Recent ucsdling items

Richard Montague’s Turn Towards Natural Language

Sun, 29 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Richard Montague (1930–1971) is known as a founding figure of natural language semantics, i.e., the formal study of the semantics of natural languages by means of tools from mathematical logic. Less well known is that Montague maintained a strongly skeptical view on the possibility of a systematic logico-philosophical analysis of natural language for most of his short life, adhering to the then-common belief that natural languages are fundamentally different from the languages of logic. Completely unknown, until now, has been how Montague underwent a 180-degree turn in the last few years of his life, in the late 1960s, and pioneered a precise formal analysis of the syntax and semantics of fragments of English in three seminal papers that established the research framework, the methodology, and the formal tools for the new field of study. I provide a precise and documented answer to when, where, and how Montague’s intellectual turn occurred and how it relates to Montague’s previous...

An embodied multi-articulatory multimodal language framework: A commentary on Karadöller, Sümer and Özyürek

Thu, 10 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While many researchers working in spoken languages have used modality to distinguish language and gesture, this is not possible for sign language researchers. We argue that co-sign gestures must be considered alongside co-speech gestures in theories of language acquisition. Focusing on how the same function is served in embodied communication in speech and embodied communication in sign promotes a truly multimodal view of language acquisition. An embodied multi-articulatory multimodal framework is needed to make broader claims about language acquisition.

Production of real signs but not pseudosigns affected by age of acquisition in American Sign Language

Thu, 13 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Research shows that insufficient language access in early childhood significantly affects language processing. While the majority of this work focuses on syntax, phonology also appears to be affected, though it is unclear exactly how. Here we investigated phonological production across age of acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL). Participants were deaf adult signers who first learned ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years and they performed both lexical decisions and repetitions of ASL signs and pseudosigns. Because phonological production has been understudied across age of acquisition, we were particularly interested in production accuracy for the sublexical phonological parameters of handshape, movement, and location. Lexical decision responses were slower and more accurate for impossible pseudosigns compared with possible pseudosigns, indicating participants were sensitive to ASL phonological structure regardless of age of acquisition. Despite this, age of...

Argument ordering in simple sentences is affected by age of first language acquisition: Evidence from late first language signers of ASL

Tue, 10 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Research on the language acquisition of deaf individuals who are exposed to accessible linguistic input at a variety of ages has provided evidence for a sensitive period of first language acquisition. Recent studies have shown that deaf individuals who first learn language after early childhood, late first-language learners (LL1), do not comprehend reversible Subject-Verb-Object (SVO) sentences. The present study analyzed 478 signed productions elicited with pictures depicting simple events with one or two arguments by 28 signers. The argument order patterns of native signers converged with one another and the word order patterns of American Sign Language (ASL). By contrast, the ordering patterns of the LL1 signers did not converge with one another or with the patterns of the native signers. This indicates that early childhood is a period of heightened sensitivity to basic word order and may help explain why complex structures are difficult for LL1 signers to learn.

Pause postures: The relationship between articulation and cognitive processes during pauses

Sat, 28 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Studies examining articulatory characteristics of pauses have identified language-specific postures of the vocal tract in inter-utterance pauses and different articulatory patterns in grammatical and non-grammatical pauses. Pause postures-specific articulatory movements that occur during pauses at strong prosodic boundaries-have been identified for Greek and German. However, the cognitive function of these articulations has not been examined so far. We start addressing this question by investigating the effect of 1) utterance type and 2) planning on pause posture occurrence and properties in American English. We first examine whether pause postures exist in American English. In an electromagnetic articulometry study, seven participants produced sentences varying in linguistic structure (stress, boundary, sentence type). To determine the presence of pause postures, as well as to lay the groundwork for their future automatic annotation and detection, a Support Vector Machine Classifier...

