This book brings together selected revised papers representing a multidisciplinary approach to language, music, and gesture, as well as their interaction. Among the number of multidisciplinary and comparative studies of the structure and organization of language and music, the presented book broadens the scope with the inclusion of gesture problems in the analyzed spectrum. A unique feature of the presented collection is that the papers, compiled in one volume, allow readers to see similarities and differences in gesture as an element of non-verbal communication and gesture as the main element of dance. In addition to enhancing the analysis, the data on the perception and comprehension of speech, music, and dance in regard to both their functioning in a natural situation and their reflection in various forms of performing arts makes this collection extremely useful for those who are interested in human cognitive abilities and performing skills. The book begins with a philosophical overview of recent neurophysiological studies reflecting the complexity of higher cognitive functions, which references the idea of the baroque style in art being neither linear nor stable. The following papers are allocated into 5 sections. The papers of the section "Language-Music-Gesture As Semiotic Systems" discuss the issues of symbolic and semiotic aspects of language, music, and gesture, including from the perspective of their notation. This is followed by the issues of "Language-Music-Gesture Onstage" and interaction within the idea of the "World as a Text." The papers of "Teaching Language and Music" present new teaching methods that take into account the interaction of all the cognitive systems examined. The papers of the last two sections focus on issues related primarily to language: The section "Verbalization Of Music And Gesture" considers the problem of describing musical text and non-verbal behavior with language, and papers in the final section "Emotions In Linguistics And Ai-Communication Systems" analyze the ways of expressing emotions in speech and the problems of organizing emotional communication with computer agents.

The "smart mobile" has become an essential and inseparable part of our lives. This powerful tool enables us to perform multi-tasks in different modalities of voice, text, gesture, etc. The user plays an important role in the mode of operation, so multimodal interaction provides the user with new complex multiple modalities of interfacing with a system, such as speech, touch, type and more. The book will discuss the new world of mobile multimodality, focusing on innovative technologies and design which create a state-of-the-art user interface. It will examine the practical challenges entailed in meeting commercial deployment goals, and offer new approaches to the designing such interfaces. A multimodal interface for mobile devices requires the integration of several recognition technologies together with sophisticated user interface and distinct tools for input and output of data. The book will address the challenge of designing devices in a synergetic fashion which does not burden the user or to create a technological overload.

Aims and Scope Patients are more empowered to shape their own health care today than ever before. Health information technologies are creating new opportunities for patients and families to participate actively in their care, manage their medical problems and improve communication with their healthcare providers. Moreover, health information technologies are enabling healthcare providers to partner with their patients in a bold effort to optimize quality of care, improve health outcomes and transform the healthcare system on the macro-level. In this book, leading figures discuss the existing needs, challenges and opportunities for improving patient engagement and empowerment through health information technology, mapping out what has been accomplished and what work remains to truly transform the care we deliver and engage patients in their care. Policymakers, healthcare providers and administrators, consultants and industry managers, researchers and students and, not least, patients and their family members should all find value in this book. "In the exciting period that lies just ahead, more will be needed than simply connecting patients to clinicians, and clinicians to each other. The health care systems that will be most effective in meeting patients' needs will be those that can actually design their 'human wares' around that purpose. This book provides deep insight into how information technology can and will support that redesign." Thomas H. Lee, MD, MSc, Chief Medical Officer, Press Ganey Associates; Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School and Professor of Health Policy and Management, Harvard School of Public Health The Editors: Drs. Maria Adela Grando, Ronen Rozenblum and David W. Bates are widely recognized professors, researchers and experts in the domain of health information technology, patient engagement and empowerment. Their research, lectures and contributions in these domains have been recognized nationally and internationally. Dr. Grando is affiliated with Arizona State University and the Mayo Clinic, and Drs. Rozenblum and Bates are affiliated with Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard University.

This book offers new insights into the language gains of adult learners enrolled in an English-medium instruction (EMI) degree programme. It provides longitudinal empirical evidence of the phonological gains of the learners; discusses which individual factors contribute to the changes in the learners' pronunciation and investigates whether and to what extent increased exposure to the target language in EMI classrooms leads to incidental learning of second language pronunciation. Furthermore, it expands on the discussions surrounding the Critical Period Hypothesis, the native-speaker norm, foreign language accent and the role of English as a Lingua Franca. The comparative and longitudinal design of the research study fills a significant gap in the literature and the book offers considerable original and important research-informed insights into the fields of EMI, bilingual education and second language acquisition. As such, it is a valuable resource and must-read book for researchers, practitioners and policymakers in these areas.

