Orientador: Rosana do Carmo Novaes Pinto / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-27T16:51:07Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Oliveira_MarcusViniciusBorges_D.pdf: 3972176 bytes, checksum: 084ce4231fd2c7ed5511c492a548777e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015 / Resumo: Conhecido na literatura da área como "tip of the tongue", doravante TOT, este fenômeno se refere ao momento em que um sujeito procura uma palavra, acompanhado da sensação de que esta já vai surgir ou que já lhe escapou, o que justifica o uso da metáfora de que a palavra se encontra na "ponta-da-língua". O objetivo principal desta tese é caracterizar os TOTs, ancorados pelos princípios teóricos-metodológicos da abordagem histórico-cultural, que caracterizam a Neurolinguística de orientação enunciativo-discursiva. Este objetivo central se relaciona a outros, mais específicos, tais como (i) discutir e dar visibilidade à relação constitutiva das funções superiores, sobretudo à relação entre linguagem-memória; (ii) contribuir para o desenvolvimento de uma metodologia qualitativa dos TOTs; e, por fim, (iii) compreender as estratégias de busca da palavra desejada, contribuindo não só para entender aspectos do funcionamento lexical envolvido nos TOTs, mas também para subsidiar o trabalho desenvolvido no contexto clínico-terapêutico com sujeitos afásicos. Para atingir estes objetivos, dialogamos com as ideias de diversos autores, dentre os quais: i) Luria e Vygotsky, principalmente com relação ao que juntos desenvolvem no campo da Neuropsicologia, ii) Bakhtin e seu Círculo, no campo da Filosofia da Linguagem, e iii) Jakobson, na Linguística, além dos autores que se dedicam mais especificamente ao campo da Neurolinguística. A maior parte dos estudos descritos na literatura sobre os TOTs partem de expedientes empíricos, cujo resultados são analisados quantitativamente. Nesta tese, contrapomos tais estudos às primeiras reflexões sobre o tema, com destaque para aquelas de Willian James, Robert Woodworth e Sigmund Freud. Também propomos formas alternativas de estudar os TOTs, desenvolvendo diferentes procedimentos qualitativos, que, ao nosso ver, nos permitem avançar na caracterização dos TOTs como eventos enunciativos e dialógicos. Para isso, nos dedicamos às reflexões que relacionam os TOTs às funções psicológicas superiores, trazendo questões acerca dos signos e de sua natureza dialógica, assim como questões que relacionam linguagem e ideologia. Para finalizar, articulamos os principais pontos desta tese à dimensão ética implicada no trabalho terapêutico no campo da linguagem, indicando as possíveis estratégias que podem ser desenvolvidas no cotidiano clínico, visando minimizar os sofrimentos dos sujeitos afásicos quando se deparam com impossibilidade de seu querer-dizer / Abstract: Known in the field literature as "tip of the tongue", herein after "TOT", this phenomenon refers to the state when someone searches for a word, accompanied by the feeling that it will soon come or that it has already gone, which explains the use of the metaphor that the word is on "the tip of the tongue". The main goal of this thesis is to characterize the TOT phenomenon on the basis of theoretical-methodological principles of the historical-cultural approach, which underlie enunciative-discursive Neurolinguistics. This core task relates to other more specific ones, including: (1) to discuss and give visibility to the constitutive relationship among the higher functions, especially that between language and memory; (ii) to contribute to the development of a qualitative methodology of TOTs; and, finally, (iii) to understand the search strategies of the target word, contributing not only to understand aspects of lexical processes involved in TOTs, but also to support the work in the clinical and therapeutic context with aphasic subjects. To achieve these goals, we dialogue with the ideas of several authors, among whom: i) Luria and Vygotsky, particularly regarding the work they have developed together in the field of Neuropsychology; ii) Bakhtin and his Circle, in the field of Philosophy of Language; and iii) Jakobson, in Linguistics, in addition to the authors who have dedicated their studies to the field of Neurolinguistics. Most of the published studies on TOTs are founded on empirical grounds and present results analyzed quantitatively. In this thesis, we confront such studies with pioneer research carried out by William James, Robert Woodworth and Sigmund Freud. We also propose alternative ways of studying TOTs, developing different qualitative procedures which, in our view, allow for advances in the characterization of a TOT as a dialogical event. We aim to relate TOTs to higher psychological functions keeping account of the dialogic nature of signs and of the relation between language and ideology. Finally, we correlate the main points of this thesis to the ethical dimension of therapeutic work in the field of language, indicating possible strategies in the clinical context to minimize the sufferings of aphasic individuals when faced with the impossibility of their speech-will / Doutorado / Linguistica / Doutor em Linguística

No description available.

