Word segmentation cues in the process of spoken language

doi:10.3724/SP.J.1042.2018.01765

Abstract

Abstract:

Words are generally considered as the basic unit of language processing. Hence word segmentation is a vital step for language comprehension. In speech processing, cues for word segmentation may be phonological, grammatical or semantic. Phonological cues can be further classified as statistic, phonotactic and prosodic, while prosodic information involves stress, duration and pitch. Phonological cues are generally acquired at the initial stage of language learning, and they differ as the linguistic environment changes. Semantic and grammatical knowledge provide high-level cues which constrains word segmentation at later stage. It is suggested that future research focus on the trajectory of segmentation cues in a lifespan and the specificity of language in the process of word segmentation.

Key words: spoken language, word segmentation, phonology, semantics, grammar

YU Wenbo, LIANG Dandan. Word segmentation cues in the process of spoken language[J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2018, 26(10): 1765-1774.

Figures/Tables 1

References 71

1	端木三 . ( 2000). 汉语的节奏. 当代语言学, ( 4), 203-209.
2	冯胜利 . ( 1998). 论汉语的 “自然音步”. 中国语文, ( 1), 40-47.
3	何善芬 . ( 1989). 英语超音段音位及其辨义功能. 外国语, ( 6), 66-69.
4	李勇, 魏珰, 王柳渝 . ( 2017). 基于PSOLA与DCT的情感语音合成方法. 计算机工程, ( 12), 278-282.
5	李卫君, 杨玉芳 . ( 2010). 绝句韵律边界的认知加工及其脑电效应. 心理学报, 42( 11), 1021-1032. doi: 10.3724/SP.J.1041.2010.01021 URL
6	唐溢, 张智君, 曾玫媚, 黄可, 刘炜, 赵亚军 . ( 2015). 基于名人面孔视觉特征和语义信息的视觉统计学习. 心理学报, 47( 7), 837-850.
7	王理嘉 . ( 1991). 音系学基础. 北京: 语文出版社.
8	林焘, 王理嘉 . ( 2013). 语音学教程. 北京: 北京大学出版社.
9	徐通锵 . ( 2001). 基础语言学教程. 北京: 北京大学出版社.
10	徐通锵 . ( 2010). 徐通锵文选. 北京: 北京大学出版社.
11	许希明, 沈家煊 . ( 2016). 英汉语重音的音系差异. 外语教学与研究, 49( 5), 643-656.
12	杨玉芳, 黄贤军, 高路 . ( 2006). 韵律特征研究. 心理科学进展, 14( 4), 546-550.
13	张辉, 孙和涛, 顾介鑫 . ( 2013). 成语加工中韵律与句法互动的事件相关电位研究. 外国语: 上海外国语大学学报, ( 1), 22-31.
14	张珊珊, 杨亦鸣 . ( 2012). 从记忆编码加工看人脑中的基本语言单位——一项基于单音节语言单位的 ERPs 研究. 外语与外语教学, ( 2), 1-6.
15	Abboub N., Nazzi T., & Gervain J . ( 2016). Prosodic grouping at birth. Brain and Language, 162, 46-59. doi: 10.1016/j.bandl.2016.08.002 URL
16	Ambridge B., Kidd E., Rowland C. F., & Theakston A. L . ( 2015). The ubiquity of frequency effects in first language acquisition. Journal of Child Language, 42( 2), 239-273. doi: 10.1017/S030500091400049X URL pmid: 25644408
17	Ambridge B. , & Lieven, E. V. M.( 2011) . Child language acquisition: Contrasting theoretical approaches Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Contrasting theoretical approaches. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
18	Aslin R. N., Saffran J. R., & Newport E. L . ( 1998). Computation of conditional probability statistics by 8-month-old infants. Psychological Science, 9( 4), 321-324. doi: 10.1111/1467-9280.00063 URL
19	Babineau M., Shi R., & Achim A . ( 2017). Contextual factors in lexical processing: The case of French Liaison. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 32( 4), 457-470. doi: 10.1080/23273798.2016.1239022 URL
20	Baese-Berk M. M., Heffner C. C., Dilley L. C., Pitt M. A., Morrill T. H., & McAuley J. D . ( 2014). Long-term temporal tracking of speech rate affects spoken-word recognition. Psychological Science, 25( 8), 1546-1553. doi: 10.1177/0956797614533705 URL pmid: 24907119
21	Bolton, T. L . ( 1894). Rhythm. The American Journal of Psychology, 6( 2), 145-238. doi: 10.2307/1410948 URL
22	Bonatti L. L., Peña M., Nespor M., & Mehler J . ( 2005). Linguistic constraints on statistical computations: The role of consonants and vowels in continuous speech processing. Psychological Science, 16( 6), 451-459.
23	Brown M., Dilley L. C., & Tanenhaus M. K . ( 2012, January). Real-time expectations based on context speech rate can cause words to appear or disappear. Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society. Austion, TX.
24	Brown M., Salverda A. P., Dilley L. C., & Tanenhaus M. K . ( 2015). Metrical expectations from preceding prosody influence perception of lexical stress. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 41( 2), 306-323. doi: 10.1037/a0038689 URL pmid: 25621583
25	Christophe A., Peperkamp S., Pallier C., Block E., & Mehler J . ( 2004). Phonological phrase boundaries constrain lexical access I. Adult data. Journal of Memory and Language, 51( 4), 523-547. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2004.07.002 URL
26	Cole R. A., Jakimik J., & Cooper W. E . ( 1980). Segmenting speech into words. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 67( 4), 1323-1332. doi: 10.1121/1.384185 URL
27	Cutler A., & Carter, D. M . ( 1987). The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech & Language, 2( 3-4), 133-142. doi: 10.1016/0885-2308(87)90004-0 URL