The book contains a collection of papers dealing with the question of how rhythm shapes language. Until now, there was no comprehensive theory that addressed these findings adequately. By bringing together researchers from many different fields, this book will make a first attempt to fill this gap.

This volume brings together two under-investigated areas of intonation typology. While tone languages make up to 70 percent of the world's languages, only few have been explored for intonation. And even though one third of the world's languages are spoken in Africa, and most sub-Saharan languages are tone languages, recent collections on tone and intonation typology have almost entirely ignored African languages. This book aims to fill this gap.

The book analyzes the articulatory motivation of several adaptation processes (place assimilations, blending, coarticulation) involving consecutive consonants in heterosyllabic consonant sequences within the framework of the degree of articulatory constraint model of coarticulation. It also shows that the homorganic relationship between two heterosyllabic consonants contributes to the implementation of manner assimilations, while heterorganicity as well as sonorancy and voicing in the syllable-onset C2 are key factors in the weakening of the syllable-coda C1. Experimental and descriptive evidence is provided with production, phonological and sound change data from several languages, and more especifically with tongue-to-palate contact and lingual configuration data for Catalan consonant sequences. The book also reviews critically research on the c-center effect in tautosyllabic consonant sequences which has been carried out during the last thirty years.

In this book, some of today's leading neurolinguists and psycholinguists provide insight into the nature of phonological processing using behavioural measures, computational modeling, EEG and fMRI. The essays cover a range of topics including categorization, acoustic variability and invariance, underspecification, talker-specificity and machine learning, focusing on the acoustics, perception, acquisition and neural representation of speech.

This volume is comprehensively designed to help prospective English Language Teaching (EFL) teachers specializing in EFL mainly in South Asian countries. It analyses the application of ELT theories, concepts, and methods to sharpen their understanding of the various techniques used for teaching English effectively in the EFL context. The book discusses the basic concepts of language aimed to develop a sense of the language phenomenon as a unique human attribute. It covers the theories of language from various disciplines such as biology, sociology, psychology, and linguistics. The book explains the underlying structures or components that shape the edifice of languages such as phonology, morphology, syntax, grammar, phonetics, semantics, and pragmatics. While taking the reader through language learning theories with a focus on English as the second language, it discusses the different teaching methods that can be adopted by teachers in classroom settings. The book will be of interest to teachers, students and researchers of education, teacher education, and English Language Teaching. It will also be useful for educators, English language teachers, language learners, professionals working in the field of education and language, and those who aspire to teach and learn English in Foreign context.

Phonetically reduced forms are plentiful, theoretically interesting, and a key challenge for automatic speech recognition systems. Yet canonical forms are still central to models of production and perception. Drawing from different fields and diverse languages, this volume brings new insights to the debate on abstractions and canonical forms in linguistics: their psychological reality, descriptive adequacy, and technical implementability.

The book provides a significant insight into the complex process of English loanword adaptation in Russian. It is based on an in-depth analysis and comparison of a rich body of experimental data on the adaptation of both established and online loans of those English sounds absent from Russian phonemic inventory. The analysis is couched within the Optimality-Theoretic framework. The uncovered patterns offer valuable contribution to the ongoing debate on loanword phonology.

A groundbreaking work on Chinese linguistics by a distinguised linguist A full picture of phonetical system from old Chinese to modern Chinese Illustrated with concrete examples

This study had a research purpose and a pedagogical purpose. Research disclosed the dynamic, changing nature of (learner-internal and learner-external) variables that influence strategic competence for developing EFL/ESL writers. This competence was found necessary for international graduate students to move from writer-centered learning to reader-centered communication. The research instruments proved to be practical tools for guiding learners' processes of learning and writing a scholarly paper or article and avoiding plagiarism. The implication for teachers and program administrators is a systematic approach for developing self-regulation (control) in EFL/ESL writing. The first part of the book reports on the mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative) research. The second part gives an in-depth report of the 6 cases used in the research. The third part presents tools for systematically developing self-regulation in scholarly (and academic) writing with (a) student and teacher checklists for formative assessment that are valid and reliable; and (b) a model syllabus for teachers that can be adapted across disciplines and genres. These tools deal with learning strategies and their applications to writing and writing instruction.

