Anja Arnhold | University of Alberta (original) (raw)

Papers by Anja Arnhold

Applied Psycholinguistics, 2024

This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from diffe... more This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from different language backgrounds and the effects of phonology, homophony, and rest on the outcome. We created Mandarin novel words varied by types of phonological contrasts and homophone status. During the experiment, native (n = 34) and non-native speakers (English; n = 30) learned pairs of novel words and were tested twice with a 15minute break in between, which was spent either resting or gaming. In the post-break test of novel word recognition, an interaction appeared between language backgrounds, phonology, and homophony: non-native speakers performed less accurately than native speakers only on non-homophones learned in pairs with tone contrasts. Eye movement data indicated that non-native speakers' processing of tones may be more effortful than their processing of segments while learning homophones, as demonstrated by the time course. Interestingly, no significant effects of rest were observed across language groups; yet after gaming, native speakers achieved higher accuracy than non-native speakers. Overall, this study suggests that Mandarin novel word learning can be affected by participants' language backgrounds and phonological and homophonous features of words. However, the role of short periods of rest in novel word learning requires further investigation.

Language Acquisition, 2024

Studies on young children’s comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interp... more Studies on young children’s comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more “intensive” process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like discourse context. This could explain why children experience more difficulties with pronouns than with reflexives. Using eye-tracking and a truth value judgement task, we investigated the effect of focus via it-clefts on the processing of reflexives and pronouns in German-speaking children and adults. We analyzed gaze data of two time segments: before and during the mention of the pronoun/reflexive. The cleft segment revealed similar processing of it-clefts in children and adults. In the subsequent reflexive/pronoun segment, clefts caused adults to pay overall more attention to the local referent, while children fixated the clefted non-local referent more. The difference in focus effect, that is, children attend the clefted referent more, while adults pay more attention to the non-clefted referent, helped uncover processing differences between children and adults. That is, unlike adults, children consider only the local discourse context during referential processing. We argue that these processing differences cause children’s interpretation difficulties. However, the offline data showed no effect of information structure, suggesting that whether the processing differences transfer to the final interpretation depends on the language-specific function of the pronoun system, which may aid in restricting referential links.

Cognitive Science, 2024

We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection task... more We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first-mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' “prominence” / “accessibility” / “salience.” The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that “prominence” or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution.

Laboratory Phonology, 2024

Previous studies reported mixed findings regarding the details of the acoustic correlates of focu... more Previous studies reported mixed findings regarding the details of the acoustic correlates of focus, as well as the relationship between information structure and pitch accent types in English. Moreover, previous studies showed that different varieties of English signal information structure differently.Therefore, we hypothesized that the way focus is expressed in terms of acoustic correlates and/or pitch accents in Canadian English would differ from Mainstream American English (MAE). Thirty-eight native speakers of Canadian English produced 24 short transitive sentences in different focus conditions: broad focus and narrow focus in different locations (Subject, Verb, Object). The speakers of Canadian English in the current study manifested some, but not all of the effects of focus that have been reported in previous research on MAE and other languages. Specifically, focus induced lengthening of focused constituents but not enhancement of intensity or f0. Instead, focus-adjacent constituents were weakened in terms of duration, intensity and f0.

Word prominence in languages with complex morphology, 2023

This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of t... more This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of the Inuit dialect continuum constituting a branch of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family. The Inuit language is an extreme example of polysynthesis, with productive noun and verb incorporation that can be applied recursively, along with extensive word-internal modification. The main analysis is based on original data from South Baffin Island (Qikiqtaaluk Nigiani) Inuktitut, but the chapter also examines the literature on other varieties from across the language family. We present acoustic analyses of three potential correlates of stress or prominence: duration, fundamental frequency and intensity. Duration of syllables increased at the end of the word, while fundamental frequency and intensity dropped at the right word edge. Word-internally, no alternating or other regular patterns appeared. Comparing these results to hypotheses of what would be expected for metrical stress systems and other types of word prominence, we conclude that there is no indication that South Baffin Island Inuktitut has stress or another type of word-level prominence. Instead, in line with previous research on Inuit prosody, we find that the language regularly marks the borders of words and other prosodic constituents.

