(Dys)Prosody in Parkinson’s Disease: Effects of Medication and Disease Duration on Intonation and Prosodic Phrasing

The phonology of prosody has received little attention in studies of motor speech disorders. The present study investigates the phonology of intonation (nuclear contours) and speech chunking (prosodic phrasing) in Parkinson’s disease (PD) as a function of medication intake and duration of the disease. Following methods of the prosodic and intonational phonology frameworks, we examined the ability of 30 PD patients to use intonation categories and prosodic phrasing structures in ways similar to 20 healthy controls to convey similar meanings. Speech data from PD patients were collected before and after a dopaminomimetic drug intake and were phonologically analyzed in relation to nuclear contours and intonational phrasing. Besides medication, disease duration and the presence of motor fluctuations were also factors included in the analyses. Overall, PD patients showed a decreased ability to use nuclear contours and prosodic phrasing. Medication improved intonation regardless of disease duration but did not help with dysprosodic phrasing. In turn, disease duration and motor fluctuations affected phrasing patterns but had no impact on intonation. Our study demonstrated that the phonology of prosody is impaired in PD, and prosodic categories and structures may be differently affected, with implications for the understanding of PD neurophysiology and therapy.

Recursion and the Definition of Universal Prosodic Categories

It is widely agreed that prosodic constituents should mirror syntactic constituents (unless high-ranking prosodic constraints interfere). Because recursion is a feature of syntactic representations, one expects recursion in prosodic representations as well. However, it is of current controversy what kinds of syntactic representation motivate prosodic recursion. In this paper, the use of Phonological Phrase recursion is reviewed in several case studies, chosen because prosodic recursion mostly does not reflect syntactic recursion as defined in current syntactic theory. We provide reanalyses that do not appeal to prosodic recursion (unless syntactically motivated), showing that Phonological Phrase recursion is not necessary to capture the relevant generalizations. The more restrictive use of prosodic recursion we argue for has the following conceptual advantages. It allows for more consistent cross-linguistic generalizations about the syntax–prosody mapping so that prosodic representations more closely reflect syntactic ones. It allows the fundamental syntactic distinctions between clause (and other phases) and phrase to be reflected in the prosodic representation, and it allows cross-linguistic generalizations to be made about the prosodic domain of intonational processes, such as downstep and continuation rise.

Prosodic categories in speech are acoustically multidimensional: evidence from dimension-based statistical learning

Segmental speech units (e.g. phonemes) are described as multidimensional categories wherein perception involves contributions from multiple acoustic input dimensions, and the relative perceptual weights of these dimensions respond dynamically to context. Can prosodic aspects of speech spanning multiple phonemes, syllables or words be characterized similarly? Here we investigated the relative contribution of two acoustic dimensions to word emphasis. Participants categorized instances of a two-word phrase pronounced with typical covariation of fundamental frequency (F0) and duration, and in the context of an artificial ‘accent’ in which F0 and duration covaried atypically. When categorizing ‘accented’ speech, listeners rapidly down-weighted the secondary dimension (duration) while continuing to rely on the primary dimension (F0). This clarifies two core theoretical questions: 1) prosodic categories are signalled by multiple input acoustic dimensions and 2) perceptual cue weights for prosodic categories dynamically adapt to local regularities of speech input.HighlightsProsodic categories are signalled by multiple acoustic dimensions.The influence of these dimensions flexibly adapts to changes in local speech input.This adaptive plasticity may help tune perception to atypical accented speech.Similar learning models may account for segmental and suprasegmental flexibility.

The realization of prosodic categories in political media discourse in British and American linguacultures

The main aim of the article is to describe, analyze and compare main prosodic categories that are realized in a unique context, namely in political media discourse. The article looks into the principles of classification of the prosodic categories as well as at realizational differences of three main prosodic categories: syllable, foot and intonation phrase. These categories are distinguished unanimously by the majority of the researchers and are described in the article form their structural and cognitive perspectives. The realizational differences of these categories derive from pragmatic and linguacultural features of English media communication. In the article media communication is represented with political media discourse which is understood as a new contextual model of media communication and is characterized by high degree of immediacy and interactivity. Certain attention in the article is given to the results of the comparative research of the realizational differences of the prosodic categories done by the author. On the basis of the data resulted from the prosodic and content analysis the author concludes that the realizational differences of the prosodic categories are often due to pragmatics of the discourse and the type of discourse itself.

