Phonetics and Phonology Commons^™

Exploring Asynchronous Pronunciation Training Through Context-Aware Pronunciation Applications, Claire L. Schweikert

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

This paper provides a survey of various research articles on context-aware asynchronous pronunciation training applications. First, a set of seven articles is reviewed and summarized. Next, they are synthesized over the three main topics of 1) automated speech recognition, 2) non-native speaker considerations in language learning, and 3) future directions for research and development within computer-assisted pronunciation training (CAPT). Research in the areas of acoustic and pronunciation modeling (both implicit and explicit), pedagogical considerations for CAPT application design, Goodness of Pronunciation algorithm scoring, accent recognition and neutralization, and more are discussed.

How Phonological And Syntactic Overlap Impact Cognate Processing Speeds In Bilinguals, Ella Marie Peterson

Undergraduate Theses, Professional Papers, and Capstone Artifacts

This paper investigates individuals who are proficient in two languages (bilinguals) and the speeds at which bilinguals process cognates (words with comparable form and meaning across languages). This paper cites two ongoing experiments: The Language Identification (LID) task and the Self-Paced Listening (SPL) task. Findings from the LID suggest that phonological overlap in cognates facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in isolation. Findings from the SPL suggest that syntactic overlap in cognates also facilitates bilingual language processing speeds, when cognates are presented in sentences. These findings are significant in that the tasks present cognates to participants in …

Exploring Strategies For Modeling Sign Language Phonology, Lee Kezar, Riley Carlin, Tejas Srinivasan, Zed Sehyr, Naomi Caselli, Jesse Thomason

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Like speech, signs are composed of discrete, recombinable features called phonemes. Prior work shows that models which can recognize phonemes are better at sign recognition, motivating deeper exploration into strategies for modeling sign language phonemes. In this work, we learn graph convolution networks to recognize the sixteen phoneme “types” found in ASL-LEX 2.0. Specifically, we explore how learning strategies like multi-task and curriculum learning can leverage mutually useful information between phoneme types to facilitate better modeling of sign language phonemes. Results on the Sem-Lex Benchmark show that curriculum learning yields an average accuracy of 87% across all phoneme types, outperforming …

Preliminary Exploration Of Pitch Discrimination, Temporal Sequencing, And Prosodic Awareness Skills Of Children Who Participate In Different School-Based Music Curricula, Ashley G. Flagge, Mary Ellen Neeley, Tara M. Davis, Victoria Henbest

University Faculty and Staff Publications

Musical training has been shown to have a positive influence on a variety of skills, including auditory-based tasks and nonmusical cognitive and executive functioning tasks; however, because previous investigations have yielded mixed results regarding the relationship between musical training and these skills, the purpose of this study was to examine and compare the auditory processing skills of children who receive focused, daily musical training with those with more limited, generalized musical training. Sixteen typically developing children (second–fourth grade) from two different schools receiving different music curricula were assessed on measures of pitch discrimination, temporal sequencing, and prosodic awareness. The results …

Language As The Medium: A Literature Review. Harnessing The Prolific Power Of Dramatic Language As A Therapeutic Tool In Drama Therapy, Edward Freeman

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Language in and of the theatre, with its palate of variegated writing styles and playwrights from throughout time, has the potential to be harnessed, focused, and systematized for use as a therapeutic tool within drama therapy – the field’s artistic medium. Drama therapy could benefit from having a specific medium germane to its artform which has the potential to provide practitioners with a common resource and means of communication, assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning, as well as align the field with other creative arts therapies. Language encompasses all forms of human communication – speaking, writing, signing, gesturing, expressing facially – …

Musical Ability And Accent Imitation, Maria Murljacic

Honors Scholar Theses

This study investigates the intersection of musical ability and accent imitation, more specifically defining what factors cause a relationship between the two. The study was run on 50 participants, who each completed an accent imitation ability assessment, a musical ability assessment, and an articulation ability assessment. The scores for the accent imitation portion were rated by anonymous online raters. Each participant filled out a questionnaire on prior musical experience and were either classified as a musician or non-musician. The analysis found that those in the musician group performed better on the musical ability, articulation, and accent ability assessment than non-musicians. …

