ABSTRACT
Purpose This study aimed to obtain a comprehensive understanding about how Mandarin-speaking children with cochlear implants (CIs) performed speech prosody in a connected discourse and to what extent their prosodic scenario differed from those normal-hearing (NH) peers. Method Fifteen prelingually deaf Mandarin-speaking children with unilateral multichannel CIs were chosen and 15 age-matched NH controls were recruited. Speech samples were spontaneously elicited by children's rhyme speech genre and subject to phonetic annotation. Acoustic analysis was conducted on all speech samples, mainly focusing on the measurements of duration and fundamental frequency (F0). Tempo measures included temporal fluency, syllable-lengthening, and rhythm metrics, whereas melodic measures included both local and global F0 variations under different prosodic domains. Results The CI children generally achieved compatible temporal performance with the NH children in spontaneous discourse, except that they were somewhat arbitrary when operationalizing lengthening strategy and pausing strategy at different prosodic boundaries. With regard to melodic performance, CI children may not sufficiently modulate local phonetic nuances of F0 variation, and meanwhile, they performed atypically in the global F0 declination pattern and overall F0 resetting pattern, failing to signal the specific structure of children's rhyme discourse. Early age at implantation and longer CI experience did not play a significant role in the temporal performance of the CI children but did facilitate their articulation of dynamic pitch variation in the spontaneous discourse to some extent. Conclusion CI children did exhibit atypical prosodic patterns in discourse context, especially the overall mapping between the prosodic manifestation and the discourse structure.
Subject(s)
Cochlear Implantation , Cochlear Implants , Deafness , Speech Perception , Child , Humans , Phonetics , SpeechABSTRACT
The mitochondrial genome of the Reticulitermes periflaviceps contains 15,925 bp of nucleotide in length including 13 protein-coding genes, 22 transport RNAs, 2 ribosomal RNAs, and a non-coding region. The overall A + T among the genome sequence is 65.64%. The start codons of all protein-coding genes are ATN and the stop codon is TAA except TAG for Nad1 and incomplete T for COII and Nad5. The lengths of 12sRNA and 16sRNA genes are 743 and 1309 bp, respectively, and the control region was 1118 bp in length, with two repeating tandem regions. The phylogenetic tree revealed that R. periflaviceps and Reticulitermes kanmonensis constituted a sister group to Reticulitermes flaviceps. The mitochondrial genome here provides a resource for evolution analysis within termites especially Reticulitermes.
ABSTRACT
The complete mitochondrial genome of drywood termite, Incisitermes minor, is reported in this study. The circular mitogenome has a length of 15,970 bp and encodes 37 genes including 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNA), two ribosomal RNA (rRNA), and a non-coding control region (D-loop). The percentage of A and T (65.44%) within this mitogenome is much higher than that of G and C (34.56%). The phylogenetic tree revealed that mitogenomes of Kalotermitidae formed one clade. The tree also revealed that I. minor was closest to Cryptotermes secundus, and was a sister group to Neotermes. I. minor is a only species in which mitogenome has been completed so far among the Incisitermes termite. The data provide resource for ecological and evolution analysis within termites especially Kalotermitidae.
ABSTRACT
The complete circular mitochondrial genome of a higher termite Pericapritermes nitobei has a length of 15,224bp and encodes 37 genes including 13 protein-coding genes (PCGs), 22 transfer RNA (tRNA), 2 ribosomal RNA (rRNA) and a non-coding control region (D-loop). Protein coding genes (PCGs) in this circular mitogenome start with standard ATN initiation codons and end with complete termination codons TAN except for cox2 and nad5 genes with an incomplete stop codon T. The percentage of A and T (67.49%) is higher than that of G and C (32.51%). The phylogenetic tree revealed that mitogenomes of Pericapritermes formed one clade. The tree also revealed that Pericapritermes dolichocephalus and Pericapritermes latignathus constituted a sister group to P. nitobei. The date here provide a resource for genetics and evolution analysis within termites especially Pericapritermes genus.
