Pausing, inhalation, and language structure

很难想象人们在谈话中打算说的话是如何与呼吸相互作用的，因为语言显然是一种高级认知功能，而呼吸显然是一种基本的生理功能。然而，语言规划和呼吸运动规划确实相互作用。在说话的时候，吸气的时间要与重要的语法连接点相一致，比如句子的边界。此外，说话者说出的句子的长度可以从说话前的呼吸深度来预测。这个项目的重点是语言和呼吸如何在说话过程中相互作用。目标是推进心理语言学理论，并与它，概念模型框架的理解和治疗沟通障碍。重要的是，尽管呼吸在说话中起着根本性的作用，但目前的语言产生理论还没有解决呼吸问题：所有声音的产生，从耳语到喊叫，都取决于从肺部流出的空气。因此，这个项目解决了理解口语如何工作的重大差距。研究小组的假设是，语言和言语运动过程，如与言语有关的呼吸，相互影响，因为它们一起发展，并在交流中一起使用。该职位激励了该项目中采取的发展方法。学龄儿童和成人参与不同的口语任务，同时他们的讲话被录音，他们的呼吸（胸部和腹部）运动被测量。从任务中引出的自发语音被分割成停顿限定的话语，其中停顿被编码为存在或不存在吸入，并且当存在吸入时，被编码为吸入深度。与此同时，话语被转录，然后标记词性和其他语言信息。利用语料库语言学和模型比较的工具，研究人员确定了最能解释吸入数据的语言因素。研究人员预测，话语结构和语言习惯比句法边界强度或句法复杂性更能解释吸入模式，而句法边界强度或句法复杂性是与吸入相关的最常讨论的语言因素。此外，生理学（例如，肺功能和身体大小的测量）可能比成人的言语呼吸模式更好地说明了儿童的言语呼吸模式，因为儿童的话语结构比成人的平坦，并且他们的语言习惯比成人的语言习惯更不牢固。该项目建立了一个自发语音的发展语料库，标记出吸气模式，其他研究人员可以使用从不同的理论角度来研究语音呼吸。研究人员还公开了为该项目开发的内部软件。最后，研究团队通过社区外展和为本科生提供研究经验，促进跨学科的科学教育，在语言学和心理学研究的学生和那些在沟通障碍和科学或残疾研究的学生之间进行学科互动。这个奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得通过使用基金会的学术价值和更广泛的影响审查标准。

It is difficult to imagine how what individuals plan to say in conversation interacts with breathing because language is so clearly a high-level cognitive function, and breathing is so clearly a basic physiological function. Yet, planning for language and motor planning for breathing do interact. During speaking, inhalations are timed to coincide with important grammatical junctures, like sentence boundaries. Also, the length of sentences that speakers produce can be predicted from the depth of the breaths taken before speaking. This project focuses on how language and breathing interact during speaking. The goal is to advance psycholinguistic theory and, with it, the conceptual models that frame understanding and treatment of communication disorders. Importantly, no current theories of language production address speech breathing despite its fundamental role in speaking: all of sound production, from whispers to shouts, depends on air flowing out from the lungs. Thus, this project addresses a substantial gap in understanding how spoken language works. The research team's hypothesis is that language and speech motor processes, such as speech-related breathing, influence one another because they develop together and are used together in communication. This position motivates the developmental approach taken in this project. School-aged children and adults engage in different spoken language tasks while their speech is audio recorded and their breathing (chest and abdominal) movements are measured. The spontaneous speech elicited from the tasks the tasks is segmented into pause-delimited utterances, with pauses coded for the presence or absence of inhalation and, when inhalations are present, for inhalation depth. At the same time, the utterances are transcribed and then tagged for part-of-speech and other linguistic information. Using the tools of corpus linguistics and model comparison, the researchers identify language factors that best explain the inhalation data. The researchers predict that discourse structure and language habits provide a better account of inhalation patterns than syntactic boundary strength or syntactic complexity—the language factors most often discussed in relation to inhalation. Additionally, physiology (e.g., measures of lung function and body size) likely provides a better account of children’s speech breathing patterns than adult speech breathing patterns because children’s discourse structure is flatter than adults’ and their language habits are less entrenched than adult language habits. The project establishes a developmental corpus of spontaneous speech marked out for inhalation patterns that other researchers can use to investigate speech breathing from different theoretical perspectives. The researchers also make publicly available the in-house software developed for the project. Finally, the research team engages in science education through community outreach and by providing undergraduate students with research experience in a setting that fosters cross-disciplinary interactions between students who pursue study in linguistics and psychology and those who pursue study in communication disorders and sciences or in disability studies.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.