28	Cutler A., & Norris, D. ( 1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14( 1), 113-121. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.14.1.113 URL
29	Cutler A., & Otake, T. ( 1994). Mora or phoneme? Further evidence for language-specific listening. Journal of Memory and Language, 33( 6), 824-844. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1994.1039 URL
30	De Saussure F., , & Baskin, W. ( 1916). Course in general linguistics. London: Duckworth.
31	Dilley L. C., & McAuley, J. D . ( 2008). Distal prosodic context affects word segmentation and lexical processing. Journal of Memory and Language, 59( 3), 294-311. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2008.06.006 URL
32	Dilley L. C., Mattys S. L., & Vinke L . ( 2010). Potent prosody: Comparing the effects of distal prosody, proximal prosody, and semantic context on word segmentation. Journal of Memory and Language, 63( 3), 274-294. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2010.06.003 URL
33	Dilley L. C., & Pitt, M. A . ( 2010). Altering context speech rate can cause words to appear or disappear. Psychological Science, 21( 11), 1664-1670. doi: 10.1177/0956797610384743 URL
34	Ding N., Lucia M., Zhang H., Tian X., & Poeppel D . ( 2016). Cortical tracking of hierarchical linguistic structures in connected speech. Nature Neuroscience, 19( 1), 158-164. doi: 10.1038/nn.4186 URL pmid: 4809195
35	Endress A. D., & Mehler, J. ( 2009). The surprising power of statistical learning: When fragment knowledge leads to false memories of unheard words. Journal of Memory and Language, 60( 3), 351-367. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2008.10.003 URL
36	Estes, K. G . ( 2012). Infants generalize representations of statistically segmented words. Frontiers in Psychology, 3( 3), 447. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00447 URL pmid: 3482870
37	Erickson L. C., Thiessen E. D., & Estes K. G . ( 2014). Statistically coherent labels facilitate categorization in 8-month-olds. Journal of Memory and Language, 72, 49-58. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2014.01.002 URL
38	Frost R. L. A., Monaghan P., & Tatsumi T . ( 2017). Domain- general mechanisms for speech segmentation: The role of duration information in language learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception and Performance, 43( 3), 466-476. doi: 10.1037/xhp0000325 URL
39	Gómez D. M., Mok P., Ordin M., Mehler J., & Nespor M . ( 2017). Statistical speech segmentation in tone languages: The role of lexical tones. Language and Speech, 61( 1), 84-96. doi: 10.1177/0023830917706529 URL
40	Gout A., Christophe A., & Morgan J. L . ( 2004). Phonological phrase boundaries constrain lexical access II. Infant data. Journal of Memory and Language, 51( 4), 548-567. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2004.07.002 URL
41	Hayes B., ( 1995). Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
42	Heffner C. C., Dilley L. C., McAuley J. D., & Pitt M. A . ( 2013). When cues combine: How distal and proximal acoustic cues are integrated in word segmentation. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28( 9), 1275-1302. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2012.672229 URL
43	Hyman, L. M . ( 2009). How (not) to do phonological typology: the case of pitch-accent. Language Sciences, 31( 2-3), 213-238. doi: 10.1016/j.langsci.2008.12.007 URL
44	Jusczyk P. W., Houston D. M., & Newsome M . ( 1999). The beginnings of word segmentation in English-learning infants. Cognitive Psychology, 39( 3), 159-207. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1999.0716 URL pmid: 10631011
45	LaCross A., Liss J., Barragan B., Adams A., Berisha V., McAuliffe M., & Fromont R . ( 2016). The role of stress and word size in Spanish speech segmentation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 140( 6), EL484-EL490. doi: 10.1121/1.4971227 URL pmid: 28040010
46	Lai W., & Dilley, L. ( 2016). Cross-linguistic generalization of the distal rate effect: Speech rate in context affects whether listeners hear a function word in Chinese Mandarin. Proceedings of 2016 Speech Prosody, Boston, MA.
47	Langus A., Seyed-Allaei S., Uysal E., Pirmoradian S., Marino C., Asaadi S., .. Nespor M . ( 2016). Listening natively across perceptual domains?. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 42( 7), 1127-1139. doi: 10.1037/xlm0000226 URL pmid: 26820498
48	Lew‐Williams C., Pelucchi B., & Saffran J. R . ( 2011). Isolated words enhance statistical language learning in infancy. Developmental Science, 14( 6), 1323-1329. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-7687.2011.01079.x URL pmid: 3280507
49	Mattys, S. L . ( 2004). Stress versus coarticulation: Toward an integrated approach to explicit speech segmentation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 30( 2), 397-408. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.30.2.397 URL pmid: 15053697
