Examined mandibular correlates of prosodic control in nonread dialog exchange involving repeated corrections. Articulatory and acoustic data were collected from four American English speakers at an x-ray laboratory, measuring jaw opening. Results suggested a local and global use of the jaw-opening gesture to produce both linguistic or…

A study investigated prosodic variables of syllable stress and intonation contours in speech produced during the simultaneous communication (SC) of ten hearing sign language users. Results indicated longer sentence duration for SC than speech only conditions. Vowel duration and frequency differences between stressed and unstressed syllables were…

Sought to determine whether two low-rising intonation contours should be accepted as distinct patterns in American English, alongside three other widely accepted contours. Dialogues varying only in their intonation contour were presented in a random order to 47 speakers of Midwestern American English. Subjects interpreted the meaning of the…

The purpose of this study was to investigate vibrato performance of university student and high school string players. Forty violinists and cellists performed an eight-measure passage both with and without vibrato. Analyses indicated that the mean rate of vibrato was approximately 5.5 Hz, with no significant differences between instruments or…

Fourteen native speakers of German heard normal sentences, sentences which were either lacking dynamic pitch variation (flattened speech), or comprised of intonation contour exclusively (degraded speech). Participants were to listen carefully to the sentences and to perform a rehearsal task. Passive listening to flattened speech compared to normal…

High functioning children with autism and age and intelligence matched controls participated in experiments testing perception of pitch intervals and musical contours. The finding from the interval study showed superior detection of pitch direction over small pitch distances in the autism group. On the test of contour discrimination no group…

A comparison of the contour alignment of nuclear and initial prenuclear accents was carried out for the Irish dialects of Gaoth Dobhair in Ulster (GD-U) and Cois Fharraige in Connaught (CF-C). This was done across conditions where the number of unstressed syllables following the nuclear and preceding the initial prenuclear accents was varied from…

There are reasons to believe that infant-directed (ID) speech may make language acquisition easier for infants. However, the effects of ID speech on infants' learning remain poorly understood. The experiments reported here assess whether ID speech facilitates word segmentation from fluent speech. One group of infants heard a set of nonsense…

Three experiments were conducted to study motor programs used by expert singers to produce short tonal melodies. Each experiment involved a response-priming procedure in which singers prepared to sing a primary melody but on 50% of trials had to switch and sing a different (secondary) melody instead. In Experiment 1, secondary melodies in the same…

The role of central auditory processing in reading skill development and reading disorders is unclear. The purpose of this study was to examine whether individuals with specific reading disabilities (SRD) have deficits in processing rapidly presented, serially ordered non-speech auditory signals. To this end, we compared 12 children with SRD and…

Key elements that affect pronunciation are outlined in this supplement to an adult literacy newsletter. Emphasis is on what students need to know about sounds, stress, intonation, and fluency in order to improve their spoken English. Suggestions are offered for identifying students' needs. Exercises are also provided for practicing sounds, word…

Designed to assess a reader's comprehension of items differing in contrastive vocal stress, this test consists of 64 items divided evenly between eight sentence types: declarative active, declarative passive, interrogative, and imperative, with each in a positive and negative form. The element of contrastive stress is placed on nouns functioning…

Native nonverbal voice properties may interfere with the learning of vocalics of a second language; this is especially true for adults. Without proficiency in and understanding of these patterns, practice of the language will be uncomfortable and frustrating. (MSE)

The original text, literal, and free translations of a story are examined for dramatic, phonological, and grammatical style. Terseness is compensated for by variation of utterance; literary characteristics are repetition, ellipses, flashbacks, and dependent sentences. (MSE)

Studies the linguistic conception of the laboratory exercises on intonal expressivity included in the audio-visual method for advanced students: "Express Yourself as a Specialist In..." (Text is in French.) (PMP)