@misc{658696, author = {Skarnitzl, Radek and Volín, Jan and Chládková, Kateřina and Bořil, Tomáš and Podlipský, Václav Jonáš and Šturm, Pavel and Hejná, Michaela and Paillereau, Nikola and Šimáčková, Šárka}, title = {{20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences 2023 - ICPhS 2023}}, year = {2023}, abstract = {The International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) takes place every four years. It is held under the auspices of the International Phonetic Association and provides an interdisciplinary forum for the presentation of basic and applied research in the phonetic sciences. The main areas covered by the Congress are speech production, speech acoustics, speech perception, speech prosody, sound change, phonology, sociophonetics, language typology, first and second language acquisition, forensic phonetics, speaking styles, voice quality, clinical phonetics and speech technology. The last four Congresses were each attended by ca. 1000 participants from all over the world. The conference theme for ICPhS 2023 is "Intermingling Communities and Changing Cultures". The last decades have seen an unprecedented increase in mobility and interpersonal contacts which bridge national languages and which impact speech patterns everywhere. Europe is aspiring to become a united community of people who, although they speak many languages, seek mutual understanding. Surrounded by a multitude of languages, people learn the languages and discover various cultures associated with them, both implicitly and with conscious efforts. All these multiple contacts enrich individuals and open promising research potentials.}, keywords = {Congress; Phonetics; International}, language = {English} } @inbook{587851, author = {Paillereau, Nikola and Skarnitzl, Radek}, title = {{An acoustic-perceptual study on Czech monophthongs}}, booktitle = {{Current Developments in Slavic Linguistics. Twenty Years After (based on selected papers from FDSL 11)}}, series = {1st ed}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The chapter provides values of higher vowel formants in Czech and examines how these contribute to the acoustic description of high front vowels. The vowels' focal character is also examined. The chapter also aims to contribute to the recent attempts at disentangling the role of durational and spectral cues in the identification of Czech vowels.}, keywords = {vowel; formant; phonetics; acoustics; Czech}, publisher = {{Peter Lang}}, address = {{Berlin}}, isbn = {978-3-631-70974-0}, doi = {10.3726/978-3-653-07147-4}, pages = {453-465}, language = {English} } @article{579638, author = {Chládková, Kateřina and Paillereau, Nikola}, title = {{The what and when of universal perception: a review of early speech sound acquisition}}, journal = {Language Learning}, number = {4}, year = {2020}, abstract = {The young universal listener is an established concept in psycholinguistics. However, it is unclear what abilities universal perception entails and at what age it exists. This paper aims to motivate re-thinking about what it means to be a universal listener. Early and recent studies on infant speech acquisition are reviewed, considered in the light of cross-language variation and adults' performance, and finally linked to the current understanding of foetal hearing and learning. It turns out that language-universal perception is best described as an auditory-based perception rather than an ability to perceptually categorize the sounds of any possible language. Interestingly, at birth infants might no longer listen in a language-universal mode since they begin to learn from the ambient speech signal at least several weeks before birth. Future studies need to answer the remaining questions concerning the point in perinatal development at which speech perception begins to take on language-specific traits and for which sounds.}, keywords = {speech sound acquisition; early language development; universal listener; first language acquisition; foetal and newborn speech perception}, volume = {70}, issn = {0023-8333}, doi = {10.1111/lang.12422}, pages = {1-49}, language = {English} } @article{634651, author = {Jarůšková, Lucie and Smolík, Filip and Chládková, Kateřina and Ocelakova, Zuzana and Paillereau, Nikola}, title = {{How to Build a Communicative Development Inventory: Insights From 43 Adaptations}}, journal = {Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research}, number = {6}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Purpose:This article reviews 43 adaptations of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MB-CDIs), a tool used for measuring children's communicative and language skills. The aim is to provide an overview of different