Proc. Speech Prosody 2022, 2022

The current study investigated how broad focus, narrow focus and given information are produced i... more The current study investigated how broad focus, narrow focus and given information are produced in Canadian English. Given previous findings that showed different varieties of English signal information structure differently, we hypothesized that the effects of focus on acoustic correlates involving duration, f0, and intensity would manifest differently in Canadian English than in American English. Thirty-eight native speakers of Canadian English produced 24 short transitive sentences in different focus conditions: broad focus and narrow focus in different locations (Subject, Verb, Object). A total of 2,736 words were analyzed. While some acoustic correlates such as duration and maximum intensity replicated the same patterns as previous findings in American English, mean intensity and f0 measures showed different patterns. These results suggest that speakers of Canadian English may employ a different set of acoustic correlates from speakers of American English. The study sheds light on the role of dialect in the production of broad and narrow focus and expands our knowledge about the fine-grained details of the phonetic realization of prosodic focus marking in English.

This dissertation provides an analysis of Finnish prosody, with a focus on the sentence or phrase... more This dissertation provides an analysis of Finnish prosody, with a focus on the sentence or phrase level. The thesis analyses Finnish as a phrase language. Thus, it accounts for prosodic variation through prosodic phrasing and explains intonational differences in terms of phrase tones. Finnish intonation has traditionally been described in terms of accents associated with stressed syllables, i.e. similarly as prototypical intonation languages like English or German. However, accents are usually described as uniform instead of forming an inventory of contrasting accent types. The present thesis confirms the uniformity of Finnish tonal contours and explains it as based on realisations of tones associated with prosodic phrases instead of accents. Two levels of phrasing are discussed: Prosodic phrases (p-phrases) and intonational phrases (i-phrases). Most prominently, the p-phrase is marked by a high tone associated with its beginning and a low tone associated with its end; realisations ...

Using a language game to elicit short sentences in various information structural conditions, we ... more Using a language game to elicit short sentences in various information structural conditions, we found that Finnish 4- to 5-year-olds already exhibit a characteristic interaction between prosody and word order in marking information structure. Providing insights into the acquisition of this complex system of interactions, the production data showed interesting parallels to adult speakers of Finnish on the one hand and to children acquiring other languages on the other hand. Analyzing a total of 571 sentences produced by 16 children, we found that children rarely adjusted input word order, but did systematically avoid marked OVS order in contrastive object focus condition. Focus condition also significantly affected four prosodic parameters, f0, duration, pauses and voice quality. Differing slightly from effects displayed in adult Finnish speech, the children produced larger f0 ranges for words in contrastive focus and smaller ones for unfocused words, varied only the duration of obj...

Intonational Phonology: Understudied or Fieldwork Languages. Satellite Work- shop of ICPhS XVI, 2007

The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody, 2020

Goidelic word stress is initial but with some signs of quantity sensitivity. Phrasal intonation t... more Goidelic word stress is initial but with some signs of quantity sensitivity. Phrasal intonation tends to be falling (for both declaratives and questions) in southern Irish dialects but rising in northern ones. Interrogativity is marked by phonetic adjustments in initial or final accents of the utterance. Icelandic and Faroese have traditional word-initial stress-to-weight but show signs of penultimate stress patterns in loanwords. Intonation is characterized by phrasal accents within overall downtrend patterns (also in questions, but with some accentual distinctions). The polysynthetic structure of the Inuit languages makes the notion of lexical stress irrelevant, but tonal targets are associated with prosodic domains of various kinds, and a distinction is made between word-level and phrase-level tones; devoicing and truncation are utterance final. In Central Alaskan Yupik, primary word stress marks the last foot by pitch movement. Enclitic bound phrases, phrasal compounds, and non-...

