Public speaking is fundamental in our daily life, and it happens to be challenging for many peopl... more Public speaking is fundamental in our daily life, and it happens to be challenging for many people. Like all aspects of language, these skills should be encouraged early on in educational settings. However, the high number of students per class and the extensive curriculum both limit the possibilities of the training and, moreover, entail that students give short in-class presentations under great time pressure. Virtual Reality (VR) environments can help speakers and teachers meet these challenges and foster oral skills. This experimental study employs a between-subjects pre- and post-training design with four Catalan high-school student groups, a VR group (N = 30) and a Non-VR group (N = 20). Both groups gave a 2-min speech in front of a live audience before (pre-training) and after (post-training) 3 training sessions (one session per week) in which they practiced public speaking either in front of a VR audience or alone in a classroom (Non-VR). Students assessed their anxiety measures right before performing every speech and filled out a satisfaction questionnaire at the end. Pre- and post-training speeches were assessed by 15 raters, who analyzed the persuasiveness of the message and the charisma of the presenter. Speeches were also analyzed for prosodic features and gesture rate. First, results showed that self-assessed anxiety got significantly reduced at post-training for both conditions. Second, acoustic analyses of both groups' speeches show that the VR group has, unlike the Non-VR group, developed a more clear and resonant voice quality in the post-training speeches, in terms of higher cepstral-peak prominence (CPP) (although no significant differences in f0- related parameters as a function of training were obtained), as well as significantly less erosion effects than the Non-VR group. However, these differences across groups did not trigger a direct improvement on the participants' gesture rate, persuasiveness and charisma at post-training. Furthermore, students perceived the training in the VR environment to be more useful and beneficial for their future oral presentations than the Non-VR group. All in all, short unguided VR training sessions can help students feel less anxious, promote a more clear and resonant voice style, and can prevent them from experiencing an erosion effect while practicing speeches in front of a real audience.
Iconic and pointing gestures are important precursors of children’s early language and cognitive ... more Iconic and pointing gestures are important precursors of children’s early language and cognitive development. While beat gestures seem to have positive effects on the recall of information by preschoolers, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of observing beat gestures on the development of children’s narrative performance. We tested 44 5- and 6-year-old children in a between-subject study with a pretest–posttest design. After a pretest in which they were asked to retell the story of an animated cartoon they had watched, the children were exposed to a training session in which they observed an adult telling a total of 6 1-min stories under 2 between-subject experimental conditions: (a) a no-beat condition, where focal elements in the narratives were not highlighted by means of beat gestures; and (b) a beat condition, in which focal elements were highlighted by beat gestures. After the training session, a posttest was administered following the same procedure as the pretest. Narrative structure scores were independently coded from recordings of the pretest and posttest and subjected to statistical comparisons. The results revealed that children who were exposed to the beat condition showed a higher gain in narrative structure scores. This study thus shows for the first time that a brief training session with beat gestures has immediate benefits for children’s narrative discourse performance.
Journal of the Acosutical Society of America, 2010
In unaccented contexts, formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction constitute a con... more In unaccented contexts, formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction constitute a consistent cue to word stress in English, whereas in languages such as Spanish that have no systematic vowel reduction, stress perception is based on duration and intensity cues. This article examines the perception of word stress by speakers of Central Catalan, in which, due to its vowel reduction patterns, words either alternate stressed open vowels with unstressed mid-central vowels as in English or contain no vowel quality cues to stress, as in Spanish. Results show that Catalan listeners perceive stress based mainly on duration cues in both word types. Other cues pattern together with duration to make stress perception more robust. However, no single cue is absolutely necessary and trading effects compensate for a lack of differentiation in one dimension by changes in another dimension. In particular, speakers identify longer mid-central vowels as more stressed than shorter open vowels. These results and those obtained in other stress-accent languages provide cumulative evidence that word stress is perceived independently of pitch accents by relying on a set of cues with trading effects so that no single cue, including formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction, is absolutely necessary for stress perception.
This paper addresses the central question of whether Mandarin Chinese (MC) is a canonical truth-b... more This paper addresses the central question of whether Mandarin Chinese (MC) is a canonical truth-based language, a language that is expected to express the speaker's disagreement to a negative proposition by means of a negative particle followed by a positive sentence. Eight native speakers of MC participated in an oral Discourse Completion Task that elicited rejecting responses to negative assertions/questions and broad focus statements (control condition). Results show that MC speakers convey reject by relying on a combination of lexico-syntactic strategies (e.g., negative particles such as bù, méi(yoˇu), and positive sentences) together with prosodic (e.g., mean pitch) and gestural strategies (mainly, the use of head nods). Importantly, the use of a negative particle, which was the expected outcome in truth-based languages, only appeared in 52% of the rejecting answers. This system puts into question the macroparametric division between truth-based and polarity-based languages and calls for a more general view of the instantiation of a REJECT speech act that integrates lexical and syntactic strategies with prosodic and gestural strategies.