approaches to develop local versions of the instrument (reflecting linguistic and cultural specifics) and to formulate recommendations and suggestions that expand the current guidelines of the MB-CDI Advisory Board. The article also discusses cross-linguistic differences in the structure of this tool, as well as the availability of sources for the language-specific MB-CDI adaptations. Conclusions:Strategies differ in the construction of the inventory contents and in the norming phase, as well as in documenting reliability and validity. The most frequent strategies in developing the item lists are translations of existing CDIs and pilot administrations; relatively recent strategies include consultations with child development experts. The norming approach varies in, for example, the number of participants and techniques of administrations. When establishing age-related norms, different methods of growth curve construction are used. We recommend methods that consider the complete data set and provide a code example. We suggest that the reliability of the tool should be documented not only as internal consistency but also using test-retest measures, ideally combined with interrater agreement. It is desirable that adaptations establish criterion validity against other measures of language development, such as structured tests, spontaneous language samples, or experimental methods. In summary, by critically reviewing the different adaptation strategies, the present review article provides guidance for teams that adapt the MB-CDI into new languages.}, keywords = {Build; Communicative; Development; Inventory; Insights; Adaptations}, publisher = {{AMER SPEECH-LANGUAGE-HEARING ASSOC}}, address = {{ROCKVILLE}}, volume = {66}, issn = {1092-4388}, doi = {10.1044/2023_JSLHR-22-00591}, pages = {2095-2117}, language = {English} } @inproceedings{566413, author = {Chládková, Kateřina and Černá, Martina and Paillereau, Nikola and Skarnitzl, Radek and Oceláková, Zuzana}, title = {{Prenatal infant-directed speech: vowels and voice quality}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019}}, series = {1st ed}, year = {2019}, abstract = {Speech addressed to young children is characterised by distinct acoustic properties. This study describes infant-directed speech (IDS) addressed to unborn infants. Recordings of pregnant women speaking Czech show that prenatal IDS differs from adult-directed speech (ADS) in several vocalic properties.}, keywords = {prenatal infant directed speech; early speech development; input; Czech; vowels}, publisher = {{Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association}}, address = {{Canberra}}, isbn = {978-0-646-80069-1}, pages = {1525-1529}, language = {English} } @inproceedings{645529, author = {Svoboda, Michaela and Chládková, Kateřina and Kocjančič Antolík, Tanja and Paillereau, Nikola and Slížková, Petra}, editor = {Skarnitzl, Radek and Volín, Jan}, title = {{Vowel length in infant-directed speech: the realisation of short-long contrasts in Czech IDS}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences}}, series = {20}, year = {2023}, abstract = {When interacting with young children, talkers across many languages use a speech style that reflects positive affect, draws infants' attention, and supposedly facilitates language acquisition. As for the latter, a well-documented feature of infant-directed speech is an exaggeration of spectrally-cued vowel contrasts. Here we tested whether talkers exaggerate also durationally cued contrasts. Sixty-three mothers, native speakers of Czech, were recorded while playing with their infant (4- to 10-month-olds, IDS) and while speaking to an adult (ADS). The durations of the five Czech phonemically short vowels were compared to their long counterparts. Vowel duration (normalised for word duration) was longer in IDS than in ADS more for phonemically long vowels at the younger infant ages, indicating a developmentally specific early exaggeration of length contrasts in Czech infant-directed speech. The present finding suggests that in a language with phonemic length, caregivers' realisation of speech sounds may go beyond merely being longer and slower overall.