•Reliable syllable priming effects are systematically observed only for CV words.•Electrophysiological correlates of the syllable structure effect in EP was examined;•Syllable effects were observed ...in the P200 and N400 for both CV and CVC targets;•Effects in the N100 might be indexing attentional processes.•Syllable effects were also observed for EP pseudowords.
Syllable effects during visual word recognition have been observed for CV but not for CVC syllables, a puzzling effect that is not explained either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables, syllable complexity, or syllabic neighbourhood density. Furthermore, in European Portuguese (EP), syllable effects have not been found for pseudowords, suggesting that syllable activation might not precede lexical activation. Here, we combined a colour-congruency lexical decision task with the collection of electroencephalographic (EEG) data to investigate syllable effects in EP for CV and CVC words and pseudowords, with the latter presenting a match (CVCO+P+) or a mismatch (CVCO+P-) between their orthographic (O) and phonological (P) syllable structure to further ascertain the locus (i.e., orthographic and/or phonological) of syllable effects. Results showed syllable congruency effects in the N100, P200, and N400 ERP components for CV and CVC words suggesting the influence of different factors underlying the syllable structure effect.
A change has been observed in the pronunciation of sonorants in Polish in positions where their occurrence does not conform with the sonority principle. It has been decided to take a closer look at ...this process and begin research on this phenomenon. First, we plan to examine the pronunciation of sonorants in word-final positions after an obstruent, next we will examine them in the position between two obstruents, and finally in the word-initial position before an obstruent. So far, a short pilot study has been published (Sawicka, Zinowjewa 2020), and the pronunciation of /w/ has been examined in sentences read by a selected speaker (Sawicka, Zinowjewa 2023). The present study discusses the pronunciation of r in sentences read by the same speaker. The project will also include an examination of the same material read by a greater number of “average” speakers of Polish, and an examination of continuous material – longer texts, read and spoken.
•The fact that syllable effects are restricted to CV words remains poorly understood.•We explored whether syllabic neighbourhood density can account for that effect.•Syllabic neighbourhood density ...does not seem to underlie the effect.•Phonology is possibly the driving force of the syllable structure effect.
Previous lexical decision masked priming studies have shown that the advantage of syllable-congruent primes over syllable-incongruent primes is observed for CV (e.g., JU.ROS interests), but not for CVC first-syllable words (e.g., TUR.BO turbo), giving rise to the so-called syllable structure effect (e.g., ju.ral-JU.ROS < jur.ga-JU.ROS; tur.ta-TUR.BO = tu.res-TUR.BO). This effect is puzzling since it is not accounted for either by the distributional frequencies of CV and CVC syllables in European Portuguese (EP) or by syllable complexity. Here we examine whether the number of words of the same syllabic length sharing the same (first) syllable in the same (first) position, a measure taken as an index of syllabic neighbourhood density, may account for the syllable structure effect. To that purpose, 36 EP skilled readers performed a lexical decision masked priming task in which 48 CV and 48 CVC words matched in the number of syllabic neighbours, amongst other variables, were preceded by syllable-congruent (e.g., ju.ral-JU.ROS and tur.ta-TURBO), syllable-incongruent (e.g., jur-ga-JU.ROS and tu.res-TUR.BO), and unrelated primes (e.g., pu.cas- JU.ROS and binva-TURBO). Syllable priming effects were still observed only for CV words, even though CVC words with a CV phonological structure (e.g., EN.TEcomb - /pˈẽtɨ/) tended to behave similarly to CV words, suggesting that EP syllable effects may be driven by phonological factors.
The article aims to establish the hierarchy of Lithuanian syllable constituents and determine how syllables should be interpreted in terms of syllable weight. The empirical data based on 311 000 ...syllables show that the variety of consonants in the onset is more significant than in the coda. A vowel and a succeeding approximant form the nucleus of a prosodic syllable, which shows strong coherency between a nucleus and a coda. Therefore, a CVC syllable is interpreted as syllable Onset rhyme Nucleus Coda. The division of Lithuanian syllables into light and heavy can be based on the realization of pitch accent, and it fully coincides with the traditional classification of long and short syllables in Lithuanian linguistics. Short syllables are light, their nucleus is a short vowel, and the number of consonants in the onset and the coda is unimportant. Such syllables account for almost half of all syllables in the database of this research (45%). Long syllables are heavy, and their nucleus may consist of long vowels (30%), diphthongs (12%), or mixed diphthongs (13%). When stressed, heavy syllables are pronounced in two ways: traditionally known as “acute” and “circumflex”. The stress is not dependent on the syllable weight, as both light (short) and heavy (long) syllables can be stressed. However, it has been observed that heavy (long) syllables are stressed more often than light (short) ones. Heavily stressed syllables constitute 25%, while light stressed syllables comprise 11% of all the syllables in this research database.