This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic ... more This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences in pointing-speech combinations. Results revealed that the perception of prominence is multimodal and that infants are aware of the timing of gesture-speech combinations well before they can produce them.
Traditionally, prosodic studies have focused on the study of intonational form and the study of i... more Traditionally, prosodic studies have focused on the study of intonational form and the study of intonational meaning has been relatively neglected. Similarly, the fields of semantics and pragmatics have paid little attention to the pragmatic uses of intonation. As a result, there is no firm agreement within the linguistic community on how to integrate the analysis of intonational meaning across languages into a unified prosodic, semantic, and pragmatic approach. This article provides an overview of the literature on intonational meaning, describing the recent advances made in the fields of prosody, semantics/pragmatics, and syntax. Several theoretical approaches to explaining the semantics and pragmatics of intonation are presented. A common feature to most frameworks is that intonation (1) should be regarded as an integral part of linguistic grammar; and (2) typically encodes meanings related to the modal aspect of propositions. However, features such as compositionality, duality o...
This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic ... more This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences in pointing-speech combinations. Results revealed that the perception of prominence is multimodal and that infants are aware of the timing of gesture-speech combinations well before they can produce them.
Ch. 2 investigates the differences that occur in pro-sodic organization of Italian sentences in t... more Ch. 2 investigates the differences that occur in pro-sodic organization of Italian sentences in the pres-ence of marked topic and focus elements. Frascarelli examines the tape-recorded data that provide evi-dence for the influence of focus and topic construc-tions on the ...
In this paper, we investigate the coordination rela- tions between F0 turning points in bitonal p... more In this paper, we investigate the coordination rela- tions between F0 turning points in bitonal pitch accents and landmarks of dynamically defined ar- ticulatory gestures in Catalan, using kinematic and acoustic data on three pitch accent types. Electro- magnetic articulography data (EMMA) reveals that the end of pitch movements for two rising and one falling accent are tightly synchronized with
Previous research has proposed that languages diverge with respect to how their speakers confirm ... more Previous research has proposed that languages diverge with respect to how their speakers confirm and contradict negative questions. Taking into account the classification between truth-based and polarity-based languages, this paper is mainly concerned with the expression of REJECT (a semantic operation that signals a contradiction move with respect to the common ground, along Krifka's lines) in two languages belonging to two typologically distinct answering systems, namely Catalan (polarity-based) and Russian (a mixed system using polarity-based, truth-based, and echoic strategies). This investigation has two goals. First, to assess empirically the relevance of prosodic and gestural patterns in the interpretation of confirming and rejecting responses to negative polar questions. Second, to test the claim that in fact speakers resort to strikingly similar universal strategies at the time of expressing rejecting answers to discourse accessible negative assertions and negative polar questions, namely the use of linguistic units that encode REJECT in combination with ASSERT. The results of our investigation support the existence of a universal answering system for rejecting negative polar questions that integrates lexical and syntactic strategies with prosodic and gestural patterns, and instantiate the REJECT and ASSERT operators. We will also discuss the implications these results have for the truth-based vs. polarity-based taxonomy.