Speech Exemplar And Evaluation Database (Seed) For Clinical Training In Articulatory Phonetics And Speech Science, Marisha Speights Atkins, Dallin J. Bailey, Suzanne E. Boyce

Faculty Publications

One challenge faced by teachers of phonetics, speech science, and clinical speech disorders courses is providing meaningful instruction that closes the theory to practice gap. One barrier to providing this type of deep learning experience is the lack of publicly available examples of speech recordings that illustrate comparisons between typical and disordered speech production across a broad range of disorder populations. Data of this type exist, but are typically collected for specific research projects under narrowly written IRB protocols that do not allow for release of even de-identified speech recordings to other investigators or teachers. As a partial corrective to …

Neural Indices Of Vowel Discrimination In Monolingual And Bilingual Infants And Children, Yan H. Yu, Carol Tessel, Henry Han, Luca Campanelli, Nancy Vidal, Jennifer Gerometta, Karen Garrido-Nag, Hia Datta, Valerie L. Shafer

Publications and Research

Objectives: To examine maturation of neural discriminative responses to an English vowel contrast from infancy to 4 years of age and to determine how biological factors (age and sex) and an experiential factor (amount of Spanish versus English input) modulate neural discrimination of speech.

Design: Event-related potential (ERP) mismatch responses (MMRs) were used as indices of discrimination of the American English vowels [ε] versus [I] in infants and children between 3 months and 47 months of age. A total of 168 longitudinal and cross-sectional data sets were collected from 98 children (Bilingual Spanish–English: 47 male and 31 female …

Orthographic And Phonological Processing In Beginning Readers, Emily Fisher

Senior Theses

In order to learn to “sound out” new words, children must have phonological awareness, the ability to reflect on and manipulate the sounds in words. However, in skilled readers, performance on phonological awareness tasks is influenced by orthographic awareness, the awareness of spelling patterns and constraints. Both orthographic and phonological awareness are essential to reading, however, until recently the role of orthographic knowledge in phonological awareness has not been thoroughly investigated in beginning readers. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between orthographic and phonological knowledge in beginning readers and established a proof of concept for the use of …

Selective Stimulability In The Speech And Language Assessment Of Bilingual Children With Selective Mutism, Elizabeth Harbaugh , M.S., Ccc-Slp, Raul F. Prezas , Ph.D., Ccc-Slp, Robin L. Edge , Ph.D., Ccc-Slp

Journal of Human Services: Training, Research, and Practice

English Language Learners (ELLs) with Selective Mutism (SM) mirror their typically developing, bilingual peers who are going through the silent period. The silent period is a normal phenomenon characterized by decreased expressive language and a general lack of communication that is temporary. Understanding second language acquisition and differentiating SM from the silent period, however, is critical to reduce over- and under-identification of children for services. Whereas bilingual children with SM do not speak in either of their languages, bilingual children in the silent period are only silent in their second language. Although limited information exists regarding assessment and treatment for …

Perception Of American–English Vowels By Early And Late Spanish–English Bilinguals, Miriam Baigorri, Luca Campanelli, Erika S. Levy

Publications and Research

Increasing numbers of Hispanic immigrants are entering the US and learning American–English (AE) as a second–language (L2). Previous studies investigating the relationship between AE and Spanish vowels have revealed an advantage for early L2 learners for their accuracy of L2 vowel perception. Replicating and extending such previous research, this study examined the patterns with which early and late Spanish–English bilingual adults assimilated naturally-produced AE vowels to their native vowel-inventory and the accuracy with which they discriminated the vowels. Twelve early Spanish–English bilingual, 12 late Spanish–English bilingual, and 10 monolingual listeners performed perceptual-assimilation and categorical-discrimination tasks involving AE /i,ɪ,ɛ,ʌ,æ,ɑ,o/. Early bilinguals …

Vowel Formant Dispersion Reflects Severity Of Apraxia Of Speech, Dirk B. Den Ouden, Elena Galkina, Alexandra Basilakos, Julius Fridriksson

Communication Sciences and Disorders Faculty Articles and Research

Background: Apraxia of Speech (AOS) has been associated with deviations in consonantal voice onset time (VOT), but studies of vowel acoustics have yielded conflicting results. However, a speech motor planning disorder that is not bound by phonological categories is expected to affect vowel as well as consonant articulations.

