Publications

Displaying 101 - 148 of 148
  • Petersson, K. M. (2002). Brain physiology. In R. Behn, & C. Veranda (Eds.), Proceedings of The 4th Southern European School of the European Physical Society - Physics in Medicine (pp. 37-38). Montreux: ESF.
  • Poellmann, K., McQueen, J. M., & Mitterer, H. (2011). The time course of perceptual learning. In W.-S. Lee, & E. Zee (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 2011 [ICPhS XVII] (pp. 1618-1621). Hong Kong: Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong.

    Abstract

    Two groups of participants were trained to perceive an ambiguous sound [s/f] as either /s/ or /f/ based on lexical bias: One group heard the ambiguous fricative in /s/-final words, the other in /f/-final words. This kind of exposure leads to a recalibration of the /s/-/f/ contrast [e.g., 4]. In order to investigate when and how this recalibration emerges, test trials were interspersed among training and filler trials. The learning effect needed at least 10 clear training items to arise. Its emergence seemed to occur in a rather step-wise fashion. Learning did not improve much after it first appeared. It is likely, however, that the early test trials attracted participants' attention and therefore may have interfered with the learning process.
  • Regier, T., Khetarpal, N., & Majid, A. (2011). Inferring conceptual structure from cross-language data. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1488). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Reinisch, E., & Weber, A. (2011). Adapting to lexical stress in a foreign accent. In W.-S. Lee, & E. Zee (Eds.), Proceedings of the 17th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 2011 [ICPhS XVII] (pp. 1678-1681). Hong Kong: Department of Chinese, Translation and Linguistics, City University of Hong Kong.

    Abstract

    An exposure-test paradigm was used to examine whether Dutch listeners can adapt their perception to non-canonical marking of lexical stress in Hungarian-accented Dutch. During exposure, one group of listeners heard only words with correct initial stress, while another group also heard examples of unstressed initial syllables that were marked by high pitch, a possible stress cue in Dutch. Subsequently, listeners’ eye movements to target-competitor pairs with segmental overlap but different stress patterns were tracked while hearing Hungarian-accented Dutch. Listeners who had heard non-canonically produced words previously distinguished target-competitor pairs faster than listeners who had only been exposed to canonical forms before. This suggests that listeners can adapt quickly to speaker-specific realizations of non-canonical lexical stress.
  • Reinisch, E., Weber, A., & Mitterer, H. (2011). Listeners retune phoneme boundaries across languages [Abstract]. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Program abstracts of the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2572-2572.

    Abstract

    Listeners can flexibly retune category boundaries of their native language to adapt to non-canonically produced phonemes. This only occurs, however, if the pronunciation peculiarities can be attributed to stable and not transient speaker-specific characteristics. Listening to someone speaking a second language, listeners could attribute non-canonical pronunciations either to the speaker or to the fact that she is modifying her categories in the second language. We investigated whether, following exposure to Dutch-accented English, Dutch listeners show effects of category retuning during test where they hear the same speaker speaking her native language, Dutch. Exposure was a lexical-decision task where either word-final [f] or [s] was replaced by an ambiguous sound. At test listeners categorized minimal word pairs ending in sounds along an [f]-[s] continuum. Following exposure to English words, Dutch listeners showed boundary shifts of a similar magnitude as following exposure to the same phoneme variants in their native language. This suggests that production patterns in a second language are deemed a stable characteristic. A second experiment suggests that category retuning also occurs when listeners are exposed to and tested with a native speaker of their second language. Listeners thus retune phoneme boundaries across languages.
  • Sadakata, M., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). The role of variability in non-native perceptual learning of a Japanese geminate-singleton fricative contrast. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 873-876).