'What' clauses can and 'which' cannot: A Romanian puzzle

Thu, 6 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: A previously unnoticed puzzle is presented concerning the distribution of wh-determiners in free relative clauses in Romanian: while care 'which' + NP can never introduce free relative clauses, ce 'what' + NP does so productively, as do all other wh-words. New evidence is provided showing that care 'which' + NP in interrogative clauses in Romanian exhibits strong discourse-anaphoric requirements, unlike ce 'what' + NP. This feature of care 'which' + NP is suggested to be responsible for the puzzle by triggering a clash with the basic set-denoting function of a free relative clause, along the lines of what is observed in light-headed relative clauses.

Investigating clausal wh-constructions in Romanian

Thu, 6 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Romanian has an articulated system of (non-)interrogative wh-clauses that look morphosyntactically similar or even identical to each other on the surface, while exhibiting striking differences in distribution and interpretation. Using a minimal set of criteria, tests and distinctions, this article presents the first systematic comparative overview of all clausal wh-constructions attested in Romanian. We show that none of these constructions can be reduced to any of the others and flesh out some of the challenges arising for a unified analysis of wh-constructions and wh-expressions.

A formal typology of process interactions

Thu, 2 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Some phonologically significant generalizations result from processes, often formalized as rewrite rules, while others result from interactions among independently motivated processes, often formalized in terms of serial ordering. We adopt these general formalizations of processes and interactions to address two questions. One is the interaction question: what are all the possible forms of interaction between two processes? The other is the opacity question: what makes an interactions between two processes opaque? We show that these questions are best addressed with a rigorous algebraic formalization of processes and their pairwise interactions, describing the complete formal typology of process interactions and identifying the formal properties of those interactions that lead to different types of opacity.

Weak determinism and the computational consequences of interaction

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: Recent work has claimed that (non-tonal) phonological patterns are subregular (Heinz 2011a,b, 2018; Heinz and Idsardi 2013), occupying a delimited proper subregion of the regular functions—the weakly deterministic (WD) functions (Heinz and Lai 2013; Jardine 2016). Whether or not it is correct (McCollum et al. 2020a), this claim can only be properly assessed given a complete and accurate definition of WD functions. We propose such a definition in this article, patching unintended holes in Heinz and Lai’s (2013) original definition that we argue have led to the incorrect classification of some phonological patterns as WD. We start from the observation that WD patterns share a property that we call unbounded semiambience, modeled after the analogous observation by Jardine (2016) about non-deterministic (ND) patterns and their unbounded circumambience. Both ND and WD functions can be broken down into compositions of deterministic (subsequential) functions (Elgot and...

Perception of ATR contrasts by Akan speakers: a case of perceptual near-merger

Thu, 9 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Despite many acoustic, articulatory and phonological studies of Advanced Tongue Root (ATR) vowel contrasts and vowel harmony, studies of the perception of ATR contrasts by speakers of languages with ATR vowel distinctions are lacking. This paper explores how vowels which differ for ATR or height, or both, are distinguished by speakers of Akan, a Kwa language of Ghana. We examine whether the phonological contrastive status of the vowels impacts perception or whether it is driven by acoustic similarity. Results from two experiments reveal that vowels that differ only for ATR are well distinguished, even those that are in an allophonic relationship. Yet, vowels that are contrastive and differ by both ATR and height features, but are acoustically similar, are poorly perceived. We suggest that these vowel contrasts constitute a case of perceptual near-merger.

Morphology Gets More and More Complex, Unless It Doesn't

Mon, 21 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Morphology Gets More and More Complex, Unless It Doesn't

Voice Quality of Children With Cerebral Palsy.

Fri, 23 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Purpose Many children with cerebral palsy (CP) are described as having altered vocal quality. The current study utilizes psychoacoustic measures, namely, low-amplitude (H1*-H2*) and high-amplitude (H1*-A2*) spectral tilt and cepstral peak prominence (CPP), to identify the vocal fold articulation characteristics in this population. Method Eight children with CP and eight typically developing (TD) peers produced vowel singletons [i, ɑ, u] and a story retell task with the same vowels in the words "beets, Bobby, boots." H1*-H2*, H1*-A2*, and CPP were extracted from each vowel. Results were analyzed with mixed linear models to identify the effect of Group (CP, TD), Task (vowel singleton, story retell), and Vowel [i, ɑ, u] on the dependent variables. Results Children with CP have lower spectral tilt values (H1*-H2* and H1*-A2*) and lower CPP values than their TD peers. For both groups, vowel singletons were associated with lower CPP values as compared to story retell. Finally, the vowel...

