Southern Salentino has a harmony process, where the stressed mid vowels /E, O/ are raised to mid-high vowels /e, o/ when followed by -i or -u. We studied this process by combining acoustic analyses with ultrasound tongue imaging. The main result of our study is that the Southern Salentino harmonic adjustments in height, which are acoustically manifested in the differentiation of F1, are articulatorily correlated with tongue root advancement when the process is triggered by -i and with tongue body raising when the process is triggered by -u. We propose a phonological analysis of the process based on these findings.

According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), acoustic similarity/dissimilarity between sounds of the second language (L2) and the native language (L1) governs L2 learnability in adulthood and predicts L2 sound perception by naïve listeners. The study addressed two questions: (1) whether the discrimination patterns predicted by the PAM for L2 naïve listeners are also reflected in the modulation of Mismatch Negativity (MMN) component of the event-related response (ERP) and (2) whether L2 classroom learning is associated with the typology of L2 naïve listeners, as recently suggested by behavioral studies on cross-linguistic research. We measured the behavioral and ERP responses in two groups (10 subjects per group) of Salento Italian (SI) undergraduate students of British English (BE) attending the first the fifth year of the Foreign Languages and Literatures Faculty, compared with 10 inexperienced subjects of BE as L2 (only for the ERP experiment). An identification test examined the perceived phonetic distance between the L1 (/i, ɛ, a, ɔ, u/) and L2 (/iː, ɪ, ɛ, æ, ʌ, ɑː, ɒ, ɜː, ɔː, ʊ, uː/) vowel system. The contrasts /iː/-/uː/ and /æ/-/ʌ/ (for which the PAM’s framework predicted an excellent and a good discrimination, respectively) were selected for an oddity discrimination test and the ERP experiment. In the ERP experiment, using an oddball paradigm, the contrasts /iː/-/uː/ and /æ/ -/ʌ/ were tested while subjects watched a silent movie. As a control condition we introduced the L1 within-category contrast /ɛ/-[e] for which poor discrimination is predicted for all subjects. Following the PAM predictions, the two groups of students did not differ in their behavioral discrimination performance: they exhibited excellent discrimination of /iː/-/uː/ and moderate to good discrimination of /æ/-/ʌ/. MMN amplitudes confirmed that the L2 contrasts were well discriminated. Crucially, no difference was found between the groups of students and the inexperienced group for the L2 contrasts /iː/-/uː/ and /æ/-/ʌ/, and, as predicted, all the subjects showed poor discrimination for the L1 within-category contrast. MMN peak latencies were modulated by the contrast type: /i/-/u/ elicited a faster MMN than /æ/-/ʌ/ and /ɛ/-[e]; in turn, /æ/-/ʌ/ evoked a faster MMN than /ɛ/-[e], reflecting the acoustic distance between the stimuli. Furthermore, the MMN was right lateralized. In line with the PAM model, we extend the findings of previous behavioral studies showing that, at the psychophysiological level, classroom instruction in adulthood relies on assimilation of L2 vowels to L1 phoneme categories and does not trigger improvement in L2 phonetic discrimination.

According to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), articulatory similarity/dissimilarity between sounds of the second language (L2) and the native language (L1) governs L2 learnability in adulthood and predicts L2 sound perception by naïve listeners. We performed behavioral and neurophysiological experiments on two groups of university students at the first and fifth years of the English language curriculum and on a group of naïve listeners. Categorization and discrimination tests, as well as the mismatch negativity (MMN) brain response to L2 sound changes, showed that the discriminatory capabilities of the students did not significantly differ from those of the naïve subjects. In line with the PAM model, we extend the findings of previous behavioral studies showing that, at the neural level, classroom instruction in adulthood relies on assimilation of L2 vowels to L1 phoneme categories and does not trigger improvement in L2 phonetic discrimination.