50	Mattys S. L., Melhorn J. F., & White L . ( 2007). Effects of syntactic expectations on speech segmentation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 33( 4), 960-977. doi: 10.1037/0096-1523.33.4.960 URL pmid: 17683240
51	Mattys S. L., White L., & Melhorn J. F . ( 2005). Integration of multiple speech segmentation cues: A hierarchical framework. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 134( 4), 477-500. doi: 10.1037/0096-3445.134.4.477 URL pmid: 16316287
52	McQueen, J. M . ( 1998). Segmentation of continuous speech using phonotactics. Journal of Memory and Language, 39( 1), 21-46. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1998.2568 URL
53	Newport, E. L . ( 2016). Statistical language learning: Computational, maturational, and linguistic constraints. Language and Cognition, 8( 3), 447-461. doi: 10.1017/langcog.2016.20 URL pmid: 5495188
54	Mehler J., Dommergues J. Y., Frauenfelder U., & Segui J . ( 1981). The syllable's role in speech segmentation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20( 3), 298-305. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5371(81)90450-3 URL
55	Morrill T. H., Dilley L. C., McAuley J. D., & Pitt M. A . ( 2014). Distal rhythm influences whether or not listeners hear a word in continuous speech: Support for a perceptual grouping hypothesis. Cognition, 131( 1), 69-74. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2013.12.006 URL
56	Morrill T., Baese-Berk M., Heffner C., & Dilley L . ( 2015). Interactions between distal speech rate, linguistic knowledge, and speech environment. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 22( 5), 1451-1457. doi: 10.3758/s13423-015-0820-9 URL pmid: 25794478
57	Norris D., Mcqueen J. M., & Cutler A . ( 1995). Competition and segmentation in spoken-word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21( 5), 1209-1228. doi: 10.1037/0278-7393.21.5.1209 URL pmid: 8744962
58	Norris D., McQueen J. M., Cutler A., & Butterfield S . ( 1997). The possible-word constraint in the segmentation of continuous speech. Cognitive Psychology, 34( 3), 191-243. doi: 10.1006/cogp.1997.0671 URL pmid: 9466831
59	Perruchet P., & Poulin-Charronnat, B. ( 2012). Beyond transitional probability computations: Extracting word-like units when only statistical information is available. Journal of Memory and Language, 66( 4), 807-818. doi: 10.1016/j.jml.2012.02.010 URL
60	Reinisch E., ( 2016). Natural fast speech is perceived as faster than linearly time-compressed speech. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78( 4), 1203-1217. doi: 10.3758/s13414-016-1067-x URL pmid: 26860711
61	Roy B. C., Frank M. C., DeCamp P., Miller M., & Roy D . ( 2015). Predicting the birth of a spoken word. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United of America, 112( 41), 12663-12668. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1419773112 URL pmid: 26392523
62	Saffran J. R., & Kirkham, N. Z . ( 2018). Infant statistical learning. Annual Review of Psychology, 69, 181-203. doi: 10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011805 URL
63	Saffran J. R., Aslin R. N., & Newport E. L . ( 1996). Statistical learning by 8-month-old infants. Science, 274, 1926-1928. doi: 10.1126/science.274.5294.1926 URL
64	Saffran J. R., Newport E. L., & Aslin R. N . ( 1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35( 4), 606-621. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1996.0032 URL
65	Shatzman K. B., & McQueen, J. M . ( 2006). Segment duration as a cue to word boundaries in spoken-word recognition. Perception, & Psychophysics, 68( 1), 1-16. doi: 10.3758/BF03193651 URL pmid: 16617825
66	Skoruppa K., Nevins A., Gillard A., & Rosen S . ( 2015). The role of vowel phonotactics in native speech segmentation. Journal of Phonetics, 49, 67-76. doi: 10.1016/j.wocn.2014.10.007 URL
67	Steinhauer K., Alter K., & Friederici A. D . ( 1999). Brain potentials indicate immediate use of prosodic cues in natural speech processing. Nature Neuroscience, 2( 2), 191-196. doi: 10.1038/5757 URL pmid: 10195205
68	Suomi K., McQueen J. M., & Cutler A . ( 1997). Vowel harmony and speech segmentation in Finnish. Journal of Memory and Language, 36( 3), 422-444. doi: 10.1006/jmla.1996.2495 URL
69	Tremblay A., & Spinell, E. ( 2013). Segmenting liaison-initial words: The role of predictive dependencies. Language and Cognitive Processes, 28( 8), 1093-1113. doi: 10.1080/01690965.2012.689306 URL
70	White L., Mattys S. L., & Wiget L . ( 2012). Segmentation cues in conversational speech: Robust semantics and fragile phonotactics. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 375. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2012.00375 URL pmid: 3464055
71	Woodrow H., ( 1909). A quantitative study of rhythm: The effect of variations in intensity, rate and duration. New York: Science Press.

