Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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Item Evaluating the role of acoustic cues in identifying the presence of a code-switch(2024) Exton, Erika Lynn; Newman, Rochelle S.; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Code-switching (switching between languages) is a common linguistic behavior in bilingual speech directed to infants and children. In adult-directed speech (ADS), acoustic-phonetic properties of one language may transfer to the other language close to a code-switch point; for example, English stop consonants may be more Spanish-like near a switch. This acoustically-natural code-switching may be easier for bilingual listeners to comprehend than code-switching without these acoustic changes; however, it effectively results in the languages being more phonetically similar at the point of a code-switch, which could make them difficult for an unfamiliar listener to distinguish. The goal of this research was to assess the acoustic-phonetic cues to code-switching available to listeners unfamiliar with the languages by studying the perception and production of these cues. In Experiment 1 Spanish-English bilingual adults (particularly those who hear code-switching frequently), but not English monolingual adults, were sensitive to natural acoustic cues to code-switching in unfamiliar languages and could use them to identify language switches between French and Mandarin. Such cues were particularly helpful when they allowed listeners to anticipate an upcoming language switch (Experiment 2). In Experiment 3 monolingual children appeared unable to continually identify which language they were hearing. Experiment 4 provides some preliminary evidence that monolingual infants can identify a switch between French and Mandarin, though without addressing the utility of natural acoustic cues for infants. The acoustic detail of code-switched speech to infants was investigated to evaluate how acoustic properties of bilingual infant-directed speech (IDS) are impacted by the presence of and proximity to code-switching. Spanish-English bilingual women narrated wordless picture books in IDS and ADS, and the voice onset times of their English voiceless stops were analyzed in code-switching and English-only stories in each register. In ADS only, English voiceless stops that preceded an English-to-Spanish code-switch and were closer to that switch point were produced with more Spanish-like voice onset times than more distant tokens. This effect of distance to Spanish on English VOTs was not true for tokens that followed Spanish in ADS, or in either direction in IDS, suggesting that parents may avoid producing these acoustic cues when speaking to young children.Item WOMEN, LANGUAGE, AND WOMEN AS LANGUAGE: THE PARADOXICAL DOMESTICITY AND SEXUALITY OF MUSLIM WOMEN AND URDU IN POST-1857 INDIAN LITERATURE AND NATIONAL DISCOURSE(2023) Taha, Fatima; Ray, Sangeeta; Comparative Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Although, since the late 1980s, much attention has been paid to the woman/mother as nation trope in multicultural colonial and post-colonial scholarship, what remains largely unexplored is the concept of woman as language functioning as scaffold for a gendered, cultural-linguistic nationalism deployed by Hindu Indians in colonial India. These “language woman,” a term political scientist Asha Sarangi coined in 2009, are diametrically opposed: the feminine anthropomorphic dutiful, mother Hindi, fit to represent India, and the unruly, courtesan Urdu who has no place in the incipient nation. In the last decade, scholarly engagement with Begum Urdu has been limited to structuring this characterization as demeaning, with Indian Muslims failing to subvert the marginalized linguistic representation in the fundamentally Hindi-speaking, Hindu project of the Indian nation state. Such a gender essentialist reading of anthropomorphic Urdu perpetuates the very androcentric society-approved gender roles it seeks to denounce, aligning with colonial Indian nationalists’ and British imperialists’ myopic ideology of one appropriate type of woman. Why must the courtesan lack agency or respectability and require reformation? This project offers an alternative view of Begum Urdu, recasting the language courtesan as empowered through the application of, among others, Foucault’s theory on authorized forms of sexuality eventually rupturing societal norms combined with sociolinguist Robin Lakoff’s interpretations of authoritative woman’s language viewed from both inside and outside the socio-political frame encompassing it. Drawing on feminist, linguistic, and colonial studies and bridging them with the concept of metonymy through contiguity in prose realism, this work offer a new metaphorical reading of Muslim female characters as representing both the Indian Muslim woman and Urdu in seven Urdu prose realist works: Ratan Nath Sarshar’s Fasana-e-Azad; Abdul Halim Sharar’s Flora Florinda; Nazir Ahmed Dehlvi’s Mirat-ul Uroos, Banaat-ul Naash, Taubat-un Nasuh, and Fasana-e-Mubtala; and finally, Muhammad Rusva’s Umrao Jan Ada and Junoon-e-Intezaar in which the metaphorical language woman is transformed into a real, round character and woman in the real world who functions with authority and agency as not only a character but an author. The Muslim and Urdu-language woman who emerges from these texts in the latter half of the 19th century gradually mesh the spheres of acceptable domestic sexuality and disreputable public sexuality to conceive a woman, who despite being untethered from societal norms, is a compelling representation of Muslim women and Urdu. In restructuring courtesan Urdu as reputable, this dissertation corrects scholarships’ sustainment of the linguistic hierarchy of Hindi over Urdu and the colonial symbolic Indian Hindu woman over her Muslim counterpart. Dismantling the British imperial and Indian colonial construction of a debased Urdu is imperative to redress the continued global devaluation of Urdu and even its speakers, including in Pakistan, where Urdu is the sole national and one of the two official languages. This dissertation answers Gyatri Spivak’s question of if the subaltern woman can speak with a resounding “yes, she can” and explores the various ways in which the marginalized and repressed can use language as a tool in an attempt