Introduction
A major issue in the study of spoken language is how humans are able to successfully perceive speech in spite of its variability. For instance, speakers can differ in speech rate, dialect, and even in the rate of the syllables within the words of speech (Newman & Sawusch, 1996). Words in speech often become distorted as with coarticulation, a phenomenon in which speakers overlap words in normal continuous speech (Dilley & Pitt, 2010). In some cases, the overlapping of adjacent words can be so severe that words appear to vanish (e.g. “Do you want to?” becomes “Djawana?”).
Although there are no explicit signals in spoken language that indicate where boundaries should be placed in the same way spaces are used to separate words in written language, listeners are still able to both segment and recognize words in normal continuous speech (Darwin, 2012). Studies on speech perception show that there are several cues listeners use to segment and subsequently, perceive words. Currently, researchers recognize two categories of cues used by listeners to locate boundaries in speech: knowledge-driven processes and acoustic speech signals (Dilleys, Mattys, & Vinke, 2010).
Knowledge-Driven Processes
Phonotactics, syntactic expectations, and context encompass the knowledge-driven processes used by listeners to segment words in speech. Phonotactics “refer to the constraints on the ordering of segments within and between the words of a language” (Mattys & Jusczyk, 1999). People know what order sounds can come in and use this to help them segment speech. Using phonotactics, an English listener, for instance, would recognize that “the sequence, [br], is generally located at the beginning of a word, whereas the sequence, [nt], is typical...
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...German, 2011).
Summary
Speech perception continues to be an ambiguous phenomenon in the study of spoken language. Several studies have been conducted in the struggle to understand how humans are able to segment and recognize words in normal continuous speech, which is in itself, prone to changes in speaking rate and numerous distortions depending on the speaker. Thus far, researchers recognize that knowledge-driven processes and acoustic signals are both prominent cues used to segment words in speech. However, the use of these cues, particularly acoustic cues, in segmentation has been mainly tested in adults while studies in children remain widely unexplored. This experiment will examine the effect of acoustic properties, pitch and speech rate, on word segmentation in four to five-year-old children in the hopes of further understanding how humans perceive speech.
Session #1: The speech language pathologist (SLP) modeled and role-played different types of voice tone. According to Jed Baker (2003), when demonstrat...
The environmental game cards consisted of the Stepping Stone Game, Syllabication Object box, Vowel-Change Word Family, The Four-Letter Long Vowel Silent-e Words, and Sorting Words by Vowel Sound Game. This article I chose to write about was written by Audrey C. Rule, Jolene Dockstader, and Roger A. Stewart. The article provides 3 table graphs, 5 examples of Phonics Games, and 6 pages of the data collected to better account for how the experiment played out. This article was published in the Early Childhood Education Journal, which really proved to me that it was an excellent way to learn more about Hands-on Learning and Kinesthetic Activities. Summary The article, “Hands-on and Kinesthetic Activities for Teaching Phonological Awareness”, gives a very well detailed overview on the teaching study done between Phonological Awareness and Phonics instruction and how they take different forms from vocal and visual methods.
The mind of an infant and toddler is a sponge to language. Whether or not the child is able to speak, their brain is rehearsing and affirming the linguistic structures they hear, and the period of baby talk—called “babbling”—is a crucial time of experimentation with sound. During this time, the child will babble while in social situations in order to see which phonological structures receive positive responses from their parents—i.e. which combinations of sounds elicit responses. If a child cannot hear the sounds that their language offers, the child does not have the opportunity to babble. A child with significant hearing loss will still make sounds in infancy, but will quickly cease due to the lack of response and the fact that they cannot hear the sounds they are making and so cannot affirm them for themselves.
Evidence for the existence of the phonological loop comes from Baddeley (1966 in Passer, 2009) They examined the word length effect in which they presented participants with visual presentations of word lists and asked them to write t...
From the moment an infant is born, it is bombarded with sounds that the brain attempts to categorize. Within the first year of life alone, infants already show preferences for phonologically legal structures in their native language when compared to illegal consonant structures (Friederici et al., 1993). While a personal lexicon is not developed until later in childhood, the early stages, primarily the recognition of word segmentation, begins within the first year of life. The topic of what the important factors are in babies perceiving speech and building a preference to their own language, however, is shrouded in mystery. For instance, Friedrici et al.’s study on phonotactic knowledge of word boundaries gave results that indicate the combination of simple context cues as well as the use of infant directed speech (IDS) allows babies to recognize phonotactically legal structures by nine months. However, McMurray et al.’s results directly contrast those findings by arguing that IDS simply causes a slower rate of speech but does not highlight contrasts between segmented sounds, nor does it enhance phonetic cues. Infant directed speech is a “speech register characterized by simpler sentences, a slower rate, and more variable prosody” (McMurray et al., 2012). While there is controversy regarding the beneficial factors of infant directed speech, most studies indicate that this register is extremely beneficial for infant speech perception in the first year of life.