Public speaking is fundamental in our daily life, and it happens to be challenging for many peopl... more Public speaking is fundamental in our daily life, and it happens to be challenging for many people. Like all aspects of language, these skills should be encouraged early on in educational settings. However, the high number of students per class and the extensive curriculum both limit the possibilities of the training and, moreover, entail that students give short in-class presentations under great time pressure. Virtual Reality (VR) environments can help speakers and teachers meet these challenges and foster oral skills. This experimental study employs a between-subjects pre- and post-training design with four Catalan high-school student groups, a VR group (N = 30) and a Non-VR group (N = 20). Both groups gave a 2-min speech in front of a live audience before (pre-training) and after (post-training) 3 training sessions (one session per week) in which they practiced public speaking either in front of a VR audience or alone in a classroom (Non-VR). Students assessed their anxiety measures right before performing every speech and filled out a satisfaction questionnaire at the end. Pre- and post-training speeches were assessed by 15 raters, who analyzed the persuasiveness of the message and the charisma of the presenter. Speeches were also analyzed for prosodic features and gesture rate. First, results showed that self-assessed anxiety got significantly reduced at post-training for both conditions. Second, acoustic analyses of both groups' speeches show that the VR group has, unlike the Non-VR group, developed a more clear and resonant voice quality in the post-training speeches, in terms of higher cepstral-peak prominence (CPP) (although no significant differences in f0- related parameters as a function of training were obtained), as well as significantly less erosion effects than the Non-VR group. However, these differences across groups did not trigger a direct improvement on the participants' gesture rate, persuasiveness and charisma at post-training. Furthermore, students perceived the training in the VR environment to be more useful and beneficial for their future oral presentations than the Non-VR group. All in all, short unguided VR training sessions can help students feel less anxious, promote a more clear and resonant voice style, and can prevent them from experiencing an erosion effect while practicing speeches in front of a real audience.
Iconic and pointing gestures are important precursors of children’s early language and cognitive ... more Iconic and pointing gestures are important precursors of children’s early language and cognitive development. While beat gestures seem to have positive effects on the recall of information by preschoolers, little is known about the potential beneficial effects of observing beat gestures on the development of children’s narrative performance. We tested 44 5- and 6-year-old children in a between-subject study with a pretest–posttest design. After a pretest in which they were asked to retell the story of an animated cartoon they had watched, the children were exposed to a training session in which they observed an adult telling a total of 6 1-min stories under 2 between-subject experimental conditions: (a) a no-beat condition, where focal elements in the narratives were not highlighted by means of beat gestures; and (b) a beat condition, in which focal elements were highlighted by beat gestures. After the training session, a posttest was administered following the same procedure as the pretest. Narrative structure scores were independently coded from recordings of the pretest and posttest and subjected to statistical comparisons. The results revealed that children who were exposed to the beat condition showed a higher gain in narrative structure scores. This study thus shows for the first time that a brief training session with beat gestures has immediate benefits for children’s narrative discourse performance.
Journal of the Acosutical Society of America, 2010
In unaccented contexts, formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction constitute a con... more In unaccented contexts, formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction constitute a consistent cue to word stress in English, whereas in languages such as Spanish that have no systematic vowel reduction, stress perception is based on duration and intensity cues. This article examines the perception of word stress by speakers of Central Catalan, in which, due to its vowel reduction patterns, words either alternate stressed open vowels with unstressed mid-central vowels as in English or contain no vowel quality cues to stress, as in Spanish. Results show that Catalan listeners perceive stress based mainly on duration cues in both word types. Other cues pattern together with duration to make stress perception more robust. However, no single cue is absolutely necessary and trading effects compensate for a lack of differentiation in one dimension by changes in another dimension. In particular, speakers identify longer mid-central vowels as more stressed than shorter open vowels. These results and those obtained in other stress-accent languages provide cumulative evidence that word stress is perceived independently of pitch accents by relying on a set of cues with trading effects so that no single cue, including formant frequency differences related to vowel reduction, is absolutely necessary for stress perception.
This paper addresses the central question of whether Mandarin Chinese (MC) is a canonical truth-b... more This paper addresses the central question of whether Mandarin Chinese (MC) is a canonical truth-based language, a language that is expected to express the speaker's disagreement to a negative proposition by means of a negative particle followed by a positive sentence. Eight native speakers of MC participated in an oral Discourse Completion Task that elicited rejecting responses to negative assertions/questions and broad focus statements (control condition). Results show that MC speakers convey reject by relying on a combination of lexico-syntactic strategies (e.g., negative particles such as bù, méi(yoˇu), and positive sentences) together with prosodic (e.g., mean pitch) and gestural strategies (mainly, the use of head nods). Importantly, the use of a negative particle, which was the expected outcome in truth-based languages, only appeared in 52% of the rejecting answers. This system puts into question the macroparametric division between truth-based and polarity-based languages and calls for a more general view of the instantiation of a REJECT speech act that integrates lexical and syntactic strategies with prosodic and gestural strategies.
This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic ... more This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences in pointing-speech combinations. Results revealed that the perception of prominence is multimodal and that infants are aware of the timing of gesture-speech combinations well before they can produce them.