The Syntax–Prosody Interface

This article provides an overview of current and historically important issues in the study of the syntax–prosody interface, the point of interaction between syntactic structure and phrase-level phonology. We take a broad view of the syntax–prosody interface, surveying both direct and indirect reference theories, with a focus on evaluating the continuing prominent role of prosodic hierarchy theory in shaping our understanding of this area of linguistics. Specific topics discussed in detail include the identification of prosodic domains, the universality of prosodic categories, the recent resurgence of interest in the role of recursion in prosodic structure, crosslinguistic variation in syntax–prosody mapping, prosodic influences on syntax and word order, and the influence of sentence processing in the planning and shaping of prosodic domains. We consider criticisms of prosodic hierarchy theory in particular, and provide an assessment of the future of prosodic hierarchy theory in research on the syntax–prosody interface.

Lexical accent perception in highly-proficient L2 Japanese learners: The roles of language-specific experience and domain-general resources

This article reports empirical findings on the roles of domain-general resources and language-specific experience in the second language (L2) acquisition of Japanese lexical pitch accent. Sixty-one advanced-proficiency L2 Japanese learners from two first languages (L1s), Mandarin Chinese and Korean, identified and categorized Japanese nouns embedded in short sentences in two aurally-presented tasks. Mixed effects models showed that although the tonal-language Chinese group outperformed non-tonal Korean speakers, L2 lexical knowledge, but not overall proficiency or learning experience, predicted performance on both perception tasks regardless of L1, suggesting that long-term knowledge of L2 phonological structure facilitates perception of lexical-level prosody. Domain-general resources, however, played no predictive role in advanced learners’ accent perception. A decision-tree analysis then revealed further divergence in perception accuracy by accent pattern, L1, and task type. Taken together, the results establish a close connection between language learning experience and L2 speech perception at the advanced level, and highlight the complexity inherent in the learning of non-native prosodic categories.

PHONETIC INFLUENCES ON ENGLISH AND FRENCH LISTENERS’ ASSIMILATION OF MANDARIN TONES TO NATIVE PROSODIC CATEGORIES

This study examined how native speakers of Australian English and French, nontone languages with different lexical stress properties, perceived Mandarin tones in a sentence environment according to their native sentence intonation categories (i-Categories) in connected speech. Results showed that both English and French speakers categorized Mandarin tones primarily on the phonetic similarities of the pitch contours between the Mandarin tones and their native i-Categories. Moreover, French but not English speakers were able to detect the fine-detailed phonetic differences between Tone 3 (T3) and Tone 4 (T4; i.e., low or low-falling tone vs. high-falling tone), which suggests that the stress differences between these languages may affect nonnative tone perception: English uses lexical stress, whereas French does not. In the discrimination task, the French listeners’ performance was better than that of the English listeners. For each group, discrimination of the Tone 1 (T1)–T4 and Tone 2 (T2)–T3 pairs was consistently and significantly lower than that of the other tone pairs, and the difference between T1-T4 and T2-T3 was significant. Discrimination of the Mandarin tone pairs was not fully predicted by pairwise categorizations to native i-Categories, however. Some discrimination differences were observed among tone pairs showing the same assimilation patterns. Phonetic overlaps in native i-Category choices for the Mandarin tones, strength of categorization (So, 2012), and tonal coarticulation effects (Xu, 1994, 1997) may offer possible accounts of these discrepancies between categorization and discrimination performance. These findings support the perceptual assimilation model for suprasegmentals (So & Best, 2008, 2010a, 2010b, 2011, 2013), extended to categorization of nonnative tone words within sentence contexts to native i-Categories.

Unifying Phonotactics and Derived Environment Blocking through Prosodic Constraint Indexation

<p>This paper presents a theory of prosodic constraint indexation that derives the blocking of markedness-reducing processes at prosodic and morphological junctures. The principle claim is that markedness constraints are indexed to prosodic categories, and are violated only when a marked structure is fully contained within the span of the indexed constituent. The interaction of prosodically-indexed constraints with faithfulness constraints accounts for both<strong> </strong>static phonotactic restrictions and derived environment blocking effects. Furthermore, they account for domain restrictions that can not be derived by CrispEdge constraints, which reference only prosodic edges. Where Strict Layering is violated, prosodic constraint indexation correctly predicts that more marked segment sequences can be admitted in extraprosodic affixes than in root morphemes.</p>

Modeling metrical stress acquisition through alignment constraint induction

The paper models the acquisition of quantity insensitive metrical stress through constraint induction. A single constraint format is specified that regulates the alignment of prosodic categories. A binary and ternary foot-based prosodic hierarchy are compared in their conduciveness to learning a range of stress patterns, with clear advantages for the latter. The paper also points out the interaction between grammatical modeling and acquisition modeling with regards to the typological predictions of the grammar formalization.