Brechtje Post
Biographic Data
| ID | 3821926 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Brechtje Post |
| GIVEN NAMES | Brechtje |
| FAMILY NAME | Post |
| SIGNATURE | POST B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cambridge |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 20 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
What determines the success of AI voice-cloned speech? Prosodic and acoustic evidence on three TTS systems
Artificial intelligence (AI) voice cloning systems have advanced rapidly, enabling applications in education and assistive technologies. Yet listeners’ perceptual ratings of naturalness and similarity remain inconsistent: some systems approach human-like quality, while others sound noticeably artificial. Here we present a comprehensive prosodic and computational analysis of voice-cloned speech across three voice-cloning systems (ElevenLabs, Style…
Systematicity in Variability
Outcomes of early phonological acquisition in multi-accent contexts can be especially wide-ranging, raising the question of whether children exposed to multiple accents in one community are building the same linguistic systems. This present study investigates the English coda clear laterals in the spontaneous, mother-directed speech of English-Malay early bilingual preschoolers raised in multi-accent Singapore. Previous work has shown that these …
Non-native tone categorization and word learning across a spectrum of L1 tonal statuses
Adults differ in the ease with which they acquire lexical tones in a non-native language. Individual differences have been attributed to several factors, such as the role that pitch plays in a learner's L1 to signal lexical meaning (L1 tonal status), the shape of the tones to be acquired (tone types), as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory). Here, we ask whether learners from a spectrum of L1 tonal statu…
Influence of caregiver input and language experience on the production of coda laterals by English–Malay bilingual preschoolers in multi-accent Singapore
Linguistic input in multi-lingual/-cultural contexts is highly variable. We examined the production of English and Malay laterals by fourteen early bilingual preschoolers in Singapore who were exposed to several allophones of coda laterals: Malay caregivers use predominantly clear-l in English and Malay, but their English coda laterals can also be l-less (vocalised/deleted) and in formal contexts, velarised. Contrastingly, the English coda latera…
Phonetic and Phono-Lexical Accuracy of Non-Native Tone Production by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 Speakers
Lexical tones are known to be a challenging aspect of speech to acquire in a second language, but several factors are known to affect tone learning facility, such as L1 tonal status (whether a learner’s L1 is tonal or not), tone type (the shape of the tones to be acquired), and individual extralinguistic factors (such as musicianship, pitch aptitude, and working memory). Crucially, most of our knowledge of the effect of these factors is based on …
Perception of Intonation on Neutral Tone in Mandarin
In Mandarin, lexical tone has been found to interact with intonational tone to influence intonation perception, with the falling T4 facilitating the perception of the statement/question contrast the most, and the rising T2 the least. However, in addition to the four citation tones T1-T4, Mandarin has “neutral tone” which marks weak, non-initial syllables that do not carry a citation tone. The prevailing view is that neutral tone is, in fact, phon…
Variation in quality of maternal input and development of coda stops in English-speaking children in Singapore
This study examines the effects of input quality on early phonological acquisition by investigating whether interadult variation in specific phonetic properties in the input is reflected in the production of their children. We analysed the English coda stop release patterns in the spontaneous speech of fourteen mothers and compared them with the spontaneous production of their preschool children. The analysis revealed a very strong positive input…
The combined effects of L1-specific and extralinguistic factors on individual performance in a tone categorization and word identification task by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 speakers
Adult second language learners often show considerable individual variability in the ease with which lexical tones are learned. It is known that factors pertaining to a learner’s first language (L1; such as L1 tonal status or L1 tone type) as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory) modulate tone learning facility. However, how such L1-specific and extralinguistic factors affect performance together in dynam…
Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language
Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, Garmann & Kristoffersen, 2019). To investigate the extent to which children use this strategy to diff…
Southern Europe
This chapter reviews the prosodic systems and intonational phonology of a group of Southern European languages: Italian, French, Greek, and Maltese. It describes their stress, phrasing, rhythm, and intonational phonology, with particular attention to phonologically informed experimental work. In the case of Italian, given the lack of a spoken standard (which is only used by professional speakers) and the descriptions of quite a number of varietie…
Cross-linguistic Influences on Sentence Accent Detection in Background Noise
This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-nativ…
Second language acquisition of intonation
The Phonetics–Phonology Interface