[1]	YIN Rong, ZHAO Jia. Evolutionary continuity and origin explanation of syntax [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2021, 29(7): 1264-1278.
[2]	YU Wenbo, WANG Lu, CHENG Xingyue, WANG Tianlin, ZHANG Jingjing, LIANG Dandan. The influence of linguistic experience on statistical word segmentation [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2021, 29(5): 787-795.
[3]	FANG Lan, ZHENG Yuanyi, JIN Han, LI Xiaoqing, YANG Yufang, WANG Ruiming. Prosodic boundaries in speech: A window to spoken language comprehension [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2021, 29(3): 425-437.
[4]	GU Junjuan, SHI Jinfu. The cognitive mechanism of Chinese character position processing and word boundary effect [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2021, 29(2): 191-201.
[5]	FENG Jie, XU Juan, WU Xinchun. The influence of blindness on auditory vocabulary recognition [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2021, 29(12): 2131-2146.
[6]	BAI Xuejun;ZHANG Manman;ZANG Chuanli;LI Xin;CHEN Lu;YAN Guoli. The Effect of Word Boundary Information on Chinese Word Acquisition and Recognition: Evidence from Eye Movements [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2014, 22(1): 1-8.
[7]	JIA Guangzhen;LIU Youyi;SHU Hua;Fang Xiaoping. The Role of Noun Animacy in Language Processing [J]. Advances in Psychological Science, 2013, 21(8): 1371-1381.
[8]	LI Xing-Shan;LIU Ping-Ping;MA Guo-Jie. Advances in Cognitive Mechanisms of Word Segmentation During Chinese Reading [J]. , 2011, 19(4): 459-470.
[9]	ZHANG Ya-Xu;PIAO Qiu-Hong;YU Jing;YANG Yan-Ping. The Functional Status of Syntactic Category Processing in Sentence Comprehension [J]. , 2011, 19(12): 1741-1748.
[10]	XU Xiao-Dong;LIU Chang. The Key Respect of Sentence Comprehension: A Further Review on the Relation between Syntax and Semantics [J]. , 2008, 16(4): 532-540.
[11]	Guo Xiuyan,Zhu Lei;Wei Zhichao. Artificial Neural Network Model about Implicit Learning [J]. , 2006, 14(6): 837-843.
[12]	Li Degao,Zhang Jijia. Deaf People’s Phonological and Morphological Awareness of Written Words and their Conceptual Structure [J]. , 2006, 14(3): 354-359.