Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries / Department: English.

published_or_final_version / Applied English Studies / Master / Master of Arts in Applied Linguistics

Thesis. 1975. Ph.D.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics. / Bibliography: leaves 318-319. / Ph.D.

No description available.

Children with Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) have difficulties in acquiring language in the absence of other neurodevelopmental issues (e.g. autism, hearing impairment) and despite growing up in an adequate language-learning environment. Previous characterisations of DLD have focused on grammatical processing, phonological memory or rapid auditory processing. This thesis approaches the language-learning difficulties of children with DLD from a novel perspective by considering the potential contribution made by differing levels of sensitivity to the rhythmic properties of language. Children with DLD have been shown to have reduced sensitivity to some of the acoustic cues present in speech which are thought to be important for rhythmic perception. Since rhythm forms the basis of language processing in early development, poorer sensitivity to language rhythm may result in later language problems. To investigate whether children with DLD demonstrate difficulties in processing language rhythm, this thesis explores five areas of language processing which could be affected by poor rhythmic sensitivity: locating word-boundaries, processing novel words, storing lexical stress patterns, representing sentence level structures and the integration of rhythm and syntax. As part of the investigation, measures were also taken of acoustic threshold sensitivity to see whether task performance related to acoustic sensitivity. A parallel strand of the study investigated whether provision of an entraining rhythm prior to task stimuli could support task performance. Three groups of children participated in the study: children with DLD, age-matched TD children (AMC) and younger, language-matched TD children (YLC). The results indicate that rhythmic manipulation of language stimuli affects task responses across the five language areas under investigation. The findings are then discussed in terms of the contribution made to our understanding of the role of rhythm in language and language disorder.