    Abstract

    The current study reports the enhancing effect of a high variability training procedure in the learning of a Japanese geminate-singleton fricative contrast. Dutch natives took part in a five-day training procedure in which they identified geminate and singleton variants of the Japanese fricative /s/. They heard either many repetitions of a limited set of words recorded by a single speaker (simple training) or fewer repetitions of a more variable set of words recorded by multiple speakers (variable training). Pre-post identification evaluations and a transfer test indicated clear benefits of the variable training.
  • Sauermann, A., Höhle, B., Chen, A., & Järvikivi, J. (2011). Intonational marking of focus in different word orders in German children. In M. B. Washburn, K. McKinney-Bock, E. Varis, & A. Sawyer (Eds.), Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (pp. 313-322). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    The use of word order and intonation to mark focus in child speech has received some attention. However, past work usually examined each device separately or only compared the realizations of focused vs. non-focused constituents. This paper investigates the interaction between word order and intonation in the marking of different focus types in 4- to 5-year old German-speaking children and an adult control group. An answer-reconstruction task was used to elicit syntactic (word order) and intonational focus marking of subject and objects (locus of focus) in three focus types (broad, narrow, and contrastive focus). The results indicate that both children and adults used intonation to distinguish broad from contrastive focus but they differed in the marking of narrow focus. Further, both groups preferred intonation to word order as device for focus marking. But children showed an early sensitivity for the impact of focus type and focus location on word order variation and on phonetic means to mark focus.
  • Scharenborg, O., Bouwman, G., & Boves, L. (2000). Connected digit recognition with class specific word models. In Proceedings of the COST249 Workshop on Voice Operated Telecom Services workshop (pp. 71-74).

    Abstract

    This work focuses on efficient use of the training material by selecting the optimal set of model topologies. We do this by training multiple word models of each word class, based on a subclassification according to a priori knowledge of the training material. We will examine classification criteria with respect to duration of the word, gender of the speaker, position of the word in the utterance, pauses in the vicinity of the word, and combinations of these. Comparative experiments were carried out on a corpus consisting of Dutch spoken connected digit strings and isolated digits, which are recorded in a wide variety of acoustic conditions. The results show, that classification based on gender of the speaker, position of the digit in the string, pauses in the vicinity of the training tokens, and models based on a combination of these criteria perform significantly better than the set with single models per digit.
  • Scharenborg, O., Boves, L., & de Veth, J. (2002). ASR in a human word recognition model: Generating phonemic input for Shortlist. In J. H. L. Hansen, & B. Pellom (Eds.), ICSLP 2002 - INTERSPEECH 2002 - 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (pp. 633-636). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    The current version of the psycholinguistic model of human word recognition Shortlist suffers from two unrealistic constraints. First, the input of Shortlist must consist of a single string of phoneme symbols. Second, the current version of the search in Shortlist makes it difficult to deal with insertions and deletions in the input phoneme string. This research attempts to fully automatically derive a phoneme string from the acoustic signal that is as close as possible to the number of phonemes in the lexical representation of the word. We optimised an Automatic Phone Recogniser (APR) using two approaches, viz. varying the value of the mismatch parameter and optimising the APR output strings on the output of Shortlist. The approaches show that it will be very difficult to satisfy the input requirements of the present version of Shortlist with a phoneme string generated by an APR.
  • Scharenborg, O., Mitterer, H., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Perceptual learning of liquids. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 149-152).

    Abstract

    Previous research on lexically-guided perceptual learning has focussed on contrasts that differ primarily in local cues, such as plosive and fricative contrasts. The present research had two aims: to investigate whether perceptual learning occurs for a contrast with non-local cues, the /l/-/r/ contrast, and to establish whether STRAIGHT can be used to create ambiguous sounds on an /l/-/r/ continuum. Listening experiments showed lexically-guided learning about the /l/-/r/ contrast. Listeners can thus tune in to unusual speech sounds characterised by non-local cues. Moreover, STRAIGHT can be used to create stimuli for perceptual learning experiments, opening up new research possibilities. Index Terms: perceptual learning, morphing, liquids, human word recognition, STRAIGHT.
  • Scharenborg, O., & Boves, L. (2002). Pronunciation variation modelling in a model of human word recognition. In Pronunciation Modeling and Lexicon Adaptation for Spoken Language Technology [PMLA-2002] (pp. 65-70).

