Dr. René Kager
(coordinator)
Room: 0.03a (Trans 10)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2538064
E-mail: rene.kager@let.uu.nl
Homepage: http://www-uilots.let.uu.nl/~Rene.Kager/personal/
My main research area is phonology, with specializations in prosody (word stress and rhythm) and the interaction between phonology and morphology. In line with the overall framework of my choice, Optimality Theory, recurrent themes in my work are ‘conflict resolution’ and ‘parallelism’. With Hugo Quené, I have co-authored Jocelyn Cohan’s postdoc project "Coping with Conflicts in Language Processing: The Role of Prosody", which I also supervise. Together with Sieb Nooteboom, Hugo Quené and Jocelyn Cohan, I am organizing an international workshop Prosody in Processing, to be held in Utrecht, July 2001.
Prof. dr. Sieb Nooteboom
Room: 1.32 (Trans 10)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2536060
E-mail: sieb.nooteboom@let.uu.nl
Homepage: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Sieb.Nooteboom/personal/
My current research interests focus on auditory word recognition, prosody, the mental organization of speech production and speech monitoring, and the role of fixed expressions in speech production and perception. I take an interest in speech errors. Often these interests are combined in the research undertaken by myself and my PhD students, as exemplified by a number of PhD thesis I supervised in recent years and in my own research. Presently I am supervising the following PhD theses within the Prosody project group of Language in Use:
1) Esther Janse, currently focusing on the effects of several types of temporal compression on speech perception, 2) Heleen Hoekstra, focusing on intonation and interpretation, 3) Maya van Rossum, studying functions of prosody in alaryngeals. Recently Rianneke Crielaard started a PhD research project on prosodic structure of idioms and other fixed expressions. I am also involved in a discussion group in the context of a postdoc project by Jocelyn Cohan, on "coping with conflicts in language processing: the role of prosody".
Dr. Hugo Quené
Room: 2.25 (Trans 10)
Telephone: +31 (0)30 2536265
E-mail: hugo.quene@let.uu.nl
Home page: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Hugo.Quene/personal/onderzoek/
My past research work has focused on speech segmentation (how listeners divide continuous speech into discrete words) and on spoken word recognition (how listeners recognise words spoken in continuous speech). Listeners have to combine incoming auditory information with knowledge about grammar, lexicon, previous discourse, etc, in order to perform these tasks. This becomes apparent when you listen to an unknown language, of which you don't have a grammar nor a lexicon. In the past, I have investigated how listeners perform these tasks, and whether these tasks are hampered (or facilitated) by assimilation and by sandhi phenomena. Recently, however, I have become somewhat worried about the statistics, methodology, and design of many phonetic and psycholinguistic experiments -- including my own. This has led to methodological research, which is still in progress. Plans for the future include work on rhythmic aspects of speech, in particular rhythmic properties as adapted from surrounding speech. The general idea is that speakers may sacrifice the grammaticality of their speech, in order to maintain an "easy" rhythm.
Prof. dr. Wim Zonneveld
Room:1.03 (Trans 10)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2538237
E-mail: wim.zonneveld@let.uu.nl
Home page:
My research interests focus on a variety of aspects concerning syllable structure and wordstress. These include the following topics: first language acquisition; second language acquisition; theoretical issues of syllable structure and stress, and the way they are intertwined (including language typology); lexical phonology and morphology (both synchronic and diachronic); and the study of metre. Subsidiary interests are the phonetics-phonology interface, dyslexia, the history of phonology, and spelling.
Drs. Esther Janse
Room: 0.20 (Trans 10)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2536110
E-mail: esther.janse@let.uu.nl
Home page: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Esther.Janse/personal/
Project title: Intelligibility of time-compressed speech
My project is based on the finding that time-compressed speech remains intelligible up to more than 3 times real time, which is much faster than the maximum speech rate humans are able to produce. When speech is time-compressed, e.g. for the purpose of fast playback of long recordings, compression is normally performed in a linear way. This means that all segments are reduced in duration to the same degree. It has been shown, however, that when speakers speed up their speech rate, the changes in durations are far from linear: some parts are compressed more than others, such that the prosodic patterns are more pronounced in fast speech than in normal rate speech. My research focuses on the following questions: (i) What is the role of non-segmental sources of information, such as lexical redundancy and prosodic patterns? (ii) Can the intelligibility of time-compressed speech be improved by taking into account the natural timing of fast speech? Or can it be the case that intelligibility of time-compressed speech would be improved by a highly unnatural prosody?
Drs. Maya van Rossum
Room: 0.20 (Trans 10)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2536001
E-mail: maya.vanrossum@let.uu.nl
Home page:
Project title: Prosody in alaryngeal speech
A listener's speech comprehension is facilitated by prosody, which contributes to the organisational structure of an utterance. Thus prosody incorporates timing, intensity and frequency variation. A laryngeal (normal) speaker relies on the fine-tuning capabilities of the larynx (voicebox) to effect this variation. Speakers who have had a laryngectomy (surgical removal of the larynx), use a part of the esophagus as a substitute voice. Research has shown that is much more difficult to effect subtle changes with this substitute voice. This research project investigates whether alaryngeal speakers realise prosodic functions effectively(such as prominence, marking of boundaries, disambiguating ambiguous sentences, etc.), and how these prosodic functions are realised (eg. using similar cues as in normal speech or by using compensatory strategies).
Drs. Rianneke Crielaard
Room: 2.27 (Trans 10)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2538127
E-mail: rianneke.crielaard@let.uu.nl
Home page:
Project title: The prosodic structure of idioms and other fixed expressions
In spontaneous speech, people tend to use a lot of fixed expressions, or idioms. There is much evidence that those idioms are stored and accessible as lexical items, as part of the mental lexicon. If this is the case, it could be hypothesized that not only their morphosyntactic and conceptual structure, but also their prosodic structure can be stored in the lexicon. In a number of production and perception experiments, I will try to find out whether it could be that prosodic characteristics of idioms and other fixed expressions are stored in the lexicon. Answering this question will add to the knowledge of the division of labour between storage and computation in language production.
Dr. Jocelyn Cohan
Room: 2.01 (Achter de Dom 22)
Phone: +31 (0)30 2536213
E-mail: jocelyn.cohan@let.uu.nl
Home page: http://www.let.uu.nl/~Jocelyn.Cohan/personal/
Project title: Coping with conflicts in language processing: The role of prosody
My work in the prosody group brings together research interests in the
syntactic, semantic and discourse characteristics of focus and accent with interests in
interface issues and the implications of these issues for the architecture of the language
faculty. Experimental research that I am conducting as part of the prosody project
investigates the influence of prosodic weight of constituents on Dutch speakers' choice of
syntactic construction. Pilot results support the existence of potential feedback from
phonology to syntax at the level of prosody. The potential for feedback from phonology to
syntax is not compatible with models of language that fix phonological encoding after
syntactic encoding in language production/performance (e.g., Levelt 1989 or Chomsky 1995).
It would, however, be compatible with models that hypothesize parallel encoding and
competitive constraints (e.g., optimality theory or Jackendoff 1997).