Cross-linguistic differences in the use of durational cues for the segmentation of a novel language

Abstract

It is widely accepted that duration can be exploited as phonological phrase final lengthening in the segmentation of a novel language, i.e., in extracting discrete constituents from continuous speech. The use of final lengthening for segmentation and its facilitatory effect has been claimed to be universal. However, lengthening in the world languages can also mark lexically stressed syllables. Stress-induced lengthening can potentially be in conflict with right edge phonological phrase boundary lengthening. Thus the processing of durational cues in segmentation can be dependent on the listener's linguistic background, e.g. on the specific correlates and unmarked location of lexical stress in the native language of the listener. We tested this prediction and found that segmentation by both German and Basque speakers is facilitated when lengthening is aligned with the word final syllable and is not affected by lengthening on either the penultimate or the antepenultimate syllables. Lengthening of the word final syllable, however, does not help Italian and Spanish speakers to segment continuous speech, and lengthening of the antepenultimate syllable impedes their performance. We have also found a facilitatory effect of penultimate lengthening on segmentation by Italians.These results confirm our hypothesis that processing of lengthening cues is not universal, and interpretation of lengthening as a phonological phrase final boundary marker in a novel language of exposure can be overridden by the phonology of lexical stress in the native language of the listener.3

Neural bases of learning and recognition of statistical regularities

“…All participants had acquired Basque in childhood after the age of 2 as their second language and were using it daily. We note that prior studies have not revealed differences between monolingual Spanish and bilingual Spanish‐Basque participants in the segmentation of statistical units in offline recognition tests . Also, to mitigate the possibility that individual differences related to bilingualism might influence statistical learning processes, we homogenized our sample by matching participants by proficiency and age of acquisition (2–3 years) of the second language, as well as the self‐reported extent of their daily exposure to and use of Basque.…”

Frequency-tagged visual evoked responses track syllable effects in visual word recognition

“…Consequently, because syllables are important functional units in language processing (Geiser, Zaehle, Jancke, & Meyer, 2008;Levelt et al, 1999;MacNeilage, 1998;Ordin, Polyanskaya, Laka, & Nespor, 2017;Ramus et al, 1999), their neural representation should be characterized by more coherent neural dynamics and larger networks (including stronger connections with sensorimotor areas and associations with higher-order regions) compared to simple bi-or trigrams of letters.…”

Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages

“…An unresolved question is which aspects of local variation in speech rate are universal ( 3 , 4 ), which vary across languages and cultures ( 5 ), and which vary across individuals ( 6 ). For example, marking the end of utterances by slowing down speech is cross-linguistically common, but its implementation is language-specific ( 7 ). Good candidates for truly universal temporal features are the relatively fast pronunciations of frequent, and thus predictable, words ( 8 ) and second mentions of words ( 9 ).…”