A Mismatch Negativity (MMN) study was performed to investigate whether pre-attentive vowel percep- tion is influenced by phonological status. We compared the MMN response to the acoustic distinction between the allophonic variation [e–e] and phonemic contrast [e–i] present in a Southern-Italian variety (Tricase dialect). Clear MMNs were elicited for both the phonemic and allophonic conditions. Interest- ingly, a shorter latency was observed for the phonemic pair, but no significant amplitude difference was observed between the two conditions. Together, these results suggest that for isolated vowels, the phonological status of a vowel category is reflected in the latency of the MMN peak. The earlier latency of the phonemic condition argues for an easier parsing and encoding of phonemic contrasts in memory representations. Thus, neural computations mapping auditory inputs into higher perceptual representa- tions seem ‘sensitive’ to the contrastive/non-contrastive status of the sounds as determined by the listen- ers’ knowledge of the own phonological system.

Lo studio delle consonanti scempie e geminate rappresenta un’ottima opportunità per confrontare il comportamento di soggetti colpiti da Morbo di Parkinson e soggetti di controllo rispetto ad un compito linguistico che può fornire dati interessanti di per sé, circa la resistenza del contrasto linguistico nel parlato patologico, e anche in relazione ai modelli teorici per la coordinazione inter-gestuale. L’obiettivo principale di questo lavoro è verificare se i gesti articolatori di soggetti affetti da Morbo di Parkinson mostrino alterazioni rispetto ai gesti di soggetti non affetti dal Morbo, sia in termini spaziali che temporali, prendendo in considerazione in modo particolare: 1) la realizzazione del contrasto tra consonanti scempie e geminate; 2) la sonorità e il modo di articolazione delle consonanti; 3) il fatto che l’età dei soggetti vari e possa influire sia sulla durata che sull’ampiezza dei gesti (con ovvie ricadute sul piano acustico). In generale, i risultati sulle consonati scempie e geminate sono in linea con i precedenti (Gili Fivela e Zmarich 2005, Zmarich e Gili Fivela 2005) e aggiungono informazioni circa i gesti linguali. Inoltre, circa l’effetto della patologia, è stato confermato che i soggetti patologici presentano spesso valori ridotti per le misure considerate, fatto salvo ciò che riguarda l’articolatore linguale e lo spostamento sull’asse antero-posteriore. Anche in questo caso, i risultati sono quindi in linea con la letteratura precedente (per l’italiano, Gili Fivela et al. 2014, Iraci et al. in stampa). L’influenza della sonorità e del modo di articolazione, risulta abbastanza chiara e in linea con le attese almeno per quanto riguarda il primo fattore, in relazione alla presenza di consonanti bilabiali sonore rafforzate (Romano, 2003, Gaillard-Corvaglia & Kamiyama 2006). Per quanto riguarda il modo di articolazione, la maggior complessità articolatoria prevista per le nasali non si esprime per mezzo di incremento generalizzato dei valori delle misure considerate o, almeno, l’eventuale incremento è minore di quello osservato per le occlusive nel loro complesso (quindi incluse le sonore). Circa l’effetto del fattore età, nel complesso abbiamo riscontrato dati coerenti con quelli descritti da Xue e Hao (2003) e in parte ritrovati in Gili Fivela et al. (2014), per cui i parlanti più anziani tendono a differire dagli altri (Xue e Hao 2003). Benché nel nostro caso anche i parlanti più giovani siano in realtà dei sessantacinquenni, le modificazioni osservate sono comunque coerenti con l’incremento dei valori nelle produzioni di coloro che hanno un’età più avanzata, ossia anche per i parlanti di età intermedia che di fatto hanno 74-75 anni. Tuttavia, dal momento che il raggruppamento per età accorpa soggetti patologici e di controllo nei tre livelli di età considerati, è ipotizzabile un’influenza della patologia sull’andamento di questi risultati (per una discussione, cfr. Iraci et al., in stampa). Infine, per quanto riguarda il phasing, i risultati ottenuti confermano quanto osservato da Gili Fivela et al. 2007 e Zmarich et al. 2007, 2009, 2011, ossia che la coordinazione inter-gestuale per scempie e geminate è coerente con un modello ibrido tra quello di Ӧhman e quello di Browman e Goldstein. A questo riguardo, la patologia sembra modificare in vario modo le significatività osservate nella popolazione di soggetti di controllo, ad indicare il fatto che sono necessarie altre analisi per comprendere appieno quali siano le differenze cruciali che interessano il parlato nel Morbo di Parkinson rispetto al parlato non patologico. In ogni caso, l’indagine descritta è preliminare e i risultati dovranno quindi essere verificati tramite ulteriori analisi.