}, keywords = {infant-directed speech; vowel length; development of early input; Czech}, publisher = {{FF UK/Guarant International}}, address = {{Praha}}, isbn = {978-80-908114-2-3}, pages = {2363-2367}, language = {English} } @inproceedings{645572, author = {Chládková, Kateřina and Podlipský, Václac Jonáš and Nudga, Natalia and Paillereau, Nikola and Kynčlová, Kateřina and Šimáčková, Šárka}, editor = {Skarnitzl, Radek and Volín, Jan}, title = {{Infants’ learning of novel segments in modulated by prosody}}, booktitle = {{Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences}}, series = {20}, year = {2023}, abstract = {Young infants recognize atypical realisations of native-language speech. Later they learn words better from native-accented talkers. However, 6-month-olds preferentially listen to unfamiliar speech. We tested whether the learning of new vowels matches 6-month-olds' listening preferences, being more effective from nonnative-accented speech. We exposed Czech six-month-olds to delexicalised utterances with consonants replaced by [f] and vowels by 405 tokens sampled from a bimodal [ɛ]-[æ] distribution, a contrast absent from Czech, and with either native or atypical rhythm. Discrimination of [ɛ]-[æ] was then tested in an alternating/non-alternating paradigm. Longer first-look duration to non-alternating than to alternating trials - indicating a learning effect - was found in infants familiarised with the novel contrast in atypical rhythm; such effect was not detected after familiarisation with native rhythm. Six-month-olds thus more effectively exploit distributional information about novel vowels from non-native rhythm, which matches their previously reported preferences for listening to novel over familiar accents.}, keywords = {distributional learning; selective learning; non-native rhythm; vowels; infancy}, publisher = {{FF UK/Guarant International}}, address = {{Praha}}, isbn = {978-80-908114-2-3}, pages = {2358-2362}, language = {English} } @article{579644, author = {Paillereau, Nikola and Chládková, Kateřina}, title = {{Spectral and temporal characteristics of Czech vowels in spontaneous speech}}, journal = {Acta Universitatis Carolinae. Philologica}, number = {2}, year = {2019}, abstract = {This paper provides a comprehensive account of spectral and durational characteristics of Czech monophthongal vowels. It improves on the existing literature (that almost exclusively focused on read speech) in that it examines vowels in spontaneous speech recorded from 10 men and 10 women, who were recruited from the general population not restricted to students or media reporters (which were the populations used in previous studies). The present material thus represents a relatively naturalistic data set. The acoustical analyses of vowel spectral properties are not limited to only the first and the second formant (F1 and F2) but include also higher formants. Duration normalized for word length as well as long/short duration ratios are compared across all vowel qualities. In line with previous acoustic data on Czech high front vowels, the present results confirm that the phonologically short /ɪ/ is realized with a higher F1 than the phonologically long /iː/. The results further demonstrate that the mid front /ɛ/ and /ɛː/ are realized with a relatively high F1 and are numerically even closer to the low /a/ and /aː/ than to the other mid vowel quality, the back /o/ and /oː/. A novel finding is that short back vowels /o/ and /u/ have a higher F2 than their long counterparts: this slight fronting is likely attributable to the spontaneous style of speech as well as to the mostly coronal context in which the vowels were embedded. In contrary to recent literature that reported extremely low long/short ratios in high vowels our findings show that duration marks the phonological length distinctions consistently across all five vowel pairs: long vowels are on average 1.76 times longer than short vowels. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications that the vowel acoustic properties may have on the way the Czech vocalic system is transcribed.}, keywords = {vowels; Czech; vowel formants; vowel duration; spontaneous speech; phonological transcription}, volume = {2019}, issn = {0567-8269}, doi = {10.14712/24646830.2019.19}, pages = {77-95}, language = {English} } @article{608497, author = {Paillereau, Nikola and Podlipský, Václav Jonáš and Smolík, Filip and Šimáčková, Šárka and Chládková, Kateřina}, title = {{The development of infants' sensitivity to native versus non-native rhythm}}, journal = {Infancy}, number = {May/June}, year = {2021}, abstract = {Speech rhythm is considered one of the first windows into the native language, and the taxonomy of rhythm classes is commonly used to explain early language discrimination. Relying on formal rhythm classification is problematic for two reasons. First, it is not known to which extent infants' sensitivity to language variation is attributable to rhythm alone, and second, it is not known how infants discriminate languages not classified in any of the putative rhythm classes. Employing a central-fixation preference paradigm with natural stimuli, this study tested whether infants differentially attend to native versus nonnative varieties that differ only