Hayes & Kaun (1996) argue that the mapping of syllables onto a metrical grid in textsetting is sensitive to natural duration, not just categorical weight (heavy or light). Most of their evidence, ...however, derives the final lengthening effects, which admit of another possible analysis (Halle 2004). Drawing on a corpus of 2,371 popular songs in English, I confirm that even when one controls for final lengthening and other factors, the setting of syllables to a discrete grid is sensitive to natural duration. Moreover, onset effects reveal that the domain of weight for textsetting is not the syllable, rime, or vowel-to-vowel interval, but rather the interval between p-centers (perceptual centers). Finally, I argue that the textsetting grammar invokes both natural duration and categorical weight; weight mapping cannot be reduced to one or the other.
We present some methods to analyze tendencies that can be discovered in the syllable structure. To this end we study regularities in the Romani language as spoken in Slovakia. The results may be ...useful to classify languages and to support a future theory.
In 1910, Ogura Shinpei published a meticulous critique of Benjamin Smith Lyman’s famous 1894 article on
. In the course of a thorough examination of compounds consisting of a single Sino-Japanese ...morpheme followed by /su/∼/zu/ ‘to do’, Ogura noted that all the examples with
(i.e., with /zu/) have a monosyllabic first element. This observation invites the inference that there is a causal connection between first-element monosyllabicity and
in X+/zu/ compounds, but a careful review of the history of these vocabulary items indicates that the correlation between monosyllabicity and
is just an accident. There is no reason to believe that first-element monosyllabicity has ever been an active phonological constraint, and the pattern that Ogura identified cannot be used to bolster the view that syllables distinct from moras are real units in modern Tokyo Japanese.
► The best acoustic, lexical and language modeling units have been investigated. ► Triphone, syllable and hybrid (phone-syllable) acoustic models have been developed. ► Words and morphemes have been ...used as lexical and language modeling units. ► Syllable and hybrid acoustic models outperformed the triphone based ones. ► The use of morphemes in lexical and language modeling led to improved performance.
State-of-the-art large vocabulary continuous speech recognition systems use mostly phone based acoustic models (AMs) and word based lexical and language models. However, phone based AMs are not efficient in modeling long-term temporal dependencies and the use of words in lexical and language models leads to out-of-vocabulary (OOV) problem, which is a serious issue for morphologically rich languages. This paper presents the results of our contributions on the use of different units for acoustic, lexical and language modeling for an under-resourced language (Amharic spoken in Ethiopia). Triphone, Syllable and hybrid (syllable-phone) units have been investigated for acoustic modeling. Word and morphemes have been investigated for lexical and language modeling. We have also investigated the use of longer (syllable) acoustic units and shorter (morpheme) lexical as well as language modeling units in a speech recognition system.
Although hybrid AMs did not bring much improvement over context dependent syllable based recognizers in speech recognition performance with word based lexical and language model (i.e. word based speech recognition), we observed a significant word error rate (WER) reduction compared to triphone-based systems in morpheme-based speech recognition. Syllable AMs also led to a WER reduction over the triphone-based systems both in word based and morpheme based speech recognition. It was possible to obtain a 3% absolute WER reduction as a result of using syllable acoustic units in morpheme-based speech recognition. Overall, our result shows that syllable and hybrid AMs are best fitted in morpheme-based speech recognition.
The present article dedicates to studying the syllable-internal structure in three Iranian Balochi dialects (IBDs) namely Mirjaveh Sarhaddi, Sarawani and Lashari dialects. The data analysis will be ...based on the onset-rhyme theory (e.g., Kurylowicz, 1948; Fudge, 1969; Vergnaud & Halle, 1979; Selkirk, 1982). Moreover, the syllable weight in IBDs will be discussed in the framework of mora theory (Hayes, 1985, 1989). The data have been collected during the research fieldwork in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Iran. The research findings demonstrate that the Balochi language is an example of a nucleus-weight language in which heavy syllables depend on the number of elements in the nucleus. Thus, CV and CVC are light syllables and CVV(C) syllable is counted as heavy syllable. Besides, the context-dependent weight of CVC syllables occurs in IBDs stress pattern system. Studying the syllable contact (word-medial consonant clusters) in IBDs shows that Balochi is among languages that admit all types of heterosyllablic clusters.
The present paper aims to discuss the phonological processes including whole segment processes occurring in Dogri. It serves an introduction to the types of phonological processes and present ...examples from Dogri words exhibiting these processes and phenomena. The objective of the present work is to present a complete classification of different phonological processes in Dogri, explore these processes in detail and to acquaint students and researchers with the changes in the sound structure because of the whole segment processes. The earlier linguistic literature on Dogri mentions that various whole segment processes such as gemination, nasalization, addition, deletion, metathesis, substitution, and assimilation were prevalent in Dogri. Moreover, gemination and nasalization is phonemic in Dogri. It has been found that in certain lexical items, transposition of sounds takes place that is one sound is moved next to the adjacent sound and that in turn is replaced by the former sound. In sum, Dogri has been found to make use of a wide variety of the phonological processes. The work employs exploratory research design with thrust on qualitative method involving interpretative approach towards the data. The finding of the research presents a good amount of whole segment and phonological type phonological processes in Dogri lexical items. The study makes students and researchers acquainted with different phonological processes in words and the data serves as a documented record for future researchers and linguists.
