Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T08:17:48.931Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Phonetic and phonological effects of tonal information in the segmentation of Korean speech: An artificial-language segmentation study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2019

Annie Tremblay Open the ORCID record for Annie Tremblay [Opens in a new window] ,
Taehong Cho ,
Sahyang Kim  and
Seulgi Shin
Annie Tremblay*
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Taehong Cho*
Affiliation:
Hanyang University
Sahyang Kim
Affiliation:
Hongik University
Seulgi Shin
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
*
*Corresponding author. E-mails: atrembla@ku.edu; tcho@hanyang.ac.kr
*Corresponding author. E-mails: atrembla@ku.edu; tcho@hanyang.ac.kr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This study investigates how the fine-grained phonetic realization of tonal cues impacts speech segmentation when the cues signal the same word boundary in the native and unfamiliar languages but do so differently. Korean listeners use the phrase-final high (H) tone and the phrase-initial low (L) tone to segment speech into words (Kim, Broersma, & Cho, 2012; Kim & Cho, 2009), but it is unclear how the alignment of the phrase-final H tone and the scaling of the phrase-initial L tone modulate their speech segmentation. Korean listeners completed three artificial-language (AL) tasks (within-subject): (a) one AL without tonal cues; (b) one AL with later-aligned phrase-final H cues (non-Korean-like); and (c) one AL with earlier-aligned phrase-final H cues (Korean-like). Three groups of Korean listeners heard (b) and (c) in three phrase-initial L scaling conditions (between-subject): high (non-Korean-like), mid (non-Korean-like), or low (Korean-like). Korean listeners’ segmentation improved as the L tone was lowered, and (b) enhanced segmentation more than (c) in the high- and mid-scaling conditions. We propose that Korean listeners tune in to low-level cues (the greater H-to-L slope in [b]) that conform to the Korean intonational grammar when the phrase-initial L tone is not canonical phonologically.