    Abstract

    Due to pronunciation variation, many insertions and deletions of phones occur in spontaneous speech. The psycholinguistic model of human speech recognition Shortlist is not well able to deal with phone insertions and deletions and is therefore not well suited for dealing with real-life input. The research presented in this paper explains how Shortlist can benefit from pronunciation variation modelling in dealing with real-life input. Pronunciation variation was modelled by including variants into the lexicon of Shortlist. A series of experiments was carried out to find the optimal acoustic model set for transcribing the training material that was used as basis for the generation of the variants. The Shortlist experiments clearly showed that Shortlist benefits from pronunciation variation modelling. However, the performance of Shortlist stays far behind the performance of other, more conventional speech recognisers.
  • Schiller, N. O., Schmitt, B., Peters, J., & Levelt, W. J. M. (2002). 'BAnana'or 'baNAna'? Metrical encoding during speech production [Abstract]. In M. Baumann, A. Keinath, & J. Krems (Eds.), Experimentelle Psychologie: Abstracts der 44. Tagung experimentell arbeitender Psychologen. (pp. 195). TU Chemnitz, Philosophische Fakultät.

    Abstract

    The time course of metrical encoding, i.e. stress, during speech production is investigated. In a first experiment, participants were presented with pictures whose bisyllabic Dutch names had initial or final stress (KAno 'canoe' vs. kaNON 'cannon'; capital letters indicate stressed syllables). Picture names were matched for frequency and object recognition latencies. When participants were asked to judge whether picture names had stress on the first or second syllable, they showed significantly faster decision times for initially stressed targets than for targets with final stress. Experiment 2 replicated this effect with trisyllabic picture names (faster RTs for penultimate stress than for ultimate stress). In our view, these results reflect the incremental phonological encoding process. Wheeldon and Levelt (1995) found that segmental encoding is a process running from the beginning to the end of words. Here, we present evidence that the metrical pattern of words, i.e. stress, is also encoded incrementally.
  • Schmiedtová, V., & Schmiedtová, B. (2002). The color spectrum in language: The case of Czech: Cognitive concepts, new idioms and lexical meanings. In H. Gottlieb, J. Mogensen, & A. Zettersten (Eds.), Proceedings of The 10th International Symposium on Lexicography (pp. 285-292). Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag.

    Abstract

    The representative corpus SYN2000 in the Czech National Corpus (CNK) project containing 100 million word forms taken from different types of texts. I have tried to determine the extent and depth of the linguistic material in the corpus. First, I chose the adjectives indicating the basic colors of the spectrum and other parts of speech (names and adverbs) derived from these adjectives. An analysis of three examples - black, white and red - shows the extent of the linguistic wealth and diversity we are looking at: because of size limitations, no existing dictionary is capable of embracing all analyzed nuances. Currently, we can only hope that the next dictionary of contemporary Czech, built on the basis of the Czech National Corpus, will be electronic. Without the size limitations, we would be able us to include many of the fine nuances of language
  • Scott, D. R., & Cutler, A. (1982). Segmental cues to syntactic structure. In Proceedings of the Institute of Acoustics 'Spectral Analysis and its Use in Underwater Acoustics' (pp. E3.1-E3.4). London: Institute of Acoustics.
  • Senft, G. (2002). What should the ideal online-archive documenting linguistic data of various (endangered) languages and cultures offer to interested parties? Some ideas of a technically naive linguistic field researcher and potential user. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics (pp. 11-15). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • Senft, G. (2000). COME and GO in Kilivila. In B. Palmer, & P. Geraghty (Eds.), SICOL. Proceedings of the second international conference on Oceanic linguistics: Volume 2, Historical and descriptive studies (pp. 105-136). Canberra: Pacific Linguistics.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (2002). Existential import. In D. De Jongh, M. Nilsenová, & H. Zeevat (Eds.), Proceedings of The 3rd and 4th International Symposium on Language, Logic and Computation. Amsterdam: ILLC Scientific Publ. U. of Amsterdam.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1971). Qualche osservazione sulla frase durativa e iterativa in italiano. In M. Medici, & R. Simone (Eds.), Grammatica trasformazionale italiana (pp. 209-224). Roma: Bulzoni.
  • Seuren, P. A. M. (1982). Riorientamenti metodologici nello studio della variabilità linguistica. In D. Gambarara, & A. D'Atri (Eds.), Ideologia, filosofia e linguistica: Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Rende (CS) 15-17 Settembre 1978 ( (pp. 499-515). Roma: Bulzoni.
  • Sloetjes, H., Somasundaram, A., & Wittenburg, P. (2011). ELAN — Aspects of Interoperability and Functionality. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011) (pp. 3249-3252).