This volume is a collection of advanced laboratory phonology research papers concerned with the interaction between the physical and the mental aspects of speech and language. The traditional linguistic theoretic distinction between phonetics and phonology is put to the test here in a series of articles that deal with some of the fundamental issues in the field, from first and second language acquisition to segmental and supra-segmental phenomena…
The Development of Prosodic Features and their Contribution to Rhythm Production in Simultaneous Bilinguals
This study aims to analyse facilitatory and inhibitory effects of bilingualism on the acquisition of prosodic features, and their contribution to speech rhythm. Here, we concentrate on phrase-final lengthening and accentuation, prosodic features suggested to give rise to different rhythmic percepts even when syllable structure is kept constant across languages. In particular, we investigate whether the development of these two features in Spanish…
Dutch and English toddlers' use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions
Adults achieve successful coordination during conversation by using prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues to predict upcoming changes in speakership. We examined the relative weight of these linguistic cues in the prediction of upcoming turn structure by toddlers learning Dutch (Experiment 1; N = 21) and British English (Experiment 2; N = 20) and adult control participants (Dutch: N = 16; English: N = 20). We tracked participants' anticipatory eye mo…
Tonal Targets in Early Child English, Spanish, and Catalan
This study analyses the scaling and alignment of low and high intonational targets in the speech of 27 children – nine English-speaking, nine Catalan-speaking and nine Spanish-speaking – between the ages of two and six years. We compared the intonational patterns of words controlled for number of syllables and stress position in the child speech to the adult target speech provided by their mothers, and to a dataset of adult-directed speech record…
Measuring Child Rhythm
Interval-based rhythm metrics were applied to the speech of English, Catalan and Spanish 2, 4 and 6 year-olds, and compared with the (adult-directed) speech of their mothers. Results reveal that child speech does not fall into a well-defined rhythmic class: for all three languages, it is more ‘vocalic’ (higher %V) than adult speech and has a tendency towards lower variability (when normalized for speech rate) in vocalic interval duration. Consona…
Combining Formal and Functional Approaches to Topic Structure
Fragmentation between formal and functional approaches to prosodic variation is an ongoing problem in linguistic research. In particular, the frameworks of the Phonetics of Talk-in-Interaction (PTI) and Empirical Phonology (EP) take very different theoretical and methodological approaches to this kind of variation. We argue that it is fruitful to adopt the insights of both PTI’s qualitative analysis and EP’s quantitative analysis and combine them…
Pitch accent realization in four varieties of British English
Restructured phonological phrases in French
In common with English and German and many other languages, French has an accentual configuration that arises in clash contexts, here referred to as clash resolution. Experimental research has shown that clash resolution is bounded by the phonological phrase. Moreover, the optional application of clash resolution has provided evidence for the restructured phonological phrase. However, the conditions on restructuring that have been proposed in the…
Pitch accent realization in four varieties of British English
Measuring Child Rhythm
Interval-based rhythm metrics were applied to the speech of English, Catalan and Spanish 2, 4 and 6 year-olds, and compared with the (adult-directed) speech of their mothers. Results reveal that child speech does not fall into a well-defined rhythmic class: for all three languages, it is more ‘vocalic’ (higher %V) than adult speech and has a tendency towards lower variability (when normalized for speech rate) in vocalic interval duration. Consona…
The combined effects of L1-specific and extralinguistic factors on individual performance in a tone categorization and word identification task by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 speakers
Adult second language learners often show considerable individual variability in the ease with which lexical tones are learned. It is known that factors pertaining to a learner’s first language (L1; such as L1 tonal status or L1 tone type) as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory) modulate tone learning facility. However, how such L1-specific and extralinguistic factors affect performance together in dynam…
Second language acquisition of intonation
Dutch and English toddlers' use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions
Adults achieve successful coordination during conversation by using prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues to predict upcoming changes in speakership. We examined the relative weight of these linguistic cues in the prediction of upcoming turn structure by toddlers learning Dutch (Experiment 1; N = 21) and British English (Experiment 2; N = 20) and adult control participants (Dutch: N = 16; English: N = 20). We tracked participants' anticipatory eye mo…
Tonal Targets in Early Child English, Spanish, and Catalan
This study analyses the scaling and alignment of low and high intonational targets in the speech of 27 children – nine English-speaking, nine Catalan-speaking and nine Spanish-speaking – between the ages of two and six years. We compared the intonational patterns of words controlled for number of syllables and stress position in the child speech to the adult target speech provided by their mothers, and to a dataset of adult-directed speech record…
Restructured phonological phrases in French
