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The present study examines native and nonnative perceptual processing of semantic information conveyed by prosodic prominence. <br>Five groups of German learners of English each listened to one of 5 experimental conditions. Three conditions differed in place of focus accent in the sentence and two conditions were with spliced stimuli. <br>The experiment condition was presented first in the learners’ L1 (German) and then in a similar set in the L2 (English). The effect of the accent condition and of the length and position of the target in the sentence was evaluated in a probe recognition task. <br>In both the L1 and L2 tasks there was no significant effect in any of the five focus conditions. Target position and target word length had an effect in the L1 task. Word length did not affect accuracy rates in the L2 task. For probe recognition in the L2, word length and the position of the target interacted with the focus condition.

In this dissertation, I examine the effects of lexical accent on the perception of intonational prominence in Japanese. I look at how an F0 accent peak is perceived relative to another flanking F0 peak in the same utterance with respect to perceived intonational prominence. Through four experiments, I show that the lexical prosodic structure plays a significant role in the perception of intonational prominence. I first show that two distinct perceptual processes are at play in the perception of relative perceived prominence in Japanese: accentual boost normalization and downstep normalization . Accentual boost normalization normalizes the accentual boost of an accented word. In this process, the extra F0 boost assigned by a lexical accent does not count as part of the F0 peak's excursion that contributes to the perceived prominence of the F0 peak. I demonstrate that when an accented word and an unaccented word are perceived as having the same prominence, the accented word has a higher F0 peak value than the unaccented word does. Downstep normalization compensates for the production effect of downstep, a pitch range compression phenomenon after a lexical accent. Experiments show that for an F0 peak to be perceived as having equivalent prominence to a preceding F0 peak, the second peak is always lower in F0 when the first word is accented than when it is unaccented. This suggests the existence of a perceptual process that normalizes the effect of downstep. I then examine the nature of accentual boost normalization and downstep normalization and show that they refer to two distinct types of lexical accent property when they are applied. One is the phonetic F0 contour shape that is characteristic of accented words. The other is the phonological lexical accent information that is uniquely specified for accented words. The experimental results show that the perceptual effects of the normalization processes are seen when only the phonological lexical accent information of a word is present with its F0 contour shape being ambiguous as well as when the same word is acoustically manipulated into different F0 contour shapes.

As Chinese is a topic prominent language and English is a subject prominent language, there are many differences between these two languages. The present study investigates the influence of Chinese topic prominence constructions on the acquisition of English with the instrument of a translation task. 60 Chinese college students of two levels were divided into two groups according to their English proficiency level (the non-English majors for low level and the English majors for high level). The results were analyzed and calculated in terms of four types of topic prominence constructions: Noun phrases as topics, clauses as topics, verb phrases as topics and prepositional phrases as topics.     Through this study, it is found that the interlanguage of Chinese learners for English is characterized by topic prominence construction. What is more, Chinese learners of English can gradually decrease the use of topic prominence construction, turning into more target-like interlangage with the increase of their English proficiency level.   The findings of the present study contribute to a better understanding of Chinese English learners' interlanguage development from topic prominence to subject prominence. Furthermore, the results of the current study are significant for the English teaching in China. The language teacher should enhance the comparison between Chinese and English so that the learners could be more aware of the difference between these two languages and errors could be avoided.

