Anne Cutler †

Publications

Displaying 1 - 16 of 16
  • Cutler, A. (2001). De baby in je hoofd: luisteren naar eigen en andermans taal [Speech at the Catholic University's 78th Dies Natalis]. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Nijmegen University Press.
  • Cutler, A. (2001). Entries on: Acquisition of language by non-human primates; bilingualism; compound (linguistic); development of language-specific phonology; gender (linguistic); grammar; infant speech perception; language; lexicon; morphology; motor theory of speech perception; perception of second languages; phoneme; phonological store; phonology; prosody; sign language; slips of the tongue; speech perception; speech production; stress (linguistic); syntax; word recognition; words. In P. Winn (Ed.), Dictionary of biological psychology. London: Routledge.
  • Cutler, A. (2001). Listening to a second language through the ears of a first. Interpreting, 5, 1-23.
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Norris, D., & Somejuan, A. (2001). The roll of the silly ball. In E. Dupoux (Ed.), Language, brain and cognitive development: Essays in honor of Jacques Mehler (pp. 181-194). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
  • Cutler, A., & Van Donselaar, W. (2001). Voornaam is not a homophone: Lexical prosody and lexical access in Dutch. Language and Speech, 44, 171-195. doi:10.1177/00238309010440020301.

    Abstract

    Four experiments examined Dutch listeners’ use of suprasegmental information in spoken-word recognition. Isolated syllables excised from minimal stress pairs such as VOORnaam/voorNAAM could be reliably assigned to their source words. In lexical decision, no priming was observed from one member of minimal stress pairs to the other, suggesting that the pairs’ segmental ambiguity was removed by suprasegmental information.Words embedded in nonsense strings were harder to detect if the nonsense string itself formed the beginning of a competing word, but a suprasegmental mismatch to the competing word significantly reduced this inhibition. The same nonsense strings facilitated recognition of the longer words of which they constituted the beginning, butagain the facilitation was significantly reduced by suprasegmental mismatch. Together these results indicate that Dutch listeners effectively exploit suprasegmental cues in recognizing spoken words. Nonetheless, suprasegmental mismatch appears to be somewhat less effective in constraining activation than segmental mismatch.
  • McQueen, J. M., Norris, D., & Cutler, A. (2001). Can lexical knowledge modulate prelexical representations over time? In R. Smits, J. Kingston, T. Neary, & R. Zondervan (Eds.), Proceedings of the workshop on Speech Recognition as Pattern Classification (SPRAAC) (pp. 145-150). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    The results of a study on perceptual learning are reported. Dutch subjects made lexical decisions on a list of words and nonwords. Embedded in the list were either [f]- or [s]-final words in which the final fricative had been replaced by an ambiguous sound, midway between [f] and [s]. One group of listeners heard ambiguous [f]- final Dutch words like [kara?] (based on karaf, carafe) and unambiguous [s]-final words (e.g., karkas, carcase). A second group heard the reverse (e.g., ambiguous [karka?] and unambiguous karaf). After this training phase, listeners labelled ambiguous fricatives on an [f]- [s] continuum. The subjects who had heard [?] in [f]- final words categorised these fricatives as [f] reliably more often than those who had heard [?] in [s]-final words. These results suggest that speech recognition is dynamic: the system adjusts to the constraints of each particular listening situation. The lexicon can provide this adjustment process with a training signal.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (Eds.). (2001). Spoken word access processes. Hove, UK: Psychology Press.
  • McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2001). Spoken word access processes: An introduction. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16, 469-490. doi:10.1080/01690960143000209.