    Abstract

    ELAN is a multimedia annotation tool that has been developed for roughly ten years now and is still being extended and improved in, on average, two or three major updates per year. This paper describes the current state of the application, the main areas of attention of the past few years and the plans for the near future. The emphasis will be on various interoperability issues: interoperability with other tools through file conversions, process based interoperability with other tools by means of commands send to or received from other applications, interoperability on the level of the data model and semantic interoperability.
  • Smith, A. C., & Monaghan, P. (2011). What are the functional units in reading? Evidence for statistical variation influencing word processing. In Connectionist Models of Neurocognition and Emergent Behavior: From Theory to Applications (pp. 159-172). Singapore: World Scientific.

    Abstract

    Computational models of reading have differed in terms of whether they propose a single route forming the mapping between orthography and phonology or whether there is a lexical/sublexical route distinction. A critical test of the architecture of the reading system is how it deals with multi-letter graphemes. Rastle and Coltheart (1998) found that the presence of digraphs in nonwords but not in words led to an increase in naming times, suggesting that nonwords were processed via a distinct sequential route to words. In contrast Pagliuca, Monaghan, and McIntosh (2008) implemented a single route model of reading and showed that under conditions of visual noise the presence of digraphs in words did have an effect on naming accuracy. In this study, we investigated whether such digraph effects could be found in both words and nonwords under conditions of visual noise. If so it would suggest that effects on words and nonwords are comparable. A single route connectionist model of reading showed greater accuracy for both words and nonwords containing digraphs. Experimental results showed participants were more accurate in recognising words if they contained digraphs. However contrary to model predictions they were less accurate in recognising nonwords containing digraphs compared to controls. We discuss the challenges faced by both theoretical perspectives in interpreting these findings and in light of a psycholinguistic grain size theory of reading.
  • Staum Casasanto, L., Gijssels, T., & Casasanto, D. (2011). The Reverse-Chameleon Effect: Negative social consequences of anatomical mimicry.[Abstract]. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. F. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 1103). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Mirror mimicry has well-known consequences for the person being mimicked: it increases how positively they feel about the mimicker (the Chameleon Effect). Here we show that anatomical mimicry has the opposite social consequences: a Reverse-Chameleon Effect. To equate mirror and anatomical mimicry, we asked participants to have a face-to-face conversation with a digital human (VIRTUO), in a fully-immersive virtual environment. Participants’ spontaneous head movements were tracked, and VIRTUO mimicked them at a 2-second delay, either mirror-wise, anatomically, or not at all (instead enacting another participant’s movements). Participants who were mimicked mirror-wise rated their social interaction with VIRTUO to be significantly more positive than those who were mimicked anatomically. Participants who were not mimicked gave intermediate ratings. Beyond its practical implications, the Reverse-Chameleon Effect constrains theoretical accounts of how mimicry affects social perception
  • Stehouwer, H., & Auer, E. (2011). Unlocking language archives using search. In C. Vertan, M. Slavcheva, P. Osenova, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technologies for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Hissar, Bulgaria, 16 September 2011 (pp. 19-26). Shoumen, Bulgaria: Incoma Ltd.

    Abstract

    The Language Archive manages one of the largest and most varied sets of natural language data. This data consists of video and audio enriched with annotations. It is available for more than 250 languages, many of which are endangered. Researchers have a need to access this data conveniently and efficiently. We provide several browse and search methods to cover this need, which have been developed and expanded over the years. Metadata and content-oriented search methods can be connected for a more focused search. This article aims to provide a complete overview of the available search mechanisms, with a focus on annotation content search, including a benchmark.
  • Sulpizio, S., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). When two newly-acquired words are one: New words differing in stress alone are not automatically represented differently. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 1385-1388).

