Grace Yeni-Komshian | University of Maryland, College Park (original) (raw)
Papers by Grace Yeni-Komshian
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 1994
This study makes use of a listening for mispronunciations (LM) task utilizing English sentences p... more This study makes use of a listening for mispronunciations (LM) task utilizing English sentences produced by native and nonnative speakers. The test sentences included high (H) and low (L) predictability target words containing mispronunciations (MPs) that were constructed by changing the initial segmental phoneme in the target words along the dimensions of voicing, place, and manner. Sentences not containing MPs were judged by native listeners for overall accent and the speakers were classified as native, having a mild-to-moderate accent or having a heavy accent. Another group of native listeners were presented the LM task. The results showed that the listeners were faster and more accurate in detecting MPs produced by the native than non-native speakers. They were more accurate, but not faster, in detecting MPs produced by non-native speakers with milder accents, as compared to heavier accents. The results also indicate that the listeners were faster and/or more accurate n detecting MP in the H sentences, and this was more pronounced with the sentences produced by the non-native speakers. The findings suggest that listeners are less accurate in detecting mispronunciations produced by non-native speakers and that the accuracy of their responses decreases as the degree of accent increases.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Nov 1, 1975
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jul 1, 1969
Canadian journal of psychology, Mar 1, 1983
Journal of Phonetics, 1977
Elsevier eBooks, 1980
Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on speech production in the child. The use of language is ... more Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on speech production in the child. The use of language is one of the most distinctive characteristics of the human species. One part of human language behavior, which is to a considerable extent autonomous, is the pronunciation; the speech sounds themselves as articulated and perceived by human beings in their use of language. The phonological production research, concerned with the structure of whole phonological systems, falls into three fairly distinct phases, related to successive dominant phonological theories—structuralist, generative, and post-generative. Learnability by children is the basic determinant of phonological structure. Children do not have a system of their own, and their phonology can be analyzed usefully only in relation to the adult system. They have, at an early age, full perceptual mastery of the adult phonological oppositions and have lexical representations equivalent to the adult surface forms. Their pronunciation falls short of the adult's because of lack of mastery of the necessary articulatory processes. Their phonological system includes a set of ordered realization rules that apply to the underlying representations to yield the pronunciation.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Apr 1, 1991
The present study examined tongue shape during oral and pharyngeal consonants. A female speaker o... more The present study examined tongue shape during oral and pharyngeal consonants. A female speaker of Lebanese Arabic produced oral and pharyngealized versions of several consonants in the carrier phrase “Kataba CV al yom,” which means “He wrote CV today.” Ultrasound scans of the tongue were made in two planes, midsagittal and anterior coronal, during repetitions of the utterances. The [h] had the most interesting results. Pharyngealized [h] used a higher posterior tongue than oral [h]. In addition, a midsagittal humping was seen in the pharyngeal [h]. The oral [h] had a midsagittal groove as expected. Similar effects seen in other CV combinations will be discussed.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1973
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, Oct 1, 1996
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 1992
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 1995
Internal open juncture refers to a set of two or more phrases which contain the same sequence of ... more Internal open juncture refers to a set of two or more phrases which contain the same sequence of phonemes, but differ in their prosody, meaning, and orthography. In this study, ten adult native speakers of Mexican Spanish read three sets of phrases. Each set of phrases contained two words and three syllables with the sequence 〈la〉♯〈sa〉, 〈las〉♯〈a〉, and 〈las〉♯〈sa〉, as in the phrases la sabes ‘‘you know it,’’ las aves ‘‘the birds,’’ and las sabes ‘‘you know them.’’ The phrases were read both in isolation and embedded in sentences (initial, medial, and final positions). Acoustic phonetic measurements were made of: (1) the duration of pauses (when present) between the first orthographic word and the second, (2) the duration of 〈s〉 and 〈ss〉, and (3) the average duration, fundamental frequency, and amplitude of the first syllable versus the second. Preliminary results suggest that internal open juncture in Mexican Spanish is more salient in phrases read in isolation than embedded in sentence contexts and that pause duration is the most consistent indicator of internal open juncture.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1984
A study was conducted to determine whether five-year old children and adults modify the timing of... more A study was conducted to determine whether five-year old children and adults modify the timing of vowel and consonant production after a listener indicates that their word production is unclear. Subjects were asked to repeat words contrasting in initial or final consonant voicing (back, pack, cab, and cap), and to respond either to specific requests for revision focused on initial or final sound segments, or to a general revision request. Productions of target words were also obtained before any revision requests were posed. Results, based on oscillographic measurements, revealed that both groups of subjects: (a) preserved original work duration in all revision conditions, but altered temporal aspects of component phonemes; (b) generally shortened vowel duration but lengthened the duration of final consonant closure; and (c) maintained the same VOT distributions. Results indicate that young children are in fact responsive to adult requests for clarification, even at the phonetic lev...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1984