In questo lavoro viene indagato l’utilizzo di italiano e dialetto in chat e Instant Messeger (IM) nell’area salentina. Dai risultati emerge che il dialetto rappresenta una lingua-risorsa, in grado di sopperire alla mancanza dei tratti paralinguistici e soprasegmentali presenti nelle interazioni dialogiche faccia a faccia. Ciò avviene nonostante la tecnologia si sia evoluta a tal punto da migliorare il livello della comunicazione, soprattutto in funzione di una sempre più verosimile simulazione dell’oralità. Tuttavia le possibilità offerte dal sistema digitale non hanno impedito che il dialetto venisse percepito da chi sfrutta il mezzo come lo strumento più idoneo a riprodurre in alcune circostante la mimesi del parlato reale, a dimostrazione forse che sulla terraferma il dialetto la fa ancora da padrone.

Studying language as an object of the biological world requires the resolution of the mind-brain problem. While contemporary theoretical linguistics has addressed the problem adopting a dualistic approach (in which the representational and algorithmic nature of linguistic knowledge can be investigated independently by brain activity), cognitive neuroscience has privileged an anti-dualistic perspective (in which the direct observation of the brain can reveal the higher-level cognitive properties of the language faculty). These different epistemological views generated incommensurable ontologies that at the moment prevent the fertile integration of linguistics and cognitive neuroscience. The aim of this special issue is to redraw attention to unresolved shortcomings adopting an interdisciplinary perspective by comparing different research traditions, approaches and methods. The contributions come from linguistics, cognitive neuroscience, neurophysiology, computational neuroscience and computer science and discussed topics related with different aspects of the language faculty. We have tried to blend experimental works with theoretical contributions from linguistics addressing questions that can fruitfully join experimental evidence with abstract theorization. We conclude by outlining some future scenarios under the theme of integration that, although stimulated on the basis of the linguistic-cognitive neuroscience interface, represent general challenges for all interdisciplinary approaches in cognitive neuroscience

Cochlear implants partially restore auditory sensation in individuals affected by severe to profound hearing loss. We investigated vowel detection, identification, and discrimination in a group of congenitally-deafened, unilaterally-implanted, Italian children and in a group of age-matched controls, by combining behavioral and neurophysiologic measures. Comparable vowel identification and discrimination performance emerged for cochlear-implant and normal- hearing ch ildren at the behavioral level. At the neurophysiologic level, on the other hand, cochlear-implant children appeared to lag behind their age-matched normal- hearing peers for vowel detection and identification, but not for vowel discrimination. Length of cochlear implant use sign ificantly affected vowel processing at the neurophysiologic level, although not systematically.

Questo articolo presenta una sintesi sulla fonetica forense, focalizzando l'attenzione sul problema della comparazione di registrazioni vocali, nella quale un campione intercettato della voce del reo (anonimo) viene comparato con il campione registrato della voce del sospettato o dei sospettati (saggio). Dopo aver discusso i principi fondamentali della fonetica acustica, il presente lavoro pone l'accento sul perché metodi non scientifici, come quello dell'impronta vocale, non siano più accettati dalla comunità scientifica, che si sta invece orientando verso metodi tecnico-scientifici, implementati da software specializzati: nell'ambito di tali metodi, viene infine illustrato quello basato sull'approccio bayesiano e sul calcolo del rapporto di verosimiglianza (Likelihood ratio) per il confronto delle distribuzioni statistiche delle frequenze formantiche e della frequenza fondamentale.

The AG500 electromagnetic articulograph is widely used to reconstruct the movements of the articulatory organs. Nevertheless, some anomalies in its performance have been observed. It is well known that accuracy of the device is affected by electromagnetic interference and possible hardware failures or damage to the sensors. In this study, after eliminating any hardware or electromagnetic source of disturbance, a set of trials was carried out. The tests prove that anomalies in sensor position tracking are systematic in certain regions within the recording volume and, more importantly, show a specific pattern that can be clearly attributed to a wrong convergence of the calculation method.