    Abstract

    Do listeners use lexical stress at an early stage in word learning? Artificial-lexicon studies have shown that listeners can learn new spoken words easily. These studies used non-words differing in consonants and/or vowels, but not differing only in stress. If listeners use stress information in word learning, they should be able to learn new words that differ only in stress (e.g., BInulo-biNUlo). We investigated this issue here. When learning new words, Italian listeners relied on segmental information; they did not take stress information into account. Newly-acquired words differing in stress alone are not automatically represented as different words.
  • Ten Bosch, L., Hämäläinen, A., & Ernestus, M. (2011). Assessing acoustic reduction: Exploiting local structure in speech. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 2665-2668).

    Abstract

    This paper presents a method to quantify the spectral characteristics of reduction in speech. Hämäläinen et al. (2009) proposes a measure of spectral reduction which is able to predict a substantial amount of the variation in duration that linguistically motivated variables do not account for. In this paper, we continue studying acoustic reduction in speech by developing a new acoustic measure of reduction, based on local manifold structure in speech. We show that this measure yields significantly improved statistical models for predicting variation in duration.
  • Tice, M., & Henetz, T. (2011). Turn-boundary projection: Looking ahead. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 838-843). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.

    Abstract

    Coordinating with others is hard; and yet we accomplish this every day when we take turns in a conversation. How do we do this? The present study introduces a new method of measuring turn-boundary projection that enables researchers to achieve more valid, flexible, and temporally informative data on online turn projection: tracking an observer’s gaze from the current speaker to the next speaker. In this preliminary investigation, participants consistently looked at the current speaker during their turn. Additionally, they looked to the next speaker before her turn began, and sometimes even before the current speaker finished speaking. This suggests that observer gaze is closely aligned with perceptual processes of turn-boundary projection, and thus may equip the field with the tools to explore how we manage to take turns.
  • Tschöpel, S., Schneider, D., Bardeli, R., Schreer, O., Masneri, S., Wittenburg, P., Sloetjes, H., Lenkiewicz, P., & Auer, E. (2011). AVATecH: Audio/Video technology for humanities research. In C. Vertan, M. Slavcheva, P. Osenova, & S. Piperidis (Eds.), Proceedings of the Workshop on Language Technologies for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Hissar, Bulgaria, 16 September 2011 (pp. 86-89). Shoumen, Bulgaria: Incoma Ltd.

    Abstract

    In the AVATecH project the Max-Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics (MPI) and the Fraunhofer institutes HHI and IAIS aim to significantly speed up the process of creating annotations of audio-visual data for humanities research. For this we integrate state-of-theart audio and video pattern recognition algorithms into the widely used ELAN annotation tool. To address the problem of heterogeneous annotation tasks and recordings we provide modular components extended by adaptation and feedback mechanisms to achieve competitive annotation quality within significantly less annotation time. Currently we are designing a large-scale end-user evaluation of the project.
  • Tuinman, A., Mitterer, H., & Cutler, A. (2011). The efficiency of cross-dialectal word recognition. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 153-156).

    Abstract

    Dialects of the same language can differ in the casual speech processes they allow; e.g., British English allows the insertion of [r] at word boundaries in sequences such as saw ice, while American English does not. In two speeded word recognition experiments, American listeners heard such British English sequences; in contrast to non-native listeners, they accurately perceived intended vowel-initial words even with intrusive [r]. Thus despite input mismatches, cross-dialectal word recognition benefits from the full power of native-language processing.
  • Turco, G., Gubian, M., & Schertz, J. (2011). A quantitative investigation of the prosody of Verum Focus in Italian. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 961-964).

    Abstract

    prosodic marking of Verum focus (VF) in Italian, which is said to be realized with a pitch accent on the finite verb (e.g. A: Paul has not eaten the banana - B: (No), Paul HAS eaten the banana!). We tried to discover whether and how Italian speakers prosodically mark VF when producing full-fledged sentences using a semi-spontaneous production experiment on 27 speakers. Speech rate and f0 contours were extracted using automatic data processing tools and were subsequently analysed using Functional Data Analysis (FDA), which allowed for automatic visualization of patterns in the contour shapes. Our results show that the postfocal region of VF sentences exhibit faster speech rate and lower f0 compared to non-VF cases. However, an expected consistent difference of f0 effect on the focal region of the VF sentence was not found in this analysis.
  • Van Hout, A., Veenstra, A., & Berends, S. (2011). All pronouns are not acquired equally in Dutch: Elicitation of object and quantitative pronouns. In M. Pirvulescu, M. C. Cuervo, A. T. Pérez-Leroux, J. Steele, & N. Strik (Eds.), Selected proceedings of the 4th Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA 2010) (pp. 106-121). Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.

