experiment 1 revealed the PI group had significantly higher accuracy scores than the TI group. A change in eye-movement pattern was also observed after training for the PI group but not for the TI group. In Experiment 2, when both groups received EI, PI subjects were again significantly more accurate than TI subjects, but both groups' accuracy scores were not reliably higher than subjects in the PI and TI groups in Experiment 1 who did not receive EI. Eye-movement patterns in Experiment 2 showed that both TI and PI started to shift their gaze to the correct picture at the same point as PI subjects did in Experiment 1. This suggests that EI helped the TI group start entertaining the correct picture as a possible response sooner but the EI did not help the PI group process the target structure sooner than the TI group.

Background: Past reports on the speech production of individuals with Williams syndrome (WS) suggest that their prosody is anomalous and may lead to challenges in spoken communication. While existing prosodic assessments confirm that individuals with WS fail to use prosodic emphasis to express contrast, those reports typically lack detailed phonetic analysis of speech data. The present study examines the acoustic properties of speech prosody, aiming for the future development of targeted speech interventions. Aims: The study examines the three primary acoustic correlates of prosodic emphasis (duration, intensity, F0) and determines whether individuals with WS have difficulty in producing all or a particular set of the three prosodic cues. Methods & Procedures: Speech produced by 12 individuals with WS and 12 chronological age (CA)-matched typically developing individuals were recorded. A sequential picture-naming task elicited production of target phrases in three contexts: (1) no contrast: gorilla with a racket [right arrow] rabbit with a balloon; (2) contrast on the animal: fox with a balloon [right arrow] "rabbit" with a balloon; and (3) contrast on the object: rabbit with a ball [right arrow] rabbit with a "balloon." The three acoustic correlates of prosodic prominence (duration, intensity and F0) were compared across the three referential contexts. Outcomes & Results: The two groups exhibited striking similarities in their use of word duration and intensity for expressing contrast. Both groups showed the reduction and enhancement of final lengthening, and the enhancement and reduction of intensity difference for the animal contrast and for the object contrast conditions, respectively. The two groups differed in their use of F0: the CA group produced higher F0 for the animal than for the object regardless of the context, and this difference was enhanced when the animal noun was contrastive. In contrast, the WS group produced higher F0 for the object than for the animal when the object was contrastive. Conclusions & Implications: The present data contradict previous assessment results that report a lack of prosodic skills to mark contrast in individuals with WS. The methodological differences that may account for this variability are discussed. The present data suggest that individuals with WS produce appropriate prosodic cues to express contrast, although their use of pitch may be somewhat atypical. Additional data and future speech comprehension studies will determine whether pitch modulation can be targeted for speech intervention in individuals with WS.

Both off-line and on-line comprehension studies suggest not only toddlers and preschoolers, but also older school-age children have trouble interpreting contrast-marking pitch prominence. To test whether children achieve adult-like proficiency in processing contrast-marking prosody during school years, an eye-tracking experiment examined the effect of accent on referential resolution in six- to eleven-year-old children and adults. In all age groups, a prominent accent facilitated the detection of a target in contrastive discourse sequences (pink cat ? green cat), whereas it led to a garden path in non-contrastive sequences (pink rabbit ? green monkey: the initial fixations were on rabbits). While the data indicate that children as young as age six immediately interpret contrastive accent, even the oldest child group showed delayed fixations compared to adults. We argue that the children's slower recovery from the garden path reflects the gradual development in cognitive flexibility that matures independently of general oculomotor control.