Aims: We measured consonant VOTs and vowel formants produced by a large sample of stroke survivors, and assessed to what extent these variables and their dispersion are predictive of AOS presence and severity, based on a scale that uses clinical observations to rate gradient presence of AOS, aphasia, and dysarthria. …

American English Speakers' Perception Of Non-Native Phonotactic Constraints: The Influence Of Training In Phonology, Bailey R. Pearson

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of the present study was to examine the differences between perceptions of non-native phonotactic rules and constraints by monolingual English-speaking undergraduate students in a program of communication disorders who had taken and passed a course in the study of phonology and by undergraduate students in communication disorders who had not yet taken a course in phonology. Participants listened to audio recordings of words from Hindi, Hmong, Kurdish, Russian, and Swedish recorded by speakers fluent in those languages. Each of the words contained at least one phonotactic constraint that is not permitted in American English phonology. Participants were instructed …

Phonetic Complexity Affects Children’S Mandarin Tone Production Accuracy In Disyllabic Words: A Perceptual Study, Puisan Wong, Winifred Strange

Publications and Research

This is the first study to examine the effect of phonetic contexts on children’s lexical tone production. Mandarin tones in disyllabic words produced by forty-four 2- to 6-year-old children and twelve mothers were low-pass filtered to eliminate lexical information. Native Mandarin speaking adults categorized the tones based on the pitch information in the filtered stimuli. All mothers’ tones were categorized with ceiling accuracy. Counter to the findings in most previous studies on children’s tone acquisition and the prevailing assumption in models of speech development that children acquire suprasegmental features much earlier than segmental features, this study found that children as …

Relationship Between Acoustic Measures And Speech Naturalness Ratings In Parkinson’S Disease: A Within-Speaker Approach, Marie I. Klopfenstein

SIUE Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This study investigated the acoustic basis of across-utterance, within-speaker variation in speech naturalness for four speakers with dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speakers read sentences and produced spontaneous speech. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, phrase-final syllable lengthening, intensity and speech rate were obtained. A group of listeners judged speech naturalness using a nine-point Likert scale. Relationships between judgements of speech naturalness and acoustic measures were determined for individual speakers with PD. Relationships among acoustic measures also were quantified. Despite variability between speakers, measures of mean F0, intensity range, articulation rate, average syllable duration, duration of final syllables, vocalic nucleus …

Central Auditory Processing And The Link To Reading Ability In Adults, Lisa M. Brody

Honors Scholar Theses

What makes someone a good reader? What makes someone a poor reader? The root biological marker of reading ability has yet to be determined. Many scientists agree that phonological awareness, the understanding of speech sounds, and phonological decoding are key components of reading ability (Melby-Lervag, Lyster, & Hulme, 2012). In addition to this, new research suggests that the auditory system, specifically the timing of auditory processing in the brain, provides a crucial platform that supports the development of reading ability (Banai et al., 2009). This thesis provides empirical data to support the link between reading skill …

The Effects Of Cued Speech On Phonemic Awareness Skills, Jessica M. Phillips

Masters Theses

Research suggests phonemic awareness is enhanced through multimodality training. Cued Speech is a multimodality system that combines hand signs with mouth movements to represent phonemes of the spoken language. This system has been utilized successfully in developing phonological awareness with children with hearing loss. However, no research is available on its effectiveness with children who are not deaf or hard-of-hearing. The efficacy of the use of Cued Speech for the enhancement of phonological skills in typically developing 1st grade students was evaluated in this study. Twenty-six 1^st graders identified as low-achieving readers by their classroom teachers were administered the …

Phonological Awareness Training: Effects On Phonological Awareness And Reading Skills, Cassie Nelson

Masters Theses

Past research has established that phonological awareness skills are an important precursor to the development of reading (Jenkins & Bowen, 1994; Catts & Karnhi, 1986; Bradley & Bryant, 1978; Frith, 1981). Results of numerous phonological awareness training programs have been published (Ball & Blachman, 1988, 1991; Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988; Bradley & Bryant, 1983, 1985), however, none have compared the roles of professionals involved in teaching phonological awareness skills. Additionally, the effectiveness of various service delivery models has not been reported. This study was conducted to examine the effectiveness of a phonological awareness training program on kindergarten children's phonological …