Phonological Abstraction in The Mental Lexicon

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this chapter, we examine the nature of the long-term memory representation of the pronunciations of words. A fundamental question concerns how abstract these representations are vis à vis the physical manifestation of words, both as gestures and as physical percepts. We consider this question and related issues within the traditions of linguistic cognition and generative phonology. We first explore the general nature of abstraction, and then review the arguments in generative phonology for positing that the units of speech stored in long-term memory (so called ‘underlying forms’) abstract away from many phonetic details. Motivations for concepts such as phonemes and distinctive phonological features are given. We then visit the open question regarding how abstract underlying forms may be allowed to be. We conclude by highlighting the contributions that evidence from neuroscience and sign language linguistics brings to these issues of phonological abstraction in the mental...

Constraint-based Learning of Phonological Processes

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Constraint-based Learning of Phonological Processes

Faithfulness and underspecification

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

This work is about two ‘generation problems’ for classic Optimality Theory, chain shifts and saltations. The issues for OT posed by traditional analyses of chain shifts and saltations have led to various embellishments of the classic theory, typically in the form of novel constraint types. Reiss (2021a,b) proposes a general solution to the problem of chain shifts and saltations that relies more directly on different assumptions about representations than about constraints. Specifically, Reiss assumes that underlying representations may be underspecified, and that a map ‘counts’ as a chain shift or as a saltation so long as the surface alternants from a uniform underlying representation match the respective observed alternants. We report here on three results from our ongoing formal assessment of Reiss’s proposed solution.

Constraint-based Learning of Phonological Processes

Thu, 22 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Constraint-based Learning of Phonological Processes

Validating a psychoacoustic model of voice quality

Fri, 16 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

No agreed-upon method currently exists for objective measurement of perceived voice quality. This paper describes validation of a psychoacoustic model designed to fill this gap. This model includes parameters to characterize the harmonic and inharmonic voice sources, vocal tract transfer function, fundamental frequency, and amplitude of the voice, which together serve to completely quantify the integral sound of a target voice sample. In experiment 1, 200 voices with and without diagnosed vocal pathology were fit with the model using analysis-by-synthesis. The resulting synthetic voice samples were not distinguishable from the original voice tokens, suggesting that the model has all the parameters it needs to fully quantify voice quality. In experiment 2 parameters that model the harmonic voice source were removed one by one, and the voice tokens were re-synthesized with the reduced model. In every case the lower-dimensional models provided worse perceptual matches to the quality...

Prediction in a visual language: real-time sentence processing in American Sign Language across development

Thu, 18 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Prediction during sign language comprehension may enable signers to integrate linguistic and non-linguistic information within the visual modality. In two eyetracking experiments, we investigated American Sign language (ASL) semantic prediction in deaf adults and children (aged 4-8 years). Participants viewed ASL sentences in a visual world paradigm in which the sentence-initial verb was either neutral or constrained relative to the sentence-final target noun. Adults and children made anticipatory looks to the target picture before the onset of the target noun in the constrained condition only, showing evidence for semantic prediction. Crucially, signers alternated gaze between the stimulus sign and the target picture only when the sentential object could be predicted from the verb. Signers therefore engage in prediction by optimizing visual attention between divided linguistic and referential signals. These patterns suggest that prediction is a modality-independent process, and...

Neurolinguistic processing when the brain matures without language

Tue, 16 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The extent to which development of the brain language system is modulated by the temporal onset of linguistic experience relative to post-natal brain maturation is unknown. This crucial question cannot be investigated with the hearing population because spoken language is ubiquitous in the environment of newborns. Deafness blocks infants' language experience in a spoken form, and in a signed form when it is absent from the environment. Using anatomically constrained magnetoencephalography, aMEG, we neuroimaged lexico-semantic processing in a deaf adult whose linguistic experience began in young adulthood. Despite using language for 30 years after initially learning it, this individual exhibited limited neural response in the perisylvian language areas to signed words during the 300-400 ms temporal window, suggesting that the brain language system requires linguistic experience during brain growth to achieve functionality. The present case study primarily exhibited neural...

