In the design of controlled experiments with language stimuli, researchers from psycholinguistic, neurolinguistic, and related fields, require language resources that isolate variables known to affect language processing. This article describes a freely available database that provides word level statistics for words and nonwords of Mandarin, Chinese. The featured lexical statistics include sub...

One challenge for theories of word recognition is to determine how the listener recovers the intended lexical segmentation in continuous speech. We argue that syllable structure provides one source of constraint on lexical segmentation and more precisely, that syllable onsets constitute potential alignment points for the mapping process. We present an overview of several studies using explicit ...

This study is an investigation into the syllable structure and rhythmic properties of Urama, an undocumented, indigenous Papuan language of New Guinea. Syllable structure in Urama is characteristic of most Papuan languages – onsets are simple, codas are prohibited, and long sequences of vowels are common. Acoustic examination of pilot data revealed considerable differences in syllable duration,...

Syllable-based compression achieves sufficiently good results on text documents of a medium size. Since the majority of XML documents are of that size, we suppose that the syllable-based method can give good results on XML documents, especially on documents that have a simple structure (small amount of elements and attributes) and relatively long character data content. In this paper we propose...

Phonotactic constraints are language-specific patterns in the sequencing of speech sounds. Are these constraints represented at the syllable level (ng cannot begin syllables in English) or at the word level (ng cannot begin words)? In a continuous recognition-memory task, participants more often falsely recognized novel test items that followed than violated the training constraints, whether tr...

In a tone language, such as Cantonese, both segmental and tonal distinctions between words are pervasive. However, previous work in Cantonese has demonstrated that in speeded-response tasks, tone is more likely to be misprocessed than is segmental structure. The present study examined whether this tone disadvantage would also hold after the initial auditory processing of a syllable had been don...

This paper describes the analysis results on the control factors of Thai syllable duration, and a statistical control model using linear regression technique. The analyses have been carried out both at a syllable level and at a phrase level. In a syllable level duration control, the effects of five Thai tones and syllable structures are investigated. To analyze syllable structure effects statis...

To explore the role of syllable structure in speech production, we conducted a study comparing C and V errors elicited through fast, paced repetition of nonsense CVC syllables. Subjects produced disproportionally more errors on consonants than on vowels, and more errors on onsets than on codas. There was no significant difference between the number of errors over CV and VC sequences. Also, most...

Previous studies of duration variation in syllable constituents have yielded results for Polish which are clear outliers in relation to those for other languages. We report on a study of this issue in the context of TTS development, using a large annotated database. Global and local duration distance measures are applied to phoneme and syllable level units, and generalised iambic and trochaic d...