This work investigates metaphony in the Southern Salentino variety of Tricase. In this variety, the mid stressed vowel [ɛ] is raised to [e] when followed by high unstressed vowels -i and -u, while the mid stressed vowels [ɔ] is raised to [o] when followed by high unstressed -u. We integrate an acoustic-articulatory analysis in production with a behavioral-neurophysiological investigation in perception. Our findings show that the metaphonic process of the Tricase variety involves spreading of two distinct features from the unstressed high vowels to the stressed mid vowels: [+ATR] when the triggers is -i and [+High] when the trigger is -u. In parallel, at the perceptual level, we demonstrate that allophones and phonemes are equally computed in early speech processing and encoded in memory representations, and that therefore the allophonic variation generated by metaphony is part of the phonological grammar acquired by the Tricase speakers.

In the present study, cortical responses of two sustained Italian vowels, /a/ and /i/, were analyzed in perception and production tasks by using the event-related potential (ERP) technique. First, we showed that the earlier auditory waveform complex, N1/P2, was elicited in both experimental tasks by acoustically presented vowels. More interestingly, the cortical activity of auditory cortex seems to reflect different spectro-acoustical items of Italian vowels in the production task. Specifically, the vowel /a/ generated a weaker activity than /i/ as revealed by different neuronal modulations; moreover, during speech production, the auditory cortex showed a dampening and delaying of its activity in the left hemisphere.

The present study investigates Salento Italian (SI) listeners’ initial state in the perception of American English (AE) vowels. Results of categorization and discrimination tasks are discussed in terms of the Perceptual Assimilation Model [1] and the Second Language Linguistic Perception model (L2LP; [2]). Further, the categorization results are compared to those of the Peruvian Spanish (PS) listeners in [3] to test the L2LP acoustic hypothesis, according to which the acoustic differences between the five SI and PS vowels will lead to different categorizations of AE vowels. Predictions of differential perceptual development across listener groups are provided.

Le applicazioni della Fisica e dell’Informatica alla Biomedicina includono i sistemi di individuazione di patologie (CAD, Computer-Assisted Detection) basati sul trattamento di dati provenienti da esami diagnostici (in particolare ma non limitandosi alle immagini diagnostiche quali TC, RM, etc.), gli strumenti di ausilio alla chirurgia (realtà virtuale, telechirurgia), l’analisi e l’interpretazione di segnali di interesse biomedicale (per esempio segnali da elettroencefalogramma, EEG, o da elettrocardiogramma, ECG). Questo lavoro presenta una rassegna di applicazioni, in cui gli autori sono impegnati, dandone alcuni dettagli implementativi e discutendone brevemente i risultati. Le applicazioni si differenziano per il tipo di dati analizzati (serie temporali provenienti da misure EEG, oppure dati bi- o tridimensionali contenuti in immagini diagnostiche), per il distretto corporeo di intervento, le finalità, la patologia.

Salento Italian (SI) listeners' categorization and discrimination of standard Southern British English (SSBE) vowels were examined in order to establish their initial state in the acquisition of the SSBE vowel system. The results of the vowel categorization task revealed that SI listeners showed single-category assimilation for many SSBE vowels and multiple-category assimilation for others. Additionally, SI vowel discrimination accuracy varied across contrasts, in line with the categorization results. This differential level of difficulty is discussed on the basis of current L2 perception models. The SI categorization results were then compared to the previously reported data on Peruvian Spanish (PS) listeners. Both SI and PS have a five-vowel inventory and therefore both listener groups were expected to have similar problems when distinguishing SSBE vowel contrasts, but were predicted to have different mappings of SSBE vowels to native categories due to the differences in the acoustic properties of vowels across the two languages. As predicted by the hypothesis that acoustic differences in production lead to a different nonnative perception, the comparison showed that there was large variability in how SSBE vowels are initially mapped to the specific five-vowel inventory. Predictions for differential L2 development across languages are also provided.

The cognitive neuroscience of language is an exciting interdisciplinary perspective that suffers from unresolved epistemological and methodological issues. Despite the impressive amount of neural evidence accumulated until now, the field of research results fragmented and it is quite difficult to reach a unit of analysis and consensus on the object of study. This frustrating state of the art results in a detrimental reductionism consisting in the practice of associating linguistic computation hypothesized at theoretical level with neurobiological computation. However, these two entities are at the moment ontologically incommensurable. The problem lies in the fact that a theory of language consistent with a range of neurophysiological and neuroimaging techniques of investigation and verifiable through neural data is still lacking. In this article, I focus on the main issues, questions, and concerns that prevent the integrated study of language and brain and I explore a feasible way for linguistics to pursue a theory susceptible of neuroscientific testability in the light of recent neurocognitive models and of data on the functional-anatomic organization of language in the brain. Finally, I discuss a possible interdisciplinary program in order to achieve a theory capable of predictions on the real-time neural constrains characterizing the biological bases of language.