Siraya is a Formosan language once spoken around Tainan City in southwest Taiwan. This comprehensive study is based on an analysis of the language of the Siraya Gospel of St. Matthew, which was translated from the Dutch in 1661. It contains a grammar, lexicon and extensive text with interlinear glossing as well as an introduction with detailed background information. Siraya has many unique linguistic features, which are of great interest to the study of linguistic typology in general. They include various reduplication patterns, orientation prefixes (adding the notions of motion, location or comitation to a verb) and anticipating sequences. The latter are (usually) formal elements of the lexical verb, such as a first consonant or a first syllable, which are prefixed to the auxiliary. Siraya is also of crucial importance for the prehistory of Taiwan because it is one of the first languages to branch off from the Austronesian language family, which has more than 1200 members. The volume is a major contribution to the Siraya people who are keen to rehabilitate Siraya culture heritage and are endeavouring to learn their lost language again. It is a unique achievement in the endeavour to revitalise the traditional languages of Taiwan.

ANTONIS BOTINIS 1. 1 Background This introduction provides essential information about the structure and the objects of study of this volume. Following the introduction, fourteen papers which represent current research on intonation are organised into five thematic sections: (I) Overview of Intonation, (II) Prominence and Focus, (III) Boundaries and Discourse, (IV) Intonation Modelling, and (V) Intonation Technology. Within the sections the papers are arranged thematically, although several papers which deal with various aspects of intonation and prosody are basically intersectional. As the title indicates, "Intonation: Analysis, Modelling and Technology" is a contribution to the study of prosody, with major emphasis on intonation. Intonation and tonal themes are thus the central object of the volume, although temporal and dynamic aspects are also taken into consideration by a good number of papers. Although tonal and prosodic distinctions have been dealt with throughout man's literate history with reference to the study of language, for example by classical philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle, it is in recent decades that we have witnessed the most fertile growth in intonation studies, as with experimental phonetics and speech technology in general. As Rossi (this volume) points out, intonation research really began to blossom in the sixties with a multi fold increase in prosodic studies, reflected in contributions to the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS), and in the international literature."

Prosodic Phonology of the Fuzhou Dialect: Domains and Rule Application is the first attempt to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Fuzhou phonological system from the perspective of prosodic phonology. It addresses the following issues: What prosodic constituents exist in the Fuzhou dialect and what kinds of roles they play in the Fuzhou phonological system; how to define the domain formation of these prosodic constituents in the Fuzhou dialect; what kinds of Fuzhou phonological phenomena make crucial reference to these prosodic constituents as the domain of application; and what implications does the study of the Fuzhou phonological system have for the prosodic phonology theory. This book is a valuable text for students and scholars in the field of Chinese dialectology, Min dialects, prosodic phonology, and phonology-morphosyntax interface.

Diachronic Perspectives and Synchronic Variation in Southern Min aims to address a range of grammatical phenomena in Southern Min. The Sinitic languages show divergence not only in phonology but also in grammar. Together with Hakka, Yue and part of Wu, Min forms the two major Southern groups of Far Southern and Southeastern languages. There is a range of grammatical phenomena in Southern Min addressed here; the themes and theoretical issues covered in this book touch on a wide range of grammatical patterns of Southern Min from both synchronic and diachronic perspectives including comparatives, obligative and dynamic modals, formation of coordinate conjunctions from the comitative marker, the benefactive marker, the rise of the continuative aspect marker, grammaticalization of the verb of saying into a complementizer and purposives in Southern Min. This book is aimed at researchers and scholars working on and interested in Chinese linguistics.

Speech: A dynamic process takes readers on a rigorous exploratory journey to expose them to the inherently dynamic nature of speech. The book addresses an intriguing question: Based only on physical principles alone, can the exploitation of a simple acoustic tube evolve into an optimal speech production system comparable to the one we possess? In the work presented, the tube is deformed step by step with the sole criterion of expending minimum effort to obtain maximum acoustic variations. At the end of this process, the tube is found divided into distinctive regions and an acoustic space emerges capable of generating speech sounds. Attaching this tube to a model, an inherently dynamic and efficient system is created. In the resulting system, optimal primitive trajectories are seen to naturally exist in the acoustic space and the regions defined in the tube correspond to the main places of articulation for oral vowels and plosive consonants. All this implies that these speech sounds are inherent properties of not only the modeled acoustic tube but also of the human speech production system. This book stands as a valuable resource for accomplished and aspiring speech scientists as well as for other interested persons in search for an introduction to speech acoustics that takes an unconventional path.

This book presents a novel experimental approach to investigating the mental representation of linguistic alternatives. Combining theoretical and psycholinguistic questions concerning the nature of alternative sets, it sheds new light on the theory of focus and the cognitive mechanisms underlying the processing of alternatives. In a series of language comprehension experiments, the author shows that intonational focus and focus particles such as 'only' shape the representation of alternatives in a listener's mind in a fundamental way. This book is relevant to researchers interested in semantics, pragmatics, language processing and memory.