Various infant studies suggest that statistical regularities in the speech stream (e.g. transitional probabilities) are one of the first speech segmentation cues available. Statistical learning may serve as a mechanism for learning various language specific segmentation cues (e.g. stress segmentation by English speakers). To test this possibility we exposed adults to an artificial language in which all words had a novel acoustic cue on the final syllable. Subjects were presented with a continuous stream of synthesized speech in which the words were repeated in random order. Subjects were then given a new set of words to see if they had learned the acoustic cue and generalized it to new stimuli. Finally, subjects were exposed to a competition stream in which the transitional probability and novel acoustic cues conflicted to see which cue they preferred to use for segmentation. Results on the word-learning test suggest that subjects were able to segment the first exposure stream, however, on the cue transfer test they did not display any evidence of learning the relationship between word boundaries and the novel acoustic cue. Subjects were able to learn statistical words from the competition stream despite extra intervening syllables.

The present thesis focuses on how native English listeners process phonological rule misapplications in non-native-accented speech. In Experiment 1, we examined whether listeners use information about a speaker’s native language to help them understand that speaker’s accented English. The test case for this scenario was word-final obstruent devoicing in German and German-accented speech. Results showed that participants did not generalize their knowledge cross-linguistically. In Experiment 2, we used a categorization task and an eye-tracking visual world paradigm to investigate listeners’ use of a position-sensitive allophonic alternation, the velarization of /l/, as a word segmentation cue in native English. Participants were able to use velarization as a cue during word segmentation, even though they also showed a later, post-perceptual bias to segment /l/ as word initial. Follow-up experiments will build upon these conclusions using German-accented speech as stimuli, which will have reduced or absent velarization of /l/ in word-final position. In sum, these experiments inform us about the limits of phonological knowledge about foreign-accented speech.

Previous research has suggested that attraction errors are not due to the proximity of the local noun and verb, as a more distant local noun can result in more errors than a nearer one (e.g., *The helicopter for the flights over the canyon are vs. *The helicopter for the flight over the canyons are; Franck, Vigliocco, & Nicol, 2002). However, the verb tends to agree in number with the nearer noun of a disjoined subject, suggesting that linear order can indeed play a role in agreement computation (e.g., The horse or the clocks are vs. The horses or the clock is; Haskell & MacDonald, 2005). In the present study, two experiments using a two-alternative forced-choice production paradigm and one experiment using eyetracking during reading directly compared agreement computation in the classic attraction configuration and when the subject is a coordinate phrase. The 2AFC experiments replicated both the lack of a linear distance effect in classic attraction and the presence of a linear order effect in disjunction agreement, which was also extended to conjunction agreement; when the second conjunct was singular, subjects frequently selected a singular verb. This order effect was also modulated by the presence or absence of additional material between the subject and verb. In the eyetracking experiment, a singular second conjunct both facilitated processing of a singular verb and inhibited processing of a plural verb. These results suggest that variable agreement with coordinate subjects is not a form of agreement attraction and that distinct theoretical treatments are required for two distinct phenomena.

Evidence of systematic misreading has been taken to argue that language processing is noisy, and that readers take noise into consideration and therefore sometimes interpret sentences non-literally (rational inference over a noisy channel). The present study investigates one specific misreading phenomenon: failure to notice word transpositions in a sentence. While this phenomenon can be explained by rational inference, it also has been argued to arise due to parallel lexical processing. The study explored these two accounts. Visual, lexical, and syntactic properties of the two transposed words were manipulated in three experiments. Failure to notice the transposition was more likely when both words were short, and when readers' eyes skipped, rather than directly fixated, one of the two words. Failure to notice the transposition also occurred when one word was long. The position of ungrammaticality elicited by transposition (the first vs. second transposed word) influenced tendency to miss the error; the direction of the effect, however, depended on word classes of the transposed words. Failure of detection was not more likely when the second transposed word was easier to recognize than the first transposed word. Finally, readers’ eye movements on the transposed words revealed no disruption in those trials when they ultimately accepted the sentence to be grammatical. We consider the findings to be only partially supportive of parallel lexical processing and instead propose that word recognition is serial, but integration is not perfectly incremental, and that rational inference may take place before an ungrammatical representation is constructed.