Contents: Content and Language Integrated Learning E-Learning Solutions for Language Teaching and Learning ICT Based Language Teaching and Learning approaches Language Learning to Support International Mobility Language for Specific Purposes Monitoring and Evaluation of Language Teaching and Learning Multilingualism Quality and Innovation in Language Teaching and Learning Recognition and Validation of Language Skills Studies in Second Language Acquisition PIXEL was established in Florence in 1999 by a team of professionals with over 10 years of experience in the education and training sector, developed mainly in the framework of transnational cooperation. PIXEL’s mission is to promote an innovative approach to education, training and culture, based on the best experiences developed at European level.

Speech sound perception is one of the most fascinating tasks performed by the human brain. It involves a mapping from continuous acoustic waveforms onto the discrete phonological units computed to store words in the mental lexicon. In this article, we review the magnetoencephalographic studies that have explored the timing and morphology of the N1m component to investigate how vowels and consonants are computed and represented within the auditory cortex. The neurons that are involved in the N1m act to construct a sensory memory of the stimulus due to spatially and temporally distributed activation patterns within the auditory cortex. Indeed, localization of auditory fields maps in animals and humans suggested two levels of sound coding, a tonotopy dimension for spectral properties and a tonochrony dimension for temporal properties of sounds. When the stimulus is a complex speech sound, tonotopy and tonochrony data may give important information to assess whether the speech sound parsing and decoding are generated by pure bottom-up reflection of acoustic differences or whether they are additionally affected by top-down processes related to phonological categories. Hints supporting pure bottom-up processing coexist with hints supporting top-down abstract phoneme representation. Actually, N1m data (amplitude, latency, source generators, and hemispheric distribution) are limited and do not help to disentangle the issue. The nature of these limitations is discussed. Moreover, neurophysiological studies on animals and neuroimaging studies on humans have been taken into consideration. We compare also the N1m findings with the investigation of the magnetic mismatch negativity (MMNm) component and with the analogous electrical components, the N1 and the MMN. We conclude that N1 seems more sensitive to capture lateralization and hierarchical processes than N1m, although the data are very preliminary. Finally, we suggest that MEG data should be integrated with EEG data in the light of the neural oscillations framework and we propose some concerns that should be addressed by future investigations if we want to closely line up language research with issues at the core of the functional brain mechanisms.

Defining the specific role of the factors that affect metaphor processing is a fundamental step for fully understanding figurative language comprehension, either in discourse and conversation or in reading poems and novels. This study extends the currently available materials on everyday metaphorical expressions by providing the first dataset of metaphors extracted from literary texts and scored for the major psycholinguistic variables, considering also the effect of context. A set of 115 Italian literary metaphors presented in isolation (Experiment 1) and a subset of 65 literary metaphors embedded in their original texts (Experiment 2) were rated on several dimensions (word and phrase frequency, readability, cloze probability, familiarity, concreteness, difficulty and meaningfulness). Overall, literary metaphors scored around medium-low values on all dimensions in both experiments. Collected data were subjected to correlation analysis, which showed the presence of a strong cluster of variables—mainly familiarity, difficulty, and meaningfulness—when literary metaphor were presented in isolation. A weaker cluster was observed when literary metaphors were presented in the original contexts, with familiarity no longer correlating with meaningfulness. Context manipulation influenced familiarity, concreteness and difficulty ratings, which were lower in context than out of context, while meaningfulness increased. Throughout the different dimensions, the literary context seems to promote a global interpretative activity that enhances the open- endedness of the metaphor as a semantic structure constantly open to all possible interpretations intended by the author and driven by the text. This dataset will be useful for the design of future experimental studies both on literary metaphor and on the role of context in figurative meaning, combining ecological validity and aesthetic aspects of language.