Working Papers in Linguistics: Volume 44 (April 1994)
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Papers from the Linguistics Laboratory. Edited by Jennifer J. Venditti
Front Matter
pp. i-vii
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Discourse functions of pitch range in spontaneous and read speech
Ayers, Gayle M. pp. 1-49
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When is a Syllable not a Syllable?
Beckman, Mary E. pp. 50-69
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The Relationship between Syntactic and Semantic Processes in Sentence Comprehension
Boland, Julie E. pp. 70-91
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The Influence of Orthography and Sentence Constraint on the Processing of Nouns in Japanese
Darnell, Kim; Boland, Julie; Nakayama, Mineharu pp. 92-104
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Rate Effects on German Unstressed Syllables
Jannedy, Stefanie pp. 105-124
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Asymmetry of prosodic effects on the glottal gesture in Korean
Jun, Sun-Ah pp. 125-145
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Is there 'dephrasing' of the accentual phrase in Japanese?
Maekawa, Kikuo pp. 146-165
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Effects of Prosodic Position and Tonal Context on Taiwanese Tones
Peng, Shu-hui pp. 166-190
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The influence of syntax on prosodic structure in Japanese
Venditti, Jennifer J. pp. 191-223
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Item Front Matter (Volume 44, April 1994)(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04)Item Discourse functions of pitch range in spontaneous and read speech(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Ayers, Gayle M.Functions of intonation and pitch range were compared in matched spontaneous and read speech discourses. Two casual conversations were recorded, and the same speakers read scripts prepared from the original conversations. Sections with one primary speaker were examined. An intonational analysis showed that the locations of accents, phrase boundaries, and pauses differed between the spontaneous and read versions. A discourse segmentation determined that the topic structures were also different, although less so for the second conversation and its read version. Measures of pause and segment durations (as a reflection of speech rate) were made and related to the discourse segmentation units of sentence and paragraph, as well as to turn structure classifications of possible turn, 'rush through', and holding the floor. Since pitch range plays an important role in conveying the hierarchical, segmentation of discourse, generally being expanded at the beginning of new topics, corresponding differences in pitch range relationships were expected. Pitch range relationships were represented in phonetic pitch trees based on phrasal peaks. These trees revealed that in addition to signaling topic structure, pitch range was also expanded for corrections and turn taking cues. In spontaneous speech, corrections and turn management disrupted pitch range cues to topic structure. However, the read versions lacked these disruptions, and the pitch range relationships reflected the topic structure more clearly. In a listening test, significantly more read utterances were misperceived as spontaneous in the conversation which had closely matching topic structures in the two versions.Item When is a Syllable not a Syllable?(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Beckman, Mary E.This paper reviews evidence for unifying two seemingly disparate types of syllable reduction phenomena: the elision of reduced vowels in English and German, and the devocalization of high vowels in Japanese, Korean, and Montreal French. Both types of "casual speech rule" can be understood as extreme endpoints of a phonetic continuum of gestural overlap. The vowel is seemingly deleted or devoiced when the gestures of neighboring consonants encroach so completely into the space for the affected vowel that the relevant vowel gesture(s) leave no salient acoustic trace. However, in some cases in some of these languages, the reduction has been phonologically reanalyzed, so that the word loses a syllable. The paper explores the circumstances under which such reanalysis can occur.Item The Relationship between Syntactic and Semantic Processes in Sentence Comprehension(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Boland, Julie E.Two experiments investigate how lexically ambiguous input is handled by the sentence processing system and shed light on the relationship between syntactic and semantic processing. Sentence contexts containing ambiguous verbs (e.g., Which salad/baseball did Janet toss... probe-word: Bill) are used to investigate how subcategorization and thematic role information is used by the sentence processing system. The results are consistent with a model in which the syntactic processing system uses subcategorization information to compute all "legal" structures in parallel, without consideration of semantic information from the context. Meanwhile, the semantic processing system uses contextual information to pursue the single most likely semantic analysis. The resulting syntactic and semantic representations are checked against each other, and inconsistent analyses discarded.Item The Influence of Orthography and Sentence Constraint on the Processing of Nouns in Japanese(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Darnell, Kim; Boland, Julie; Nakayama, MineharuUtilizing