Using LPC analysis, an investigation of anticipatory vowel coarticulation was made of 100-ms segm... more Using LPC analysis, an investigation of anticipatory vowel coarticulation was made of 100-ms segments of Arabic voiceless fricatives (/h, x, ∫, and s/) spoken in isolation and in three prevocalic contexts (/ɑ, i, and u/) by three native speakers. The degree of coarticulation for each prevocalic fricative segment was determined by assessing both the amount of spectral change from the isolated production, and the relationship of prevocalic fricative peaks to vowel formats. Strong coarticulation was observed for all speakers in all three vowel contexts for the pharyngeal fricative /h/, while minimal coarticulatory effects were present for the dental fricative /s/. Vowel specific trends were evident for the palatal /∫/ and velar /x/ fricatives: strong coarticulation was seen for /xi/, /xu/, /∫i/ and/ ∫ɑ/ and not the remaining utterances. Individual differences were evident with respect to degree of coarticulation. The three speakers behaved similarly for only three of the 12 fricative-v...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1973
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
This investigation examined age-related differences in auditory-visual (AV) integration as reflec... more This investigation examined age-related differences in auditory-visual (AV) integration as reflected on perceptual judgments of temporally misaligned AV English sentences spoken by native English and native Spanish talkers. In the detection task, it was expected that slowed auditory temporal processing of older participants, relative to younger participants, would be manifest as a shift in the range over which participants would judge asynchronous stimuli as synchronous (referred to as the “AV simultaneity window”). The older participants were also expected to exhibit greater declines in speech recognition for asynchronous AV stimuli than younger participants. Talker accent was hypothesized to influence listener performance, with older listeners exhibiting a greater narrowing of the AV simultaneity window and much poorer recognition of asynchronous AV foreign-accented speech compared to younger listeners. Participant groups included younger and older participants with normal hearing...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2021
Older adults often report difficulty understanding speech produced by non-native talkers. These l... more Older adults often report difficulty understanding speech produced by non-native talkers. These listeners can achieve rapid adaptation to non-native speech, but few studies have assessed auditory training protocols to improve non-native speech recognition in older adults. In this study, a word-level training paradigm was employed, targeting improved recognition of Spanish-accented English. Younger and older adults were trained on Spanish-accented monosyllabic word pairs containing four phonemic contrasts (initial s/z, initial f/v, final b/p, final d/t) produced in English by multiple male native Spanish speakers. Listeners completed pre-testing, training, and post-testing over two sessions. Statistical methods, such as growth curve modeling and generalized additive mixed models, were employed to describe the patterns of rapid adaptation and how they varied between listener groups and phonemic contrasts. While the training protocol failed to elicit post-test improvements for recognit...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1970
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1967
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 1994
This study makes use of a listening for mispronunciations (LM) task utilizing English sentences p... more This study makes use of a listening for mispronunciations (LM) task utilizing English sentences produced by native and nonnative speakers. The test sentences included high (H) and low (L) predictability target words containing mispronunciations (MPs) that were constructed by changing the initial segmental phoneme in the target words along the dimensions of voicing, place, and manner. Sentences not containing MPs were judged by native listeners for overall accent and the speakers were classified as native, having a mild-to-moderate accent or having a heavy accent. Another group of native listeners were presented the LM task. The results showed that the listeners were faster and more accurate in detecting MPs produced by the native than non-native speakers. They were more accurate, but not faster, in detecting MPs produced by non-native speakers with milder accents, as compared to heavier accents. The results also indicate that the listeners were faster and/or more accurate n detecting MP in the H sentences, and this was more pronounced with the sentences produced by the non-native speakers. The findings suggest that listeners are less accurate in detecting mispronunciations produced by non-native speakers and that the accuracy of their responses decreases as the degree of accent increases.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Nov 1, 1975
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Jul 1, 1969
Canadian journal of psychology, Mar 1, 1983
Journal of Phonetics, 1977
Elsevier eBooks, 1980
Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on speech production in the child. The use of language is ... more Publisher Summary This chapter focuses on speech production in the child. The use of language is one of the most distinctive characteristics of the human species. One part of human language behavior, which is to a considerable extent autonomous, is the pronunciation; the speech sounds themselves as articulated and perceived by human beings in their use of language. The phonological production research, concerned with the structure of whole phonological systems, falls into three fairly distinct phases, related to successive dominant phonological theories—structuralist, generative, and post-generative. Learnability by children is the basic determinant of phonological structure. Children do not have a system of their own, and their phonology can be analyzed usefully only in relation to the adult system. They have, at an early age, full perceptual mastery of the adult phonological oppositions and have lexical representations equivalent to the adult surface forms. Their pronunciation falls short of the adult's because of lack of mastery of the necessary articulatory processes. Their phonological system includes a set of ordered realization rules that apply to the underlying representations to yield the pronunciation.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Apr 1, 1991