    Abstract

    This research reports the results of eliciting pronouns in two syntactic environments: Object pronouns and quantitative er (Q-er). Thus another type of language is added to the literature on subject and object clitic acquisition in the Romance languages (Jakubowicz et al., 1998; Hamann et al., 1996). Quantitative er is a unique pronoun in the Germanic languages; it has the same distribution as partitive clitics in Romance. Q-er is an N'-anaphor and occurs obligatorily with headless noun phrases with a numeral or weak quantifier. Q-er is licensed only when the context offers an antecedent; it binds an empty position in the NP. Data from typically-developing children aged 5;0-6;0 show that object and Q-er pronouns are not acquired equally; it is proposed that this is due to their different syntax. The use of Q-er involves more sophisticated syntactic knowledge: Q-er occurs at the left edge of the VP and binds an empty position in the NP, whereas object pronouns are simply stand-ins for full NPs and occur in the same position. These Dutch data reveal that pronouns are not used as exclusively as object clitics are in the Romance languages (Varlakosta, in prep.).
  • Van Valin Jr., R. D. (2000). Focus structure or abstract syntax? A role and reference grammar account of some ‘abstract’ syntactic phenomena. In Z. Estrada Fernández, & I. Barreras Aguilar (Eds.), Memorias del V Encuentro Internacional de Lingüística en el Noroeste: (2 v.) Estudios morfosintácticos (pp. 39-62). Hermosillo: Editorial Unison.
  • Vapnarsky, V., & Le Guen, O. (2011). The guardians of space: Understanding ecological and historical relations of the contemporary Yucatec Mayas to their landscape. In C. Isendahl, & B. Liljefors Persson (Eds.), Ecology, Power, and Religion in Maya Landscapes: Proceedings of the 11th European Maya Conference. Acta Mesoamericano. vol. 23. Markt Schwaben: Saurwein.
  • Versteegh, M., Ten Bosch, L., & Boves, L. (2011). Modelling novelty preference in word learning. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 761-764).

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the effects of novel words on a cognitively plausible computational model of word learning. The model is first familiarized with a set of words, achieving high recognition scores and subsequently offered novel words for training. We show that the model is able to recognize the novel words as different from the previously seen words, based on a measure of novelty that we introduce. We then propose a procedure analogous to novelty preference in infants. Results from simulations of word learning show that adding this procedure to our model speeds up training and helps the model attain higher recognition rates.
  • Verweij, H., Windhouwer, M., & Wittenburg, P. (2011). Knowledge management for small languages. In V. Luzar-Stiffler, I. Jarec, & Z. Bekic (Eds.), Proceedings of the ITI 2011 33rd Int. Conf. on Information Technology Interfaces, June 27-30, 2011, Cavtat, Croatia (pp. 213-218). Zagreb, Croatia: University Computing Centre, University of Zagreb.