a word-by-word reading paradigm, we investigated the role of orthographic familiarity in the processing of Japanese nouns by comparing the reading times of words that were kanji dominant (the kanji form is preferred by native speakers), kana dominant (the kana form is preferred), and orthographically neutral (both forms are equally acceptable). Target words appeared in kana or kanji, and were embedded in highly constraining (Experiment 1) or unconstraining (Experiment 2) carrier sentences. The results suggest that orthography does not affect reading time unless the sentence is highly constraining, in which case the most familiar orthography is faster.Item Rate Effects on German Unstressed Syllables(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Jannedy, StefanieGerman is characterized by the rhythmic alternation of strong and weak syllables. Weak syllables contain short or reduced vowels like schwa. In some instances, the unstressed weak syllable nucleus can be the only difference between words that underlyingly contain a consonant cluster. Examples in German are Kannen 'cans, pitchers' contrasting with kann 'can (V)' or beraten 'to advise' contrasting with braten 'to fry'. In some instances, in a faster rate of speech for example, weakening of the unstressed syllable nucleus is observed which can eventually result in the neutralization between such pairs of words. In slower speech, one might find an opposite effect, that is the appearance of vocalic traces between the members of an underlying consonant cluster. This transition vowel can perceptually cause a confusion in these "minimal pairs". Based on acoustic measurements, I will argue that gestural reorganization can best account for both of these rate effects found in German.Item Asymmetry of prosodic effects on the glottal gesture in Korean(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Jun, Sun-AhMany languages have different allophones for voiced or voiceless stops depending on position within the word or the phrase (Keating et al. 1983). However, such effects are not always symmetrical. In this paper, I examined the voicing of the word final lenis stop when it comes at the end of the Accentual Phrase. By contrast to the word initial lenis stop, which is almost always voiceless at the beginning of the Accentual Phrase (Jun 1990a,b, 1993), the word final lenis stop was voiced at the resyllabified Accentual Phrase initial position. The data showed that the voicing of lenis stop depends on its duration relative to the following vowel and this duration was determined by its position relative to the prosodic contexts. Therefore, I proposed that the Lenis Stop Voicing rule in Korean is not a phonological rule, but is a byproduct of some other effect of prosodic position on the gestural amplitude and overlapping, thus producing a continuum of voicing. To distinguish the different duration pattern of the lenis stop, thus the different voicing pattern of the lenis stop, I suggested different prosodic representations utilizing the coda/onset information.Item Is there 'dephrasing' of the accentual phrase in Japanese?(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Maekawa, KikuoAn experiment was carried out in order to examine two putative cases of 'dephrasing' of the accentual phrase in Japanese. The result revealed that it was possible to detect the accentedness of seemingly 'dephrased' accentual phrases in most of the cases. Although f0 contours of the accentual phrases in question are quasi-linear, we can detect their accentedness through the statistical examination of slope and intercept values of the regression lines fitted to the f0 contours.Item Effects of Prosodic Position and Tonal Context on Taiwanese Tones(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Peng, Shu-huiThe present study investigates the effects of prosodic position and following tone on duration and fundamental frequency of voicing (F0) pattern for the Taiwanese tones. The results showed that Taiwanese tones were acoustically influenced by prosodic position and to a certain extent by tonal context. Prosodic position had strong effects on both the F0 and duration of tones. Final lengthening and final lowering were found in the utterance-final and to a somewhat lesser extent in phrase-final positions. Pitch range was substantially affected by prosodic position, but in general, the tone shape was not changed. Tone sandhi in Taiwanese was not only defined by syntactic phrase but also by prosodic phrase. Anticipatory tonal coarticulation affected the F0 offsets of Taiwanese tones without affecting syllable duration. Assimilation occurred between contour tones and the following tone. Dissimilation was found between the high-level tone and the following tone. Pitch range in general was not affected by tonal context; however, some subject-dependent variation was found.Item The influence of syntax on prosodic structure in Japanese(Ohio State University. Department of Linguistics, 1994-04) Venditti, Jennifer J.This paper examines the relationship between the syntactic and prosodic structures of utterances which are structurally ambiguous. Two experiments were conducted involving ambiguous noun phrases (right-versus left-branching) and relative clause constructions containing an adjunct with ambiguous scope of modification. Results of careful examination of the F0 contours and downstepping patterns reveal that inter-and intra-speaker variability as well as depth of syntactic embedding are important factors in determining the prosodic phrasing.