Seminario para optar al título de Ingeniero Comercial, Mención Administración de Empresas / Las marcas propias han tomado protagonismo en Chile en los principales retailers, por lo que se invierten muchos recursos en el desarrollo de las mismas. Esto lleva a preguntarse hasta qué punto es importante la prominencia de marca en las marcas propias para los clientes, para conocer cuál es el alcance que puede tener una marca en su nivel de prominencia en los productos, y cuáles son las preferencias de foreign branding para estas marcas, para poder desarrollarlas en el idioma más apropiado. Para ello, se estudió el comportamiento en la preferencia de prominencia de marca y foreign branding de las marcas propias para dos grupos, que fueron derivados del estudio realizado por Han, Nunes & Drèze (2010): Patricios y No Patricios. El grupo de los Patricios son clientes que no consideran que las marcas les entreguen estatus, por lo que para marcas de lujo prefieren una prominencia de marca baja. El grupo de los No Patricios son clientes que consideran que las marcas les entregan estatus, por lo que para marcas de lujo prefieren una prominencia de marca alta. Además, de acuerdo al estudio de Olavarrieta, Manzur y Friedmann (2009), el uso de marcas de idioma extranjero es relevante y genera diferencias en cómo evalúan los consumidores las marcas, siendo el inglés un idioma preferido tanto para productos utilitarios y hedónicos, y el francés un mejor idioma para crear una marca de productos hedónicos, por lo que se realizó un estudio para saber si estos comportamientos se repetirían para marcas propias en Chile. Se concluyó que no existe evidencia significativa para determinar una correlación entre el grupo (Patricio – No Patricio) y la preferencia de prominencia de marca para marcas propias, sin embargo se puede ver que en general existe una preferencia por baja prominencia de marca en marcas propias, dado que éstas, al no ser de lujo o reconocidas, no entregan estatus, por lo que los clientes prefieren que no se den a conocer. Existe también, en orden de mayor a menor preferencia, una predilección por marcas propias en idioma inglés, luego en español y finalmente en francés. Esto permite comprender dónde invertir los recursos para potenciar las marcas propias.

This thesis proposes to improve and enrich the expressiveness of English Text-to-Speech (TTS) synthesis by identifying and generating natural patterns of prosodic prominence. In most state-of-the-art TTS systems the prediction from text of prosodic prominence relations between words in an utterance relies on features that very loosely account for the combined effects of syntax, semantics, word informativeness and salience, on prosodic prominence. To improve prosodic prominence prediction we first follow up the classic approach in which prosodic prominence patterns are flattened into binary sequences of pitch accented and pitch unaccented words. We propose and motivate statistic and syntactic dependency based features that are complementary to the most predictive features proposed in previous works on automatic pitch accent prediction and show their utility on both read and spontaneous speech. Different accentuation patterns can be associated to the same sentence. Such variability rises the question on how evaluating pitch accent predictors when more patterns are allowed. We carry out a study on prosodic symbols variability on a speech corpus where different speakers read the same text and propose an information-theoretic definition of optionality of symbolic prosodic events that leads to a novel evaluation metric in which prosodic variability is incorporated as a factor affecting prediction accuracy. We additionally propose a method to take advantage of the optionality of prosodic events in unit-selection speech synthesis. To better account for the tight links between the prosodic prominence of a word and the discourse/sentence context, part of this thesis goes beyond the accent/no-accent dichotomy and is devoted to a novel task, the automatic detection of contrast, where contrast is meant as a (Information Structure’s) relation that ties two words that explicitly contrast with each other. This task is mainly motivated by the fact that contrastive words tend to be prosodically marked with particularly prominent pitch accents. The identification of contrastive word pairs is achieved by combining lexical information, syntactic information (which mainly aims to identify the syntactic parallelism that often activates contrast) and semantic information (mainly drawn from the Word- Net semantic lexicon), within a Support Vector Machines classifier. Once we have identified patterns of prosodic prominence we propose methods to incorporate such information in TTS synthesis and test its impact on synthetic speech naturalness trough some large scale perceptual experiments. The results of these experiments cast some doubts on the utility of a simple accent/no-accent distinction in Hidden Markov Model based speech synthesis while highlight the importance of contrastive accents.