The Effectiveness Of Minimal Pair Therapy For S-Cluster Reduction, Julie Anne Mcdow

Loma Linda University Electronic Theses, Dissertations & Projects

This descriptive study compared minimal pair therapy to a modeling imitative method of phonological remediation. The s-cluster was targeted for remediation. Four phonologically impaired children, ages 3-2 to 3-11, served as subjects. In the minimal pair procedure, minimal pairs were used to contrast the meaning of correctly produced target words and incorrectly produced target words. In the non-minimal pair approach, correct productions were modeled and cued for the subjects to imitate/produce. Generalization to untrained words was insufficient to assess the effectiveness of the two procedures used. Other measures made during the course of the study produced some interesting findings. Imitative …

Percentage Of Phonological Process Usage In Expressive Language Delayed Children, Sherri Lynn Miller

Dissertations and Theses

Language delay and phonological delay have been shown to coexist. Because they so often co-occur, it is possible that they may interact, sharing a relationship during the child's development. A group of children who were "late talkers" as toddlers, achieved normal development in their syntactic ability by the preschool period. Because their language abilities are known to have increased rapidly, data on their phonological development could provide information on the relationship between phonological and syntactic development.

The purpose of this study was to compare the percentage of phonological process usage of the eight most commonly used simplification processes in four-year-old …

Normative Data For The Tennessee Test Of Rhythm And Intonation Patterns (T-Trip), Ray Drommond

Dissertations and Theses

Prosody is the flow of speech created by controlling elements such as pitch, rate, loudness, and stress (Tiffany and Carrell, 1977). Prosody is vital to intelligibility of speech and also communicates meaning. Despite the importance of prosody, however, few tests for the adequacy of prosodic ability in young children have been published (Koike and Asp, 1981a). To remedy this paucity of tools, Koike and Asp published the Tennessee Test of Rhythm and Intonation Patterns (T-TRIP). The clinical usefulness of the T-TRIP has been limited by a lack of normative data against which to compare individual children's performance.

The purpose of …

Phonational Frequency Ranges In Vocally Untrained Adults Using Different Cardinal Vowels, Lorie Renee Chambers

Dissertations and Theses

In the clinical management of voice clients, it is important to measure accurate pitch ranges in order to determine if a client has a normal range or is speaking at an optimum pitch. It is not clear from the literature which vowel should be used in determining these pitch ranges. The purpose of this investigation was to determine the phonational frequency ranges in adults with no vocal training when phonating the cardinal vowels of /i/, /u/, and /a/. The investigation sought to answer the following question: Does the phonational frequency range in vocally untrained adults vary significantly when phonating the …

A Phonological And Morphological Analysis Of Two-Year Old Children's Utterances Of Final /S/ And /Z/ In Nouns, Janice Brewer

Masters Theses

The purpose of this study was to examine, from a phonological and morphological point of view, two-year old children's utterances of final /s/ and final /z/ in singular (CVC) and plural (CVCC) forms.

The subjects were 32 two-year old children who attended day-care centers. There were 13 males and 19 females, ranging in age from 26 months to 36 months, with an average age of 29 months.

In a 16 item test, each of the 32 children named eight singular nouns (/bʌs/, /haus/, /fers/, /maus/, /nouz/, /tʃiz/, /rouz/, /hous/) and eight plural nouns (/kʌps/, /hæts/, /keɪks/, /sɑks/, /bɔlz/, /gʌnz/, /bɛdz/, …

Phonetic Context And Articulation Therapy Of /R/ Blends, Deborah D. Cline

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

A Durational Analysis Of Inter-Syllabic And Intra-Syllabic /R/ Blends, Jerry E. Wasson

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

A Phonetic Context Analysis Of Nine Frequently Misarticulated Sounds, Katherine Ann Little

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

Auditory Discrimination And Phonetic Contexts In School Age Children, Mary Anne Hanner

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

A Durational Analysis Of Inter- And Intra-Syllabic /S/ Blends, Ajit Harisinghani

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

Comparison Of /S/ Acquisition Under Block Vs. Intermittent Scheduling, Vicki Tripp

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.

A Phonetic Context Approach To Articulation Therapy For /R/, Karen W. Ettinger

Masters Theses

No abstract provided by author.