to dismantle colonialism and subvert the authority of colonial oppressors while creating a singular identity, much in the way Aamir Mufti approaches the power of language.Item Utterance-level predictors of stuttering-like, stall, and revision disfluencies in the speech of young children who do and do not stutter(2021) Garbarino, Julianne; Bernstein Ratner, Nan; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Disfluencies are generally divided into two types: stuttering-like disfluencies (SLDs), which are characteristic of the speech of people who stutter, and typical disfluencies (TDs), which are produced by nearly all speakers. In several studies, TDs have been further divided into stalls and revisions; stalls (fillers, repetitions) are thought to be prospective, occurring due to glitches in planning upcoming words and structures, while revisions (word and phrase repetitions, word fragments) are thought to be retrospective, occurring when a speaker corrects language produced in error.This dissertation involved the analysis of 15,782 utterances produced by 32 preschool-age children who stutter (CWS) and 32 matched children who do not stutter (CWNS). The first portion of this dissertation focused on how syntactic factors relate to disfluency. Disfluencies (of all three types) were more likely to occur when utterances were ungrammatical. The disfluency types thought a priori to relate to planning (SLDs and stalls) occurred significantly more often before errors, which is consistent with these disfluencies occurring, in part, due to difficulty planning the error-containing portion of the utterance. Previous findings of a distributional dichotomy between stalls and revisions were not replicated. Both stalls and revisions increased in likelihood in ungrammatical utterances, as the length of the utterance increased, and as the language level of the child who produced the utterance increased. This unexpected result suggests that both stalls and revisions are more likely to occur in utterances that are harder to plan (those that are ungrammatical and/or longer), and that as children’s language develops, so do the skills they need to produce both stalls and revisions. The second part of this dissertation assessed the evidence base for the widespread recommendation that caregivers of young CWS should avoid asking them questions, as CWS have been thought to stutter more often when answering questions. CWS were, in fact, less likely to stutter when answering questions than in other utterance types. Given this finding, the absence of previous evidence connecting question-answering to stuttering, and the potential benefits of asking children questions, clinicians should reconsider the recommendation for caregivers of CWS to reduce their question-asking.Item The use of the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) as a comparative model for speech perception(2020) Mallikarjun, Amritha; Newman, Rochelle S; Neuroscience and Cognitive Science; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Animals have long been used as comparative models for adult human speech perception. However, few animal models have been used to explore developmental speech perception questions. This dissertation encourages the use of domestic dogs as a behavioral model for speech perception processes. Specifically, dog models are suggested for questions about 1) the role and function of underlying processes responsible for different aspects of speech perception, and 2) the effect of language experience on speech perception processes. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 examined the contributions of auditory, attention, and linguistic processing skills to infants’ difficulties understanding speech in noise. It is not known why infants have more difficulties perceiving speech in noise, especially single-talker noise, than adults. Understanding speech in noise relies on infants’ auditory, attention, and linguistic processes. It is methodologically difficult to isolate these systems’ contributions when testing infants. To tease apart these systems, I compared dogs’ name recognition in nine- and single-talker background noise to that of infants. These studies suggest that attentional processes play a large role in infants’ difficulties in understanding speech in noise. Chapter 5 explored the reasons behind infants’ shift from a preference for vowel information (vowel bias) to consonant information (consonant bias) in word identification. This shift may occur due to language exposure, or possessing a particular lexicon size and structure. To better understand the linguistic exposure necessary for consonant bias development, I tested dogs, who have long-term linguistic exposure and a minimal vocabulary. Dogs demonstrated a vowel bias rather than a consonant bias; this suggests that a small lexicon and regular linguistic exposure, plus mature auditory processing, do not lead to consonant bias emergence. Overall, these chapters suggest that dog models can be useful for broad questions about systems underlying speech perception and about the role of language exposure in the development of certain speech perception processes. However, the studies faced limitations due to a lack of knowledge about dogs’ underlying cognitive systems and linguistic exposure. More fundamental research is necessary to characterize dogs’ linguistic exposure and to understand their auditory, attentional, and linguistic processes to ask more specific comparative research questions.Item INFANT LANGUAGE LEARNING & COOPERATIVE COMMUNICATION: THE INFLUENCE OF CONTINGENT RESPONSIVENESS AND SES(2018) Renzi, Doireann Tomas; Bolger, Donald J; Human Development; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Early language development relates to a child’s later language ability, cognitive development, and academic achievement. Parent input has long been studied as a predictor of infant language acquisition, and consequently, as a predictor of the differences in early language attainment associated with the documented ‘word gap’ between children from high and low Socio-Economic Status (SES) backgrounds. This dissertation sought to investigate the specific mechanisms of early parent-infant interactions that facilitate infant language learning, and whether SES differences are evident in those mechanisms at 10 months. Specifically, cooperative