Two eye-tracking experiments tested how pitch prominence on a prenominal adjective affects contrast resolution in Japanese adult and 6-year old listeners. Participants located two animals in succession on displays with multiple colored animals. In Experiment 1, adults' fixations to the contrastive target (pink cat [right arrow] GREEN cat) were facilitated by a pitch expansion on the adjective while infelicitous pitch expansion (purple rabbit [right arrow] ORANGE monkey) led to a garden-path effect, i.e., frequent fixations to the incorrect target (orange rabbit). In 6-year olds, only the facilitation effect surfaced. Hypothesizing that the interval between the two questions may not have given enough time for children to overcome their tendency to perseverate on the first target, Experiment 2 used longer intervals and confirmed a garden-path effect in 6-year olds. These results demonstrate that Japanese 6-year olds can make use of contrast-marking pitch prominence when time allows an establishment of proper discourse representation. (Contains 6 figures and 6 tables.)

Three eye-tracking experiments investigated the role of pitch accents during online discourse comprehension. Participants faced a grid with ornaments, and followed prerecorded instructions such as "Next, hang the blue ball" to decorate holiday trees. Experiment 1 demonstrated a processing advantage for felicitous as compared to infelicitous uses of L+H* on the adjective noun pair (e.g., "blue ball" followed by "GREEN ball" vs. "green BALL"). Experiment 2 confirmed that L+H* on a contrastive adjective led to "anticipatory" fixations, and demonstrated a "garden path" effect for infelicitous L+H* in sequences with no discourse contrast (e.g., "blue angel" followed by "GREEN ball" resulted in erroneous fixations to the cell of angels). Experiment 3 examined listeners' sensitivity to coherence between pitch accents assigned to discourse markers such as "And then," and those assigned to the target object noun phrase.

This study examines the perceptual trade-off between knowledge of a language’s statistical regularities and reliance on the acoustic signal during L2 spoken word recognition. We test how early learners track and make use of segmental and suprasegmental cues and their relative frequencies during non-native word recognition. English learners of Mandarin were taught an artificial tonal language in which a tone’s informativeness for word identification varied according to neighborhood density. The stimuli mimicked Mandarin’s uneven distribution of syllable+tone combinations by varying syllable frequency and the probability of particular tones co-occurring with a particular syllable. Use of statistical regularities was measured by four-alternative forced-choice judgments and by eye fixations to target and competitor symbols. Half of the participants were trained on one speaker, that is, low speaker variability while the other half were trained on four speakers. After four days of learning, the results confirmed that tones are processed according to their informativeness. Eye movements to the newly learned symbols demonstrated that L2 learners use tonal probabilities at an early stage of word recognition, regardless of speaker variability. The amount of variability in the signal, however, influenced the time course of recovery from incorrect anticipatory looks: participants exposed to low speaker variability recovered from incorrect probability-based predictions of tone more rapidly than participants exposed to greater variability. These results motivate two conclusions: early L2 learners track the distribution of segmental and suprasegmental co-occurrences and make predictions accordingly during spoken word recognition; and when the acoustic input is more variable because of multi-speaker input, listeners rely more on their knowledge of tone-syllable co-occurrence frequency distributions and less on the incoming acoustic signal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the mission and practices of the Language Sciences Research Lab, a fully functional research lab embedded within a science museum. Within this environment, we integrate cutting-edge research, formal instruction, informal learning, and outreach to the public so that our work in each domain interacts with and enriches the others. We are guided by core concepts from the field of informal science education, and we strive to inspire excitement and expand both scholarly and public knowledge about the language sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perception of prosodic prominence is thought to be influenced by multiple competing factors. Three experiments tested the effects of phonological salience, discourse context and listener’s knowledge about the discourse on prosodic prominence judgements, using short adjective–noun phrases extracted from a corpus of spontaneous speech. These phrases had either a prominent L + H* 0 or a less prominent H* !H* pitch accent contour. The phrases were presented in a discourse context which either supported or did not support a contrastive interpretation of the adjective. Effects of the contrastive context to increase the perception of prominence only emerged for the phrases with the phonologically prominent L + H* 0 pitch accent sequence. Additionally, the magnitude of the contrast effect was correlated with the listener’s awareness of the discourse context, suggesting an ample interplay between linguistic context, pragmatic context, and phonology in prominence perception. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An eye-tracking study investigated how the interaction between syllable frequency and syllable-specific tonal probability guides online lexical access in speakers of mutually unintelligible Chinese dialects with three disparate tonal systems. Mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers, bi-dialectal Shanghai-Mandarin speakers and bi-dialectal Cantonese-Mandarin speakers searched for target Mandarin syllable-tone combinations while their eye movements and mouse clicks were recorded. The results showed dialectal differences in online eye fixation patterns but not in offline mouse responses. For all groups, mouse clicks were fastest for infrequent syllables with most probable tones and slowest for infrequent syllables with least probable tones. In online eye movement responses, only mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers showed an interaction between syllable frequency and tonal probability. Mono-dialectal Mandarin speakers' fixations were fastest for infrequent syllables with probable tones and slowest for infrequent syllables with improbable tones. Mono-dialectal speakers also showed a greater amount of competition from the more probable segmental competitor when hearing improbable tones. Bi-dialectal speakers showed different timing in their integration of tonal probabilities. These findings suggest that highly bilingual speakers track and use Mandarin tonal probabilities, but their sensitivity to L2 tonal information may lag behind monolinguals for online word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eye-tracking has become increasingly popular in second language (L2) research. In this study, we systematically reviewed 111 eye-tracking studies published in 17 L2 journals to explore the application and replicability of eye-tracking technology in L2 research. The results revealed eight areas of application of eye-tracking in L2 research, among which grammar and vocabulary were the most frequently examined lines of inquiry. We also identified three types of cognitive mechanisms investigated in L2 eye-tracking studies: attention, higher cognitive processes, and cognitive load. Attention was predominantly measured via fixation temporal indices, while higher cognitive processes were frequently measured by using fixation count and fixation temporal measures. In addition, the measures adopted to assess cognitive load mainly depended on the task type. Finally, with respect to the replicability of the studies, transparent reporting practices were evaluated based on 33 features of replicable studies. We found that more than 95% of the reviewed studies reported less than 70% of the information essential for future replication studies. We suggest that the reporting of the information critical to conducting replicable L2 eye-tracking research needs improvement in transparency and completeness. The implications of this study are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The production of L2 lexical tone has proven difficult for learners of tonal languages, leading to the testing of different tone training techniques. To test the validity of these techniques, it is first necessary to capture the differences between L1 and L2 tone datasets. The current study explores three analyses designed to compare L1 and L2 tone: (1) using a single deviation score, (2) using deviation score calculations for specific regions of tone productions, and (3) applying a complexity-invariant distance measure to the two time series datasets. These three analyses were tested using datasets sampled from a previous study testing the effects of a visual feedback paradigm on the production of L2 Mandarin tone. Results suggest the first two analyses, although useful for providing an overall evaluation of how L2 speakers' pretest versus posttest productions compare to L1 speakers, lose critical information about tone, namely pitch height, contour, and the timing of the production. The third analysis, applying the complexity-invariant distance measure to the datasets, can provide the pertinent information lost from the first two analyses in a more robust manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children acquiring a non-negative concord language like English or German have been found to consistently interpret sentences with two negative elements in a negative concord manner as conveying a single semantic negation. Corpus-based investigations for English and German show that children also produce sentences with two negative elements but only a single negation meaning. As any approach to negative concord and negative indefinites needs to account for both the typological variation and the child data, we revisit the three most current syntactic Agree-based analyses, as well as a movement-based approach and show that they either have difficulties with the child data or face challenges in the adult language variation or both. As a consequence, we develop a novel analysis of negative concord and negative indefinites which relies