Linguistic innovations in IRC: Cypriot-Greek phonological features

The Cypriot Greek variety (CG), spoken in the island of Cyprus, is relatively distinct from Standard Greek (SG) in all linguistic domains and, especially, in the area of pronunciation. Youth language, within the Greek-Cypriot context, is an area of study that has, until recently, received little attention. Tsiplakou (2004) makes reference to the emergence of a new slang among young Greek-Cypriots, influenced by new comedy series, in which the actors make extensive use of ‘exaggeratedly peasant’ CG. As these comedy series become increasingly popular, the use of marked regional features becomes evident in the speech style of young Greek-Cypriots. A preliminary study has also revealed that marked CG linguistic features are equally evident in the online interactions of young internet users (Themistocleous 2005). In this study, I examine the use of CG phonological elements in a corpus of messages collected from channel #Cyprus, of Internet Relay Chat (IRC). It is demonstrated that young Greek-Cypriots use language in creative ways, in order to represent in writing phonological features, typical of their informal speech.

Multi-sensory treatment for children with developmental motor speech disorders

What this paper adds? What is already known on the subject? Multi-sensory treatment approaches have been shown to impact outcome measures positively, such as accuracy of speech movement patterns and speech intelligibility in adults with motor speech disorders, as well as in children with apraxia of speech, autism and cerebral palsy. However, there has been no empirical study using multi-sensory treatment for children with speech sound disorders (SSDs) who demonstrate motor control issues in the jaw and orofacial structures (e.g. jaw sliding, jaw over extension, inadequate lip rounding/retraction and decreased integration of speech movements). What this paper adds? Findings from this study indicate that, for speech production disorders where both the planning and production of spatiotemporal parameters of movement sequences for speech are disrupted, multi-sensory treatment programmes that integrate auditory, visual and tactile–kinesthetic information improve auditory and visual accuracy of speech production. The training (practised in treatment) and test words (not practised in treatment) both demonstrated positive change in most participants, indicating generalization of target features to untrained words. It is inferred that treatment that focuses on integrating multi-sensory information and normalizing parameters of speech movements is an effective method for treating children with SSDs who demonstrate speech motor control issues.

Evolution of the modern Nile delta promontories: development of accretional features during shoreline retreat

The active accretional features that have developed along the modern Nile Delta promontories during shoreline retreat are analysed using topographic maps, remote imagery, ground and hydrographic surveys, together providing 15 time-slice maps (1922-2000) at Rosetta and 14 time-slice maps (1909-2000) at Damietta. Small double sandy spits developed and persisted at Rosetta between 1986 and 1991. At Damietta, a much larger single spit, 9 km long, formed approximately east of the mouth of the Damietta Nile branch between 1955 and 1972, although its source has now been depleted. Both the Rosetta and Damietta inlets are associated with submerged mouth bars that accumulated prior to the damming of the Nile, but that continue to contribute to local sedimentation problems, particularly at Rosetta. The development of the active accretional features along the Nile promontories reflects a combination of factors including sediment availability, transport pathways from source areas, a decrease in the magnitude of Nile flood discharges, as well as the impact of protective structures at the river mouths.

Modeling infant speech sound discrimination using simple associative networks

Infants' responses in speech sound discrimination tasks can be nonmonotonic over time. Stager and Werker (1997) reported such data in a bimodal habituation task. In this task, 8-month-old infants were capable of discriminations that involved minimal contrast pairs, whereas 14-month-old infants were not. It was argued that the older infants' attenuated performance was linked to their processing of the stimuli for meaning. The authors suggested that these data are diagnostic of a qualitative shift in infant cognition. We describe an associative connectionist model showing a similar decrement in discrimination without any qualitative shift in processing. The model suggests that responses to phonemic contrasts may be a nonmonotonic function of experience with language. The implications of this idea are discussed. The model also provides a formal framework for studying habituation-dishabituation behaviors in infancy.

Habituation and dishabituation to speech and office noise

The authors examined whether background noise can be habituated to in the laboratory by using memory for prose tasks in 3 experiments. Experiment 1 showed that background speech can be habituated to after 20 min exposure and that meaning and repetition had no effect on the degree of habituation seen. Experiment 2 showed that office noise without speech can also be habituated to. Finally, Experiment 3 showed that a 5-min period of quiet, but not a change in voice, was sufficient to partially restore the disruptive effects of the background noise previously habituated to. These results are interpreted in light of current theories regarding the effects of background noise and habituation; practical implications for office planning are discussed.

Key features of the IPSL ocean atmosphere model and its sensitivity to atmospheric resolution

This paper presents the major characteristics of the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation model. The model components and the coupling methodology are described, as well as the main characteristics of the climatology and interannual variability. The model results of the standard version used for IPCC climate projections, and for intercomparison projects like the Paleoclimate Modeling Intercomparison Project (PMIP 2) are compared to those with a higher resolution in the atmosphere. A focus on the North Atlantic and on the tropics is used to address the impact of the atmosphere resolution on processes and feedbacks. In the North Atlantic, the resolution change leads to an improved representation of the storm-tracks and the North Atlantic oscillation. The better representation of the wind structure increases the northward salt transports, the deep-water formation and the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation. In the tropics, the ocean–atmosphere dynamical coupling, or Bjerknes feedback, improves with the resolution. The amplitude of ENSO (El Niño-Southern oscillation) consequently increases, as the damping processes are left unchanged.

The neural processing of masked speech: Evidence for different mechanisms in the left and right temporal lobes

It has been previously demonstrated that extensive activation in the dorsolateral temporal lobes associated with masking a speech target with a speech masker, consistent with the hypothesis that competition for central auditory processes is an important factor in informational masking. Here, masking from speech and two additional maskers derived from the original speech were investigated. One of these is spectrally rotated speech, which is unintelligible and has a similar (inverted) spectrotemporal profile to speech. The authors also controlled for the possibility of “glimpsing” of the target signal during modulated masking sounds by using speech-modulated noise as a masker in a baseline condition. Functional imaging results reveal that masking speech with speech leads to bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG) activation relative to a speech-in-noise baseline, while masking speech with spectrally rotated speech leads solely to right STG activation relative to the baseline. This result is discussed in terms of hemispheric asymmetries for speech perception, and interpreted as showing that masking effects can arise through two parallel neural systems, in the left and right temporal lobes. This has implications for the competition for resources caused by speech and rotated speech maskers, and may illuminate some of the mechanisms involved in informational masking.