Anne Cutler †

Publications

Displaying 1 - 16 of 16
  • Choi, J., Broersma, M., & Cutler, A. (2015). Enhanced processing of a lost language: Linguistic knowledge or linguistic skill? In Proceedings of Interspeech 2015: 16th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (pp. 3110-3114).

    Abstract

    Same-different discrimination judgments for pairs of Korean stop consonants, or of Japanese syllables differing in phonetic segment length, were made by adult Korean adoptees in the Netherlands, by matched Dutch controls, and Korean controls. The adoptees did not outdo either control group on either task, although the same individuals had performed significantly better than matched controls on an identification learning task. This suggests that early exposure to multiple phonetic systems does not specifically improve acoustic-phonetic skills; rather, enhanced performance suggests retained language knowledge.
  • Braun, B., Lemhöfer, K., & Cutler, A. (2008). English word stress as produced by English and Dutch speakers: The role of segmental and suprasegmental differences. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2008 (pp. 1953-1953).

    Abstract

    It has been claimed that Dutch listeners use suprasegmental cues (duration, spectral tilt) more than English listeners in distinguishing English word stress. We tested whether this asymmetry also holds in production, comparing the realization of English word stress by native English speakers and Dutch speakers. Results confirmed that English speakers centralize unstressed vowels more, while Dutch speakers of English make more use of suprasegmental differences.
  • Braun, B., Tagliapietra, L., & Cutler, A. (2008). Contrastive utterances make alternatives salient: Cross-modal priming evidence. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2008 (pp. 69-69).

    Abstract

    Sentences with contrastive intonation are assumed to presuppose contextual alternatives to the accented elements. Two cross-modal priming experiments tested in Dutch whether such contextual alternatives are automatically available to listeners. Contrastive associates – but not non- contrastive associates - were facilitated only when primes were produced in sentences with contrastive intonation, indicating that contrastive intonation makes unmentioned contextual alternatives immediately available. Possibly, contrastive contours trigger a “presupposition resolution mechanism” by which these alternatives become salient.
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Butterfield, S., & Norris, D. (2008). Prelexically-driven perceptual retuning of phoneme boundaries. In Proceedings of Interspeech 2008 (pp. 2056-2056).

    Abstract

    Listeners heard an ambiguous /f-s/ in nonword contexts where only one of /f/ or /s/ was legal (e.g., frul/*srul or *fnud/snud). In later categorisation of a phonetic continuum from /f/ to /s/, their category boundaries had shifted; hearing -rul led to expanded /f/ categories, -nud expanded /s/. Thus phonotactic sequence information alone induces perceptual retuning of phoneme category boundaries; lexical access is not required.
  • Cooper, N., & Cutler, A. (2004). Perception of non-native phonemes in noise. In S. Kin, & M. J. Bae (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech 2004-ICSLP) (pp. 469-472). Seoul: Sunjijn Printing Co.

    Abstract

    We report an investigation of the perception of American English phonemes by Dutch listeners proficient in English. Listeners identified either the consonant or the vowel in most possible English CV and VC syllables. The syllables were embedded in multispeaker babble at three signal-to-noise ratios (16 dB, 8 dB, and 0 dB). Effects of signal-to-noise ratio on vowel and consonant identification are discussed as a function of syllable position and of relationship to the native phoneme inventory. Comparison of the results with previously reported data from native listeners reveals that noise affected the responding of native and non-native listeners similarly.
  • Cutler, A., Norris, D., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2004). Phonemic repertoire and similarity within the vocabulary. In S. Kin, & M. J. Bae (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Interspeech 2004-ICSLP) (pp. 65-68). Seoul: Sunjijn Printing Co.

    Abstract

    Language-specific differences in the size and distribution of the phonemic repertoire can have implications for the task facing listeners in recognising spoken words. A language with more phonemes will allow shorter words and reduced embedding of short words within longer ones, decreasing the potential for spurious lexical competitors to be activated by speech signals. We demonstrate that this is the case via comparative analyses of the vocabularies of English and Spanish. A language which uses suprasegmental as well as segmental contrasts, however, can substantially reduce the extent of spurious embedding.
  • Cutler, A. (1996). The comparative study of spoken-language processing. In H. T. Bunnell (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 1). New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

    Abstract

    Psycholinguists are saddled with a paradox. Their aim is to construct a model of human language processing, which will hold equally well for the processing of any language, but this aim cannot be achieved just by doing experiments in any language. They have to compare processing of many languages, and actively search for effects which are specific to a single language, even though a model which is itself specific to a single language is really the last thing they want.
  • Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1996). The processing of word prosody in Japanese. In P. McCormack, & A. Russell (Eds.), Proceedings of the 6th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 599-604). Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association.
  • Kuijpers, C., Van Donselaar, W., & Cutler, A. (1996). Phonological variation: Epenthesis and deletion of schwa in Dutch. In H. T. Bunnell (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 94-97). New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

