Pitch in native and non-native Lombard speech

Lombard speech, speech produced in noise, is typically produced with a higher fundamental frequency (F0, pitch) compared to speech in quiet. This paper examined the potential differences in native and non-native Lombard speech by analyzing median pitch in sentences with early- or late-focus produced in quiet and noise. We found an increase in pitch in late-focus sentences in noise for Dutch speakers in both English and Dutch, and for American-English speakers in English. These results show that non-native speakers produce Lombard speech, despite their higher cognitive load. For the early-focus sentences, we found a difference between the Dutch and the American-English speakers. Whereas the Dutch showed an increased F0 in noise in English and Dutch, the American-English speakers did not in English. Together, these results suggest that some acoustic characteristics of Lombard speech, such as pitch, may be language-specific, potentially resulting in the native language influencing the non-native Lombard speech

Age Estimation in Foreign-accented Speech by Native and Non-native Speakers

Current research shows that listeners are generally accurate at estimating speakers’ age from their speech. This study investigates the effect of speaker first language and the role played by such speaker characteristics as fundamental frequency and speech rate. In this study English and Japanese first language speakers listened to English- and Japanese-accented English speech and estimated the speaker’s age. We find the highest correlation between real and estimated speaker age for English listeners listening to English speakers, followed by Japanese listeners listening to both English and Japanese speakers, with English listeners listening to Japanese speakers coming last. We find that Japanese speakers are estimated to be younger than the English speakers by English listeners, and that both groups of listeners estimate male speakers and speakers with a lower mean fundamental frequency to be older. These results suggest that listeners rely on sociolinguistic information in their speaker age estimations and language familiarity plays a role in their success

Gendered L1 attrition and L2 acquisition of pitch range in Japanese-English sequential bilinguals

This project investigated pitch range production in Japanese-English female and male sequential bilinguals. This language combination was chosen because high pitch level has been claimed to index femininity in Japanese (Ohara, 2019) whereas in English an increase in pitch level is used to index friendliness by both females and males (Loveday, 1981). Data were collected through a reading task and voicemail task from 19 Japanese-English bilinguals in London (UK), 21 Japanese-English bilinguals in Tokyo (JP), 15 Japanese monolinguals in Tokyo and 16 English monolinguals in London (49 females vs 21 males). In both tasks, speech was directed to an imaginary addressee varying in formality and sex. Of interest was to examine the extent to which Japanese and English influenced one another with regard to L1 attrition and L2 acquisition. The effect of individual gender identity on pitch range was investigated to assess whether, e.g., female bilinguals who closely identified with femininity would produce a high pitch level. In the reading task, Japanese female and male monolinguals produced significantly higher f0 maximum and wider pitch span than English monolinguals, irrespective of addressee. Regarding L1 attrition, bilingual males produced a significantly lower f0min in their Japanese than the Japanese monolingual males, suggesting a restructuring of the L1. Regarding L2 acquisition, English f0 mean and f0 maximum of the female bilinguals was significantly higher than that of the English females, suggesting an influence from Japanese on English. Additionally, English f0 mean was lower for both female bilinguals who rated themselves as more masculine and male bilinguals who rated themselves as more feminine on the English gender questionnaire. These results were not replicated in semi-spontaneous speech. Summarising, gender-specific patterns of L1 attrition and L2 acquisition were evidenced with regard to read speech, but not semi-spontaneous speech. This suggests that the formality of read speech might enhance the production of language and gender normative pitch range and that individual gender identity might have been expressed alternatively in semi-spontaneous speech