The alveolar trill is perceived as jagged/rough by speakers of different languagesa).

Typological research shows that across languages, trilled [r] sounds are more common in adjectives describing rough as opposed to smooth surfaces. In this study, this lexical research is built on with an experiment with speakers of 28 different languages from 12 different families. Participants were presented with images of a jagged and a straight line and imagined running their finger along each.

Alterations in Emotional Expression Through Speech in Patients With Unilateral Vocal Fold Paralysis: A Preliminary Study.

Unilateral vocal fold paralysis (UVFP) has a known impact on patients' quality of life. One of the potentially affected domains that has not been studied yet is emotional prosody. To produce and transmit an efficient emotional prosody, several vocal parameters are modulated by the speaker, principally the fundamental frequency, the speech rate, and the voice intensity.

The effect is robust across cultures and writing systems.

The effect-the association of the nonce word with a round shape and with a spiky shape-is a type of correspondence between speech sounds and visual properties with potentially deep implications for the evolution of spoken language. However, there is debate over the robustness of the effect across cultures and the influence of orthography. We report an online experiment that tested the effect across speakers of 25 languages representing nine language families and 10 writing systems.

A Cross-Linguistic Study of Individual Differences in Speech Planning.

Although previous research has shown that there exist individual and cross-linguistic differences in planning strategies during language production, little is known about how such individual differences might vary depending on which language a speaker is planning. The present series of studies examines individual differences in planning strategies exhibited by speakers of American English, French, and German. Participants were asked to describe images on a computer monitor while their eye movements were monitored.

Novel vocalizations are understood across cultures.

Linguistic communication requires speakers to mutually agree on the meanings of words, but how does such a system first get off the ground? One solution is to rely on iconic gestures: visual signs whose form directly resembles or otherwise cues their meaning without any previously established correspondence. However, it is debated whether vocalizations could have played a similar role. We report the first extensive cross-cultural study investigating whether people from diverse linguistic backgrounds can understand novel vocalizations for a range of meanings.

Exploring the source of short-term variations in respiratory data.

This study explores short-term respiratory volume changes in German oral and nasal stops and discusses to what extent these changes may be explained by laryngeal-oral coordination. It is expected that respiratory volumes decrease more rapidly when the glottis and the vocal tract are open after the release of voiceless aspirated stops. Two experiments were performed using Inductance Plethysmography and acoustics, varying consonantal properties, loudness, and prosodic focus.

Effects of cognitive impairment on prosodic parameters of speech production planning in multiple sclerosis.

Cognitive impairment (CI) affects 40-65% of patients with multiple sclerosis (MS). CI can have a negative impact on a patient's everyday activities, such as engaging in conversations. Speech production planning ability is crucial for successful verbal interactions and thus for preserving social and occupational skills.

Relations among subglottal pressure, breathing, and acoustic parameters of sentence-level prominence in German.

This study investigates whether acoustic correlates of prominence are related to actions of the respiratory system resulting in local changes of subglottal pressure (Psub). Simultaneous recordings were made of acoustics; intraoral pressure (Pio), as an estimate of Psub; and thoracic and abdominal volume changes. Ten German speakers read sentences containing a verb ending with /t/ followed by a noun starting with /t/.

Phonetic and phonological imitation of intonation in two varieties of Italian.

The aim of this study was to test whether both phonetic and phonological representations of intonation can be rapidly modified when imitating utterances belonging to a different regional variety of the same language. Our main hypothesis was that tonal alignment, just as other phonetic features of speech, would be rapidly modified by Italian speakers when imitating pitch accents of a different (Southern) variety of Italian. In particular, we tested whether Bari Italian (BI) speakers would produce later peaks for their native rising L + H(*) (question pitch accent) in the process of imitating Neapolitan Italian (NI) rising L(*) + H accents.

On the intonation of German intonation questions: the role of the prenuclear region.

German questions and statements are distinguished not only by lexical and syntactic but also by intonational means. This study revisits, for Northern Standard German, how questions are signalled intonationally in utterances that have neither lexical nor syntactic cues. Starting from natural productions of such 'intonation questions', two perception experiments were run.

Brain response to prosodic boundary cues depends on boundary position.

Prosodic information is crucial for spoken language comprehension and especially for syntactic parsing, because prosodic cues guide the hearer's syntactic analysis. The time course and mechanisms of this interplay of prosody and syntax are not yet well-understood. In particular, there is an ongoing debate whether local prosodic cues are taken into account automatically or whether they are processed in relation to the global prosodic context in which they appear.