This study aims to evaluate and compare the performance of automatic transcription systems for the ToBI (Tones and Breaks Indices) and ToDI (Transcription of Dutch Intonation) frameworks....Show moreThis study aims to evaluate and compare the performance of automatic transcription systems for the ToBI (Tones and Breaks Indices) and ToDI (Transcription of Dutch Intonation) frameworks. Specifically, the focus is on matching or surpassing the results achieved by previous systems using a relatively small data set for training. By employing recent advancements in Natural Language Processing (NLP), this research demonstrates the potential to achieve comparable or superior performance in generating ToDI transcriptions of intonational phonology with limited labelled data available for boundary detection and boundary classification, while, for accent detection and accent classification, no results substantially better than the majority class baseline were obtained.Show less
This thesis is an exploratory corpus study on the origins of single segment speech errors in child language. The central question is which phonological factors other than markedness influence the...Show moreThis thesis is an exploratory corpus study on the origins of single segment speech errors in child language. The central question is which phonological factors other than markedness influence the acquisition of fricatives, more specifically word-initial labiodental fricatives. Through examination of Dutch and U.S. English child speech data of approximately 1-3 years old, patterns emerged that indeed suggest an influence of markedness on the phonemes that children substitute for targets /f/ and /v/. A cross-linguistic difference in the produced phonemes, along with a salient faster and more consistent development of the U.S. English participants, could not be explained by markedness. An influence of neighbourhood density is proposed in addition to the influence of markedness.Show less
Verschillende eerdere onderzoeken tonen aan dat er sprake is van genderstereotypen bij sportverslaggeving, maar voor het Nederlands zijn dit soort onderzoeken nog schaars. Het doel van dit...Show moreVerschillende eerdere onderzoeken tonen aan dat er sprake is van genderstereotypen bij sportverslaggeving, maar voor het Nederlands zijn dit soort onderzoeken nog schaars. Het doel van dit onderzoek was om inzicht te krijgen in de mate waarin er bij sportverslaggeving sprake is van stereotyperend taalgebruik. Het onderzoek is uitgevoerd aan de hand van een corpusonderzoek waarbij een inhoudsanalyse en een transitiviteitsanalyse zijn gebruikt. Er is gekeken naar 334 clauses uit sportverslaggeving uit het AD en de Telegraaf over mannelijke en vrouwelijke voetballers en mannelijke en vrouwelijke hockeyers. De inhoudsanalyse richtte zich op de benamingen die werden gebruikt voor vrouwelijke en mannelijke sporters en de transitiviteitsanalyse werd gebruikt om te onderzoeken welke soort processen er bij beide geslachten het meest frequent voorkwamen en of dit significant van elkaar verschilde. Uit de resultaten van de inhoudsanalyse kunnen vanwege de kleine aantallen geen duidelijke kwantitatieve conclusies getrokken worden. Bij de transitiviteitsanalyse is gekeken naar hoe vaak mannelijke en vrouwelijke sporters werden gekoppeld aan een bepaald soort proces, zoals een materieel of mentaal proces. De resultaten van de transitiviteitsanalyse waren niet significant en de resultaten voldoen dus niet aan de verwachting dat er bij vrouwelijke sporters meer mentale processen worden gebruikt en bij mannelijke sporters meer materiële processen. Er is dus, tegen de verwachting in, geen sprake van stereotyperend taalgebruik bij sportverslaggeving. In toekomstig onderzoek is het belangrijk dat er wordt gekeken naar een grotere verscheidenheid aan dagbladen en naar het geslacht van de auteur van het artikel. Daarnaast zou het interessant zijn om te kijken naar het verschil in hoe vaak mannelijke en vrouwelijke sporters zelf aan het woord komen in artikelen van sportverslaggeving. Ten slotte zou het interessant kunnen zijn om naar meer verschillende sporten te kijken en bijvoorbeeld eveneens naar een typische ‘vrouwensport’ zoals turnen.Show less
Taruma is a critically endangered and poorly described language isolate of Guyana. The language has already been presumed extinct but there are, however, still at least three speakers of Taruma...Show moreTaruma is a critically endangered and poorly described language isolate of Guyana. The language has already been presumed extinct but there are, however, still at least three speakers of Taruma living in Guyana. Thanks to language data from both the early 20th century and the 21st century, it is possible to expand our current knowledge of the Taruma phonology by digitising, transcribing and analysing the 20th century data set and comparing it with the data set from the 21st century. After the analysis and comparison of the two data sets, a conclusion is given about how the phonology of Taruma has changed over the last 100 years. The contribution of missionary work and the active roles of Indigenous people in creating these manuscripts realized this expansion of documentation of Taruma language and history.Show less
In many languages, a noun’s grammatical gender is expressed overtly via its definite article. The languages of interest in this study were Swiss German and Standard German. While both languages...Show moreIn many languages, a noun’s grammatical gender is expressed overtly via its definite article. The languages of interest in this study were Swiss German and Standard German. While both languages have a high lexical similarity and share the same gender system, some nouns do not share the same grammatical gender in both languages. Bidialectal speakers of these languages must have different representations for these words. This provides an opportunity to investigate the representation of lexico-syntactic features in the mental lexicon and the process of gender retrieval in bidialectals simultaneously. In an experiment employing the picture-word interference paradigm, participants named a picture (article + noun) while ignoring a distractor word. Results showed faster naming latencies in Standard German when the grammatical gender of the picture and the distractor word matched than when they did not match. In Swiss German, we did not observe such an effect. We assumed that the gender ambiguity of some Swiss German varieties diluted the effect. In Standard German, we found markedly slower naming latencies for nouns with different grammatical gender in each language than with the same grammatical gender. We argued that Swiss German interfered in Standard German since erroneously used articles corresponded to the grammatical gender in Swiss German. This effect supported the Revised Hierarchical Model according to which bilinguals have a separate lexicon for both languages, and the lexical link from the second to the first language is stronger than from the first to the second language.Show less
