Temporal cues support syntactic identification

Authors

  • Michelle D. Wiley Univ of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
  • M.Kathleen Pichora-Fuller Univ of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Keywords:

Behavioral research, Linguistics, Spectral cues, Syntactic identification, Temporal cues

Abstract

The roles of temporal and spectral cues in syntactic processing are examined. Fifteen normal hearing, native English-speaking females and 5 listeners participated. Listeners correctly identified most common syntactic structures when spectral cues were severely reduced but prosodic cues were largely preserved, or when normal sentence-level prosodic cues were altered but spectral cues were preserved. Error patterns in the spectral inversion condition suggests that listeners are guided by syllabicity cues. A high working memory span to accuracy correlation in identifying the sentence types supports the idea that subjects are storing information about the number and relative timing of syllables and using this information to select an alternative sentence.

Additional Files

Published

1998-09-01

How to Cite

1.
Wiley MD, Pichora-Fuller M. Temporal cues support syntactic identification. Canadian Acoustics [Internet]. 1998 Sep. 1 [cited 2024 Nov. 1];26(3):90-1. Available from: https://jcaa.caa-aca.ca/index.php/jcaa/article/view/1172

Issue

Section

Proceedings of the Acoustics Week in Canada