on purely morphological operations applying to hierarchical semantic representations within a version of the Meaning First architecture of grammar. We will argue that the typological variation between the main three different types of languages as well as the children's non adult-like behaviour fall out from this in a straightforward fashion while the downsides of the Agree- and the movement-based accounts are avoided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the introductory paper of the Special Issue titled: "New Research on the Role and Effects of Structured Input in Assessing the Nature of Language Processing". It provides a clear analysis of the nature and role of structured input activities in second language research and language pedagogy. It presents the main findings of genuine empirical research investigating the effectiveness of structured input on different forms and structures across different languages and among different populations. The paper provides suggestions for future research within this framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous picture naming tasks, semantically related distractor words (co-hyponyms to the target word) induce interference, which is usually taken as evidence for lexical competition. In an online picture-word-interference experiment, we showed that distractor words that share a feature with the target (here: their natural prototypical color), also induced interference. Pictures were not named with single words but with short descriptive sentences ("The heart is red"). Focus on the noun modulated the interference effect. In particular, when target and distractor were presented simultaneously, the interference effect was significantly reduced in the narrow focus condition, compared to broad focus. We discuss our findings for focus production against the findings on language comprehension reported in the literature, which mostly observed facilitatory effects of focus marking on the comprehension of focus alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chinese verb separation is a grammatical construction in which a bimorphemic verb compound separates and expands into a verb phrase. For example, to say "sang one song", one must insert the aspect marker le and classifier phrase yī shǒu between the verb chàng gē 'sing-song' as in chàng le yī shǒu gē (sing-LE-one-classifier-song). Adult second language (L2) learners face at least three problems related to acquiring verb separation: separation patterns are complex and numerous, classroom oral input is limited, and L1 transfer often fails. To better understand L2 learners' acquisition of verb separation, this study tested 28 adult L2-Chinese classroom learners. Three tasks were administered online: verb decomposition, grammaticality judgment, and oral translation. On average, only 37% of verbs were accurately decomposed, 63% of verbs were accurately judged to be grammatical, and 19% of verbs were orally produced with the correct separation pattern. Chinese verb separation, particularly decomposition and oral production, is thus extremely challenging for L2 learners to acquire—even for advanced learners with a relatively large vocabulary size. The results are discussed in terms of the Unified Competition Model and L2 Chinese pedagogy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present in this article corpus analyses, two experiments, and a preliminary English-French comparison on children's acquisition of wh-in-situ. Our examination of 10,000 wh-questions from CHILDES reveals that the reported empirical picture of wh-question acquisition in English is incomplete: A type of wh-in-situ, probe questions (PQs), has been left out from most discussions despite its presence in child-directed speech. Unlike wh-in-situ echo questions (EQs), PQs are used to request new information, and parents frequently use PQs and fronted information-seeking questions in alternation. The fact that PQs share the pragmatic space with fronted wh-questions while involving fewer syntactic operations and exhibiting lower input frequency allows us to test both structure-based and frequency-based theories of syntax acquisition. Our comprehension task with 3;06–5;06-year-olds confirms that children accept and understand PQs as information seeking. On the other hand, results from a production task show a strong avoidance of wh-in-situ, which is in line with reported elicited data from French-speaking children. We reason that a structural economy-based approach alone is not sufficient to account for children's disfavor of wh-in-situ. Depending on the input frequency and consistency, as well as the number of variants licensed by the grammar of a given language, children may treat part of the input as uninformative and initially only learn from higher-frequent, more regularized input. Their intake is thus selective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corrective information is produced with higher prosodic prominence than non-corrective information. However, it remains unclear how corrective prosody is realized in different communicative settings. We conducted two production experiments to investigate whether interlocutors' prosodic realization of corrective focus depends on each other's knowledge state. Participants carried