Traditionally, prosodic studies have focused on the study of intonational form and the study of i... more Traditionally, prosodic studies have focused on the study of intonational form and the study of intonational meaning has been relatively neglected. Similarly, the fields of semantics and pragmatics have paid little attention to the pragmatic uses of intonation. As a result, there is no firm agreement within the linguistic community on how to integrate the analysis of intonational meaning across languages into a unified prosodic, semantic, and pragmatic approach. This article provides an overview of the literature on intonational meaning, describing the recent advances made in the fields of prosody, semantics/pragmatics, and syntax. Several theoretical approaches to explaining the semantics and pragmatics of intonation are presented. A common feature to most frameworks is that intonation (1) should be regarded as an integral part of linguistic grammar; and (2) typically encodes meanings related to the modal aspect of propositions. However, features such as compositionality, duality o...
This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic ... more This study investigated the sensitivity of 9-month-old infants to the alignment between prosodic and gesture prominences in pointing-speech combinations. Results revealed that the perception of prominence is multimodal and that infants are aware of the timing of gesture-speech combinations well before they can produce them.
Ch. 2 investigates the differences that occur in pro-sodic organization of Italian sentences in t... more Ch. 2 investigates the differences that occur in pro-sodic organization of Italian sentences in the pres-ence of marked topic and focus elements. Frascarelli examines the tape-recorded data that provide evi-dence for the influence of focus and topic construc-tions on the ...
In this paper, we investigate the coordination rela- tions between F0 turning points in bitonal p... more In this paper, we investigate the coordination rela- tions between F0 turning points in bitonal pitch accents and landmarks of dynamically defined ar- ticulatory gestures in Catalan, using kinematic and acoustic data on three pitch accent types. Electro- magnetic articulography data (EMMA) reveals that the end of pitch movements for two rising and one falling accent are tightly synchronized with
Previous research has proposed that languages diverge with respect to how their speakers confirm ... more Previous research has proposed that languages diverge with respect to how their speakers confirm and contradict negative questions. Taking into account the classification between truth-based and polarity-based languages, this paper is mainly concerned with the expression of REJECT (a semantic operation that signals a contradiction move with respect to the common ground, along Krifka's lines) in two languages belonging to two typologically distinct answering systems, namely Catalan (polarity-based) and Russian (a mixed system using polarity-based, truth-based, and echoic strategies). This investigation has two goals. First, to assess empirically the relevance of prosodic and gestural patterns in the interpretation of confirming and rejecting responses to negative polar questions. Second, to test the claim that in fact speakers resort to strikingly similar universal strategies at the time of expressing rejecting answers to discourse accessible negative assertions and negative polar questions, namely the use of linguistic units that encode REJECT in combination with ASSERT. The results of our investigation support the existence of a universal answering system for rejecting negative polar questions that integrates lexical and syntactic strategies with prosodic and gestural patterns, and instantiate the REJECT and ASSERT operators. We will also discuss the implications these results have for the truth-based vs. polarity-based taxonomy.
Prieto, Pilar; Borràs-Comes, Joan; Cabré, Teresa; Crespo-Sendra, Verònica; Mascaró, Ignasi; Rosea... more Prieto, Pilar; Borràs-Comes, Joan; Cabré, Teresa; Crespo-Sendra, Verònica; Mascaró, Ignasi; Roseano, Paolo; Sichel-Bazin, Rafèu & Vanrell, Maria del Mar (to appear: 2014): “Intonational phonology of Catalan and its dialectal varieties”, in: Frota, Sónia and Prieto, Pilar (Eds.): Intonational variation in Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This chapter describes the intonation and prosodic phrasing patterns which characterize the main dialects of the Catalan language (namely Central Catalan, Northwestern Catalan, Valencian, Balearic Catalan, Northern Catalan, and Alguerese Catalan) from a Romance perspective. The analysis will be framed in the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) framework, and a Cat_ToBI analysis of the data will be proposed that is valid for all Catalan dialectal varieties and which takes into consideration the labeling proposals presented for other Romance languages. Importantly, this investigation will be the first to analyze prosodically the major and traditionally accepted dialects that compose the Catalan-speaking territory in a balanced way. The analysis is based on the data available online at the Atles interactiu de l’entonació del català (Prieto & Cabré coords 2007-2012) and in the recent analysis presented in book format by the authors L’entonació dels dialectes catalans (Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2012). The empirical basis of the investigation includes a large-scale intonation survey collection in 69 different Catalan locales from these dialectal areas. Two middle-aged educated women were interviewed in each locale (with a total of 142 interviews, as 6 women were recorded in L’Alguer) and responded to the original and larger version of the common intonation survey used for all languages