in temporal rhythm cues, and both of which are rhythmically unclassified. An analysis of total looking time did not detect any rhythm preferences at any age. First-look duration, arguably more closely reflecting infants' underlying perceptual sensitivities, indicated age-specific preferences for native versus non-native rhythm: 4-month-olds seemed to prefer the native-, and 6-month-olds the non-native language-variety. These findings suggest that infants indeed acquire native rhythm cues rather early, by the 4th month, supporting the theory that rhythm can bootstrap further language development. Our data on infants' processing of rhythmically unclassified languages suggest that formal rhythm classification does not determine infants' ability to discriminate language varieties.}, keywords = {early language development; infants; language preferences; speech rhythm; temporal cues; Czech}, volume = {26}, issn = {1525-0008}, doi = {10.1111/infa.12395}, pages = {423-441}, language = {English} } @article{608498, author = {Paillereau, Nikola and Podlipský, Václav Jonáš and Šimáčková, Šárka and Smolík, Filip and Oceláková, Zuzana and Chládková, Kateřina}, title = {{Perceptual sensitivity to vowel quality and vowel length in the first year of life}}, journal = {JASA Express Letters}, number = {1}, year = {2021}, abstract = {The perceptual attunement to native vowel categories has been reported to occur at 6 months of age. However, some languages contrast vowels both in quality and in length, and whether and how the acquisition of spectral and duration-cued contrasts differs is uncertain. This study traced the development of infants' sensitivity to native (Czech) vowel-length and vowel-quality contrasts. The results suggest that in a vowel-length language, infants learn to categorize vowels in terms of length earlier and/or more robustly than in terms of quality, the representation of which may still be relatively underdeveloped at 10 months of age.}, keywords = {perceptual sensitivity; speech acquisition; vowel quality; vowel length}, volume = {2021}, issn = {2691-1191}, doi = {10.1121/10.0003369}, pages = {nestrankovano}, language = {English} } @article{656816, author = {Jarůšková, Lucie and Pavlíková, Tereza and Smolík, Filip and Chládková, Kateřina and Oceláková, Zuzana and Paillereau, Nikola}, title = {{Developing Dovyko I: The Czech Adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory}}, journal = {Československá {p}sychologie}, number = {2}, year = {2024}, abstract = {Objectives. This article reports on the adaptation procedure of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory (MB-CDI): Words & Gestures into Czech. The parental-report questionnaire screens communicative development in infants aged 8 to 18 months and focuses on general communicative skills, active and passive vocabulary, and communicative gestures. The content of the Czech adaptation needs to reflect the communicative practices specific to the Czech language and cultural environment. Methods. The final item list for the questionnaire was developed by combining a variety of methods including translations, parental diaries from 44 caregivers an expert focus group, and a corpus survey. The preliminary questionnaire was piloted in two rounds, altogether in 95 Czech caregivers and 100 children. Preliminary content was drawn from translations and parental diaries. These items were reduced based on assessment of child-development experts and frequency in four Czech-language corpora. Item analysis was conducted after each of the pilot rounds to remove from the final content words or gestures which were infrequently checked. Conclusions. This process assured that the Czech CDI screens communicative develop ment on items relevant to the Czech linguistic and social landscape. As such, Dovyko I offers a powerful tool to measure communicative development in local children and may also find use in research of children with different developmental and linguistic characteristics. Limitations. The questionnaire is designed as a complement to other existing methods of communicative screening. The tool thus does not serve for final diagnosis but may help indicate an area problematic for the child or motivate further medical, cognitive, or linguistic assessment. The norming, validity, and reliability studies, which have been completed with Czech-speaking families, are not described in this article but separately in the tool's manual.}, keywords = {communicative development inventories; communicative gestures; comprehension; early language development; infancy; production; screening tool; vocabulary}, volume = {68}, issn = {0009-062X}, doi = {10.51561/cspsych.68.2.174}, pages = {174-185}, language = {English} }