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Item does not contain fulltext Experimental Linguistics

The present study concerns the prosodic structure of Greek as a function of word stress and focus as well as statement and yes/no question sentence type distinctions. It is argued that the word stress distinction has a local domain whereas focus, statement and question distinctions have a global domain. Word stress has a lengthening effect on all segmental constituents of the stressed syllable and especially on vowel in combination with an intensity increase whereas the tonal pattern is variable in accordance with the global context. The focus distinction has no lengthening effect locally and may show variable tonal patterns locally and globally depending on the global context. The statement and yes/no sentence type distinction has variable prosodic patterns locally and globally and shows multiple interactions with variable focus applications.

BackgroundThe speech prosody of young children who have CIs has not been the subject of detailed investigation. This case study is a longitudinal investigation of the vocalizations of two young children with CIs. The aims were to examine the suprasegmental characteristics of the prelinguistic utterances of these CI children and to develop a method for deriving phonoprosodic classifications using acoustical and auditory analyses.Material and MethodSpontaneous productions by two congenitally hearing-impaired Greek children fitted with a Nucleus-24 multichannel CI (ages 1: 10 and 2: 7; post-implant ages 0: 0 and 0: 6) were sampled for 6 months and, following transcription, classification of protophones was made. The analysis aimed to detect the frequency of occurrence of different protophone types in the infants’ utterances and to examine utterance duration and pitch contour via spectrography. Utterance characteristics were analyzed in relation to a) child’s age and b) post-implant age.ResultsAt post-implant age of 6 months, the younger and earlier implanted child showed more prelinguistic vocalizations and more complex structures than the older, later fitted child. The older, later CI recipient produced CV vocalizations at the beginning of implantation and gained a facility for frequent CV productions after 4 months of CI use.ConclusionsThe findings are in agreement with other studies which observe that later CI recipients produce CV combinations at earlier phases of the prelexical period until the necessary auditory input is provided by CIs. Protophone vocalizations serve as a comparative parameter of speech production level in pre-lingual speech.

Five male speakers produced the vowels of Greek at slow and fast tempo, in lexically stressed and unstressed syllables, and in lexically stressed syllables of words appearing in focus position. Duration, fundamental frequency (F₀), amplitude, and the frequencies of the first (F1) and second formant (F2) were measured. The effects on these variables of the phonemic category of the vowel, tempo, stress, and focus were examined. The results indicated that the vowel system of Greek follows universal tendencies in terms of duration but not in terms of F₀ and amplitude. Vowels in focus position, when plotted by their F1 and F2 frequencies, defined a vowel space larger than that defined by vowels in any other condition.

This is a study of tonal representation as a function of syllable structure constituency in Swedish. The results of a production experiment indicate that the onset of the focal accent rise – which we suggest to be best represented by a bitonal LH command – is associated with the consonant onset of the post- accented syllable. Furthermore, a vowel insertion is favored in certain intervocalic consonant clusters. In light of these findings, as well a parallel study on Greek, we claim: (1) syllabification is a basic prerequisite condition in tonal analysis and intonation studies, (2) tonal targets may define syllable boundaries and hence syllabification and (3) different tonal targets may be associated with different syllable structure constituents in different languages. Funktions- och produktionsbaserad modellering av svensk prosodi/ Function- and production-based modeling of Swedish prosody

A number of recent studies have investigated the alignment of fundamental frequency (Fo) contours to the segmental string. Understanding how alignment works will (i) provide a key to establishing boundaries between phonologically distinct intonational categories; (ii) identify contextual constraints on the realisation in time of such categories; and (iii) contribute to prosodic modelling for more natural-sounding synthetic speech. Languages for which detailed studies have been reported include American English, British English, German, Swedish, Dutch, Mexican Spanish and Greek1.

Aims: (a) To study the structure of protophones of spontaneous speech of two implanted children and classify them via acoustical analysis of their suprasegmental features; (b) to track a developmental order of infant vocalizations. Material and Methods: The spontaneous productions of two Greek implanted children (ages: 1:10–2:7, post-implant ages: 0:0–0:11) were examined. Over a span of six months an extensive record of protophones was transcribed via the IPA. Duration and pitch contour were analyzed via PRAAT. Utterance characteristics were analyzed in relation to a) children’s age b) post-implant age. Results: Certain developmental classification schemes emerged via the multi-level phonological analysis. The structure of protophones depended upon implantation age since the younger, earlyimplanted child showed more complex patterns. Consonant-vowel sequences were established by the post-implant age of six months. Conclusions: The analysis of protophones can serve as a prognostic indicator for the detection of other disabilities in implanted infants/toddlers

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