In my thesis, the correlation between spatial and temporal descriptions of solar movement in Homeric Greek will be investigated, in order to assess whether the temporal FoR was indeed an outgrowth...Show moreIn my thesis, the correlation between spatial and temporal descriptions of solar movement in Homeric Greek will be investigated, in order to assess whether the temporal FoR was indeed an outgrowth of the spatial FoR, as proposed in Bartolotta (2018).Show less
While the effects of temporal audiovisual asynchrony and multisensory integration on speech perception have been studied extensively, their effects on speech comprehension are largely unknown. In...Show moreWhile the effects of temporal audiovisual asynchrony and multisensory integration on speech perception have been studied extensively, their effects on speech comprehension are largely unknown. In the current study, thirty participants took part in a picture naming task. Reaction times were measured across four experimental conditions resulting from two independent variables: temporal synchrony of the audiovisual prime and semantic relation between prime and target. The primes consisted of videos with a delay of 500 milliseconds between the onsets of the visual and auditory track. The results indicate no significant effect of temporal synchrony on speech comprehension within this paradigm.Show less
Turkish improvised lament songs, also known as 'Ağıt', have a rich history within Turkish oral poetry. All the way from complete improvisation during a funeral to full standardization within...Show moreTurkish improvised lament songs, also known as 'Ağıt', have a rich history within Turkish oral poetry. All the way from complete improvisation during a funeral to full standardization within popular music, Ağıt are found everywhere within Turkish culture. By using a musicolinguistic and semiotic approach this thesis uncovers the formal structures that lie beneath the improvised lament songs.Show less
This document contains my BA-thesis on the use of the gerund in a Spanish novel from the Ecuadorian Andes and a Spanish novel from Spain. It will give a description of each of the gerundial uses...Show moreThis document contains my BA-thesis on the use of the gerund in a Spanish novel from the Ecuadorian Andes and a Spanish novel from Spain. It will give a description of each of the gerundial uses and provide ideas for future research.Show less
The present study attempted at answering the research question whether musical expertise facilitates acquisition of L2 prosodic features, since the effect of transfer from musical to linguistic...Show moreThe present study attempted at answering the research question whether musical expertise facilitates acquisition of L2 prosodic features, since the effect of transfer from musical to linguistic auditory processing skills was claimed by several studies. The study examined the productions of a small text by 134 L1 English and Dutch L2 English speakers with different amounts of musical experience. Multilevel regression analyses were performed to investigate the effect of musicality on the native speaker ratings, and distance between the L1 and L2 F0 range and speaking rate. Native speaker ratings proved to be unreliable, and there was a trend for higher musicality scores to predict larger F0 range distances from the native mean, contrary to the hypotheses. Based on the obtained results it was impossible to claim a positive correlation between musical expertise and more nativelike L2 prosody production. The paper concludes by discussing the methodological limitations and suggesting other prosodic features to measure in the future studies.Show less
In dit literatuuronderzoek werden de rol van ritmische en melodische aspecten in de relatie tussen taal en muziek vergeleken. De onderzoeksvraag was of de relatie tussen taal en muziek zich beperkt...Show moreIn dit literatuuronderzoek werden de rol van ritmische en melodische aspecten in de relatie tussen taal en muziek vergeleken. De onderzoeksvraag was of de relatie tussen taal en muziek zich beperkt tot taal en ritme of dat er ook duidelijke verbanden tussen taal en melodische aspecten te vinden zijn. Hierbij werd er ingegaan op: (1) overeenkomsten en verschillen tussen taal en muziek, (2) de invloed van muzikale training op taalontwikkeling, (3) de invloed van moedertaal op muziek en (4) muzikale aanleg bij dieren en mensen. Uit de besproken verschillen en overeenkomsten kon niet geconcludeerd worden dat de relatie tussen taal en muziek zich beperkt tot taal en ritme.Show less
This paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt...Show moreThis paper explores the acquisition of syllable types in German. It follows the approach of Levelt et al. (2000), who looked at Dutch syllable type acquisition. In line with the findings of Levelt et al., a couple of hypotheses regarding German syllable type acquisition were formulated. Since German does not have onsetless syllables, the syllable types V, VC, and VCC were not expected to appear in child language. The German data for this study consisted of recordings of four German children between the ages 1;00 and 2;00. The data was searched for different syllable types at different stages of acquisition. Unexpectedly, onsetless syllables did appear in the recordings. However, additional analysis showed that they appear unsystematically and are thus likely produced due to a phonetic or articulatory error and do not emerge from underlying grammar. Therefore, onsetless syllables were disregarded, in the order of acquisition. All children showed the same order of acquisition for the rest of the syllable types. The acquisitional order of the syllable types was accounted for by an OT analysis in which each new syllable type emerges from a reranking of constraints in the underlying grammar. The most prominent difference to the Dutch OT grammar is that in German grammar ONSET remains high ranked and does not get outranked by FAITH.Show less
