Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. Cognition, 73(3):265-92, 1999.
abstract   bibtex   
Spoken languages have been classified by linguists according to their rhythmic properties, and psycholinguists have relied on this classification to account for infants' capacity to discriminate languages. Although researchers have measured many speech signal properties, they have failed to identify reliable acoustic characteristics for language classes. This paper presents instrumental measurements based on a consonant/vowel segmentation for eight languages. The measurements suggest that intuitive rhythm types reflect specific phonological properties, which in turn are signaled by the acoustic/phonetic properties of speech. The data support the notion of rhythm classes and also allow the simulation of infant language discrimination, consistent with the hypothesis that newborns rely on a coarse segmentation of speech. A hypothesis is proposed regarding the role of rhythm perception in language acquisition.
@Article{Ramus1999,
  author   = {F. Ramus and M. Nespor and J. Mehler},
  journal  = {Cognition},
  title    = {Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal.},
  year     = {1999},
  number   = {3},
  pages    = {265-92},
  volume   = {73},
  abstract = {Spoken languages have been classified by linguists according to their
	rhythmic properties, and psycholinguists have relied on this classification
	to account for infants' capacity to discriminate languages. Although
	researchers have measured many speech signal properties, they have
	failed to identify reliable acoustic characteristics for language
	classes. This paper presents instrumental measurements based on a
	consonant/vowel segmentation for eight languages. The measurements
	suggest that intuitive rhythm types reflect specific phonological
	properties, which in turn are signaled by the acoustic/phonetic properties
	of speech. The data support the notion of rhythm classes and also
	allow the simulation of infant language discrimination, consistent
	with the hypothesis that newborns rely on a coarse segmentation of
	speech. A hypothesis is proposed regarding the role of rhythm perception
	in language acquisition.},
  keywords = {Adult, Female, Humans, Infant, Language, Language Development, Male, Newborn, Phonetics, Psycholinguistics, Sound Spectrography, Speech Acoustics, 10585517},
}

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