Metrical phonology is a relatively successful theory that attempts to explain stress systems in language. This paper discusses a perceptron model of stress, pointing out interesting parallels between certain aspects of the model and the constructs and predictions of metrical theory. The distribution of learning times obtained from perceptron experiments corresponds with theoretical predictions ...

We propose an interface for a name input based on speech recognition using syllable-based N-gram and a word dictionary. Name utterance is hard to recognize accurately because of the large vocabulary size, so the system uses continuous syllable recognition with syllable-based N-gram and isolated word recognition with a dictionary containing frequent words. User first utters a name and then choos...

In this paper, we develop a keyword spotting system using vocabulary-independent speech recognition technique, and investigate several non-keyword modeling methods to improve its performance. In order to overcome the weakness of conventional syllable model, we propose the syllable filler based on syllable information of keywords and syllable-like filler model. The former prohibits syllable fill...

The present study addressed the issue of syllable activation during visual recognition of French words. In addition, it was investigated whether word orthographic information underlies syllable effects. To do so, words were selected according to the frequency of their first syllable (high versus low) and the frequency of the orthographic correspondence of this syllable (high versus low). For ex...

When disyllabic words of Chinese are compounded, truncation often applies to yield a disyllabic output that draws one syllable from each of the contributing words, e.g., xiàdiē + fúdù → xiàdiē + fúdù → diēfú. A substantial portion of new words enter Chinese via this process, and all combinations of four underlying syllables are attested in disyllabic neologisms. Variation in which syllable of t...

In four reading aloud experiments we investigated the operations occurring at the level of the phonological buffer by manipulating stress and phoneme information. In all experiments we adopted a masked priming paradigm with three-syllable Italian word targets. Experiments 1 and 2 tested the effect of pure segmental (e.g., fe%%%% - FEcola) and pure suprasegmental (CInema - FEcola) overlap, respe...

Duration is a primary factor in the structural and cognitive organization of discourse. In this study, we investigate pauses and durational patterns in Mandarin Chinese spontaneous conversation, as well as investigate how reliably such elements can serve as boundary-marking predictors across different types of speech corpora, and how language activities are affected by their cognitive correlate...

A new technique, tagged Cine-Magnetic Resonance Imaging (tMRI), was used to develop a mechanical model that represented local, homogeneous, internal tongue deformation during speech. The goal was to infer muscle activity within the tongue from tissue deformations seen on tMRI. Measurements were made in three sagittal slices (left, middle, right) during production of the syllable /ka/. Each slic...