Anatomy of a Short Story : Nabokov’s Puzzles, Codes, “Signs and Symbols”

Cognitive Science, 2016

We use visual world eye-tracking to test if a speaker’s eye gaze to a potential antecedent modula... more We use visual world eye-tracking to test if a speaker’s eye gaze to a potential antecedent modulates the listener’s interpretation of an ambiguous pronoun. Participants listened to stories that included an ambiguous pronoun, such as “The dolphin kisses the goldfish... He....” During the prepronominal context, an onscreen narrator gazed at one of the two characters. As expected, participants looked more at the subject character overall. However, this was modulated by the narrator’s eye gaze and the amount of time the participant spent looking at the gaze cue. For trials in which participants attended to the narrator’s eye gaze for > 500ms, participants were significantly more likely to interpret the pronoun as referring to the object if the narrator had previously looked at the object. Results suggest that eye gaze – a social cue – can temper even strong linguistic/cognitive biases in pronoun resolution, such as the subject/first-mention bias.

This paper provides a first account of prosodic structure and the correspondence between prosodic... more This paper provides a first account of prosodic structure and the correspondence between prosodic and morphosyntactic constituents in South Baffin Inuktitut. Analyzing scripted dialogues between two speakers, we found that orthographic words were consistently marked by an f0 fall, while some prosodic variation occurred in utterance-final position. We propose that our intonational analysis shows evidence for two prosodic units: a smaller one corresponding to orthographic words, termed ‘prosodic word’ here, and a larger one delimited by pauses, identified as the intonational phrase. These two prosodic units exhibit remarkable regularity with respect to their tonal marking, with words regularly being marked by HL tones and intonational phrases mostly being demarcated by an additional L tone. This finding suggests that there is a robust prosodic correlate for the notion of “wordhood” in Inuktitut: orthographic words, whether or not they exhibit polysynthetic properties such as noun inco...

This paper investigates instrumentally for the first time the binary vowel quantity opposition (s... more This paper investigates instrumentally for the first time the binary vowel quantity opposition (short vs. long) in Yakut (or Sakha) on the basis of spontaneous production data from nine speakers. Acoustic measurements of vowels in disyllabic words showed a significantly shorter duration of short vowels than their long counterparts. Furthermore, f0 maxima and f0 slope showed effects of both quantity and syllable number. The results suggest that pitch is an additional phonetic correlate of vowel quantity in Yakut, alongside with the robust durational difference between short and long vowels.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Using visual world eye-tracking, we examined whether adults (N= 58) and children (N= 37; 3;1–6;3)... more Using visual world eye-tracking, we examined whether adults (N= 58) and children (N= 37; 3;1–6;3) use linguistic focussing devices to help resolve ambiguous pronouns. Participants listened to English dialogues about potential referents of an ambiguous pronoun he. Four conditions provided prosodic focus marking to the grammatical subject or to the object, which were either additionally it-clefted or not. A reference condition focussed neither the subject nor object. Adult online data revealed that linguistic focussing via prosodic marking enhanced subject preference, and overrode it in the case of object focus, regardless of the presence of clefts. Children’s processing was also influenced by prosodic marking; however, their performance across conditions showed some differences from adults, as well as a complex interaction with both their memory and language skills. Offline interpretations showed no effects of focus in either group, suggesting that while multiple cues are processed, ...

This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of t... more This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of the Inuit dialect continuum constituting a branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. Inuit is an extreme example of polysynthesis, with productive noun and verb incorporation that can be applied recursively, along with extensive word-internal modification. The main analysis is based on original data from South Baffin Island Inuktitut (Uqqurmiut), but the chapter also examines the literature on other varieties from across the language family. We present acoustic analyses of three potential correlates of stress or prominence: duration, fundamental frequency and intensity. Duration of syllables increased at the end of the word, while fundamental frequency and intensity dropped at the right word edge. Word-internally, no alternating or other regular patterns appeared. Comparing these results to hypotheses of what would be expected for metrical stress systems and other types of word prominen...