Background: Since the early 1990s, the market for luxury goods has been growing at an unprecedented pace (Granot et al., 2013). Formerly exclusively targeting the richest of the rich, nowadays luxury products are aiming at a broader and considerably younger customer base, the Generation Y (Truong, 2010). Current studies suggest that luxury goods consumption is driven by a need to signal prestige (Grotts &amp; Widner-Johnson, 2013; Nelissen &amp; Meijers, 2011). However, this need can only be fulfilled when a signal is interpreted in the intended way. Nelissen &amp; Meijers (2011) among others believe that a reliable signal can yield “fitness benefits”. Although researchers agree on the outcome of the signaling game, there appears to be no consensus on “what” a product should look like in order to serve as a reliable signal. Purpose: This thesis investigates the impact of brand prominence on perceived “fitness benefits” among Generation Y consumers in the context of luxury fashion clothing. Method: To meet the purpose of this thesis a quantitative study was conducted. The data was collected through a social experiment among students at Högskolan i Jönköping. The participants were randomly presented with one of three visual cues, capturing Brand Prominence by a person wearing t-shirts with differently sized brand logos. An oral survey was then conducted by which the attributed social "fitness" of the depicted person was assessed. Conclusion: The overall results of this study suggest that Brand Prominence has not as much impact on Generation Y consumers than suggested by previous research. Empirical evidence is provided that the signaling process is not as straight forward as proposed by Nelissen &amp; Meijers (2011) or Veblen (1899). The signaling process among Generation Y consumers is (a) influenced by the recipient’s characteristics and (b) by the subtlety of the signal. Furthermore, current studies suggest in accordance with the obtained results a shift form Luxury Consumption to the phenomenon of Luxury Experience. This implies the necessity for luxury manufacturers to adapt to new levels of complexity created by a demographically and geographically heterogeneous consumer landscape, characterized by a new way of Costly Signaling.

Magister Chirurgiae Dentium (MChD) / Even though the mandibular nerve is of great importance to the dentist, very little research on the course of the nerve and the relationship of the mandibular canal to the adjacent anatomical structures has been carried out. From the. literature, it appears that the lateral ramus prominence (L.R.P.),or antilingula, is found to be present in from 50% to 100% of cases and is situated anterior and superior to the mandibular foramen. Most authors are in agreement on the situation of the mandibular foramen. Only one mandibular foramen is described in each ramus. The mandibular canal is described as lying inferior to the teeth. There is no agreement on the possibility of the existence of a second mandibular canal per hemimandible. Concerning the mental foramen, it is accepted that one is found on each side, but a second foramen,as well as accessory foramina, namely, the major and the minor variety, are described. In the horizontal plane, the mental foramen is found at the apex of the second premolar tooth or between the premolar teeth. In the vertical plane, the mental foramen is situated from inferior to the apex of the premolar teeth to halfway between the apex and the crown of the premolar teeth. The mylohyoid groove is converted into a canal in 16% of cases but never commences from within the mandibular canal, according to available literature.

This dissertation investigates how grammatical functions in transitive sentences (i.e., `subject' and `direct object') are distributed in written Swedish discourse with respect to morphosyntactic as well as semantic and referential (i.e., prominence-based) information. It also investigates how assignment of grammatical functions during on-line comprehension of transitive sentences in Swedish is influenced by interactions between morphosyntactic and prominence-based information. In the dissertation, grammatical functions are assumed to express role-semantic (e.g., Actor and Undergoer) and discourse-pragmatic (e.g., Topic and Focus) functions of NP arguments. Grammatical functions correlate with prominence-based information that is associated with these functions (e.g., animacy and definiteness). Because of these correlations, both prominence-based and morphosyntactic information are assumed to serve as argument interpretation cues during on-line comprehension. These cues are utilized in a probabilistic fashion. The weightings, interplay and availability of them are reflected in their distribution in language use, as shown in corpus data. The dissertation investigates these assumptions by using various methods in a triangulating fashion. The first contribution of the dissertation is an ERP (event-related brain potentials) experiment that investigates the ERP response to grammatical function reanalysis, i.e., a revision of a tentative grammatical function assignment, during on-line comprehension of transitive sentences. Grammatical function reanalysis engenders a response that correlates with the (re-)assignment of thematic roles to the NP arguments. This suggests that the comprehension of grammatical functions involves assigning role-semantic functions to the NPs. The second contribution is a corpus study that investigates the distribution of prominence-based, verb-semantic and morphosyntactic features in transitive sentences in written discourse. The study finds that overt morphosyntactic information about grammatical functions is used more frequently when the grammatical functions cannot be determined on the basis of word order or animacy. This suggests that writers are inclined to accommodate the understanding of their recipients by more often providing formal markers of grammatical functions in potentially ambiguous sentences. The study also finds that prominence features and their interactions with verb-semantic features are systematically distributed across grammatical functions and therefore can predict these functions with a high degree of confidence. The third contribution consists of three computational models of incremental grammatical function assignment. These models are based upon the distribution of argument interpretation cues in written discourse. They predict processing difficulties during grammatical function assignment in terms of on-line change in the expectation of different grammatical function assignments over the presentation of sentence constituents. The most prominent model predictions are qualitatively consistent with reading times in a self-paced reading experiment of Swedish transitive sentences. These findings indicate that grammatical function assignment draws upon statistical regularities in the distribution of morphosyntactic and prominence-based information in language use. Processing difficulties in the comprehension of Swedish transitive sentences can therefore be predicted on the basis of corpus distributions.