The traditional dialect spoken in the Shetland Isles, the northernmost part of Scotland and Britain, is highly distinct. It displays distinct, characteristic features on all linguistic levels and particularly in its sound system, or its phonology. The dialect is one of the lesser- known varieties of English within the Inner Circle. Increasing interest in the lesser- known varieties of English in recent years has brought a realization that there are still blanks on the map, even within the very core of the Inner Circle. Sundkvist's comprehensive treatise draws upon results from a three- year research project funded by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation, for which a phonological survey of the Shetland dialect was carried out between 2010 and 2012. This book is a useful resource for those working on historical linguistics and is intended to serve as a comprehensive description and accessible reference source on one of the most distinct lesser- known varieties of English within Britain. It documents and offers a systematic account of the rich regional variation as well as being a reference source for those studying the historical formation and emergence of the Shetland dialect and language variation and change in Shetland, as well as those within the broader field of Germanic linguistics.

This handbook presents the first systematic account of corpus phonology - the employment of corpora, especially purpose-built phonological corpora of spoken language, for studying speakers' and listeners' acquisition and knowledge of the sound system of their native languages and the principles underlying those systems. The field combines methods and theoretical approaches from phonology, both diachronic and synchronic, phonetics, corpus linguistics, speech technology, information technology and computer science, mathematics and statistics. The book is divided into four parts: the first looks at the design, compilation, and use of phonological corpora, while the second looks at specific applications, including examples from French and Norwegian phonology, child phonological development, and second language acquisition. Part 3 looks at the tools and methods used, such as Praat and EXMARaLDA, and the final part examines a number of currently available phonological corpora in various languages, including LANCHART, LeaP, and IViE. It will appeal not only to those working with phonological corpora, but also to researchers and students of phonology and phonetics more generally, as well as to all those interested in language variation, dialectology, first and second language acquisition, and sociolinguistics.

The present volume contains a selection of the papers and commentaries which were originally presented at the Tenth Conference of Laboratory Phonology (LabPhon10) held in Paris from June 29 to July 1, 2006. The theme of the volume is Variation, Phonetic Detail and Phonological Representation. It brings together specialists of different fields of speech research with the goal to discuss the relevance of patterns of variation and phonetic details on phonological representations and theories. The topic is addressed from the angles of speech production, perception, acquisition, speech disorders, and language universals. The contributions are grouped thematically in five sections, each of which is commented by invited discussants. Section I contains the contributions to the special '10th anniversary session' of the conference which represent in a prototypical way some of the different research questions that have been at the core of important debates over the last 20 years in the laboratory phonology community. Issues of phonological universals and language typology are addressed in section II. In section III, the notions of variation and phonetic detail are examined with regard to how they are acquired and dealt with in the formation of phonological representation in emerging systems. Section IV focuses on recent work at the crossroad between normal and disordered speech.

American English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice provides an accessible introduction to basic articulatory phonetics for students of American English. Built around an extensive collection of practice materials, this book teaches the pronunciation of modern standard American English to intermediate and advanced learners worldwide. This book: * provides an up-to-date description of the pronunciation of modern American English; * demonstrates the use of each English phoneme with a selection of high-frequency words, both alone and in context in sentences, idiomatic phrases and dialogues; * provides examples and practice material on commonly confused sounds, including illustrative pronunciation diagrams; * is supported by a companion website featuring complete audio recordings of practice material to check your pronunciation against; * can be used not only for studying pronunciation in the classroom but also for independent practice. American English Phonetics and Pronunciation Practice is essential reading for any student studying this topic.

This book provides an overview of the role of the syllable in Optimality Theory (OT) and ways in which problems that relate to the analysis of syllable structure can be solved in OT. The contributions to the book show that the syllable not only sheds light on certain properties of OT itself. They also show that OT is capable of describing and adequately analyzing many issues that are problematic in other theories. The analyses are based on a wealth of languages.

This is the first major sociolinguistic work on Indian diasporic communities in Germany. It investigates accent perceptions and attitudes to variation in Indian varieties of English. The study shows how differences in phonological characteristics index ethnic identities. Based on a network approach, it establishes the spatial dimensions of patterns of perceived language variation with a stratified sample of 60 Indians. The study uses an innovative mixed methodology to investigate overt stigmatisations as well as covert attitudes towards accent variation. It shows that metalanguage allows to understand what sociolinguistic stereotypes are at stake in diasporic communities and what criteria are made use of in such discriminations.