Timing, and ergo rhythm, are intrinsic features of language that help facilitate real-time speech comprehension. However, work exploring how variable timing is processed in speech is limited. This dissertation addresses this gap in literature by exploring the tenets of how temporal variability is cognitively processed, particularly in the context of real-time stimulus processing. This research is one of the first works to examine temporal variations in linguistic and other acoustically complex contexts. Using electroencephalography (EEG) and behavioural methods, participants were tested on their perception of temporal variations within a continuous stream of either simple tones, complex waves, or syllables. Two timing deviants were presented that occurred early or late compared to other stimuli in the sequence. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded for each stimulus type across three experiments. A fourth experiment tested participant recognition memory for syllable order. Results showed differential processing between the two timing deviants. Unexpectedly earlier tokens elicited larger pre-attentive responses compared to late, suggesting a saliency for the earlier tokens that was not present for the delayed ones. This pattern was observed across all three levels of acoustic and linguistic complexity. Compared to sequences with no timing deviants or an early timing deviant, unexpectedly late tokens were more detrimental to memory, suggesting a negative impact of delays on verbal recognition. Thus, not only were early and late timing variations processed differently, but delays in continuous sequences were also more cognitively taxing for working memory. The results reported in this dissertation contribute to existing knowledge by enriching our understanding of the fundamentals of how aspects of prosodic timing may affect attention and memory. Additionally, it provides new insights into how speech synthesis can be used in neurolinguistic research by tracking how neurophysiological responses change with increasing acoustic complexity and linguistic familiarity. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / This thesis examines how unexpectedly shorter or longer pauses in speech may affect speech comprehension. Specifically, the research reported here examined how stimuli that are presented unexpectedly early or unexpectedly late in a steady-rate sequence impact a listener’s attention and memory. Although the speed at which we speak has been studied previously, work on unexpected changes in its timing has been limited. This research begins to explore this aspect of speech processing. It contributes to our understanding of how speech timing is processed in two important ways. First, we found that unexpected delays in both non-linguistic sounds and syllables were less noticeable than unexpectedly early presentations, when participants were not required to pay attention to them. Second, we found that unexpected delays made recognition memory for stimulus order worse. Overall, the results of these studies indicate that unexpected delays in the rhythm of speech make it more difficult to understand.

No description available.

published_or_final_version / abstract / Linguistics / Master / Master of Philosophy

Un nombre croissant d'études révèle combien les processus cérébraux de production et de perception de l'action sont intriqués. En particulier, on sait maintenant que la perception de la parole induit l'activation de représentations motrices articulatoires chez l'auditeur. Dans ce travail, nous explorons la perception de la voix chantée, une action vocale non-linguistique. L'écoute d'une voix chantée provoque-t-elle une activation du système moteur ? Cette activité motrice est-elle plus forte pour la voix que pour un son musical non-biologique ? Ces questions sont abordées en utilisant de façon complémentaire deux protocoles comportementaux, une technique de lésion virtuelle par stimulation magnétique transcrâniale, l'étude des oscillations en EEG et celle de la variabilité métabolique en IRMf. Nos résultats montrent que la perception d'une voix chantée est effectivement associée à une activité du cortex sensorimoteur dans des tâches de répétition et de discrimination. De façon intéressante, les plus mauvais chanteurs ont montré la plus forte résonance motrice. Le système moteur pourrait, par la génération de modèles internes, faciliter le traitement des stimuli ou la préparation de la réponse vocale quand le traitement acoustique seul est insuffisant. L'ensemble des résultats présentés ici suggère que les interactions audiomotrices en perception de la voix humaine sont modulées par la dimension biologique du son et par le niveau d'expertise vocale des auditeurs. / A growing body of research reveals that action production and action perception interact. In particular, it has been shown that speech perception entails articulatory motor representations in the listener. In the present work, we investigate the perception of a singing voice, a stimulus that is not primarily linked to articulatory processes. Does listening to a singing voice induce activity in the motor system? Is this motor activity stronger for a voice than for a non-biological musical sound? Two behavioral tasks, a og virtual lesionfg{} paradigm using TMS, the study of brain oscillations with EEG and an fMRI experiment carried out during my PhD have shed some light on these questions. Our results show that the perception of a singing voice is indeed associated with sensorimotor activity in repetition and discrimination tasks. Interestingly, the poorer singers displayed the stronger motor resonance. The motor system could facilitate the processing of sound or the preparation of the vocal response by internal model generation when the acoustic processing is not effective enough. The set of studies presented here thus suggests that audiomotor interactions in human voice perception are modulated by two factors: the biological dimension of sound and the listeners' vocal expertise. These results suggest new perspectives on our understanding of the auditory-vocal loop in speech and of sound perception in general.