由語言類型來看，中文常被視為是「主題顯著」的語言，而英文常被視為是「主詞顯著」的語言。本篇論文將從語言轉移的角度，探討台灣的英語學習者學習英文時的中介語言，包括是否有中文主題顯著的轉移現象以及是否有學習英文的主詞顯著結構困難。七十八位就讀台北縣某高職的學生參與此研究，他們因英文程度而分為高、中、低成就三組。實驗設計包括三種題型，文法判斷題、翻譯題及寫作題，研究重點在於四種主題顯著的結構，包括無主詞及無受詞句型、主題化的動詞片語及子句、連續動詞結構、雙主語結構，以及兩種主詞顯著的結構，包括主詞動詞一致、虛主詞結構。質化及量化的研究結果顯示，主題結構轉移到學習者的中介語言中，且學習者會有學習主詞結構的困難。當受試者的英文程度提升，主題結構的轉移會逐漸減少且伴隨著主詞結構的發展。皮爾森相關係數亦指出此兩種語言類型的發展在學習者的中介語言中有強烈的相關性。最後，我們發現測驗題型會影響實驗結果。在兩種控制型的題型中，文法判斷題難於翻譯題。寫作測驗不像其他測驗，會造成高、中、低三組表現的差異。不同的測驗題型會改變主題顯著結構的使用趨勢。 / With regard to language typology, Mandarin Chinese has been considered a topic-prominent language while English a subject-prominent language (Li & Thompson & Thomson 1976, Rutherford, 1983, et al.) The present study explored Taiwanese EFL learners’ interlanguage from the perspective of typological transfer; it investigated the influence of first language (L1) topic-prominence typology on the transfer effect and the acquisition of L2 subject-prominence. Seventy-eight vocational high school students in Taipei County participated in the experiment and were further divided into three proficiency groups. Three tasks used to measure learners’ L2 interlanguage were a grammaticality judgment task, a translation task, and a free writing task. The tasks were designed on structures where L1 and L2 contrast typologically including four topic-prominence properties: null subject and null object, topicalized verb phrase and clause, serial verb construction, double nominatives and two subject-prominence properties: subject-verb agreement and dummy subject. Both quantitative and qualitative results showed that topic-prominence has been transferred into learners’ interlanguage; also, learners were found to have difficulty acquiring subject-prominence properties. Besides, it was discovered that as learners’ proficiency increases, there is a gradual decrease of topic-prominence and a relative development of subject-prominence. Pearson Correlation Coefficients indicated that the two linguistic typologies exert a high degree of correlation in learners’ interlanguage development. Finally, methodological effect was found in that, of the two controlled tasks, comprehension task was harder than the production task. Free writing task did not lead a significant group difference as the other tasks did. Also, different task formats changed the trend of topic-prominence transfer.