Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 2010
Page 1. Semantically-Independent but Contextually-Dependent Interpretation of Contrastive Accent ... more Page 1. Semantically-Independent but Contextually-Dependent Interpretation of Contrastive Accent Kiwako Ito and Shari R. Speer 1 Introduction Successful communication requires agreement on what has been and is being talked about. ...
... lose interest in the repeating sound, and increases when they recognize a novel one ... of an... more ... lose interest in the repeating sound, and increases when they recognize a novel one ... of annotation systems, the functions of language-specific boundary tunes in infant-directed speech ... to test the comprehension of two kinds of phrasing-based prosodic disambiguation in Korean ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1994
Effects of speaking rate and paragraph structure on the production of sentence prosody. [The Jour... more Effects of speaking rate and paragraph structure on the production of sentence prosody. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95, 2979 (1994)]. Shari R. Speer, Sarah C. Wayland, Margaret M. Kjelgaard, Arthur Wingfield. Abstract. ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2000
Prosodic indication of syntactic structure in quasispontaneous speech. [The Journal of the Acoust... more Prosodic indication of syntactic structure in quasispontaneous speech. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 108, 2466 (2000)]. Amy J. Schafer, Paul Warren, Shari R. Speer, S. David White. Abstract. This research ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1999
Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity in discourse context. [The Journal of the Acoustic... more Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity in discourse context. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 106, 2275 (1999)]. Shari R. Speer, Shari B. Sokol, Amy J. Schafer, Paul Warren. Abstract. A cooperative boardgame ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1989
Two experiments show that prosodic information plays a crucial role in the processing of sentence... more Two experiments show that prosodic information plays a crucial role in the processing of sentences of Standard Mandarin Chinese, where local lexical ambiguities may occur due to the operation of a tone sandhi rule. In Chinese, each word is associated with a tone; in this paper, the term "Mandarin tone sandhi" refers to a phonological rule that changes the first of two consecutive low tones (Tone 3) to a rising tone (Tone 2). As a result, a two-syllable sequence with a rising tone followed by a low tone is ambiguous. In Experiment 1, listeners identified lexical tones for ambiguous, unambiguous, and nonsense words in phrasal contexts where the tone sandhi rule might have applied. Comparable results in the lexical versus nonsense conditions indicate that judgments did not rely simply on lexically stored tonal information, but also made reference to the tonal context of the phrase. In Experiment 2, subjects chose the most likely written English translation for auditory sentences of Mandarin. Global prosodic information was manipulated to create different levels of "prosodic closeness" between two critical items in a tone sandhi environment, while the syntactic relation between these items was held constant. Results show that listeners relied on the prosodic structure of the phrases to determine whether or not the tone sandhi rule had applied, and consequently to identify individual lexical items. The evidence is taken to support the notion that prosodic structure influences auditory language comprehension processes.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1997
Comparison of pitch reset characteristics between children's filler syllable and starter syl... more Comparison of pitch reset characteristics between children's filler syllable and starter syllable productions. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 3202 (1997)]. PJ Seymour, Shari R. Speer, Marc E. Fey, Diane Frome Loeb. Abstract. ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1997
Prosodic phrasal structure and lexical interpretation. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of ... more Prosodic phrasal structure and lexical interpretation. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101, 3195 (1997)]. Shari R. Speer, Amy Schafer. Abstract. In phonological theory, phonological phrases (PPhs) and intonational ...
This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehens... more This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.
Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 2010
Page 1. Semantically-Independent but Contextually-Dependent Interpretation of Contrastive Accent ... more Page 1. Semantically-Independent but Contextually-Dependent Interpretation of Contrastive Accent Kiwako Ito and Shari R. Speer 1 Introduction Successful communication requires agreement on what has been and is being talked about. ...