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2021

Two experiments quantitatively investigated the interaction of prosody and syntax in marking focu... more Two experiments quantitatively investigated the interaction of prosody and syntax in marking focus in English. A production study with 28 participants (analyzing 919 utterances) found that the acoustic marking of subject focus vs broad focus, induced through a preceding context question, was generally the same in clefts as in sentences with unmarked syntax. Thus, results suggested that prosody is independent from syntax rather than showing a trade-off (weaker prosodic marking for clefts). Focus was marked with f0 range, f0 maxima, f0 minima, duration, and intensity. Maxima of focused subjects were not significantly higher, but they were earlier than in broad focus. In a perception experiment, 230 participants rated the suitability of 24 auditorily presented stimuli as answers to preceding context questions inducing subject focus or broad focus. Clefts and sentences prosodically marking the subject as focused were rated higher in subject focus than in broad focus contexts. Syntax and prosody did not interact, again suggesting the absence of a trade-off. Thus, both studies suggest an additive use of syntax and prosody: Prosodic focus marking was equally extensive and effective in the presence of syntactic focus marking as without.

Laboratory Phonology, 2017

Applied Psycholinguistics, 2024

This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from diffe... more This study used the visual world paradigm to investigate novel word learning in adults from different language backgrounds and the effects of phonology, homophony, and rest on the outcome. We created Mandarin novel words varied by types of phonological contrasts and homophone status. During the experiment, native (n = 34) and non-native speakers (English; n = 30) learned pairs of novel words and were tested twice with a 15minute break in between, which was spent either resting or gaming. In the post-break test of novel word recognition, an interaction appeared between language backgrounds, phonology, and homophony: non-native speakers performed less accurately than native speakers only on non-homophones learned in pairs with tone contrasts. Eye movement data indicated that non-native speakers' processing of tones may be more effortful than their processing of segments while learning homophones, as demonstrated by the time course. Interestingly, no significant effects of rest were observed across language groups; yet after gaming, native speakers achieved higher accuracy than non-native speakers. Overall, this study suggests that Mandarin novel word learning can be affected by participants' language backgrounds and phonological and homophonous features of words. However, the role of short periods of rest in novel word learning requires further investigation.

Language Acquisition, 2024

Studies on young children’s comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interp... more Studies on young children’s comprehension have shown that children can experience problems interpreting object pronouns, even when reflexive interpretation is already adult-like. Compared to resolving reflexives, linking pronouns to a referent is considered a more “intensive” process, because it also involves non-syntactic factors like discourse context. This could explain why children experience more difficulties with pronouns than with reflexives. Using eye-tracking and a truth value judgement task, we investigated the effect of focus via it-clefts on the processing of reflexives and pronouns in German-speaking children and adults. We analyzed gaze data of two time segments: before and during the mention of the pronoun/reflexive. The cleft segment revealed similar processing of it-clefts in children and adults. In the subsequent reflexive/pronoun segment, clefts caused adults to pay overall more attention to the local referent, while children fixated the clefted non-local referent more. The difference in focus effect, that is, children attend the clefted referent more, while adults pay more attention to the non-clefted referent, helped uncover processing differences between children and adults. That is, unlike adults, children consider only the local discourse context during referential processing. We argue that these processing differences cause children’s interpretation difficulties. However, the offline data showed no effect of information structure, suggesting that whether the processing differences transfer to the final interpretation depends on the language-specific function of the pronoun system, which may aid in restricting referential links.

Cognitive Science, 2024

We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection task... more We report the results of one visual-world eye-tracking experiment and two referent selection tasks in which we investigated the effects of information structure in the form of prosody and word order manipulation on the processing of subject pronouns er and der in German. Factors such as subjecthood, focus, and topicality, as well as order of mention have been linked to an increased probability of certain referents being selected as the pronoun's antecedent and described as increasing this referent's prominence, salience, or accessibility. The goal of this study was to find out whether pronoun processing is primarily guided by linguistic factors (e.g., grammatical role) or nonlinguistic factors (e.g., first-mention), and whether pronoun interpretation can be described in terms of referents' “prominence” / “accessibility” / “salience.” The results showed an overall subject preference for er, whereas der was affected by the object role and focus marking. While focus increases the attentional load and enhances memory representation for the focused referent making the focused referent more available, ultimately it did not affect the final interpretation of er, suggesting that “prominence” or the related concepts do not explain referent selection preferences. Overall, the results suggest a primacy of linguistic factors in determining pronoun resolution.

Laboratory Phonology, 2024

Previous studies reported mixed findings regarding the details of the acoustic correlates of focu... more Previous studies reported mixed findings regarding the details of the acoustic correlates of focus, as well as the relationship between information structure and pitch accent types in English. Moreover, previous studies showed that different varieties of English signal information structure differently.Therefore, we hypothesized that the way focus is expressed in terms of acoustic correlates and/or pitch accents in Canadian English would differ from Mainstream American English (MAE). Thirty-eight native speakers of Canadian English produced 24 short transitive sentences in different focus conditions: broad focus and narrow focus in different locations (Subject, Verb, Object). The speakers of Canadian English in the current study manifested some, but not all of the effects of focus that have been reported in previous research on MAE and other languages. Specifically, focus induced lengthening of focused constituents but not enhancement of intensity or f0. Instead, focus-adjacent constituents were weakened in terms of duration, intensity and f0.

Word prominence in languages with complex morphology, 2023

This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of t... more This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of the Inuit dialect continuum constituting a branch of the Inuit-Yupik-Unangan language family. The Inuit language is an extreme example of polysynthesis, with productive noun and verb incorporation that can be applied recursively, along with extensive word-internal modification. The main analysis is based on original data from South Baffin Island (Qikiqtaaluk Nigiani) Inuktitut, but the chapter also examines the literature on other varieties from across the language family. We present acoustic analyses of three potential correlates of stress or prominence: duration, fundamental frequency and intensity. Duration of syllables increased at the end of the word, while fundamental frequency and intensity dropped at the right word edge. Word-internally, no alternating or other regular patterns appeared. Comparing these results to hypotheses of what would be expected for metrical stress systems and other types of word prominence, we conclude that there is no indication that South Baffin Island Inuktitut has stress or another type of word-level prominence. Instead, in line with previous research on Inuit prosody, we find that the language regularly marks the borders of words and other prosodic constituents.

Proc. Speech Prosody 2022, 2022

The current study investigated how broad focus, narrow focus and given information are produced i... more The current study investigated how broad focus, narrow focus and given information are produced in Canadian English. Given previous findings that showed different varieties of English signal information structure differently, we hypothesized that the effects of focus on acoustic correlates involving duration, f0, and intensity would manifest differently in Canadian English than in American English. Thirty-eight native speakers of Canadian English produced 24 short transitive sentences in different focus conditions: broad focus and narrow focus in different locations (Subject, Verb, Object). A total of 2,736 words were analyzed. While some acoustic correlates such as duration and maximum intensity replicated the same patterns as previous findings in American English, mean intensity and f0 measures showed different patterns. These results suggest that speakers of Canadian English may employ a different set of acoustic correlates from speakers of American English. The study sheds light on the role of dialect in the production of broad and narrow focus and expands our knowledge about the fine-grained details of the phonetic realization of prosodic focus marking in English.

This dissertation provides an analysis of Finnish prosody, with a focus on the sentence or phrase... more This dissertation provides an analysis of Finnish prosody, with a focus on the sentence or phrase level. The thesis analyses Finnish as a phrase language. Thus, it accounts for prosodic variation through prosodic phrasing and explains intonational differences in terms of phrase tones. Finnish intonation has traditionally been described in terms of accents associated with stressed syllables, i.e. similarly as prototypical intonation languages like English or German. However, accents are usually described as uniform instead of forming an inventory of contrasting accent types. The present thesis confirms the uniformity of Finnish tonal contours and explains it as based on realisations of tones associated with prosodic phrases instead of accents. Two levels of phrasing are discussed: Prosodic phrases (p-phrases) and intonational phrases (i-phrases). Most prominently, the p-phrase is marked by a high tone associated with its beginning and a low tone associated with its end; realisations ...

Using a language game to elicit short sentences in various information structural conditions, we ... more Using a language game to elicit short sentences in various information structural conditions, we found that Finnish 4- to 5-year-olds already exhibit a characteristic interaction between prosody and word order in marking information structure. Providing insights into the acquisition of this complex system of interactions, the production data showed interesting parallels to adult speakers of Finnish on the one hand and to children acquiring other languages on the other hand. Analyzing a total of 571 sentences produced by 16 children, we found that children rarely adjusted input word order, but did systematically avoid marked OVS order in contrastive object focus condition. Focus condition also significantly affected four prosodic parameters, f0, duration, pauses and voice quality. Differing slightly from effects displayed in adult Finnish speech, the children produced larger f0 ranges for words in contrastive focus and smaller ones for unfocused words, varied only the duration of obj...

