Language and Speech

On the evidence available general tendencies in the development of personal pronouns are enumerated. Two interconnected sets of tendencies are considered in more detail together with similar tendencies in pidgins and creoles.

The method of magnitude estimation was used to scale naturally and mechanically altered rates of two passages in English and French. The scales obtained remained invariant across languages, texts and methods of altering rate. They were not invariant however when Ss estimated naturally and mechanically altered rates one after the other. In this case, Ss changed the weights they attributed to the two component variables of speech rate—namely articulation rate and pause rate—in arriving at a global impression of speech rate. A comparison of the present results with those of prior studies also showed that the scales are not invariant with changes in the range of stimuli presented. An intramodal range effect was confirmed by cross-modality matching in which Ss matched apparent force of handgrip to apparent speech rate.

There is voluminous evidence that homorganic stop consonants are distinguishable on the basis of voice onset time relative to their supraglottal articulation. For initial stops a convenient acoustic reference point is the onset of the release burst, and VOT has been defined as the interval between this point and onset of glottal signal. VOT boundary values between voiced and voiceless initial stops of English have been established by spectrographic measurements of naturally produced isolated words and by perception testing of synthesized CV syllables. The close match between the two kinds of boundary values suggests that fairly natural values were chosen for the invariant features of the synthetic speech patterns tested. It is known, however, that certain of these affect voicing perception. New data from synthesis experiments show that VOT boundaries shift with changes in transition duration, and that it is the first formant and not higher ones which are responsible.

This paper presents the idea that language is global in nature, and consists of three interrelated aspects; functions, determinants, and components, each of which can be examined by reference to certain characteristics. This global concept of language has significance for first and second language learning, deviant language, and demonstrates the need for a multi-disciplinary approach to the study of language.

A preliminary experiment was performed to discover what effect the topic of speech and repetition of recording session would have on the number of types in samples of spoken monologues. Ten normal subjects were recorded on three occasions, and on each occasion they spoke on three different topics for five minutes each, though two of the topics were constant across occasions. Despite the fact that the subjects felt they spoke more easily on one topic, that of their own choice, there was no evidence of a significant topic effect or an order effect upon measures closely related to the Type-Token Ratio. The conclusion was that sampling speech in this fashion is a suitable design to study changes in Type-Token Ratios where change over time due to specific causes (e.g. psychiatric illness, exhibition of drugs, etc.) is being investigated.

A flexible scheme for assigning timing and pitch to synthetic speech is described. The scheme is designed to provide sufficiently adequate and natural control of the prosody of utterances for people to be able to use the speech which it generates as a simple but effective tool for man-machine interaction. The basic prosodic features of the utterance must be marked in the phonemic input string, while more global features are defined by parameters which can be changed as and when desired. This combines a simple input format with the capability of synthesizing many of the nuances encountered when connected passages are spoken in a rich and natural way.

Since the scheme has been implemented on a computer, many decisions about precise details of pitch and timing have had to be made, usually in the absence of proper experimental justification. Each point of detail is discussed in the paper, so that the procedure is described sufficiently fully to enable it to be replicated in other research laboratories.

The present study was concerned with comparative judgments of vocal quality, speech fluency, and confidence of black and white speakers in southern universities. Specific objectives were to determine whether the following were related: (1) perception of vocal quality and judgment of confidence in the voice, (2) quality and fluency, (3) speech fluency and judgment of confidence; and to ascertain the differences between black and white speakers in vocal quality, speech fluency, and confidence. Stimuli were taken from a short passage read by 25 Negroes and 25 Caucasians. Using a seven-point scale, the following results were obtained: (1) the 50 speakers were correctly identified as to race by a majority of 36 listeners; (2) vocal quality and speech fluency were both perceived to be significantly better for white speakers; (3) confidence as perceived in the voice was also significantly better for white speakers; (4) relationships between all combinations of quality, fluency, and confidence were significant.

Approximately 100 college students were asked to evaluate Spanish-English bilingual speakers on the basis of taped readings of an English text. The speakers were chosen to represent a wide range of accentedness. The relationship between the amount of accentedness heard and the attributed characteristics of the speaker was investigated. The results show that the students made rather fine discriminations among varying degrees of accentedness in rating a speaker's personal attributes and speech. Support was thus found for the proposition that Spanish-accented English is negatively stereotyped and that the more accented the speech, the stronger the stereotype. By employing a seven-point rating scale with large groups rather than more involved scaling techniques based on individual testing, this study attempted to generalize the results of recent research which indicated that linguistically naive persons can reliably rate varying degrees of accentedness. Indeed, since the more convenient group-administered rating scale procedure provided high correlations with the accentedness scores obtained via more complicated scaling techniques, research concerned with reactions to a range of accentedness can progress rapidly.

The semantically ambiguous phrase, "I thought so," was tape-recorded using three sources: (1) a professional radio announcer, (2) a computer speech synthesizer employing within-word intonation glides, and (3) a computer speech synthesizer without glides. Each subject heard four intonation patterns from one source and marked the "speaker's" apparent intended meaning for each utterance: (A) "and I was right," (B) "but I was wrong," or (C) "Can't tell which the speaker meant." Analyses indicated: (1) For the announcer and synthesized glide versions, listeners inferred confirmation from falling intonation on thought, and denial from rising thought. (2) Percentages of "Can't tell which the speaker meant" responses and intra-subject response agreements indicated that the announcer utterances were least ambiguous, while the synthesized non-glide utterances were most ambiguous.

Starting with the knowledge that large numbers of Dublin teachers are not from Dublin themselves and speak, therefore, with a regional accent, the study used the matched-guise technique to investigate the reactions of Dublin secondary school students to five such regional accents. The subjects (N = 178), from different social strata, consistently rated the Donegal guise most favourably on traits reflecting competence. The Dublin speaker was perceived least favourably on these traits, and the Cork, Cavan and Galway guises were in the middle ranks. Evaluations were more varied on other dimensions, although the Dublin speaker was, with the Galway guise, rated most favourably in terms of social attractiveness. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to future investigations of regional stereotypes in general, and the study of teacher-pupil dynamics in particular.

Six severely hearing-impaired children were trained in the auditory discrimination of the voiced-voiceless distinction between pairs of stop consonants. The effects of this training upon articulation of the voiced-voiceless distinction were studied. Findings indicated that auditory discrimination training resulted in improved articulation of the voiced-voiceless distinction.