The present study examined tongue shape during oral and pharyngeal consonants. A female speaker o... more The present study examined tongue shape during oral and pharyngeal consonants. A female speaker of Lebanese Arabic produced oral and pharyngealized versions of several consonants in the carrier phrase “Kataba CV al yom,” which means “He wrote CV today.” Ultrasound scans of the tongue were made in two planes, midsagittal and anterior coronal, during repetitions of the utterances. The [h] had the most interesting results. Pharyngealized [h] used a higher posterior tongue than oral [h]. In addition, a midsagittal humping was seen in the pharyngeal [h]. The oral [h] had a midsagittal groove as expected. Similar effects seen in other CV combinations will be discussed.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1973
Journal of Speech Language and Hearing Research, Oct 1, 1996
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct 1, 1992
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, May 1, 1995
Internal open juncture refers to a set of two or more phrases which contain the same sequence of ... more Internal open juncture refers to a set of two or more phrases which contain the same sequence of phonemes, but differ in their prosody, meaning, and orthography. In this study, ten adult native speakers of Mexican Spanish read three sets of phrases. Each set of phrases contained two words and three syllables with the sequence 〈la〉♯〈sa〉, 〈las〉♯〈a〉, and 〈las〉♯〈sa〉, as in the phrases la sabes ‘‘you know it,’’ las aves ‘‘the birds,’’ and las sabes ‘‘you know them.’’ The phrases were read both in isolation and embedded in sentences (initial, medial, and final positions). Acoustic phonetic measurements were made of: (1) the duration of pauses (when present) between the first orthographic word and the second, (2) the duration of 〈s〉 and 〈ss〉, and (3) the average duration, fundamental frequency, and amplitude of the first syllable versus the second. Preliminary results suggest that internal open juncture in Mexican Spanish is more salient in phrases read in isolation than embedded in sentence contexts and that pause duration is the most consistent indicator of internal open juncture.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1984
A study was conducted to determine whether five-year old children and adults modify the timing of... more A study was conducted to determine whether five-year old children and adults modify the timing of vowel and consonant production after a listener indicates that their word production is unclear. Subjects were asked to repeat words contrasting in initial or final consonant voicing (back, pack, cab, and cap), and to respond either to specific requests for revision focused on initial or final sound segments, or to a general revision request. Productions of target words were also obtained before any revision requests were posed. Results, based on oscillographic measurements, revealed that both groups of subjects: (a) preserved original work duration in all revision conditions, but altered temporal aspects of component phonemes; (b) generally shortened vowel duration but lengthened the duration of final consonant closure; and (c) maintained the same VOT distributions. Results indicate that young children are in fact responsive to adult requests for clarification, even at the phonetic lev...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1984
Using LPC analysis, an investigation of anticipatory vowel coarticulation was made of 100-ms segm... more Using LPC analysis, an investigation of anticipatory vowel coarticulation was made of 100-ms segments of Arabic voiceless fricatives (/h, x, ∫, and s/) spoken in isolation and in three prevocalic contexts (/ɑ, i, and u/) by three native speakers. The degree of coarticulation for each prevocalic fricative segment was determined by assessing both the amount of spectral change from the isolated production, and the relationship of prevocalic fricative peaks to vowel formats. Strong coarticulation was observed for all speakers in all three vowel contexts for the pharyngeal fricative /h/, while minimal coarticulatory effects were present for the dental fricative /s/. Vowel specific trends were evident for the palatal /∫/ and velar /x/ fricatives: strong coarticulation was seen for /xi/, /xu/, /∫i/ and/ ∫ɑ/ and not the remaining utterances. Individual differences were evident with respect to degree of coarticulation. The three speakers behaved similarly for only three of the 12 fricative-v...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1973
Frontiers in Psychology, 2022
This investigation examined age-related differences in auditory-visual (AV) integration as reflec... more This investigation examined age-related differences in auditory-visual (AV) integration as reflected on perceptual judgments of temporally misaligned AV English sentences spoken by native English and native Spanish talkers. In the detection task, it was expected that slowed auditory temporal processing of older participants, relative to younger participants, would be manifest as a shift in the range over which participants would judge asynchronous stimuli as synchronous (referred to as the “AV simultaneity window”). The older participants were also expected to exhibit greater declines in speech recognition for asynchronous AV stimuli than younger participants. Talker accent was hypothesized to influence listener performance, with older listeners exhibiting a greater narrowing of the AV simultaneity window and much poorer recognition of asynchronous AV foreign-accented speech compared to younger listeners. Participant groups included younger and older participants with normal hearing...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2021
Older adults often report difficulty understanding speech produced by non-native talkers. These l... more Older adults often report difficulty understanding speech produced by non-native talkers. These listeners can achieve rapid adaptation to non-native speech, but few studies have assessed auditory training protocols to improve non-native speech recognition in older adults. In this study, a word-level training paradigm was employed, targeting improved recognition of Spanish-accented English. Younger and older adults were trained on Spanish-accented monosyllabic word pairs containing four phonemic contrasts (initial s/z, initial f/v, final b/p, final d/t) produced in English by multiple male native Spanish speakers. Listeners completed pre-testing, training, and post-testing over two sessions. Statistical methods, such as growth curve modeling and generalized additive mixed models, were employed to describe the patterns of rapid adaptation and how they varied between listener groups and phonemic contrasts. While the training protocol failed to elicit post-test improvements for recognit...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1970
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1967