Phonemic awareness is the ability to notice, think about, and work with the individual sounds in words. It is very important to teach phonemic awareness because it the start of teaching the students how to read. This lesson taught me about all the steps it takes to teach students about phonemic awareness. It’s something that can’t be done in one class. Phonemic awareness has for stages, word, syllable, onset rime, and phoneme. All these steps are crucial for learning how to read. This lesson taught me a lot about phonemic awareness and it’s a lesson I’ll be using in the near future when I begin
Hearing loss is often overlooked because our hearing is an invisible sense that is always expected to be in action. Yet, there are people everywhere that suffer from the effects of hearing loss. It is important to study and understand all aspects of the many different types and reasons for hearing loss. The loss of this particular sense can be socially debilitating. It can affect the communication skills of the person, not only in receiving information, but also in giving the correct response. This paper focuses primarily on hearing loss in the elderly. One thing that affects older individuals' communication is the difficulty they often experience when recognizing time compressed speech. Time compressed speech involves fast and unclear conversational speech. Many older listeners can detect the sound of the speech being spoken, but it is still unclear (Pichora-Fuller, 2000). In order to help with diagnosis and rehabilitation, we need to understand why speech is unclear even when it is audible. The answer to that question would also help in the development of hearing aids and other communication devices. Also, as we come to understand the reasoning behind this question and as we become more knowledgeable about what older adults can and cannot hear, we can better accommodate them in our day to day interactions.
Style has been an integral component in the field of linguistics. Linguistic style refers to a person’s speaking pattern, which can include different features such as pace, pitch, intonation, syntactic patterns, etc. Styles of speech is learned, and is often influenced by location, gender, ethnicity, and age. As different cultures and sub-cultures arise, linguistic variations occur and different sociolinguistic styles come into being. Each style can index social meanings such as group membership, personal attributes or beliefs.
Thiessen, E. D., Hill, E. A., & Saffran, J. R. (2005). Infant-directed speech facilitates word segmentation. Infancy, 7(1), 53-71.
Niemi, Jussi and Matti Laine. 1997. Slips of the tongue as linguistic evidence: Finnish word initial segments and vowel harmony. Folia (Linguistica 31. 161=175.
As explained phonological awareness develops through a gradual process of refinement of sounds, starting with broad distinctions between general sounds, moving ultimately towards fine gradations of phonemes (Barratt-Pugh, Rivalland, Hamer & Adams, 2005a). Studies David Hornsby and Lorraine Wilson from suggesting that children learn phonic before they learn how to read and write. Children at young ages explore the relationships in sound and letter, this leads there phonics to a graphic symbol.
According to Bursuck & Damer (2011) phonemes are “the smallest individual sounds in words spoken.” Phonemic awareness is the “ability to hear the phonemes and manipulate the sounds” (p. 41). Phonemic awareness is essential because without the ability students are not able to manipulate the sounds. According to the National Institute for Literacy (2007), “students with poor phonics skills prevent themselves from reading grade-level text and are unable to build their vocabulary” (p.5) Agreeing with the importance of phonemic awareness, Shapiro and Solity attempted to use whole class instruction to improve students’ phonological awareness. The intervention showed that whole class instruction assisted not only the students with poor phonemic awareness, but also on-level developing readers.
Children will then start to produce two-word utterance around two years of age. The first utterance of the sentence usually begin start with the child's earlier holophrastic utterance, children begin to form actually two-word utterance with clear syntactic and semantic relations, each word has it own contour. During this period, t...
Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2003). An introduction to language (7th ed.). Boston: Heinle.
The three components of language consist of content, form, and use. These components are then made up of the five main components of language which are made up of semantics, morphology, phonology, syntax, and pragmatics (Owens, 2012, p. 18). Each of these main components provides its own sets of rules. Semantics rules provide meanings to words or content to a combination of words (Owens, 2012, p. 23). The smaller units of words are known as morphemes. Morphemes can be both free and bound depending on if the word can stand alone or not. Morphemes can also be derivational morphemes if they include either a prefix or suffix (Owens, 2012, p. 21). Phonology pertains to the sounds that letters make when in a certain sequence order. Syntax rules involve the structure of words and sentences. Lastly, pragmatics is how one uses language to communicate. When these rules are not followed, communicating with others will not be