    Abstract

    We introduce the papers in this special issue by summarising the current major issues in spoken word recognition. We argue that a full understanding of the process of lexical access during speech comprehension will depend on resolving several key representational issues: what is the form of the representations used for lexical access; how is phonological information coded in the mental lexicon; and how is the morphological and semantic information about each word stored? We then discuss a number of distinct access processes: competition between lexical hypotheses; the computation of goodness-of-fit between the signal and stored lexical knowledge; segmentation of continuous speech; whether the lexicon influences prelexical processing through feedback; and the relationship of form-based processing to the processes responsible for deriving an interpretation of a complete utterance. We conclude that further progress may well be made by swapping ideas among the different sub-domains of the discipline.
  • McQueen, J. M., Otake, T., & Cutler, A. (2001). Rhythmic cues and possible-word constraints in Japanese speech segmentation. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 103-132. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2763.

    Abstract

    In two word-spotting experiments, Japanese listeners detected Japanese words faster in vowel contexts (e.g., agura, to sit cross-legged, in oagura) than in consonant contexts (e.g., tagura). In the same experiments, however, listeners spotted words in vowel contexts (e.g., saru, monkey, in sarua) no faster than in moraic nasal contexts (e.g., saruN). In a third word-spotting experiment, words like uni, sea urchin, followed contexts consisting of a consonant-consonant-vowel mora (e.g., gya) plus either a moraic nasal (gyaNuni), a vowel (gyaouni) or a consonant (gyabuni). Listeners spotted words as easily in the first as in the second context (where in each case the target words were aligned with mora boundaries), but found it almost impossible to spot words in the third (where there was a single consonant, such as the [b] in gyabuni, between the beginning of the word and the nearest preceding mora boundary). Three control experiments confirmed that these effects reflected the relative ease of segmentation of the words from their contexts.We argue that the listeners showed sensitivity to the viability of sound sequences as possible Japanese words in the way that they parsed the speech into words. Since single consonants are not possible Japanese words, the listeners avoided lexical parses including single consonants and thus had difficulty recognizing words in the consonant contexts. Even though moraic nasals are also impossible words, they were not difficult segmentation contexts because, as with the vowel contexts, the mora boundaries between the contexts and the target words signaled likely word boundaries. Moraic rhythm appears to provide Japanese listeners with important segmentation cues.
  • Moore, R. K., & Cutler, A. (2001). Constraints on theories of human vs. machine recognition of speech. In R. Smits, J. Kingston, T. Neary, & R. Zondervan (Eds.), Proceedings of the workshop on Speech Recognition as Pattern Classification (SPRAAC) (pp. 145-150). Nijmegen: Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    The central issues in the study of speech recognition by human listeners (HSR) and of automatic speech recognition (ASR) are clearly comparable; nevertheless the research communities that concern themselves with ASR and HSR are largely distinct. This paper compares the research objectives of the two fields, and attempts to draw informative lessons from one to the other.
  • Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., Cutler, A., Butterfield, S., & Kearns, R. (2001). Language-universal constraints on speech segmentation. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16, 637-660. doi:10.1080/01690960143000119.

    Abstract

    Two word-spotting experiments are reported that examine whether the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC) is a language-specific or language-universal strategy for the segmentation of continuous speech. The PWC disfavours parses which leave an impossible residue between the end of a candidate word and any likely location of a word boundary, as cued in the speech signal. The experiments examined cases where the residue was either a CVC syllable with a schwa, or a CV syllable with a lax vowel. Although neither of these syllable contexts is a possible lexical word in English, word-spotting in both contexts was easier than in a context consisting of a single consonant. Two control lexical-decision experiments showed that the word-spotting results reflected the relative segmentation difficulty of the words in different contexts. The PWC appears to be language-universal rather than language-specific.
  • Otake, T., & Cutler, A. (2001). Recognition of (almost) spoken words: Evidence from word play in Japanese. In P. Dalsgaard (Ed.), Proceedings of EUROSPEECH 2001 (pp. 465-468).

    Abstract

    Current models of spoken-word recognition assume automatic activation of multiple candidate words fully or partially compatible with the speech input. We propose that listeners make use of this concurrent activation in word play such as punning. Distortion in punning should ideally involve no more than a minimal contrastive deviation between two words, namely a phoneme. Moreover, we propose that this metric of similarity does not presuppose phonemic awareness on the part of the punster. We support these claims with an analysis of modern and traditional puns in Japanese (in which phonemic awareness in language users is not encouraged by alphabetic orthography). For both data sets, the results support the predictions. Punning draws on basic processes of spokenword recognition, common across languages.
  • Soto-Faraco, S., Sebastian-Galles, N., & Cutler, A. (2001). Segmental and suprasegmental mismatch in lexical access. Journal of Memory and Language, 45, 412-432. doi:10.1006/jmla.2000.2783.

    Abstract

    Four cross-modal priming experiments in Spanish addressed the role of suprasegmental and segmental information in the activation of spoken words. Listeners heard neutral sentences ending with word fragments (e.g., princi-) and made lexical decisions on letter strings presented at fragment offset. Responses were compared for fragment primes that fully matched the spoken form of the initial portion of target words, versus primes that mismatched in a single element (stress pattern; one vowel; one consonant), versus control primes. Fully matching primes always facilitated lexical decision responses, in comparison to the control condition, while mismatching primes always produced inhibition. The respective strength of the contribution of stress, vowel, and consonant (one feature mismatch or more) information did not differ statistically. The results support a model of spoken-word recognition involving automatic activation of word forms and competition between activated words, in which the activation process is sensitive to all acoustic information relevant to the language’s phonology.
  • Warner, N., Jongman, A., Cutler, A., & Mücke, D. (2001). The phonological status of Dutch epenthetic schwa. Phonology, 18, 387-420. doi:10.1017/S0952675701004213.

    Abstract

    In this paper, we use articulatory measures to determine whether Dutch schwa epenthesis is an abstract phonological process or a concrete phonetic process depending on articulatory timing. We examine tongue position during /l/ before underlying schwa and epenthetic schwa and in coda position. We find greater tip raising before both types of schwa, indicating light /l/ before schwa and dark /l/ in coda position. We argue that the ability of epenthetic schwa to condition the /l/ alternation shows that Dutch schwa epenthesis is an abstract phonological process involving insertion of some unit, and cannot be accounted for within Articulatory Phonology.
  • Warner, N., Jongman, A., Mucke, D., & Cutler, A. (2001). The phonological status of schwa insertion in Dutch: An EMA study. In B. Maassen, W. Hulstijn, R. Kent, H. Peters, & P. v. Lieshout (Eds.), Speech motor control in normal and disordered speech: 4th International Speech Motor Conference (pp. 86-89). Nijmegen: Vantilt.

    Abstract

    Articulatory data are used to address the question of whether Dutch schwa insertion is a phonological or a phonetic process. By investigating tongue tip raising and dorsal lowering, we show that /l/ when it appears before inserted schwa is a light /l/, just as /l/ before an underlying schwa is, and unlike the dark /l/ before a consonant in non-insertion productions of the same words. The fact that inserted schwa can condition the light/dark /l/ alternation shows that schwa insertion involves the phonological insertion of a segment rather than phonetic adjustments to articulations.
  • Cutler, A. (1970). An experimental method for semantic field study. Linguistic Communications, 2, 87-94.

    Abstract

    This paper emphasizes the need for empirical research and objective discovery procedures in semantics, and illustrates a method by which these goals may be obtained. The aim of the methodology described is to provide a description of the internal structure of a semantic field by eliciting the description--in an objective, standardized manner--from a representative group of native speakers. This would produce results that would be equally obtainable by any linguist using the same method under the same conditions with a similarly representative set of informants. The standardized method suggested by the author is the Semantic Differential developed by C. E. Osgood in the 1950's. Applying this method to semantic research, it is further hypothesized that, should different members of a semantic field be employed as concepts on a Semantic Differential task, a factor analysis of the results would reveal the dimensions operative within the body of data. The author demonstrates the use of the Semantic Differential and factor analysis in an actual experiment.

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