Intonational Phonology: Understudied or Fieldwork Languages. Satellite Work- shop of ICPhS XVI, 2007

The Oxford Handbook of Language Prosody, 2020

Goidelic word stress is initial but with some signs of quantity sensitivity. Phrasal intonation t... more Goidelic word stress is initial but with some signs of quantity sensitivity. Phrasal intonation tends to be falling (for both declaratives and questions) in southern Irish dialects but rising in northern ones. Interrogativity is marked by phonetic adjustments in initial or final accents of the utterance. Icelandic and Faroese have traditional word-initial stress-to-weight but show signs of penultimate stress patterns in loanwords. Intonation is characterized by phrasal accents within overall downtrend patterns (also in questions, but with some accentual distinctions). The polysynthetic structure of the Inuit languages makes the notion of lexical stress irrelevant, but tonal targets are associated with prosodic domains of various kinds, and a distinction is made between word-level and phrase-level tones; devoicing and truncation are utterance final. In Central Alaskan Yupik, primary word stress marks the last foot by pitch movement. Enclitic bound phrases, phrasal compounds, and non-...

Anatomy of a Short Story : Nabokov’s Puzzles, Codes, “Signs and Symbols”

Cognitive Science, 2016

We use visual world eye-tracking to test if a speaker’s eye gaze to a potential antecedent modula... more We use visual world eye-tracking to test if a speaker’s eye gaze to a potential antecedent modulates the listener’s interpretation of an ambiguous pronoun. Participants listened to stories that included an ambiguous pronoun, such as “The dolphin kisses the goldfish... He....” During the prepronominal context, an onscreen narrator gazed at one of the two characters. As expected, participants looked more at the subject character overall. However, this was modulated by the narrator’s eye gaze and the amount of time the participant spent looking at the gaze cue. For trials in which participants attended to the narrator’s eye gaze for > 500ms, participants were significantly more likely to interpret the pronoun as referring to the object if the narrator had previously looked at the object. Results suggest that eye gaze – a social cue – can temper even strong linguistic/cognitive biases in pronoun resolution, such as the subject/first-mention bias.

This paper provides a first account of prosodic structure and the correspondence between prosodic... more This paper provides a first account of prosodic structure and the correspondence between prosodic and morphosyntactic constituents in South Baffin Inuktitut. Analyzing scripted dialogues between two speakers, we found that orthographic words were consistently marked by an f0 fall, while some prosodic variation occurred in utterance-final position. We propose that our intonational analysis shows evidence for two prosodic units: a smaller one corresponding to orthographic words, termed ‘prosodic word’ here, and a larger one delimited by pauses, identified as the intonational phrase. These two prosodic units exhibit remarkable regularity with respect to their tonal marking, with words regularly being marked by HL tones and intonational phrases mostly being demarcated by an additional L tone. This finding suggests that there is a robust prosodic correlate for the notion of “wordhood” in Inuktitut: orthographic words, whether or not they exhibit polysynthetic properties such as noun inco...

This paper investigates instrumentally for the first time the binary vowel quantity opposition (s... more This paper investigates instrumentally for the first time the binary vowel quantity opposition (short vs. long) in Yakut (or Sakha) on the basis of spontaneous production data from nine speakers. Acoustic measurements of vowels in disyllabic words showed a significantly shorter duration of short vowels than their long counterparts. Furthermore, f0 maxima and f0 slope showed effects of both quantity and syllable number. The results suggest that pitch is an additional phonetic correlate of vowel quantity in Yakut, alongside with the robust durational difference between short and long vowels.