Who's on First? Investigating the referential hierarchy in simple native ASL narratives

Fri, 5 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Discussions of reference tracking in spoken languages often invoke some version of a referential hierarchy. In this paper, we asked whether this hierarchy applies equally well to reference tracking in a visual language, American Sign Language, or whether modality differences influence its structure. Expanding the results of previous studies, this study looked at ASL referential devices beyond nouns, pronouns, and zero anaphora. We elicited four simple narratives from eight native ASL signers, and examined how the signers tracked reference throughout their stories. We found that ASL signers follow general principles of the referential hierarchy proposed for spoken languages by using nouns for referent introductions, and zero anaphora for referent maintenance. However, we also found significant differences such as the absence of pronouns in the narratives, despite their existence in ASL, and differential use of verbal and constructed action zero anaphora. Moreover, we found that...

Language-to-music transfer effects depend on the tone language: Akan vs. East Asian tone languages

Thu, 27 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Recent research suggests that speaking a tone language confers benefits in processing pitch in nonlinguistic contexts such as music. This research largely compares speakers of nontone European languages (English, French) with speakers of tone languages in East Asia (Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Thai). However, tone languages exist on multiple continents—notably, languages indigenous to Africa and the Americas. With one exception (Bradley, Psychomusicology, 26(4), 337–345, 2016), no research has assessed whether these tone languages also confer pitch processing advantages. Two studies presented a melody change detection task, using quasirandom note sequences drawn from Western major scale tone probabilities. Listeners were speakers of Akan, a tone language of Ghana, plus speakers from previously tested populations (nontone language speakers and East Asian tone language speakers). In both cases, East Asian tone language speakers showed the strongest musical pitch processing,...

Do Adults Show an Effect of Delayed First Language Acquisition When Calculating Scalar Implicatures?

Mon, 24 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Language acquisition involves learning not only grammatical rules and a lexicon, but also what someone is intending to convey with their utterance: the semantic/pragmatic component of language. In this paper we separate the contributions of linguistic development and cognitive maturity to the acquisition of the semantic/pragmatic component of language by comparing deaf adults who had either early or late first exposure to their first language (ASL). We focus on the particular type of meaning at the semantic/pragmatic interface called scalar implicature, for which preschool-age children typically differ from adults. Children's behavior has been attributed to either their not knowing appropriate linguistic alternatives to consider or to cognitive developmental differences between children and adults. Unlike children, deaf adults with late language exposure are cognitively mature, although they never fully acquire some complex linguistic structures, and thus serve as a test...

Subjective frequency ratings for 432 ASL signs

Fri, 21 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Given the importance of lexical frequency for psycholinguistic research and the lack of comprehensive frequency data for sign languages, we collected subjective estimates of lexical frequency for 432 signs in American Sign Language (ASL). Our participants were 59 deaf signers who first began to acquire ASL at ages ranging from birth to 14 years old and who had a minimum of 10 years of experience. Subjective frequency estimates were made on a scale ranging from 1 = rarely see the sign to 7 = always see the sign. The mean subjective frequency ratings for individual signs did not vary in relation to age of sign language exposure (AoLE), chronological age, or length of ASL experience. Nor did AoLE show significant effects on the response times (RTs) for making the ratings. However, RTs were highly correlated with mean frequency ratings. These results suggest that the distributions of subjective lexical frequencies are consistent across signers with varying AoLEs. The implications...