... lose interest in the repeating sound, and increases when they recognize a novel one ... of an... more ... lose interest in the repeating sound, and increases when they recognize a novel one ... of annotation systems, the functions of language-specific boundary tunes in infant-directed speech ... to test the comprehension of two kinds of phrasing-based prosodic disambiguation in Korean ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1994
Effects of speaking rate and paragraph structure on the production of sentence prosody. [The Jour... more Effects of speaking rate and paragraph structure on the production of sentence prosody. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 95, 2979 (1994)]. Shari R. Speer, Sarah C. Wayland, Margaret M. Kjelgaard, Arthur Wingfield. Abstract. ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2000
Prosodic indication of syntactic structure in quasispontaneous speech. [The Journal of the Acoust... more Prosodic indication of syntactic structure in quasispontaneous speech. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 108, 2466 (2000)]. Amy J. Schafer, Paul Warren, Shari R. Speer, S. David White. Abstract. This research ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1999
Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity in discourse context. [The Journal of the Acoustic... more Prosodic disambiguation of syntactic ambiguity in discourse context. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 106, 2275 (1999)]. Shari R. Speer, Shari B. Sokol, Amy J. Schafer, Paul Warren. Abstract. A cooperative boardgame ...
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1989
Two experiments show that prosodic information plays a crucial role in the processing of sentence... more Two experiments show that prosodic information plays a crucial role in the processing of sentences of Standard Mandarin Chinese, where local lexical ambiguities may occur due to the operation of a tone sandhi rule. In Chinese, each word is associated with a tone; in this paper, the term "Mandarin tone sandhi" refers to a phonological rule that changes the first of two consecutive low tones (Tone 3) to a rising tone (Tone 2). As a result, a two-syllable sequence with a rising tone followed by a low tone is ambiguous. In Experiment 1, listeners identified lexical tones for ambiguous, unambiguous, and nonsense words in phrasal contexts where the tone sandhi rule might have applied. Comparable results in the lexical versus nonsense conditions indicate that judgments did not rely simply on lexically stored tonal information, but also made reference to the tonal context of the phrase. In Experiment 2, subjects chose the most likely written English translation for auditory sentences of Mandarin. Global prosodic information was manipulated to create different levels of "prosodic closeness" between two critical items in a tone sandhi environment, while the syntactic relation between these items was held constant. Results show that listeners relied on the prosodic structure of the phrases to determine whether or not the tone sandhi rule had applied, and consequently to identify individual lexical items. The evidence is taken to support the notion that prosodic structure influences auditory language comprehension processes.
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1997
Comparison of pitch reset characteristics between children's filler syllable and starter syl... more Comparison of pitch reset characteristics between children's filler syllable and starter syllable productions. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 102, 3202 (1997)]. PJ Seymour, Shari R. Speer, Marc E. Fey, Diane Frome Loeb. Abstract. ...
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 1997
Prosodic phrasal structure and lexical interpretation. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of ... more Prosodic phrasal structure and lexical interpretation. [The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 101, 3195 (1997)]. Shari R. Speer, Amy Schafer. Abstract. In phonological theory, phonological phrases (PPhs) and intonational ...
This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehens... more This paper investigates the influence of prosodic structure on the process of sentence comprehension, with a specific focus on the relative contributions of syntactic and prosodic information to the resolution of temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. We argue that prosodic structure provides an initial memory representation for spoken sentences, and that information from this prosodic representation is available to inform syntactic parsing decisions. This view makes three predictions for the processing of temporary syntactic ambiguity: 1. When prosodic and syntactic boundaries coincide, syntactic processing should be facilitated. 2. When prosodic boundaries are placed at misleading points in syntactic structure, syntactic processing should show interference effects. 3. The processing difficulties that have been reliably demonstrated in reading experiments for syntactically complex sentences should disappear when those sentences are presented with a felicitous prosodic structure in listening experiments. These predictions were confirmed by series of experiments measuring end-of-sentence comprehension time and cross-modal naming time for sentences with temporary syntactic closure ambiguities. Sentences with coinciding or conflicting prosodic and syntactic boundaries were compared to a prosodic baseline condition.
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