MARCS Insight Series: The Role of Tone in Swedish Speech Segmentation

MARCS INSIGHTS SERIES – Tuesdays at 11am

All welcome! To receive the zoom link and be added to the mailing list, please email marcs@westernsydney.edu.au.

Speaker

Dr Pelle Söderström

Interest Group

Speech & Language

Abstract

Spoken language has no blank spaces or commas, yet we effortlessly hear speech as being made up of discrete words. This process – known as speech segmentation – is informed by knowledge of the phonotactics and phonology of our native language. Thus, English listeners know that strong syllables constitute possible word onsets, while Finnish listeners take advantage of vowel features to determine which syllables belong to the same word. New findings show how Swedish listeners consider or inhibit possible words based on the prosodic structure of the language, suggesting a speech segmentation role for lexical prosody which has not been explored previously.

Location

Level 4 Seminar Room, Innovation Quarter, 160 Hawkesbury Road, Sydney, NSW 2145, Australia

Join Remotely

To receive a link to virtually attend please register by emailing marcs@westernsydney.edu.au