Traces the development of punctuation and the understanding of its role over the centuries. Throughout its existence, punctuation has played the dual role of recording prosodic contours and syntactic structure. Past research and discussion has not provided a coherent picture. A model of punctuation based on systematic observation is needed. (175…

In this study we examined syntactic ambiguity resolution in two different Chinese languages, Cantonese and Mandarin, which are relatively similar grammatically but very different phonologically. We did this using four-character sentences that could be read using two, two-syllable sequences (2-2) or a structure where the first syllable could be…

We examined 7-month-old infants' processing of emotionally congruent and incongruent face-voice pairs using ERP measures. Infants watched facial expressions (happy or angry) and, after a delay of 400 ms, heard a word spoken with a prosody that was either emotionally congruent or incongruent with the face being presented. The ERP data revealed that…

Several descriptions of the transition from single to multiword utterances use prosody as an important diagnostic criterion. For example, in contrast to successive single-word utterances, [lsquo ]real[rsquo ] two-word utterances are supposed to be characterized by a unifying intonation contour and a lack of an intervening pause. Research on the…

Cued American English (CAE) is a visual variety of English derived from a mode of communication called Cued Speech (CS). CS, or cueing, is a system of communication for use with the deaf, which consists of hand shapes, hand placements, and mouth shapes that signify the phonemic information conventionally conveyed through speech in spoken…

Purpose: To explore the sensitivity of children with specific language impairment (SLI) to amplitude-modulated and durational cues that are important for perceiving suprasegmental speech rhythm and stress patterns. Method: Sixty-three children between 7 and 11 years of age were tested, 21 of whom had a diagnosis of SLI, 21 of whom were matched for…

The current study investigates the learning of nonnative suprasegmental patterns for word identification. Native English-speaking adults learned to use suprasegmentals (pitch patterns) to identify a vocabulary of six English pseudosyllables superimposed with three pitch patterns (18 words). Successful learning of the vocabulary necessarily…

Purpose: This study examined relationships between 3rd graders' metalinguistic skills (phonological and morphological awareness), reading skills (decoding and word identification), and accurate stress production in derived words with stress-changing suffixes. Method: Seventy-six typically developing 3rd-grade children (M = 8;8[years;months])…

Sensitivity to prosodic cues might be used to constrain lexical search. Indeed, the prosodic organization of speech is such that words are invariably aligned with phrasal prosodic edges, providing a cue to segmentation. In this paper we devise an experimental paradigm that allows us to investigate the interaction between statistical and prosodic…

This paper analyzes linguistical features of Quiegolani Zapotec (QZ) via a combination of language-specific rules and universal constraints ordered within a constraint hierarchy that operates within a derivational phonology. A number of complex onset clusters in QZ do not follow the Sonority Sequencing Generalization discussed by J. Greenberg…

A study examined segmental and suprasegmental elements which contribute to an impression of one speaking style as opposed to another. A corpus containing three styles of speech, casual, careful, and read, for the same linguistic content was gathered. Thirteen speakers from Paris, France (aged 24-35) were given a scenario to be acted out over the…

A purely segmental or suprasegmental analysis of vowel harmony in Arabic is inadequate because it leaves some questions unanswered. An approach based primarily on the metrical structure of the utterance and addressing an independent structural category, the "foot" of the word, that phonological rules may refer to, is preferred,…

The article discusses the tonal system of Lamnsok, a language spoken in the North-West province of the United Republic of Cameroun with specific reference to verbs. The tone pattern for a given clause is dependent on various factors handled at length. Charts and extensive examples accompany the text. (CLK)

This volume is composed of preliminary phonological statements of seven indigenous languages of Colombia, South America. The studies, prepared in a 1965 field seminar in Lomalinda, Colombia, are data oriented and follow a common format for easy comparison. Titles and authors are: (1) "Phonemic System of Tucano," by Birdie West and Betty…

Word boundaries of 30 sentences spoken by deaf children were acoustically marked by means of silent pauses between words. Subsequent tests with normal-hearing listeners demonstrated that after insertion of pauses the intelligibility of the sentences increased significantly. Results are compared to studies in which segmental and suprasegmental…