    Abstract

    Two types of phonological variation in Dutch, resulting from optional rules, are schwa epenthesis and schwa deletion. In a lexical decision experiment it was investigated whether the phonological variants were processed similarly to the standard forms. It was found that the two types of variation patterned differently. Words with schwa epenthesis were processed faster and more accurately than the standard forms, whereas words with schwa deletion led to less fast and less accurate responses. The results are discussed in relation to the role of consonant-vowel alternations in speech processing and the perceptual integrity of onset clusters.
  • Van Donselaar, W., Kuijpers, C., & Cutler, A. (1996). How do Dutch listeners process words with epenthetic schwa? In H. T. Bunnell (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 149-152). New York: Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

    Abstract

    Dutch words with certain final consonant clusters are subject to optional schwa epenthesis. The present research aimed at investigating how Dutch listeners deal with this type of phonological variation. By means of syllable monitoring experiments, it was investigated whether Dutch listeners process words with epenthetic schwa (e.g., ’balluk’) as bisyllabic words or rather as monosyllabic words. Real words (e.g., ’balk’, ’balluk’) and pseudowords (e.g., ’golk’, ’golluk’) were compared, to examine effects of lexical representation. No difference was found between monitoring times for BAL targets in ’balluk’ carriers as compared to ’balk’ carriers. This suggests that words with epenthetic schwa are not processed as bisyllabic words. The effects for the pseudo-words paralleled those for the real words, which suggests that they are not due to lexical representation but rather to the application of phonological rules.
  • Cutler, A. (1994). How human speech recognition is affected by phonological diversity among languages. In R. Togneri (Ed.), Proceedings of the fifth Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology: Vol. 1 (pp. 285-288). Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association.

    Abstract

    Listeners process spoken language in ways which are adapted to the phonological structure of their native language. As a consequence, non-native speakers do not listen to a language in the same way as native speakers; moreover, listeners may use their native language listening procedures inappropriately with foreign input. With sufficient experience, however, it may be possible to inhibit this latter (counter-productive) behavior.
  • Cutler, A., & Young, D. (1994). Rhythmic structure of word blends in English. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 1407-1410). Kobe: Acoustical Society of Japan.

    Abstract

    Word blends combine fragments from two words, either in speech errors or when a new word is created. Previous work has demonstrated that in Japanese, such blends preserve moraic structure; in English they do not. A similar effect of moraic structure is observed in perceptual research on segmentation of continuous speech in Japanese; English listeners, by contrast, exploit stress units in segmentation, suggesting that a general rhythmic constraint may underlie both findings. The present study examined whether mis parallel would also hold for word blends. In spontaneous English polysyllabic blends, the source words were significantly more likely to be split before a strong than before a weak (unstressed) syllable, i.e. to be split at a stress unit boundary. In an experiment in which listeners were asked to identify the source words of blends, significantly more correct detections resulted when splits had been made before strong syllables. Word blending, like speech segmentation, appears to be constrained by language rhythm.
  • Cutler, A., McQueen, J. M., Baayen, R. H., & Drexler, H. (1994). Words within words in a real-speech corpus. In R. Togneri (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th Australian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology: Vol. 1 (pp. 362-367). Canberra: Australian Speech Science and Technology Association.

    Abstract

    In a 50,000-word corpus of spoken British English the occurrence of words embedded within other words is reported. Within-word embedding in this real speech sample is common, and analogous to the extent of embedding observed in the vocabulary. Imposition of a syllable boundary matching constraint reduces but by no means eliminates spurious embedding. Embedded words are most likely to overlap with the beginning of matrix words, and thus may pose serious problems for speech recognisers.
  • Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1994). Competition and segmentation in spoken word recognition. In Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Spoken Language Processing: Vol. 1 (pp. 401-404). Yokohama: PACIFICO.

    Abstract

    This paper describes recent experimental evidence which shows that models of spoken word recognition must incorporate both inhibition between competing lexical candidates and a sensitivity to metrical cues to lexical segmentation. A new version of the Shortlist [1][2] model incorporating the Metrical Segmentation Strategy [3] provides a detailed simulation of the data.
  • Butterfield, S., & Cutler, A. (1988). Segmentation errors by human listeners: Evidence for a prosodic segmentation strategy. In W. Ainsworth, & J. Holmes (Eds.), Proceedings of SPEECH ’88: Seventh Symposium of the Federation of Acoustic Societies of Europe: Vol. 3 (pp. 827-833). Edinburgh: Institute of Acoustics.
  • Cutler, A., & Butterfield, S. (1986). The perceptual integrity of initial consonant clusters. In R. Lawrence (Ed.), Speech and Hearing: Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics (pp. 31-36). Edinburgh: Institute of Acoustics.

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