Introduction and Table of Contents

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction and Table of Contents

The second generation of “New Shanghainese”: their language and identity

Tue, 10 Jan 2023 00:00:00 +0000

The second generation of “New Shanghainese”: their language and identity

On the linguistic behavior of keysmashes

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

On the linguistic behavior of keysmashes

Introduction and Table of Contents

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction and Table of Contents

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction and Table of Contents

Tone melody and tense, mood, aspect marking in in Gua

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Tone melody and tense, mood, aspect marking in in Gua

Comparing Positional Licensing Patterns in HG and OT

Wed, 12 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Positional licensing refers to the observation that elements (e.g. particular feature values or feature value combinations) can be limited to specific positions (e.g. syllable onsets, initial syllables, stressed syllables, etc.). Positional licensing patterns have been analyzed using either positional markedness or positional faithfulness constraints in OT and HG. In this paper we demonstrate that the predictions of OT and HG diverge in deep but structured ways once there are more than two licensing positions. We propose an account for this structured divergence based on 3-position systems, and confirm the validity of that account with an analysis of 4-position systems. We also describe how conjoined constraints impact positional licensing patterns, and in doing so provide a counter-example to a claim made in our previous work (Mai & Baković 2020).

Introduction and Table of Contents

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction and Table of Contents

On the proper treatment of weak determinism: Subsequentiality and simultaneous application in phonological maps

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

On the proper treatment of weak determinism: Subsequentiality and simultaneous application in phonological maps

Predicting discrimination accuracy by assimilation pattern, overlap score, and acoustic properties

Tue, 13 Apr 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Predicting discrimination accuracy by assimilation pattern, overlap score, and acoustic properties

Introduction and Table of Contents

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction and Table of Contents

The source of creak in Mandarin utterances

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

The source of creak in Mandarin utterances

A mixed height and ATR system of vowels in Rere

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A mixed height and ATR system of vowels in Rere

A Compositional Semantic Analysis of Echo Questions in Korean

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

A Compositional Semantic Analysis of Echo Questions in Korean

Intrinsic fundamental frequency of Amharic vowels

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Intrinsic fundamental frequency of Amharic vowels

Grammatical gender agreement with nominal compounds in Somali

Mon, 25 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Grammatical gender agreement with nominal compounds in Somali

Unbounded circumambient patterns in segmental phonology

Tue, 18 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We present an empirical challenge to Jardine's (2016) assertion that only tonal spreading patterns can be unbounded circumambient, meaning that the determination of a phonological value may depend on information that is an unbounded distance away on both sides. We focus on a demonstration that the ATR harmony pattern found in Tutrugbu is unbounded circumambient, and we also cite several other segmental spreading processes with the same general character. We discuss implications for the complexity of phonology and for the relationship between the explanation of typology and the evaluation of phonological theories.

Speakers enhance contextually confusable words

Tue, 21 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Speakers enhance contextually confusable words

Evidence against interactive effects on articulation in Javanese verb paradigms

Wed, 1 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In interactive models of speech production, wordforms that are related to a target form are co-activated during lexical planning, and co-activated wordforms can leave phonetic traces on the target. This mechanism has been proposed to account for phonetic similarities among morphologically related wordforms. We test this hypothesis in a Javanese verb paradigm. In Javanese, one class of verbs is inflected by nasalizing an initial voiceless obstruent: one form of each word begins with a nasal, while its otherwise identical relative begins with a voiceless obstruent. We predict that if morphologically related forms are co-activated during production, the nasal-initial forms of these words should show phonetic traces of their obstruent-initial forms, as compared to nasal-initial wordforms that do not alternate. Twenty-seven native Javanese speakers produced matched pairs of alternating and non-alternating wordforms. Based on an acoustic analysis of nasal resonance and closure duration,...

Using H1 instead of H1–H2 as an acoustic correlate of glottal constriction

Wed, 1 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Bickley (1982) proposed H1–H2 as an index of the stronger H1 observed for breathy vowels compared to modal ones. Because harmonic amplitudes also vary by overall sound pressure level (SPL), H1 amplitude was normalized to that of H2. Studies have also shown that H1–H2 is well perceived and correlates with glottal open quotient, and thus can be used to infer the articulations leading to changes in perceived quality. Yet in some cases, H1–H2 does not distinguish two voice qualities at statistically significant levels. We claim that this might be due not to the same open quotient between two voice qualities, but to the fact that H1–H2 can be especially noisy to estimate: for example, when f0 is irregular (as in creaky voice qualities), H1–H2 often has large variance that isn’t well modeled statistically. Using several corpora, we show that H1 alone (while controlling for SPL) allows for stronger statistical differentiation of voice categories than H1–H2. We further confirm that H1...