    Abstract

    In this paper an overview of the knowledge components needed for extensive documentation of small languages is given. The Language Archive is striving to offer all these tools to the linguistic community. The major tools in relation to the knowledge components are described. Followed by a discussion on what is currently lacking and possible strategies to move forward.
  • Vuong, L., Meyer, A. S., & Christiansen, M. H. (2011). Simultaneous online tracking of adjacent and non-adjacent dependencies in statistical learning. In L. Carlson, C. Hölscher, & T. Shipley (Eds.), Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 964-969). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
  • Wagner, M., Tran, D., Togneri, R., Rose, P., Powers, D., Onslow, M., Loakes, D., Lewis, T., Kuratate, T., Kinoshita, Y., Kemp, N., Ishihara, S., Ingram, J., Hajek, J., Grayden, D., Göcke, R., Fletcher, J., Estival, D., Epps, J., Dale, R. and 11 moreWagner, M., Tran, D., Togneri, R., Rose, P., Powers, D., Onslow, M., Loakes, D., Lewis, T., Kuratate, T., Kinoshita, Y., Kemp, N., Ishihara, S., Ingram, J., Hajek, J., Grayden, D., Göcke, R., Fletcher, J., Estival, D., Epps, J., Dale, R., Cutler, A., Cox, F., Chetty, G., Cassidy, S., Butcher, A., Burnham, D., Bird, S., Best, C., Bennamoun, M., Arciuli, J., & Ambikairajah, E. (2011). The Big Australian Speech Corpus (The Big ASC). In M. Tabain, J. Fletcher, D. Grayden, J. Hajek, & A. Butcher (Eds.), Proceedings of the Thirteenth Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (pp. 166-170). Melbourne: ASSTA.
  • Warner, N., & Weber, A. (2002). Stop epenthesis at syllable boundaries. In J. H. L. Hansen, & B. Pellom (Eds.), 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP2002 - INTERSPEECH 2002) (pp. 1121-1124). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    This paper investigates the production and perception of epenthetic stops at syllable boundaries in Dutch and compares the experimental data with lexical statistics for Dutch and English. This extends past work on epenthesis in coda position [1]. The current work is particularly informative regarding the question of phonotactic constraints’ influence on parsing of speech variability.
  • Warner, N., Jongman, A., & Mücke, D. (2002). Variability in direction of dorsal movement during production of /l/. In J. H. L. Hansen, & B. Pellom (Eds.), 7th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP2002 - INTERSPEECH 2002) (pp. 1089-1092). ISCA Archive.

    Abstract

    This paper presents articulatory data on the production of /l/ in various environments in Dutch, and shows that the direction of movement of the tongue dorsum varies across environments. This makes it impossible to measure tongue position at the peak of the dorsal gesture. We argue for an alternative method in such cases: measurement of position of one articulator at a time point defined by the gesture of another. We present new data measured this way which confirms a previous finding on the articulation of Dutch /l/.
  • Weber, A. (2000). Phonotactic and acoustic cues for word segmentation in English. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (ICSLP 2000) (pp. 782-785).

    Abstract

    This study investigates the influence of both phonotactic and acoustic cues on the segmentation of spoken English. Listeners detected embedded English words in nonsense sequences (word spotting). Words aligned with phonotactic boundaries were easier to detect than words without such alignment. Acoustic cues to boundaries could also have signaled word boundaries, especially when word onsets lacked phonotactic alignment. However, only one of several durational boundary cues showed a marginally significant correlation with response times (RTs). The results suggest that word segmentation in English is influenced primarily by phonotactic constraints and only secondarily by acoustic aspects of the speech signal.
  • Weber, A. (2000). The role of phonotactics in the segmentation of native and non-native continuous speech. In A. Cutler, J. M. McQueen, & R. Zondervan (Eds.), Proceedings of SWAP, Workshop on Spoken Word Access Processes. Nijmegen: MPI for Psycholinguistics.

    Abstract

    Previous research has shown that listeners make use of their knowledge of phonotactic constraints to segment speech into individual words. The present study investigates the influence of phonotactics when segmenting a non-native language. German and English listeners detected embedded English words in nonsense sequences. German listeners also had knowledge of English, but English listeners had no knowledge of German. Word onsets were either aligned with a syllable boundary or not, according to the phonotactics of the two languages. Words aligned with either German or English phonotactic boundaries were easier for German listeners to detect than words without such alignment. Responses of English listeners were influenced primarily by English phonotactic alignment. The results suggest that both native and non-native phonotactic constraints influence lexical segmentation of a non-native, but familiar, language.
  • Witteman, M. J., Bardhan, N. P., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). Adapting to foreign-accented speech: The role of delay in testing. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Program abstracts of the 162nd Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 130(4), 2443.