The current thesis has two aims to further the understanding of the cognitive underpinnings that are involved in word-learning and language processing. One aim is to understand how individuals are able to make temporary phonological and serial order representations of new words in language and non-language domains. The second aim is to investigate whether the mechanisms involved in maintaining temporary nonverbal and serial order representations are related to verbal short-term abilities. We created four behavioural tasks to determine the processing of phonological short-term memory information, nonverbal short-term memory information, serial order short-term memory information and rhythmic short-term memory. We used 30 adult Spanish-English bilinguals as the target population to also investigate whether individual language abilities in two spoken languages affect the learning of words in a foreign language with distinct prosody and phonology. The first correlational analysis revealed that performance on a serially ordered verbal short-term memory task that involved a language of unfamiliar prosody and phonology was strongly predicted by performance on two serially ordered verbal short-term memory tasks that involved languages of familiar prosody and phonology. A second correlational analysis showed that tasks that tapped into individuals’ memory for serial order in the verbal, nonverbal and rhythmic domains were weakly associated with one another. In a third correlational analysis, it was shown that individuals’ lexical knowledge of Spanish was not a predictor of their performance on a measure of their serially ordered verbal short-term memory abilities. Multiple linear regression analyses found that none of the tasks that were used to measure individuals’ abilities for processing serial order information in the verbal, nonverbal and rhythmic domain were strong predictors for foreign-word learning. Overall, the results show promising findings for the tasks that tapped into serial order short-term memory for verbal information. However, they also suggest that the nonverbal and rhythm tasks may not be reliable measures of the constructs we were hoping to study. Future work should adjust the tasks to ensure we are properly tapping into individuals’ serial order abilities in the nonverbal and rhythm domains. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Orientador: Plinio Almeida Barbosa / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-08T03:40:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Meireles_AlexsandroRodrigues_D.pdf: 6729195 bytes, checksum: c6f916e8e8d1f7fcb13d314092e429dc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2007 / Resumo: Esta tese trata de reestruturações rítmicas da fala no português brasileiro ao se variar a taxa de elocução (speech rate). A reestruturação rítmica é considerada como uma reorganização entre grupos acentuais ao longo do enunciado ao se variar a taxa de elocução. A variação da taxa de elocução, por sua vez, é uma das maiores causas de modificação fonética, pois, perturbando a cadeia da fala dessa forma, pode-se avaliar as possibilidades de variação que revelariam novos padrões estáveis. A fim de explicarmos como a mudança da taxa de elocução pode modificar a estrutura rítmica da fala, dividimos a tese em três partes distintas. Na primeira parte apresentamos os fundamentos teóricos que serviram de guia para os experimentos realizados. Nessa parte introduzimos a principal motivação teórica de nossa tese, a aplicação da Teoria dos Sistemas Dinâmicos à linguagem. Os pressupostos teóricos desse programa estão presentes na Fonologia Articulatória (Browman & Goldstein, 1992) e no Modelo Dinâmico do Ritmo de Barbosa (2006), utilizados como suporte teórico dos nossos experimentos. Na segunda parte, após apresentarmos as noções básicas sobre o ritmo, relatamos um experimento acústico e um articulatório que revelam variações rítmicas nas frases estudadas com o aumento da taxa de elocução. Os principais resultados para o estudo acústico, em trechos que se reestruturaram ritmicamente, foram: a) o número de unidades VV (vogal-a-vogal) por grupo acentual aumenta proporcionalmente ao crescimento da taxa de elocução; b) a duração do grupo acentual tende a se manter constante com o aumento da taxa de elocução; c) o desvio-padrão da duração das unidades VV, bem como da duração dos grupos acentuais é menor nas taxas rápidas. Já o estudo articulatório, realizado com a utilização de um magnetômetro (EMMA), revela que a taxa de elocução tende a afetar todos os gestos dos enunciados de maneira uniforme, independentemente dos mesmos pertencerem a uma unidade VV em posição de acento frasal ou não. Na terceira parte, trabalhamos com variações rítmicas no item lexical. Especificamente estudamos a variação/mudança de proparoxítonas a paroxítonas com o aumento da taxa de elocução. Primeiramente, apresentamos aspectos históricos desta variação/mudança lexical, para, depois, apresentarmos uma análise à luz da Fonologia Articulatória. Para tanto, realizamos dois estudos: um acústico e um articulatório (EMMA). A principal conclusão para o estudo acústico foi de que a variação de proparoxítonas para formas paroxitonizadas é influenciada pela taxa de elocução, sendo que a probabilidade de encontrar formas consideradas como paroxítonas é maior nas taxas rápidas. No entanto, há fatores individuais/dialetais envolvidos, pois há falantes que nunca as produziram na taxa rápida. Já os estudos articulatórios serviram para corroborar os resultados acústicos, pois, o aumento de coarticulação entre as consoantes pós-tônicas com o crescimento da taxa de elocução explicaria a percepção de proparoxítonas como paroxítonas, sobretudo nas taxas mais rápidas. Concluindo, esta tese mostra que a explicação dinamicista de fenômenos lingüísticos de variação e mudança lingüística pode vir a conciliar aspectos fonéticos e fonológicos da linguagem. Especificamente, apresentamos aqui, como variações contínuas da fala, através do aumento da taxa de elocução, são capazes de modificar a estrutura rítmica da fala e atuar na variação/ mudança lingüística / Abstract: The present thesis deals with speech rhythmical restructurings due to speech rate variation in Brazilian Portuguese. Rhythmical restructuring is considered as a reorganization of stress groups along the utterance due to speech rate variation. Speech rate variation, on the other side, is one of the greatest causes of phonetic change, since this speech chain¿s perturbation makes possible to evaluate the possibilities of variation which would reveal new stable patterns. In order to explain how speech rate change modifies the rhythmic structure of speech, the thesis was split into three different parts. The first part presents the theoretical background on which our experiments were based upon. In this part, it is introduced the thesis¿ main theoretical motivation, the application of Dynamical Systems Theory to language. Its theoretical basis is found in the Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1992) and the Dynamical Model of Rhythm (Barbosa, 2006). Both models are used as our experiments¿ theoretical basis. The second part, after presenting some basic notions about rhythm, presents an acoustical and an articulatory experiment which reveal rhythmic variations on sentences in which speech rate was varied. The acoustical study¿s main results in stretches with rhythmical restructurings are: a) the number of VV units (vowel-to-vowel) increases proportionally to speech rate increase; b) the stress group¿s duration tends to be constant with speech rate increase; c) the standard deviation of VV units¿ duration, as well as the stress groups¿ duration, is smaller at fast rates. On the other hand, the articulatory study, through the use of a magnetometer (EMMA), reveals that speech rate tends to affect all gestures in a utterance, independently of the VV unit phrasal position. The third part works with lexical rhythmic variation. Specifically, variation/ change from antepenultimate stress words to penultimate stress words is studied. Firstly, historical aspects of this lexical variation/change is presented, then, an analysis by the light of Articulatory Phonology is presented. In order to do so, two studies were made: an acoustical and an articulatory one (EMMA). The acoustical study¿s main conclusion is that antepenultimate stress words variation to penultimate stress words is influenced by speech rate. Higher probability of penultimate stress words forms is to be expected at fast rates. Nevertheless, there are individual/dialectal factors involved, since there are speakers who never produced such forms at fast rates. On the other hand, the articulatory studies were used to corroborate the previous acoustical results, for coarticulation increase between post-stress consonants with speech rate increase would explain the perception of antepenultimate stress words as penultimate stress words, especially at fast rates. Finally, this thesis shows how dynamical explanations of linguistic phenomena like linguistic change and variation may come to reconcile phonetic and phonological aspects of language. Specifically, it presents how speech continuous variations through speech rate increase are able to modify speech¿s rhythmic structure and take part in linguist change/variation / Doutorado / Doutor em Linguística