Cumulative constraint interaction and the equalizer of OT and HG

Tue, 12 May 2020 00:00:00 +0000

We show that, in general, Optimality Theory (OT) grammars containing a restricted family of locally-conjoined constraints (Smolensky 2006) make the same typological predictions as corresponding Harmonic Grammar (HG) grammars. We provide an intuition for the generalization using a simple constrast and neutralization typology, as well as a formal proof. This demonstration adds structure to claims about the (non)equivalence of HG and OT with local conjunction (Legendre et al. 2006, Pater 2016) and provides a tool for understanding how different sets of constraints lead to the same typological predictions in HG and OT.

Rule Interaction Conversion Operations

Tue, 28 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Different types of interactions between pairs of phonological rules can be converted into one another using three formal operations that we discuss in this article. One of these conversion operations, rule re-ordering (here called swapping), is well-known; another, flipping, is a more recent finding (Hein et al., 2014). We introduce a third conversion operation that we call cropping. Formal relationships among the members of the set of rule interactions, expanded by cropping beyond the classical four (feeding, bleeding, counterfeeding, and counterbleeding) to include four more (mutual bleeding, seeding, counterseeding, and merger), are identified and clarified. We show that these conversion operations exhaustively delimit the set of possible pairwise rule interactions predicted by conjunctive rule ordering (Chomsky & Halle, 1968), and that each interaction is related to each of the others by the application of at most two conversion operations.

Revisiting non-idempotency in Tibetan vowel harmony

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Revisiting non-idempotency in Tibetan vowel harmony

Counting with fingers symbolically: basic numerals across sign languages

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Counting with fingers symbolically: basic numerals across sign languages

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Table of Contents

Introduction

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Introduction

Systematic overabundance exhibits systematic differentiation: On person marking, perfect marking, and evidentiality in Azerbaijani

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Systematic overabundance exhibits systematic differentiation: On person marking, perfect marking, and evidentiality in Azerbaijani

In Defense of What(ever) Free Relative Clauses They Dismiss: A Reply to Donati and Cecchetto (2011)

Wed, 21 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I argue that the version of phrase structure theory proposed by Donati and Cecchetto (2011) falls short of accounting for the attested patterns of free relative clauses not only in English but crosslinguistically in general. In particular, I show that free relative clauses can be introduced not only by wh-words like what or where, which is what Donati and Cecchetto predict, but also by wh-phrases like what books or whatever books and their equivalents in other languages, which Donati and Cecchetto explicitly predict not to be possible.

On the acoustical features of vowel nasality in English and French

Thu, 4 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Although much is known about the linguistic function of vowel nasality, whether contrastive (as in French) or coarticulatory (as in English), and much effort has gone into identifying potential correlates for the phenomenon, this study examines these proposed features to find the optimal acoustic feature(s) for nasality measurement. To this end, a corpus of 4778 oral and nasal vowels in English and French was collected, and data for 22 features were extracted. A series of linear mixed-effects regressions highlighted three promising features with large oral-to-nasal feature differences and strong effects relative to normal oral vowel variability: A1-P0, F1's bandwidth, and spectral tilt. However, these three features, particularly A1-P0, showed considerable variation in baseline and range across speakers and vowels within each language. Moreover, although the features were consistent in direction across both languages, French speakers' productions showed markedly stronger effects,...

