scholarly journals Lexically conditioned phonetic variation in motherese: age-of-acquisition and other word-specific factors in infant- and adult-directed speech

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3-4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgia Zellou ◽  
Rebecca Scarborough
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Speech Signal ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Phonetic Variation ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood Density ◽  
Study Support ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood

AbstractWords produced to infants exhibit phonetic modifications relative to speech to adult interlocutors, such as longer, more canonical segments and prosodic enhancement. Meanwhile, within speech directed towards adults, phonetic variation is conditioned by word properties: lower word frequency and higher phonological neighborhood density (ND) correlate with increased hyperarticulation and degree of coarticulation. Both of these types of findings have interpretations that recruit listener-directed motivations, suggesting that talkers modify their speech in an effort to enhance the perceptibility of the speech signal. In that vein, the present study examines lexically-conditioned variation in infant-directed speech. Specifically, we predict that the adult-reported age at which a word was learned – lexical age-of-acquisition (AoA) – conditions phonetic variation in infant-directed speech. This prediction is indeed borne out in spontaneous infant-directed speech: later-acquired words are produced with more hyperarticulated vowels and a greater degree of nasal coarticulation. Meanwhile, ND predicts phonetic variation in data from spontaneous adult-directed speech, while AoA does not independently influence production. The patterns of findings in the current study support the stance that evaluation of the need for clarity is tuned to the listener. Lexical difficulty is evaluated by AoA in infant-directed speech, while ND is most relevant in adult-directed speech.

scholarly journals The Effect of Phonological Neighborhood Density on Vowel Articulation

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (5) ◽  
pp. 1048-1058 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Munson ◽  
Nancy Pearl Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Word Frequency ◽  
Recent Literature ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Low Density ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Vowel Production ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood Density ◽  
Formant Frequencies ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood

Recent literature suggests that phonological neighborhood density and word frequency can affect speech production, in addition to the well-documented effects that they have on speech perception. This article describes 2 experiments that examined how phonological neighborhood density influences the durations and formant frequencies of adults’ productions of vowels in real words. In Experiment 1, 10 normal speakers produced words that covaried in phonological neighborhood density and word frequency. Infrequent words with many phonological neighbors were produced with shorter durations and more expanded vowel spaces than frequent words with few phonological neighbors. Results of this experiment confirmed that this effect was not related to the duration of the vowels constituting the high- and low-density words. In Experiment 2, 15 adults produced words that varied in both word frequency and neighborhood density. Neighborhood density affected vowel articulation in both high- and low-frequency words. Moreover, frequent words were produced with more contracted vowel spaces than infrequent words. There was no interaction between these factors, and the vowel duration did not vary as a function of neighborhood density. Taken together, the results suggest that neighborhood density affects vowel production independent of word frequency and vowel duration.

scholarly journals When Phonological Neighborhood Density both Facilitates and Impedes: Age of Acquisition and Name Agreement Interact with Phonological Neighborhood during Word Production

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hossein Karimi ◽  
Michele T Diaz
Keyword(s):  
Target Word ◽  
Reaction Times ◽  
Age Of Acquisition ◽  
Word Production ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Lexical Retrieval ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood Density ◽  
Name Agreement ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood

The number of similar-sounding words that a target word has, or its Phonological Neighborhood Density (PND), has been shown to influence word production. However, reported results are sometimes inconsistent, with studies showing facilitation, inhibition, and null effects of phonological neighbors. These mixed results may be due to the influence of other factors beyond PND. We investigated the potential interactions between a broad measure of PND (bPND), and age of acquisition (AoA), frequency, and name agreement in order to see if the effect of bPND varies as a function of these three variables. We examined the effect of bPND on the latency of picture naming and observed significant interactions between bPND and AoA such that bPND facilitated lexical retrieval for words that were acquired early, but inhibited retrieval for words acquired later in life. We hypothesize that lexical retrieval difficulty ultimately depends on the activation level of the target word’s phonological representations relative to the activation levels of its neighbors’ phonological representations. When phonological features of the target word are weakly activated (i.e., late AoA), and bPND is high, the neighbors’ activation may overshadow the target’s, impeding target retrieval. However, when the target’s phonological representation is strongly activated, the activation of the neighbors might not exceed that of the target, thereby supporting phonological retrieval. We also observed interactions between bPND and name agreement such that increasing bPND led to faster reaction times, particularly when name agreement was lower, suggesting that bPND may also facilitate word retrieval when lexical competition is high.

Effects of word frequency and phonological neighborhood density on speech recognition in background noise and competing speech

2021 ◽  
Vol 150 (4) ◽  
pp. A276-A276
Author(s):  
Nicole Whittle ◽  
Christian Herrera Ortiz ◽  
Marjorie R. Leek ◽  
Jerome Heidrich ◽  
Mark Jenkins ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Speech Recognition ◽  
Word Frequency ◽  
Background Noise ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood Density ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood ◽  
Competing Speech

Successful Implicit Vocabulary Intervention for Three Cantonese-Speaking Toddlers: A Replicated Single-Case Design

2020 ◽  
Vol 63 (12) ◽  
pp. 4148-4161
Author(s):  
Christine S.-Y. Ng ◽  
Stephanie F. Stokes ◽  
Mary Alt
Keyword(s):  
Single Case ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Neighborhood Density ◽  
Expressive Vocabulary ◽  
Single Case Design ◽  
Vocabulary Intervention ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood Density ◽  
Phonological Neighborhood ◽  
And Control ◽  
Case Design

Purpose We report on a replicated single-case design study that measured the feasibility of an expressive vocabulary intervention for three Cantonese-speaking toddlers with small expressive lexicons relative to their age. The aim was to assess the cross-cultural and cross-linguistic feasibility of an intervention method developed for English-speaking children. Method A nonconcurrent multiple-baseline design was used with four baseline data points and 16 intervention sessions per participant. The intervention design incorporated implicit learning principles, high treatment dosage, and control of the phonological neighborhood density of the stimuli. The children (24–39 months) attended 7–9 weeks of twice weekly input-based treatment in which no explicit verbal production was required from the child. Each target word was provided as input a minimum of 64 times in at least two intervention sessions. Treatment feasibility was measured by comparison of how many of the target and control words the child produced across the intervention period, and parent-reported expressive vocabulary checklists were completed for comparison of pre- and postintervention child spoken vocabulary size. An omnibus effect size for the treatment effect of the number of target and control words produced across time was calculated using Kendall's Tau. Results There was a significant treatment effect for target words learned in intervention relative to baselines, and all children produced significantly more target than control words across the intervention period. The effect of phonological neighborhood density on expressive word production could not be evaluated because two of the three children learned all target words. Conclusion The results provide cross-cultural evidence of the feasibility of a model of intervention that incorporated a high-dosage, cross-situational statistical learning paradigm to teach spoken word production to children with small expressive lexicons.

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