In common with English and German and many other languages, French has an accentual configuration that arises in clash contexts, here referred to as clash resolution. Experimental research has shown that clash resolution is bounded by the phonological phrase. Moreover, the optional application of clash resolution has provided evidence for the restructured phonological phrase. However, the conditions on restructuring that have been proposed in the…
Combining Formal and Functional Approaches to Topic Structure
Fragmentation between formal and functional approaches to prosodic variation is an ongoing problem in linguistic research. In particular, the frameworks of the Phonetics of Talk-in-Interaction (PTI) and Empirical Phonology (EP) take very different theoretical and methodological approaches to this kind of variation. We argue that it is fruitful to adopt the insights of both PTI’s qualitative analysis and EP’s quantitative analysis and combine them…
Phonetic and Phono-Lexical Accuracy of Non-Native Tone Production by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 Speakers
Lexical tones are known to be a challenging aspect of speech to acquire in a second language, but several factors are known to affect tone learning facility, such as L1 tonal status (whether a learner’s L1 is tonal or not), tone type (the shape of the tones to be acquired), and individual extralinguistic factors (such as musicianship, pitch aptitude, and working memory). Crucially, most of our knowledge of the effect of these factors is based on …
The Development of Prosodic Features and their Contribution to Rhythm Production in Simultaneous Bilinguals
This study aims to analyse facilitatory and inhibitory effects of bilingualism on the acquisition of prosodic features, and their contribution to speech rhythm. Here, we concentrate on phrase-final lengthening and accentuation, prosodic features suggested to give rise to different rhythmic percepts even when syllable structure is kept constant across languages. In particular, we investigate whether the development of these two features in Spanish…
Restructured phonological phrases in French
In common with English and German and many other languages, French has an accentual configuration that arises in clash contexts, here referred to as clash resolution. Experimental research has shown that clash resolution is bounded by the phonological phrase. Moreover, the optional application of clash resolution has provided evidence for the restructured phonological phrase. However, the conditions on restructuring that have been proposed in the…
Pitch accent realization in four varieties of British English
Measuring Child Rhythm
Interval-based rhythm metrics were applied to the speech of English, Catalan and Spanish 2, 4 and 6 year-olds, and compared with the (adult-directed) speech of their mothers. Results reveal that child speech does not fall into a well-defined rhythmic class: for all three languages, it is more ‘vocalic’ (higher %V) than adult speech and has a tendency towards lower variability (when normalized for speech rate) in vocalic interval duration. Consona…
Combining Formal and Functional Approaches to Topic Structure
Fragmentation between formal and functional approaches to prosodic variation is an ongoing problem in linguistic research. In particular, the frameworks of the Phonetics of Talk-in-Interaction (PTI) and Empirical Phonology (EP) take very different theoretical and methodological approaches to this kind of variation. We argue that it is fruitful to adopt the insights of both PTI’s qualitative analysis and EP’s quantitative analysis and combine them…
Tonal Targets in Early Child English, Spanish, and Catalan
This study analyses the scaling and alignment of low and high intonational targets in the speech of 27 children – nine English-speaking, nine Catalan-speaking and nine Spanish-speaking – between the ages of two and six years. We compared the intonational patterns of words controlled for number of syllables and stress position in the child speech to the adult target speech provided by their mothers, and to a dataset of adult-directed speech record…
The Phonetics–Phonology Interface
This volume is a collection of advanced laboratory phonology research papers concerned with the interaction between the physical and the mental aspects of speech and language. The traditional linguistic theoretic distinction between phonetics and phonology is put to the test here in a series of articles that deal with some of the fundamental issues in the field, from first and second language acquisition to segmental and supra-segmental phenomena…
The Development of Prosodic Features and their Contribution to Rhythm Production in Simultaneous Bilinguals
This study aims to analyse facilitatory and inhibitory effects of bilingualism on the acquisition of prosodic features, and their contribution to speech rhythm. Here, we concentrate on phrase-final lengthening and accentuation, prosodic features suggested to give rise to different rhythmic percepts even when syllable structure is kept constant across languages. In particular, we investigate whether the development of these two features in Spanish…
Dutch and English toddlers' use of linguistic cues in predicting upcoming turn transitions
Adults achieve successful coordination during conversation by using prosodic and lexicosyntactic cues to predict upcoming changes in speakership. We examined the relative weight of these linguistic cues in the prediction of upcoming turn structure by toddlers learning Dutch (Experiment 1; N = 21) and British English (Experiment 2; N = 20) and adult control participants (Dutch: N = 16; English: N = 20). We tracked participants' anticipatory eye mo…
Second language acquisition of intonation
Southern Europe
