3,079 research outputs found
Perception of nonnative tonal contrasts by Mandarin-English and English-Mandarin sequential bilinguals
This study examined the role of acquisition order and crosslinguistic similarity in influencing transfer at the initial stage of perceptually acquiring a tonal third language (L3). Perception of tones in Yoruba and Thai was tested in adult sequential bilinguals representing three different first (L1) and second language (L2) backgrounds: L1 Mandarin-L2 English (MEBs), L1 English-L2 Mandarin (EMBs), and L1 English-L2 intonational/non-tonal (EIBs). MEBs outperformed EMBs and EIBs in discriminating L3 tonal contrasts in both languages, while EMBs showed a small advantage over EIBs on Yoruba. All groups showed better overall discrimination in Thai than Yoruba, but group differences were more robust in Yoruba. MEBsâ and EMBsâ poor discrimination of certain L3 contrasts was further reflected in the L3 tones being perceived as similar to the same Mandarin tone; however, EIBs, with no knowledge of Mandarin, showed many of the same similarity judgments. These findings thus suggest that L1 tonal experience has a particularly facilitative effect in L3 tone perception, but there is also a facilitative effect of L2 tonal experience. Further, crosslinguistic perceptual similarity between L1/L2 and L3 tones, as well as acoustic similarity between different L3 tones, play a significant role at this early stage of L3 tone acquisition.Published versio
Prosodic description: An introduction for fieldworkers
This article provides an introductory tutorial on prosodic features such as tone and accent for researchers working on little-known languages. It specifically addresses the needs of non-specialists and thus does not presuppose knowledge of the phonetics and phonology of prosodic features. Instead, it intends to introduce the uninitiated reader to a field often shied away from because of its (in part real, but in part also just imagined) complexities. It consists of a concise overview of the basic phonetic phenomena (section 2) and the major categories and problems of their functional and phonological analysis (sections 3 and 4). Section 5 gives practical advice for documenting and analyzing prosodic features in the field.National Foreign Language Resource Cente
âPitch accentâ and prosodic structure in Scottish Gaelic: Reassessing the role of contact
This paper considers the origin of âpitch accentsâ in Scottish Gaelic with a view to evaluating the hypothesis that this feature was borrowed from North Germanic varieties spoken by Norse settlers in medieval Scotland. It is shown that the âpitch accentâ system in Gaelic is tightly bound with metrical structure (more precisely syllable count), certainly diachronically, and probably (at least in some varieties) synchronically. Gaelic âpitch accentâ is argued to be a plausible internal development, parallel to similar phenomena in other branches of Celtic (specifically in Breton), as well as in Germanic. This conclusion may appear to undermine the contact hypothesis, especially in the absence of reliable written sources; nevertheless, a certain role for Norse-Gaelic contact in the appearance of the pitch accent system cannot be completely exclude
The interaction of syllabification and voicing perception in american english
The current paper explores these two sorts of phonetic explanations of the relationship between syllabic position and the voicing contrast in American English. It has long been observed that the contrast between, for example, /p/ and /b/ is expressed differently, depending on the position of the stop with respect to the vowel. Preceding a vowel within a syllable, the contrast is largely one of aspiration. /p/ is aspirated, while /b/ is voiceless, or in some dialects voiced or even an implosive. Following a vowel within a syllable, both /p/ and /b/ both tend to lack voicing in the closure and the contrast is expressed largely by dynamic differences in the transition between the previous vowel and the stop. Here, vowel and closure duration are negatively correlated such that the /p/ has a shorter vowel and longer closure duration. This difference is often enhanced by the addition of glottalization to /p/. In addition to these differences, there are additional differences connected to higher-level organization involving stress and feet edges. To make the current discussion more tractable, we will restrict ourselves to the two conditions (CV and VC) laid out above
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Second language acquisition of intonation: Peak alignment in American English
The objective of the present study was to investigate (1) whether, and to what degree, late bilinguals of different L1 backgrounds are comparable to native speakers in the phonetic implementation of tonal targets in their L2, (2) whether they exhibit general patterns of acquisition irrespective of the typological closeness of their L1 to their L2, and (3) whether learnersâ choice of accent contours and the alignment of the high tone (Hâ) proceeds in parallel with proficiency in the L2. More specifically, we examined the acquisition of the nuclear contour composition and the Hâ alignment of the American English (L)HâL- (i.e. pitch accent and boundary tone combination) in initial-stressed and final-stressed words by Japanese and Spanish late bilingual speakers at varying proficiency levels in American English. Our results show that the L1 Spanish speakers were more comparable than the L1 Japanese speakers to the native English speakers in the phonological aspect of intonation (choice of pitch accent contour). In terms of peak alignment, we found that the late bilinguals generally tended to realise significantly later alignment than the native speakers, although the precise manifestation of this varied according to the L1 background of speakers and the stress pattern of words.This research was supported by a PhD scholarship awarded to the first author from the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and St John's College, University of Cambridge, and by a PhD research support grant from the Japan Foundation. These sources of support are gratefully acknowledged
Temporal Variability and Stability in Infant-Directed Sung Speech: Evidence for Language-specific Patterns.