included in this volume. This survey is based on the Discourse Completion Test methodology, which is designed for eliciting different types of utterances (roughly 50 contours per locale) through an inductive method in which the researcher presents the subject with a series of everyday situations (such as “You go into a shop you have never been in before and ask the shop assistant if they sell tangerines”) and then asks him or her to respond accordingly. The first par of the chapter will be devoted to review the recent literature on Catalan prosody, which in the last decades has been intensively analyzed from a prosodic point of view. The central part of the chapter will compare the realization of different dialects realizations of the different sentence types covered in all chapters, namely, statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions, requests/orders, and vocatives. With respect to statements, all dialects are characterized by a falling nuclear pitch configuration L* L%, with the exception of Northern Catalan and Alguerese, which have a H+L* L% configuration (the former with an optional initial accent). Yes-no and wh-questions display interesting types of intonational variation, both from a pragmatic and from a dialectal point of view. For example, information-seeking yes-no questions display two distinct intonation patterns, depending on the dialect. Roughly, a falling nuclear configuration H+L* L% characterizes yes-no questions in Balearic, Northwestern, and Alguerese Catalan (which are Catalan dialectal areas which display archaic linguistic traits), while a rising nuclear configuration L* H% characterizes the rest of the dialects. Interestingly, other Romance dialects such as Sardinian, Galician, or Caribbean Spanish also display the falling intonational configuration for questions. As will be explained in the chapter, the prosody of wh-questions and vocatives is also interesting from a dialectal point of view. The chapter will end by presenting: (a) commonalities and differences found with other Romance languages; and (b) an inclusive Cat_ToBI proposal which takes into consideration the labeling options presented for other Romance languages.
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This chapter describes the intonation and prosodic phrasing patterns which characterize the main dialects of the Catalan language (namely Central Catalan, Northwestern Catalan, Valencian, Balearic Catalan, Northern Catalan, and Alguerese Catalan) from a Romance perspective. The analysis will be framed in the Autosegmental-Metrical (AM) framework, and a Cat_ToBI analysis of the data will be proposed that is valid for all Catalan dialectal varieties and which takes into consideration the labeling proposals presented for other Romance languages. Importantly, this investigation will be the first to analyze prosodically the major and traditionally accepted dialects that compose the Catalan-speaking territory in a balanced way. The analysis is based on the data available online at the Atles interactiu de l’entonació del català (Prieto & Cabré coords 2007-2012) and in the recent analysis presented in book format by the authors L’entonació dels dialectes catalans (Publicacions de l’Abadia de Montserrat, 2012). The empirical basis of the investigation includes a large-scale intonation survey collection in 69 different Catalan locales from these dialectal areas. Two middle-aged educated women were interviewed in each locale (with a total of 142 interviews, as 6 women were recorded in L’Alguer) and responded to the original and larger version of the common intonation survey used for all languages included in this volume. This survey is based on the Discourse Completion Test methodology, which is designed for eliciting different types of utterances (roughly 50 contours per locale) through an inductive method in which the researcher presents the subject with a series of everyday situations (such as “You go into a shop you have never been in before and ask the shop assistant if they sell tangerines”) and then asks him or her to respond accordingly. The first par of the chapter will be devoted to review the recent literature on Catalan prosody, which in the last decades has been intensively analyzed from a prosodic point of view. The central part of the chapter will compare the realization of different dialects realizations of the different sentence types covered in all chapters, namely, statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions, requests/orders, and vocatives. With respect to statements, all dialects are characterized by a falling nuclear pitch configuration L* L%, with the exception of Northern Catalan and Alguerese, which have a H+L* L% configuration (the former with an optional initial accent). Yes-no and wh-questions display interesting types of intonational variation, both from a pragmatic and from a dialectal point of view. For example, information-seeking yes-no questions display two distinct intonation patterns, depending on the dialect. Roughly, a falling nuclear configuration H+L* L% characterizes yes-no questions in Balearic, Northwestern, and Alguerese Catalan (which are Catalan dialectal areas which display archaic linguistic traits), while a rising nuclear configuration L* H% characterizes the rest of the dialects. Interestingly, other Romance dialects such as Sardinian, Galician, or Caribbean Spanish also display the falling intonational configuration for questions. As will be explained in the chapter, the prosody of wh-questions and vocatives is also interesting from a dialectal point of view. The chapter will end by presenting: (a) commonalities and differences found with other Romance languages; and (b) an inclusive Cat_ToBI proposal which takes into consideration the labeling options presented for other Romance languages.