out a statement-response task in pairs (e.g., Speaker B: Tina had shrimp at a restaurant. Speaker A: No, she had beef at a restaurant.). Our focus is on the prosody of Speaker A's utterance. We manipulated whether Speaker B's statement was implausible in the context (e.g., a context where it is known that Tina actually hates seafood). Furthermore, the two experiments differed in whether Speaker B knew that their statement (e.g., about Tina eating shrimp at a restaurant) was (im)plausible. In Experiment 1, both speakers had access to the crucial context concerning the probability of Speaker A's statement (Tina's preferences about food). In Experiment 2, only Speaker A had access to this background information. We found that Speaker A's prosody when responding to Speaker B was influenced by both (i) the contextual probability of Speaker B's statements and (ii) Speaker B's knowledge (or lack thereof) about the contextual probability. We present an analysis where the prosodic prominence associated with corrective information reflects the gap between expectation and reality – in this case, what Speaker A had expected Speaker B to say and what Speaker B actually says. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the original model of Prosodic Hierarchy (Selkirk 1984, 1986; Nespor &Vogel 1986), the prosodic representation was partly autonomous from the syntactic structure, and prosodic recursion was not possible. Recently, it has been proposed in Match Theory (Selkirk 2011) that each prosodic unit has a corresponding syntactic constituent, and prosodic recursion exists, as proposed in some recent empirical studies (Féry and Truckenbrodt 2005; Wagner 2005, 2010, Selkirk 2009, 2011, Itô &Mester 2012, 2013; Elfner 2012among others).This paper empirically investigates the phonological phrase construction in Jordanian Arabic as spoken in Irbid. The empirical results indicate that phonological phrases match XPs and are marked by low phrase accents and preboundary lengthening. They also suggest that syntactic nesting motivates prosodic recursion: a nested XP matches a recursive phonological phrase which is cued by gradient pre-boundary lengthening. However, a recursive phonological phrase is limited to two subcategories, i.e. a minimal and maximal layer. In accord with that, prosodic recursion is neither prohibited as proposed in the early version of Strict Layer Hypothesis (Selkirk 1984, 1986; Nespor &Vogel 1986), nor freely allowed to perfectly mirror syntactic nesting as in Match Theory (Selkirk 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a visual verification study we investigated how syntactic focus affects the interpretation of quantifiers. We compared the effect of syntactic focus on the truth conditions of sentences with the quantificational adverb only and the superlative quantifier most in Polish. In this language, the scopal properties of most as well as the syntactic construction of the sentence final focus allowed us to predict parallel focus association patterns for both quantifiers. We found that, indeed, syntactic focus is able to guide the attention during visual verification. It is known that prosodic focus is immediately integrated during semantic processing, our study is the first to demonstrate that syntactic focus can facilitate the verification of the truth of a sentence, by guiding attention towards the more salient information in the picture, i.e., the set of focus alternatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Earlier research states that if an unaccented pronoun refers to the subject of the preceding sentence, a focally accented pronoun will refer to the object. In the current study, we tested whether Norwegian adults select the intended pronoun referent in this context. Our study is also the first one to use eye-tracking to investigate children's developing sensitivity to intonational cues in pronoun resolution, and consequently the first one where Norwegian is the object language. The participants were monolingual 3-, 5-, and 7-year-old children, and a group of adults. They listened to the Norwegian version of utterances like ‘Sarai hugged Mariaj. Then shei/SHEj hugged her own teddy bear’, while watching two corresponding figures on a screen. This was followed by the question, in Norwegian, ‘Who hugged her own teddybear?’ When answering the question, the adults selected the subject referent (Sara) after unaccented pronouns, and the object referent (Maria) after focally accented pronouns. Eye-tracking data revealed that the 7-year-olds initially looked towards the object referent after hearing the pronoun, and then switched to look at the subject referent, regardless of the pronoun's intonation. The 5-year-olds answered the question by selecting the intended referent more often after a focally accented pronoun than after an unaccented one. Finally, the 3-year-olds showed no clear preferences. These results suggest that Norwegian children under the age of seven are still not adult-like when resolving accented and unaccented pronouns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that mental state verbs are difficult to acquire, but little is known about the acquisition of mental state language encoded through intonation. Puerto Rican Spanish (PRS) has at least three intonation