Purpose:To demonstrate the feasibility of dynamic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with near-real-time temporal resolution ("real-time MRI") for analyzing the velopharyngeal closure in comparison with multiview videofluoroscopy. Materials and Methods:Seven patients (three females and four males, 5-21 years old, mean age ϭ 11.3 years) with suspected velopharyngeal insufficiency, and one healthy volunteer were examined with videofluoroscopy and real-time MRI using a turbo-spin-echo (TSE) sequence (TR ϭ 170 msec, TE ϭ 21 msec, slice thickness ϭ 6 mm, six images per second). Imaging was done during phonation in all three image planes. The results were analyzed by two radiologists in comparison with videofluoroscopy as the standard of reference for overall image quality and the pattern of velopharyngeal closure.Results: Real-time MRI correctly depicted the pattern of velopharyngeal closure in correspondence to videofluoroscopy in all cases. Concerning the movement of the pharyngeal walls, real-time MRI falsely depicted a general movement of the dorsal pharyngeal wall in one case, whereas videofluoroscopy showed no movement. In one patient, real-time MRI provided additional information by showing an asymmetric movement of the lateral pharyngeal walls that could not be depicted by videofluoroscopy due to technical limitations. Concerning image quality, the coronal plane was more difficult to evaluate with real-time MRI compared to videofluoroscopy. The axial plane was easier to analyze in real-time MRI compared to videofluoroscopy. Conclusion:Real-time MRI has the potential to depict the pattern of velopharyngeal closure in close correlation with videofluoroscopy, and may deliver additional information in selected cases.

In languages with variable focus positions, prominent elements tend to be emphasised by prosodic cues (e.g. English). If a language prefers a given prosodic pattern, i.e. sentence-final nuclear accents, like Spanish, the prosodic realisation of broad focus might not differ from that of narrow and contrastive focus. The relevance of prosodic focus marking was tested in Hungarian were focus typically appears in front of the finite verb. Prosodic cues such as f0 maximum, f0 peak alignment, segment duration and post-verbal deaccentuation were tested in an experiment with read question and answer sequences. While narrow and contrastive focus triggered post-verbal deaccentuation, none of the gradual measures distinguished focus types consistently from each other. A subsequent perception experiment was conducted in which the same sentences without postverbal units were to be judged for their naturalness. F0 maximum, f0 peak alignment and accent duration were manipulated. Naturalness scores revealed a sequence narrow > contrastive > broad focus, i.e. a preference for narrow focus contexts compared to contrastive and broad focus ones, while the manipulated prosodic parameters had no effect on the scores. It is concluded that prosodic focus marking in Hungarian is optional and pragmatic rather than grammatical and syntax-related.

We examine prosodic entrainment in cooperative game dialogs for new feature sets describing register, pitch accent shape, and rhythmic aspects of utterances. For these as well as for established features we present entrainment profiles to detect within-and across-dialog entrainment by the speakers' gender and role in the game. It turned out, that feature sets undergo entrainment in different quantitative and qualitative ways, which can partly be attributed to their different functions. Furthermore, interactions between speaker gender and role (describer vs. follower) suggest gender-dependent strategies in cooperative solution-oriented interactions: female describers entrain most, male describers least. Our data suggests a slight advantage of the latter strategy on task success.

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Hungarian prosody is left-headed, as suggested by the placement of the accent on the initial syllable on the level of prosodic words and the placement of the strongest pitch accent on the first accented word of the prosodic phrase. Earlier studies have pointed out that the left edge of the intonational phrase can bear a phrase-initial boundary tone that distinguishes between stringidentical wh-interrogatives and wh-exclamatives. In this paper, two other string-identical sentence types, polar questions and declaratives, are investigated with respect to their prosodic features. Polar questions were characterised by a higher f0 maximum and a lower sentence-initial f0 than declaratives. The only pitch accent within the sentence was low, whereas declaratives had falling pitch accents. Sentence-final f0 and the pitch level of the accented syllable did not show a consistent pattern across speakers. It is concluded that low sentence-initial f0 together with the high t! one on the penultimate syllable is a relevant marker of polar questions in Hungarian.