LLP_W8

Speech segmentation is:

• choosing parts of speech to study more deeply

• separating speech into meaningful units like morphemes and words

• the study of the sound system of language

Why do children and L2 speakers need to learn to segment speech?

• to make sense of the stream of speech that is constant with no divisions

• to learn where to put the stress in words and sentences

• to find out how frequently words are presented in isolation

Lexical stress is a good cue for speech segmentation in English because:

• all content words in English have stress

• 1/2 of the content words in English have final stress

• 3/4 of the content words in English have initial stress

Phonotactics means:

• what sounds are allowed next to each other or in certain places in words

• what sounds are phonemes vs. allophones

• what sounds are allowed at certain places in sentences

Infants show sensitivity to the phonotactics of their language by:

• 2 months of age

• 9 months of age

• 2 years of age

Relying on most cues for segmentation is not reliable because:

• many cues are probabilistic rather than absolute

• many cues differ from one language to another

• you need to learn some words before you can use the cues

• all of the above

• only b and c

What percent of input to English-speaking infants is isolated words, according to Brent & Siskind 2001?

• 0%

• 9%

• 22%

• 48%

One segmentation cue is transitional probability. This is statistical information about:

• what syllables occur next to each other

• how frequently transitions occur between words

• how quickly speech transitions from child to parent and back

Which of the following can infants use to segment other words in a sentence?

• their own name

• frequent function words

• adjectives and adverbs

• all of the above

• only a and b

Words at the ends of utterances help in segmentation because:

• their pronunciation is lengthened

• they are shorter

• they are more frequent