Probabilistic relations between words

Jurafsky, Daniel; Bell, Alan; Gregory, Michelle; Raymond, William D.

doi:10.1075/tsl.45.13jur

Cited by 560 publications

(89 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…While a basic relationship between reduction and probability has long been established (e.g., Jespersen, 1922;Zipf, 1929), this relationship has more recently become a central concern in the field, dubbed the 'Probabilistic Reduction Hypothesis ' in Jurafsky et al (2001) The idea is supported by findings that show that frequent words and words that are highly predictable in a certain context tend to be reduced in terms of their phonetic duration, and/or with respect to their segmental content. Such effects are often seen as a rational use of resources from an information-theoretic perspective: Highly probable words may be easier to retrieve for speakers during planning and easier to recover for listeners in perception (cf.…”

Section: Variability and Probabilistic Reductionsupporting

confidence: 54%

“…CSD has been found to be affected by word frequency in several studies that explore probabilistic reduction in word-final coronal stops (e.g., Bybee, 2000;Coetzee & Kawahara, 2013;Gregory et al, 1999;Jurafsky et al, 2001) and word-medial coronal stops (Raymond et al, 2006). A recurring finding is that CSD is more likely to apply in frequent words compared to infrequent words (see also Gahl & Garsney, 2006;Guy et al, 2008;Pluymaekers et al, 2005).…”

Section: Variability and Probabilistic Reductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

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Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

Tanner

Sonderegger

Wagner

2017

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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Many phonological processes can be affected by segmental context spanning word boundaries, which often lead to variable outcomes. This paper tests the idea that some of this variability can be explained by reference to production planning. We examine coronal stop deletion (CSD), a variable process conditioned by preceding and upcoming phonological context, in a corpus of spontaneous British English speech, as a means of investigating a number of variables associated with planning: Prosodic boundary strength, word frequency, conditional probability of the following word, and speech rate. From the perspective of production planning, (1) prosodic boundaries should affect deletion rate independently of following context; (2) given the locality of production planning, the effect of the following context should decrease at stronger prosodic boundaries; and (3) other factors affecting planning scope should modulate the effect of upcoming phonological material above and beyond the modulating effect of prosodic boundaries. We build a statistical model of CSD realization, using pause length as a quantitative proxy for boundary strength, and find support for these predictions. These findings are compatible with the hypothesis that the locality of production planning constrains variability in speech production, and have practical implications for work on CSD and other variable processes.

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Section: Variability and Probabilistic Reductionsupporting

confidence: 54%

Section: Variability and Probabilistic Reductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

Tanner

Sonderegger

Wagner

2017

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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“…A growing body of studies report phonetic and phonological reduction of frequent and/or predictable words and segments, which cannot simply be attributed to fast articulation rates (e.g., Aylett & Turk, 2006;Baese-Berk & Goldrick, 2009;Baran et al, 1977;Bybee, 2000;Ernestus, 2000;Fosler-Lussier & Morgan, 1999;Frank & Jaeger, 2008;Fricke, 2013;Gahl et al, 2012;Jurafsky et al, 2001;Lieberman, 1963;Munson, 2007). Where it is predictable, voicing specifications may not need to be as clearly signaled by VOT for successful communication, considering the facilitative effects of listener expectations on word recognition (e.g., Rubenstein & Pollack, 1963) and listener tolerance for acoustic mismatches in reduced speech (Brouwer et al, 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The VOT Category Boundary in Word-Initial Stops: Counter-Evidence Against Rate Normalization in English Spontaneous Speech

Nakai

Scobbie

2016

Laboratory Phonology

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Some languages, such as many varieties of English, use short-lag and long-lag VOT to distinguish word-and syllable-initial voiced vs. voiceless stop phonemes. According to a popular view, the optimal VOT category boundary between the two types of stops moves towards larger values as articulation rate becomes slower (and speech segments longer), and listeners accordingly shift the perceptual VOT category boundary. According to an alternative view, listeners do not shift the VOT category boundary with a change in articulation rate, because the same category boundary remains optimal across different rates of articulation in normal speech, although a shift in the optimal boundary location can be induced in the laboratory by instructing speakers to use artificially extreme articulation rates. In this study we compared the effectiveness of rateindependent VOT category boundaries applied to word-initial stop phonemes in spontaneous English speech, against the effectiveness of Miller et al.'s (1986) rate-dependent VOT category boundary applied to laboratory speech. The effectiveness of the two types of category boundaries were comparable, when spontaneous speech data were controlled for factors other than articulation rate. Our results suggest that perceptual VOT category boundaries need not shift with a change in articulation rate under normal circumstances.

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“…The first is lexical predictability, which is where speakers produce certain words with shorter durations and/or greater phonological reduction when they are predictable. For example, speakers tend to use shorter pronunciations for frequent words, as well as words that are highly probable given the preceding and/or following word (Aylett & Turk, 2004;Bell et al, 2009;Frank & Jaeger, 2008;Gahl & Garnsey, 2004;Gahl et al, 2012;Jurafsky et al, 1998;Jurafsky et al, 2001). Another example comes from Lieberman (1963), where the word "nine" in the common maxim, "a stitch in time saves nine" has less emphasis (lower intelligibility) than in, "the next number you will hear is nine."…”

Section: Does Thematic Role Predictability Affect Duration?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…When words are redundant with the context, they are easier to retrieve and are pronounced with shorter durations (e.g., Aylett & Turk, 2004;Bell et al, 2009;Gahl et al, 2012;Jurafsky et al, 2001). Bell et al (2009) argued that the contextual probability of a word affects the speed at which it is accessed, and speakers utilize word duration as a mechanism to coordinate between planning and articulation, in order to maintain fluent delivery.…”

Section: The Lexical Facilitation and Planning Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Thematic role predictability and planning affect word duration

Zerkle

Rosa

Arnold

2017

Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology

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It is known that acoustic variation is influenced by the predictability of words and the information that they represent. What is unknown is whether acoustic reduction is also influenced by the referential predictability of thematic roles. We tested this question in two production experiments, where speakers heard a sentence with goal/source arguments, e.g., "Lady Mannerly [source] gave a painting to Sir Barnes [goal]," and described a picture of a subsequent action, e.g., "Sir Barnes threw it in the closet." We analyzed the duration of full NP descriptions used to refer to the pictured character. We found that duration was shorter for references to the goal than the source, but only in Experiment 2, where the timing of the stimuli encouraged the participant to plan their response incrementally, and not Experiment 1, where participants could pre-plan their responses. The strongest finding across both experiments was that response latency predicted duration, and latency was influenced by the predictability of thematic roles: Goal continuations had significantly shorter latencies. Together, these findings suggest that thematic role predictability does affect acoustic duration, and may be related to the time needed for utterance planning.

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Probabilistic relations between words

Cited by 560 publications

References 22 publications

Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

Production planning and coronal stop deletion in spontaneous speech

The VOT Category Boundary in Word-Initial Stops: Counter-Evidence Against Rate Normalization in English Spontaneous Speech

Thematic role predictability and planning affect word duration

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