Frontiers in Psychology, 2021

Using visual world eye-tracking, we examined whether adults (N= 58) and children (N= 37; 3;1–6;3)... more Using visual world eye-tracking, we examined whether adults (N= 58) and children (N= 37; 3;1–6;3) use linguistic focussing devices to help resolve ambiguous pronouns. Participants listened to English dialogues about potential referents of an ambiguous pronoun he. Four conditions provided prosodic focus marking to the grammatical subject or to the object, which were either additionally it-clefted or not. A reference condition focussed neither the subject nor object. Adult online data revealed that linguistic focussing via prosodic marking enhanced subject preference, and overrode it in the case of object focus, regardless of the presence of clefts. Children’s processing was also influenced by prosodic marking; however, their performance across conditions showed some differences from adults, as well as a complex interaction with both their memory and language skills. Offline interpretations showed no effects of focus in either group, suggesting that while multiple cues are processed, ...

This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of t... more This chapter addresses the question of word prominence in Eastern Canadian Inuktitut, a part of the Inuit dialect continuum constituting a branch of the Eskimo-Aleut language family. Inuit is an extreme example of polysynthesis, with productive noun and verb incorporation that can be applied recursively, along with extensive word-internal modification. The main analysis is based on original data from South Baffin Island Inuktitut (Uqqurmiut), but the chapter also examines the literature on other varieties from across the language family. We present acoustic analyses of three potential correlates of stress or prominence: duration, fundamental frequency and intensity. Duration of syllables increased at the end of the word, while fundamental frequency and intensity dropped at the right word edge. Word-internally, no alternating or other regular patterns appeared. Comparing these results to hypotheses of what would be expected for metrical stress systems and other types of word prominen...

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2021

Two experiments quantitatively investigated the interaction of prosody and syntax in marking focu... more Two experiments quantitatively investigated the interaction of prosody and syntax in marking focus in English. A production study with 28 participants (analyzing 919 utterances) found that the acoustic marking of subject focus vs broad focus, induced through a preceding context question, was generally the same in clefts as in sentences with unmarked syntax. Thus, results suggested that prosody is independent from syntax rather than showing a trade-off (weaker prosodic marking for clefts). Focus was marked with f0 range, f0 maxima, f0 minima, duration, and intensity. Maxima of focused subjects were not significantly higher, but they were earlier than in broad focus. In a perception experiment, 230 participants rated the suitability of 24 auditorily presented stimuli as answers to preceding context questions inducing subject focus or broad focus. Clefts and sentences prosodically marking the subject as focused were rated higher in subject focus than in broad focus contexts. Syntax and prosody did not interact, again suggesting the absence of a trade-off. Thus, both studies suggest an additive use of syntax and prosody: Prosodic focus marking was equally extensive and effective in the presence of syntactic focus marking as without.

Laboratory Phonology, 2017

This dissertation provides an analysis of Finnish prosody, with a focus on the sentence or phrase... more This dissertation provides an analysis of Finnish prosody, with a focus on the sentence or phrase level. The thesis analyses Finnish as a phrase language. Thus, it accounts for prosodic variation through prosodic phrasing and explains intonational differences in terms of phrase tones.
Finnish intonation has traditionally been described in terms of accents associated with stressed syllables, i.e. similarly as prototypical intonation languages like English or German. However, accents are usually described as uniform instead of forming an inventory of contrasting accent types. The present thesis confirms the uniformity of Finnish tonal contours and explains it as based on realisations of tones associated with prosodic phrases instead of accents. Two levels of phrasing are discussed: Prosodic phrases (p-phrases) and intonational phrases (i-phrases). Most prominently, the p-phrase is marked by a high tone associated with its beginning and a low
tone associated with its end; realisations of these tones form the rise-fall contours traditionally analysed as accents. The i-phrase is associated with a final tone that is either low or high and additionally marked by voice quality and final lengthening. While the tonal specifications of these phrases are thus predominantly invariant, variation arises from different distributions of phrases.
This analysis is based on three studies, two production experiments and one perception study. The first production study investigated systematic variation in information structure, first syllable vowel quantity and the target word’s position in the sentence, while the second production experiment induced variation in information structure, first and second syllable type and number of syllables. In addition to fundamental frequency, the materials were analysed regarding duration, the occurrence of pauses and voice quality. The perception study investigated the interpretation of compound/noun phrase minimal pairs with manipulated fundamental frequency contours using a two-alternative forced-choice picture selection task. Additionally, a pilot perception study on variation in peak height and timing supported the assumption of uniform tonal contours.