contours available for marking polar questions (PQs): ¡H*L% marks an utterance as a PQ; H+L*L%, in addition to doing the former, conveys that the speaker has a belief about the (p)roposition and L*HL% marks the utterance as a PQ in addition to marking the speaker’s disbelief regarding p. A longitudinal study of two PRS-acquiring children (1;07-3;06) and their caretakers was carried out, analyzing 661 PQs from child speech and 4,574 from child-directed speech. Results show that while all three contours are used in child-directed speech, children almost categorically produce the contour that does not convey any specific mental state. Almost no tokens of the contour conveying that the speaker has a belief about a proposition were found in child speech (4/661 total PQs), and these only appeared after 2;08. No felicitous, nonimitative uses of the contour that conveys a speaker’s disbelief were found in child speech. Like other mental state language, intonation conveying epistemic information appears to emerge relatively late in child production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examined the production of the Irish initial mutation eclipsis in two speaking styles. In initial mutation phenomena, a word appears with a different initial sound depending on the lexical or morphosyntactic environment (e.g. croí [kɾɣi] ‘(a) heart’ (radical form), (a) chroí [xɾɣi] ‘(his) heart/darling’ (séimhiú-lenition form), and (a) gcroí [ɡɾɣi] ‘their heart/darling’ (eclipsis form)). The goals of the study were: (i)to examine whether there are acoustic differences between the initial consonants of radical word forms (e.g. [ɡ] of gruig ‘(a) frown/scowl’) and the corresponding consonants of eclipsis forms (e.g. [ɡ] of gcroí), as has been found for similar phenomena in other languages;(ii)to examine variability in the patterns of initial mutation in the speech of present-day speakers of Irish.Our analyses offer limited evidence that there may be phonetic differences between radical and corresponding eclipsis consonants, but the current data do not allow us to rule out alternative explanations. The realization of initial mutations in semi-spontaneous speech differed dramatically both from that of read speech and from the expectations of the traditional grammar. The results suggest that the realization of eclipsis and other initial mutations may be style- or register-dependent. We also found some evidence that it may vary by consonant type, in part due to phonological frequency patterns of the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The perception of prosodic prominence in spontaneous speech is investigated through an online task of prosody transcription using untrained listeners. Prominence is indexed through a probabilistic prominence score assigned to each word based on the proportion of transcribers who perceived the word as prominent. Correlation and regression analyses between perceived prominence, acoustic measures and measures of a word's information status are conducted to test three hypotheses: (i) prominence perception is signal-driven, influenced by acoustic factors reflecting speakers' productions; (ii) perception is expectation-driven, influenced by the listener's prior experience of word frequency and repetition; (iii) any observed influence of word frequency on perceived prominence is mediated through the acoustic signal. Results show correlates of perceived prominence in acoustic measures, in word log-frequency and in the repetition index of a word, consistent with both signal-driven and expectation-driven hypotheses of prominence perception. But the acoustic correlates of perceived prominence differ somewhat from the correlates of word frequency, suggesting an independent effect of frequency on prominence perception. A speech processing account is offered as a model of signal-driven and expectation-driven effects on prominence perception, where prominence ratings are a function of the ease of lexical processing, as measured through the activation levels of lexical and sub-lexical units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adopting an eyetracking paradigm, we investigated the role of H*L, L*HL, L*H, H*LH, and deaccentuation at the intonational phrase-final position in online processing of information status in British English in natural speech. The role of H*L, L*H and deaccentuation was also examined in diphonesynthetic speech. It was found that H*L and L*HL create a strong bias towards newness, whereas L*H, like deaccentuation, creates a strong bias towards givenness. In synthetic speech, the same effect was found for H*L, L*H and deaccentuation, but it was delayed. The delay may not be caused entirely by the difference in the segmental quality between synthetic and natural speech. The pitch accent H*LH, however, appears to bias participants' interpretation to the target word, independent of its information status. This finding was explained in the light of the effect of durational information at the segmental level on word recognition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the table of contents for the November 2014 issue of "Journal of Child Language," as well as other information about the journal.

Presents an introduction to the 47th volume of the journal "Language and Speech."