This chapter reviews the prosodic systems and intonational phonology of a group of Southern European languages: Italian, French, Greek, and Maltese. It describes their stress, phrasing, rhythm, and intonational phonology, with particular attention to phonologically informed experimental work. In the case of Italian, given the lack of a spoken standard (which is only used by professional speakers) and the descriptions of quite a number of varietie…
Cross-linguistic Influences on Sentence Accent Detection in Background Noise
This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-nativ…
Cross-linguistic variation in word-initial cluster production in adult and child language
Young children simplify word initial consonant clusters by omitting or substituting one (or both) of the elements. Vocalic insertion, coalescence and metathesis are said to be used more seldom (McLeod, van Doorn & Reed, 2001). Data from Norwegian children, however, have shown vocalic insertion to be more frequently used (Simonsen, 1990; Simonsen, Garmann & Kristoffersen, 2019). To investigate the extent to which children use this strategy to diff…
Perception of Intonation on Neutral Tone in Mandarin
In Mandarin, lexical tone has been found to interact with intonational tone to influence intonation perception, with the falling T4 facilitating the perception of the statement/question contrast the most, and the rising T2 the least. However, in addition to the four citation tones T1-T4, Mandarin has “neutral tone” which marks weak, non-initial syllables that do not carry a citation tone. The prevailing view is that neutral tone is, in fact, phon…
Variation in quality of maternal input and development of coda stops in English-speaking children in Singapore
This study examines the effects of input quality on early phonological acquisition by investigating whether interadult variation in specific phonetic properties in the input is reflected in the production of their children. We analysed the English coda stop release patterns in the spontaneous speech of fourteen mothers and compared them with the spontaneous production of their preschool children. The analysis revealed a very strong positive input…
The combined effects of L1-specific and extralinguistic factors on individual performance in a tone categorization and word identification task by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 speakers
Adult second language learners often show considerable individual variability in the ease with which lexical tones are learned. It is known that factors pertaining to a learner’s first language (L1; such as L1 tonal status or L1 tone type) as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory) modulate tone learning facility. However, how such L1-specific and extralinguistic factors affect performance together in dynam…
Phonetic and Phono-Lexical Accuracy of Non-Native Tone Production by English-L1 and Mandarin-L1 Speakers
Lexical tones are known to be a challenging aspect of speech to acquire in a second language, but several factors are known to affect tone learning facility, such as L1 tonal status (whether a learner’s L1 is tonal or not), tone type (the shape of the tones to be acquired), and individual extralinguistic factors (such as musicianship, pitch aptitude, and working memory). Crucially, most of our knowledge of the effect of these factors is based on …
Non-native tone categorization and word learning across a spectrum of L1 tonal statuses
Adults differ in the ease with which they acquire lexical tones in a non-native language. Individual differences have been attributed to several factors, such as the role that pitch plays in a learner's L1 to signal lexical meaning (L1 tonal status), the shape of the tones to be acquired (tone types), as well as extralinguistic factors (such as musical experience and working memory). Here, we ask whether learners from a spectrum of L1 tonal statu…
Influence of caregiver input and language experience on the production of coda laterals by English–Malay bilingual preschoolers in multi-accent Singapore
Linguistic input in multi-lingual/-cultural contexts is highly variable. We examined the production of English and Malay laterals by fourteen early bilingual preschoolers in Singapore who were exposed to several allophones of coda laterals: Malay caregivers use predominantly clear-l in English and Malay, but their English coda laterals can also be l-less (vocalised/deleted) and in formal contexts, velarised. Contrastingly, the English coda latera…
What determines the success of AI voice-cloned speech? Prosodic and acoustic evidence on three TTS systems
Artificial intelligence (AI) voice cloning systems have advanced rapidly, enabling applications in education and assistive technologies. Yet listeners’ perceptual ratings of naturalness and similarity remain inconsistent: some systems approach human-like quality, while others sound noticeably artificial. Here we present a comprehensive prosodic and computational analysis of voice-cloned speech across three voice-cloning systems (ElevenLabs, Style…
Systematicity in Variability
Outcomes of early phonological acquisition in multi-accent contexts can be especially wide-ranging, raising the question of whether children exposed to multiple accents in one community are building the same linguistic systems. This present study investigates the English coda clear laterals in the spontaneous, mother-directed speech of English-Malay early bilingual preschoolers raised in multi-accent Singapore. Previous work has shown that these …
Linguistics (17 works) · Phonetics and Phonology Research (17 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Computer Science (10 works) · Linguistic Variation and Morphology (10 works) · Reading and Literacy Development (7 works) · Neuroscience and Music Perception (6 works) · Speech recognition (6 works) · Language Development and Disorders (5 works) · Perception (5 works)