communication: the conversation-like back and forth between parents and infants, and parents’ contextualized responsiveness: use of responses that contingently elaborate on the infant’s attentional focus, were examined. These relationships were also examined in terms of infant language outcomes at 18 months. Controlling for infant communication and parent input, SES was significantly correlated with parents’ responses to infant vocalizations, in particular when they were paired with a gesture or other behavior, and to parents’ use of object labels in their interactions with their infants. These noted differences suggest that input differences associated with the ‘word gap’ are evident in development as early as 10 months old. Children who were exposed to more contextualized responses overall and in particular those that contained a question, a label, or that responded to infant behavioral communication had better language performance at 18 months, even controlling for child communication and total parent input. Importantly, these components of contextualized responsiveness had a larger effect than SES on language outcomes, such as child word types and scores on the standardized Mullen Scales of Early Learning. This suggests that while SES is related to some positive components of responsiveness (labels and responses to vocalizations), the relationship between SES and language outcomes is often mediated, in full or in part, by parents’ use of specific contextualized responses. Together, the findings present contextualized responsiveness as a promising foundation for interventions aimed at diminishing and preventing the word gap and that, for parents from all SES backgrounds, their use of specific contextualized responses elaborating on their infant’s attentional focus facilitates optimal infant language learning.Item Syntactic Processing and Word Learning with a Degraded Auditory Signal(2017) Martin, Isabel A.; Huang, Yi Ting; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The current study examined real-time processing and word learning in children receiving a degraded audio signal, similar to the signal children with cochlear implants hear. Using noise-vocoded stimuli, this study assessed whether increased uncertainty in the audio signal alters the developmental strategies available for word learning via syntactic cues. Normal-hearing children receiving a degraded signal were found to be able to differentiate between active and passive sentences nearly as well as those hearing natural speech. However, they had the most difficulty when correct interpretation of a sentence required revision of initial misinterpretations. This pattern is similar to that found with natural speech. While further testing is needed to confirm these effects, the current evidence suggests that a degraded signal may make revision even harder than it is in natural speech. This provides important information about language learning with a cochlear implant, with implications for intervention strategies.Item Early Phonological Predictors of Toddler Language Outcomes(2015) Gerhold, Kayla; Bernstein Ratner, Nan; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Several studies have explored relationships between children's early phonological development and later language performance. This literature has included a more recent focus on the potential for early vocalization profiles in infancy to predict later language outcomes, including those characterized by delay or disorder. The present study examines phonetic inventories and syllable structure patterns in a large cohort of infants as they relate to expressive language outcomes at 2 years of age. Results suggest that as early as 11 months, phonetic inventory and mean syllable structure level are related to two year expressive language outcomes (MLU, MCDI, and types). If specific patterns of production can be established for a typically-developing population then this will additionally inform clinical decision-making. Possible applications are discussed.Item Fast mapping in linguistic context: Processing and complexity effects(2015) Arnold, Alison Reese; Huang, Yi Ting; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Young children readily use syntactic cues for word learning in structurally-simple contexts (Naigles, 1990). However, developmental differences in children's language processing abilities might interfere with their access to syntactic cues when novel words are presented in structurally-challenging contexts. To understand the role of processing on syntactic bootstrapping, we used an eye-tracking paradigm to examine children's fast-mapping abilities in active (structurally-simple) and passive (structurally-complex) sentences. Actions after sentences indicated children were more successful mapping words in passive sentences when novel words were presented in NP2 ("The seal will be quickly eaten by the blicket") than when novel words were presented in NP1 ("The blicket will be quickly eaten by the seal"), indicating presenting more prominent nouns in NP1 increases children's agent-first bias and sabotages interpretation of passives. Later recall data indicate children were less likely to remember new words in structurally-challenging contexts.Item PATTERNS AND POSSIBLE INFLUENCES OF MATERNAL VOWEL CLARIFICATION ON CHILD LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT(2013) Hartman, Kelly Marie; Ratner, Nan B; Hearing and Speech Sciences; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There have been many studies examining the differences between infant-directed speech (IDS) and adult-directed speech (ADS). However, very few longitudinal studies exist that explore how patterns of maternal vowel articulation in IDS change as children get older, or whether these changes have any effect on a child's developing language skills. This study examines the vowel clarification of mothers' IDS at 10-11 months, 18 months, and 24 months, as compared to their vowel production in ADS. Relationships between vowel space, vowel duration, and vowel variability and child language outcomes at 2 years are also explored. Results show that vowel space and vowel duration tend to be greater in IDS than in ADS, and that a mother's vowel space at 18 months is significantly related to expressive and receptive child language outcomes at 2 years. Possible explanations are discussed.