Keywords

artificial languageKoreanspeech segmentationtonal cues
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 40 , Issue 5 , September 2019 , pp. 1221 - 1240
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arvaniti, A., Ladd, D. R., & Mennen, I. (2000). What is a starred tone? Evidence from Greek. In Broe, M., and Pierrehumbert, J. (Eds.), Papers in Laboratory Phonology V: Acquisition and the lexicon (pp. 119–131). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Atterer, M., & Ladd, D. R. (2004). On the phonetics and phonology of “segmental anchoring” of F0: Evidence from German. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 177–197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bates, D., Maechler, B., Bolker, B., & Walker, S. (2015). Fitting linear mixed-effects models using lme4. Journal of Statistical Software, 67, 1–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baumann, S., & Winter, B. (2018). What makes a word prominent? Predicting untrained German listeners’ perceptual judgments. Journal of Phonetics, 70, 20–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2017). Doing phonetics by computer (Version 6.0.36). Retrieved from http://www.praat.orgGoogle Scholar
Cho, T. (2015). Language effects on timing at the segmental and suprasegmental levels. In Redford, M. A. (Ed.), The handbook of speech production (pp. 505–529). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cho, T. (2016). Prosodic boundary strengthening in the phonetics-prosody interface. Language and Linguistics Compass, 10, 120–141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, T., & Keating, P. A. (2001). Articulatory and acoustic studies on domain-initial strengthening in Korean. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 155–190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cho, T., McQueen, J. M., & Cox, E. A. (2007). Prosodically driven phonetic detail in speech processing: The case of domain-initial strengthening in English. Journal of Phonetics, 35, 210–243.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunillera, T., Toro, J. M., Sebastian-Galles, N., & Rodriguez-Fornells, A. (2006). The effects of stress and statistical cues on continuous speech segmentation: An event-related brain potential study. Brain Research, 1123, 168–178.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
DiCanio, D., Benn, J., & García, C. (2018). The phonetics of information structure in Yoloxóchitl Mixtec. Journal of Phonetics, 68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finn, A. S., & Hudson Kam, C. L. (2008). The curse of knowledge: First language knowledge impairs adult learners’ use of novel statistics for word segmentation. Cognition, 108, 477–499.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gow, D. W. Jr. (2002). Does English coronal place assimilation create lexical ambiguity? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 28, 163–179.Google Scholar
Gow, D. W. Jr., & Im, A. M. (2004). A cross-linguistic examination of assimilation context effects. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 279–296.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jun, S.-A. (1998). The accentual phrase in the Korean prosodic hierarchy. Phonology, 15, 189–226.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jun, S.-A. (2000). K-ToBI (Korean ToBI) labeling conventions. UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, 99, 149–173.Google Scholar
Jun, S.-A., & Fougeron, C. (2000). A phonological model of French intonation. In Botinis, A. (Ed.), Intonation: Analysis, modeling and technology (pp. 209–242). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jun, S.-A., & Fougeron, C. (2002). Realizations of accentual phrase in French intonation. Probus, 14, 147–172.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, S., Broersma, M., & Cho, T. (2012). The use of prosodic cues in learning new words in an unfamiliar language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34, 415–444.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, S., & Cho, T. (2009). The use of phrase-level prosodic information in lexical segmentation: Evidence from word-spotting experiments in Korean. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 3373–3386.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kim, S., Mitterer, H., & Cho, T. (2018). A time course of prosodic modulation in phonological inferencing: The case of Korean post-obstruent tensing. PLOS ONE, 13, e0202912.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knight, R.-A. (2008). The shape of nuclear falls and their effect on the perception of pitch and prominence: Peaks vs. plateaux. Language and Speech, 51, 223–244.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kuznetsova, A., Brockhoff, B., & Christensen, H. (2016). Tests in linear mixed effects models. Version 2.0.32. Retrieved from https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/lmerTest/index.htmlGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. R. (2012). Intonational phonology Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. R., Schepman, A., White, L., Quarmby, L. M., & Stackhouse, R. (2009). Structural and dialectal effects on pitch peak alignment in two varieties of British English. Journal of Phonetics, 37, 145–161.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monaghan, P., Chater, N., & Christiansen, M. H. (2005). The differential role of phonological and distributional cues in grammatical categorisation. Cognition, 96, 143–182.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ordin, M., & Nespor, M. (2013). Transition probabilities and different levels of prominence in segmentation. Language Learning, 63, 800–834.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ordin, M., & Nespor, M. (2016). Native language influence in the segmentation of a novel language. Language Learning and Development, 12, 461–481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ots, N. (2017). On the phrase-level function of F0 in Estonian. Journal of Phonetics, 65, 77–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paradigm Stimulus Presentation. (2007). Perception Research Systems. Retrieved from http://www.paradigmexperiments.comGoogle Scholar
Rietveld, A. M. C., & Gussenhoven, C. (1985). On the relation between pitch excursion size and pitch prominence. Journal of Phonetics, 13, 299–308.Google Scholar
Saffran, J. R. (2001). The use of predictive dependencies in language learning. Journal of Memory and Language, 44, 493–515.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salverda, A. P., Dahan, D., & McQueen, J. M. (2003). The role of prosodic boundaries in the resolution of lexical embedding in speech comprehension. Cognition, 90, 51–89.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Salverda, A. P., Dahan, D., Tanenhaus, M. K., Crosswhite, K., Masharov, M., & McDonough, J. (2007). Effects of prosodically modulated sub-phonetic variation on lexical competition. Cognition, 105, 466–476.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shukla, M., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (2007). An interaction between prosody and statistics in the segmentation of fluent speech. Cognitive Psychology, 54, 1–32.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spinelli, E., Grimault, N., Meunier, F., & Welby, P. (2010). An intonational cue to word segmentation in phonemically identical sequences. Attention Perception and Psychophysics, 72, 775–787.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Spinelli, E., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (2003). Processing resyllabified words in French. Journal of Memory and Language, 48, 233–254.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toro, J. M., Pons, F., Bion, R. A. H., & Sebastian-Galles, N. (2011). The contribution of language-specific knowledge in the selection of statistically-coherent word candidates. Journal of Memory and Language, 64, 171–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toro, J. M., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Mattys, S. L. (2009). The role of perceptual salience during the segmentation of connected speech. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 21, 786–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tremblay, A., Broersma, M., Coughlin, C. E., & Choi, J. (2016). Effects of the native language on the learning of fundamental frequency in second-language speech segmentation. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 985.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tremblay, A., Namjoshi, J., Spinelli, E., Broersma, M., Cho, T., Kim, S., … Connell, K. (2017). Experience with a second language affects the use of fundamental frequency in speech segmentation. PLOS ONE, 12, e0181709.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tremblay, A., & Spinelli, E. (2014). Utilisation d’indices acoustico-phonétique dans la reconnaissance des mots en contexte de liaison. In Soum-Favaro, C., Coquillon, A., and Chevrot, J. P. (Eds.), La liaison: Approches contemporaines (pp. 111–134). Berne: Lang.Google Scholar
Tyler, M. D., & Cutler, A. (2009). Cross-language differences in cue use for speech segmentation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 126, 367–376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vroomen, J., & de Gelder, B. (1995). Metrical segmentation and lexical inhibition in spoken word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21, 98–108.Google Scholar
Welby, P. (2006). French intonational structure: Evidence from tonal alignment. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 343–371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welby, P. (2007). The role of early fundamental frequency rises and elbows in French word segmentation. Speech Communication, 49, 28–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welby, P., & Loevenbruck, H. (2006). Anchored down in Anchorage: Syllable structure and segmental anchoring in French. Italian Journal of Linguistics, 18, 74–124.Google Scholar
Yurovsky, D., Yu, C., & Smith, L. B. (2012). Statistical speech segmentation and word learning in parallel: Scaffolding from child-directed speech. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 374.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed