Böcker i Prosody, Phonology and Phonetics-serien

This book contrasts variations in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, using as a reference for discussion the mainstream careful speech of news anchors at the national level or the equivalent type of speech: a well-educated style that nonetheless sounds natural.

These include the acoustics of speech prosody, the relationship between lexical and non-lexical prosody, the phonology of prosody, the modeling of rhythm and of melody, and the central question of the various and at times quite mysterious ways in which prosody contributes to the interpretation of an utterance.

This book discusses the morphological properties of intonation, building on past research to support the long-recognized relationship between the functions and meanings of discourse particles and the functions and meanings of intonation.

The volume addresses issues concerning prosody generation in speech synthesis, including prosody modeling, how we can convey para- and non-linguistic information in speech synthesis, and prosody control in speech synthesis (including prosody conversions).

Many post-colonial varieties of English, which are mostly spoken as a second language in countries such as India, Nigeria and the Philippines, are thought to have a syllable-timed rhythm, whereas first language varieties such as British English are characterized as being stress-timed.

This book provides a refreshing perspective on the description, study and representation of consonant clusters in Polish. What are the sources of phonotactic complexity? What properties or principles motivate the phonological structure of initial and final consonant clusters? In answering these questions, a necessary turning point consists in investigating sequences of consonants at their most basic level, namely in terms of phonological features. The analysis is exploratory: it leads to discovering prevalent feature patterns in clusters from which new phonotactic generalizations are derived.A recurring theme in the book is that phonological features vary in weight depending on (1) their distribution in a cluster, (2) their position in a word, and (3) language domain. Positional feature weight reflects the relative importance of place, manner and voice features (e.g. coronal, dorsal, strident, continuant) in constructing cluster inventories, minimizing cognitive effort, facilitating production and triggering specific casual speech processes. Feature weights give rise to previously unidentified positional preferences. Rankings of features and preferences are a testing ground for principles of sonority, contrast, clarity of perception and ease of articulation.This volume addresses practitioners in the field seeking new methods of phonotactic modelling and approaches to complexity, as well as students interested in an overview of current research directions in the study of consonant clusters. Sequences of consonants in Polish are certainly among the most remarkable ones that readers will ever encounter in their linguistic explorations. In this volume, they will come to realise that hundreds of unusually long, odd-looking, sonority-violating, morphologically complex and infrequent clusters are in fact well-motivated and structured according to well-defined tactic patterns of features.

This book is the first edited book to cover a wide range of issues related to Chinese as a second language (CSL) speech, including tone and segment acquisition and processing, categorical perception of tones, CSL fluency, CSL intelligibility/comprehensibility and accentedness, and pronunciation pedagogy.

This book presents cutting-edge research on the production and perception of speech rhythm by speakers of English in countries where it is used as a foreign language or an institutionalised second language (also sometimes known as the Expanding and Outer Circles). It contributes to a better understanding of speech rhythm, which has long been recognised as an important supra-segmental category of speech, focusing on its relevance in World Englishes, Second Language Acquisition and learner varieties of English, as well as the sociolinguistic and perceptual significance of this phonological variable.

This book contrasts variations in Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese pronunciation, using as a reference for discussion the mainstream careful speech of news anchors at the national level or the equivalent type of speech: a well-educated style that nonetheless sounds natural. Pursuing an innovative approach, the book uses this view of language as a cornerstone to describe and discuss other social and regional variants relative to that speaking register. It is aimed at speakers of Spanish interested in learning Portuguese and speakers of Portuguese who want to learn Spanish, as well as language specialists interested in bilingualism, heritage languages, in the teaching of typologically similar languages in contrast, and readers with interest in Phonetics and Phonology. The book employs a variety of innovative approaches, especially the reinterpretation of some of the traditional concept in Phonetics, and the use of speech prosodies and speech melodies, a user-friendly strategy to describe speech prosody in languages and speech melody in music through musical notation.

The book focuses on the interaction of persons with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). ASD is a neurobiological developmental disorder, characterized by problems with social interaction, over-sensitivity to sensory stimuli and restricted interest (APA 2013). Problems with social interaction being a core feature of ASD, there is a scientific and a societal need for a book focusing on this topic. The book approaches the interaction of persons with ASD from a new angle. Firstly, where most studies on ASD are based on data coming from experimental settings, this book is based on naturally occurring data coming from group therapy sessions where 11¿13-year-old Finnish- and French-speaking boys with ASD talk with each other and with their therapists. Secondly, the book treats a variety of themes that have so far been studied much less than, for example, the pragmatic problems of persons with ASD. These themes include the following aspects: speech prosody (characteristic features, perception of atypicality by neurotypical listeners), disfluencies of speech (comparison with neurotypical controls), comprehension problems (role of prosody, role of disfluencies, other causes), gaze behavior (eye contact avoidance strategies, using gaze as a source of feedback) as well as therapists¿ response strategies and teaching orientations. The book is intended for researchers working in the field of autism, professionals working with persons with ASD as well as for families of persons with ASD.