    Abstract

    Understanding speech usually seems easy, but it can become noticeably harder when the speaker has a foreign accent. This is because foreign accents add considerable variation to speech. Research on foreign-accented speech shows that participants are able to adapt quickly to this type of variation. Less is known, however, about longer-term maintenance of adaptation. The current study focused on long-term adaptation by exposing native listeners to foreign-accented speech on Day 1, and testing them on comprehension of the accent one day later. Comprehension was thus not tested immediately, but only after a 24 hour period. On Day 1, native Dutch listeners listened to the speech of a Hebrew learner of Dutch while performing a phoneme monitoring task that did not depend on the talker’s accent. In particular, shortening of the long vowel /i/ into /ɪ/ (e.g., lief [li:f], ‘sweet’, pronounced as [lɪf]) was examined. These mispronunciations did not create lexical ambiguities in Dutch. On Day 2, listeners participated in a cross-modal priming task to test their comprehension of the accent. The results will be contrasted with results from an experiment without delayed testing and related to accounts of how listeners maintain adaptation to foreign-accented speech.
  • Witteman, M. J., Weber, A., & McQueen, J. M. (2011). On the relationship between perceived accentedness, acoustic similarity, and processing difficulty in foreign-accented speech. In Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2011), Florence, Italy (pp. 2229-2232).

    Abstract

    Foreign-accented speech is often perceived as more difficult to understand than native speech. What causes this potential difficulty, however, remains unknown. In the present study, we compared acoustic similarity and accent ratings of American-accented Dutch with a cross-modal priming task designed to measure online speech processing. We focused on two Dutch diphthongs: ui and ij. Though both diphthongs deviated from standard Dutch to varying degrees and perceptually varied in accent strength, native Dutch listeners recognized words containing the diphthongs easily. Thus, not all foreign-accented speech hinders comprehension, and acoustic similarity and perceived accentedness are not always predictive of processing difficulties.
  • Wittenburg, P., Kita, S., & Brugman, H. (2002). Crosslinguistic studies of multimodal communication.
  • Wittenburg, P., Peters, W., & Drude, S. (2002). Analysis of lexical structures from field linguistics and language engineering. In M. R. González, & C. P. S. Araujo (Eds.), Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 682-686). Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    Lexica play an important role in every linguistic discipline. We are confronted with many types of lexica. Depending on the type of lexicon and the language we are currently faced with a large variety of structures from very simple tables to complex graphs, as was indicated by a recent overview of structures found in dictionaries from field linguistics and language engineering. It is important to assess these differences and aim at the integration of lexical resources in order to improve lexicon creation, exchange and reuse. This paper describes the first step towards the integration of existing structures and standards into a flexible abstract model.
  • Wittenburg, P., & Broeder, D. (2002). Metadata overview and the semantic web. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics. Paris: European Language Resources Association.

    Abstract

    The increasing quantity and complexity of language resources leads to new management problems for those that collect and those that need to preserve them. At the same time the desire to make these resources available on the Internet demands an efficient way characterizing their properties to allow discovery and re-use. The use of metadata is seen as a solution for both these problems. However, the question is what specific requirements there are for the specific domain and if these are met by existing frameworks. Any possible solution should be evaluated with respect to its merit for solving the domain specific problems but also with respect to its future embedding in “global” metadata frameworks as part of the Semantic Web activities.
  • Wittenburg, P., Peters, W., & Broeder, D. (2002). Metadata proposals for corpora and lexica. In M. Rodriguez González, & C. Paz Suárez Araujo (Eds.), Third international conference on language resources and evaluation (pp. 1321-1326). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • Wittenburg, P., Mosel, U., & Dwyer, A. (2002). Methods of language documentation in the DOBES program. In P. Austin, H. Dry, & P. Wittenburg (Eds.), Proceedings of the international LREC workshop on resources and tools in field linguistics (pp. 36-42). Paris: European Language Resources Association.
  • Zwitserlood, I. (2002). The complex structure of ‘simple’ signs in NGT. In J. Van Koppen, E. Thrift, E. Van der Torre, & M. Zimmermann (Eds.), Proceedings of ConSole IX (pp. 232-246).

    Abstract

    In this paper, I argue that components in a set of simple signs in Nederlandse Gebarentaal (also called Sign Language of the Netherlands; henceforth: NGT), i.e. hand configuration (including orientation), movement and place of articulation, can also have morphological status. Evidence for this is provided by: firstly, the fact that handshape, orientation, movement and place of articulation show regular meaningful patterns in signs, which patterns also occur in newly formed signs, and secondly, the gradual change of formerly noninflecting predicates into inflectional predicates. The morphological complexity of signs can best be accounted for in autosegmental morphological templates.

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