In this paper, sung speech is used as a methodological tool to explore temporal variability in the timing of word-internal consonants and vowels. It is hypothesized that temporal variability/stability becomes clearer under the varying rhythmical conditions induced by song. This is explored crosslinguistically in German â a language that exhibits a potential vocalic quantity distinction â and the non-quantity languages French and Russian. Songs by non-professional singers, i.e. parents that sang to their infants aged 2 to 13 months in a non-laboratory setting, were recorded and analyzed. Vowel and consonant durations at syllable contacts of trochaic word types with ŠCVCV or ŠCVËCV structure were measured under varying rhythmical conditions. Evidence is provided that in German non-professional singing, the two syllable structures can be differentiated by two distinct temporal variability patterns: vocalic variability (and consonantal stability) was found to be dominant in ŠCVËCV structures whereas consonantal variability (and vocalic stability) was characteristic for ŠCVCV structures. In French and Russian, however, only vocalic variability seemed to apply. Additionally, findings suggest that the different temporal patterns found in German were also supported by the stability pattern at the tonal level. These results point to subtle (supra) segmental timing mechanisms in sung speech that affect temporal targets according to the specific prosodic nature of the language in question
The sequence recall task and lexicality of tone: Exploring tone âdeafnessâ
Many perception and processing effects of the lexical status of tone have been found in behavioral, psycholinguistic, and neuroscientific research, often pitting varieties of tonal Chinese against non-tonal Germanic languages. While the linguistic and cognitive evidence for lexical tone is therefore beyond dispute, the word prosodic systems of many languages continue to escape the categorizations of typologists. One controversy concerns the existence of a typological class of âpitch accent languages,â another the underlying phonological nature of surface tone contrasts, which in some cases have been claimed to be metrical rather than tonal. We address the question whether the Sequence Recall Task (SRT), which has been shown to discriminate between languages with and without word stress, can distinguish languages with and without lexical tone. Using participants from non-tonal Indonesian, semi-tonal Swedish, and two varieties of tonal Mandarin, we ran SRTs with monosyllabic tonal contrasts to test the hypothesis that high performance in a tonal SRT indicates the lexical status of tone. An additional question concerned the extent to which accuracy scores depended on phonological and phonetic properties of a languageâs tone system, like its complexity, the existence of an experimental contrast in a languageâs phonology, and the phonetic salience of a contrast. The results suggest that a tonal SRT is not likely to discriminate between tonal and non-tonal languages within a typologically varied group, because of the effects of specific properties of their tone systems. Future research should therefore address the first hypothesis with participants from otherwise similar tonal and non-tonal varieties of the same language, where results from a tonal SRT may make a useful contribution to the typological debate on word prosody
Phonetic insights into a simple level-tone system: âcarefulâ vs. âimpatientâ realizations of Naxi High, Mid and Low tones
International audienceThe Naxi language has three level tones: H, M and L (plus a marginal Rising tone). The present study aims to offer phonetic insights into this simple system through examination of production data from three male speakers and one female speaker: realizations of the three level tones on CV syllables, under two reading conditions, labelled as âCAREFULâ and âIMPATIENTâ. Fundamental frequency (F0), glottal open quotient (Oq), and formant frequency characteristics are estimated. The three level tones span about 8 semitones under âCAREFULâ reading and 11 semitones under âIMPATIENTâ reading. The average distance separating H from M is on the same order as that separating M from L. Under âIMPATIENTâ reading, F0 register is higher. Oq follows speaker-specific patterns. No clear pattern of influence of tone or reading condition on vowel articulation was found. These findings (along with the original data, made available in full) offer a basis for cross-linguistic comparison
Persuasion prosody in prosecutorâs speech: Ukrainian and english
This paper presents the research of prosodic means conveying the persuasion modality in a prosecutorâs speech in court. The material under study consists of English and Ukrainian speeches of the prosecutors (the total duration time is 16 hours). The results of the experimental material examination demonstrate common and specific characteristics of prosody components (melody, loudness, tempo, timber and sentence stress) in English and Ukrainian. Pragmatics of prosody semantics and correlation between its parameters have been proved. It has been stated that in both English and Ukrainian an utterance becomes emphatic due to the prosodic means of persuasion in a prosecutorâs speech as follows: 1) changes of tempo; 2) changes of the pitch of a voice; 3) replacements of the rising tone with the falling one and vice versa; 4) usage of complex tones; 5) use of an interrupted ascending or descending scale; 6) change of sentence stress type; 7) division of a sense group into two or more parts. The above mentioned facts enable us to conclude that: while describing the first of these aspects of typological similarity of prosody in the compared languages, the parameters of the pitch component of intonation are most informative when differentiating attitudinal ones. The specificity of interaction between prosodic and grammar means when expressing persuasion in Ukrainian and English prosecutorâs speech is caused by a degree of distinction between the grammatical and vocabulary systems of the compared languages
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