The time course of individuals' perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change: Supplemental Material

Thu, 4 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The time course of individuals' perception of coarticulatory information is linked to their production: Implications for sound change: Supplemental Material

Plosive voicing in Afrikaans: Differential cue weighting and tonogenesis

Thu, 4 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This study documents the relation between f0 and prevoicing in the production and perception of plosive voicing in Afrikaans. Acoustic data show that Afrikaans speakers differed in how likely they were to produce prevoicing to mark phonologically voiced plosives, but that all speakers produced large and systematic f0 differences after phonologically voiced and voiceless plosives to convey the contrast between the voicing categories. This pattern is mirrored in these same participants’ perception: although some listeners relied more than others on prevoicing as a perceptual cue, all listeners used f0 (especially in the absence of prevoicing) to perceptually differentiate historically voiced and voiceless plosives. This variation in the speech community is shown to be generationally structured such that older speakers were more likely than younger speakers to produce prevoicing, and to rely on prevoicing perceptually. These patterns are consistent with generationally determined...

Coarticulation and Contrast: Neighborhood Density Conditioned Phonetic Variation in French

Thu, 4 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Coarticulation and Contrast: Neighborhood Density Conditioned Phonetic Variation in French

Automatic tongue contour extraction in ultrasound images with convolutional neural networks

Thu, 4 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Automatic tongue contour extraction in ultrasound images with convolutional neural networks

Overapplication conversion

Tue, 26 Feb 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Overapplication conversion

Overapplication Conversion

Tue, 1 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This squib sheds light on the relationship between two types of overapplication opacity, counterbleeding and self-destructive feeding, by demonstrating how one can be formally converted into the other. This demonstration further clarifies the relation between self-destructive feeding and cross-derivational feeding interactions, which have also been identified as involving overapplication opacity (Baković, 2007; 2011).

Vowel dispersion and Kazakh labial harmony

Tue, 9 Oct 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Vowel dispersion and Kazakh labial harmony

Temporal Annotation in the Clinical Domain

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This article discusses the requirements of a formal specification for the annotation of temporal information in clinical narratives. We discuss the implementation and extension of ISO-TimeML for annotating a corpus of clinical notes, known as the THYME corpus. To reflect the information task and the heavily inference-based reasoning demands in the domain, a new annotation guideline has been developed, "the THYME Guidelines to ISO-TimeML (THYME-TimeML)". To clarify what relations merit annotation, we distinguish between linguistically-derived and inferentially-derived temporal orderings in the text. We also apply a top performing TempEval 2013 system against this new resource to measure the difficulty of adapting systems to the clinical domain. The corpus is available to the community and has been proposed for use in a SemEval 2015 task.

Towards comprehensive syntactic and semantic annotations of the clinical narrative

Tue, 17 Jul 2018 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVE: To create annotated clinical narratives with layers of syntactic and semantic labels to facilitate advances in clinical natural language processing (NLP). To develop NLP algorithms and open source components. METHODS: Manual annotation of a clinical narrative corpus of 127 606 tokens following the Treebank schema for syntactic information, PropBank schema for predicate-argument structures, and the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) schema for semantic information. NLP components were developed. RESULTS: The final corpus consists of 13 091 sentences containing 1772 distinct predicate lemmas. Of the 766 newly created PropBank frames, 74 are verbs. There are 28 539 named entity (NE) annotations spread over 15 UMLS semantic groups, one UMLS semantic type, and the Person semantic category. The most frequent annotations belong to the UMLS semantic groups of Procedures (15.71%), Disorders (14.74%), Concepts and Ideas (15.10%), Anatomy (12.80%), Chemicals and Drugs (7.49%),...

Online perception of glottalized coda stops in American English

Tue, 22 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Online perception of glottalized coda stops in American English

John J. McCarthy and Joe Pater (eds.) (2015). Harmonic Grammar and Harmonic Serialism. (Advances in Optimality Theory.) Sheffield & Bristol, Conn.: Equinox Publishing. Pp. viii+437.

Tue, 16 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

John J. McCarthy and Joe Pater (eds.) (2015). Harmonic Grammar and Harmonic Serialism. (Advances in Optimality Theory.) Sheffield & Bristol, Conn.: Equinox Publishing. Pp. viii+437.

Free choice free relative clauses in Italian and Romanian

Wed, 4 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Free choice free relative clauses in Italian and Romanian

A revised typology of opaque generalisations*