A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn

The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ocke’s current and former PhD-students, colleagues and research collaborators. The Festschrift is divided into six sections, moving from the smallest building blocks of language, through gradually expanding objects of linguistic inquiry to the highest levels of description - all of which have formed a part of Ocke’s career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: “Segments”, “Perception of Accent”, “Between Sounds and Graphemes”, “Prosody”, “Morphology and Syntax” and “Second Language Acquisition”. Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters

音声生成のタイミング制御に対する聴覚分析と評価

制度:新 ; 文部省報告番号:甲2011号 ; 学位の種類:博士(国際情報通信学) ; 授与年月日:2005/3/15 ; 早大学位記番号:新395

Relationship between acoustic measures and speech naturalness ratings in Parkinson’s disease: A within-speaker approach

This study investigated the acoustic basis of across-utterance, within-speaker variation in speech naturalness for four speakers with dysarthria secondary to Parkinson’s disease (PD). Speakers read sentences and produced spontaneous speech. Acoustic measures of fundamental frequency, phrase-final syllable lengthening, intensity and speech rate were obtained. A group of listeners judged speech naturalness using a nine-point Likert scale. Relationships between judgements of speech naturalness and acoustic measures were determined for individual speakers with PD. Relationships among acoustic measures also were quantified. Despite variability between speakers, measures of mean F0, intensity range, articulation rate, average syllable duration, duration of final syllables, vocalic nucleus length of final unstressed syllables and pitch accent of final syllables emerged as possible acoustic variables contributing to within-speaker variations in speech naturalness. Results suggest that acoustic measures correlate with speech naturalness, but in dysarthric speech they depend on the speaker due to the within-speaker variation in speech impairment

Re-examining Phonological and Lexical Correlates of Second Language Comprehensibility:The Role of Rater Experience

Few researchers and teachers would disagree that some linguistic aspects of second language (L2) speech are more crucial than others for successful communication. Underlying this idea is the assumption that communicative success can be broadly defined in terms of speakers’ ability to convey the intended meaning to the interlocutor, which is frequently captured through a listener-based rating of comprehensibility or ease of understanding (e.g. Derwing & Munro, 2009; Levis, 2005). Previous research has shown that communicative success – for example, as defined through comprehensible L2 speech – depends on several linguistic dimensions of L2 output, including its segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation, fluency-based characteristics, lexical and grammatical content, as well as discourse structure (e.g. Field, 2005; Hahn, 2004; Kang et al., 2010; Trofimovich & Isaacs, 2012). Our chief objective in the current study was to explore the L2 comprehensibility construct from a language assessment perspective (e.g. Isaacs & Thomson, 2013), by targeting rater experience as a possible source of variance influencing the degree to which raters use various characteristics of speech in judging L2 comprehensibility. In keeping with this objective, we asked the following question: What is the extent to which linguistic aspects of L2 speech contributing to comprehensibility ratings depend on raters’ experience

Cross-linguistic study of vocal pathology: perceptual features of spasmodic dysphonia in French-speaking subjects

Clinical characterisation of Spasmodic Dysphonia of the adductor type (SD) in French speakers by Klap and colleagues (1993) appears to differ from that of SD in English. This perceptual analysis aims to describe the phonetic features of French SD. A video of 6 French speakers with SD supplied by Klap and colleagues was analysed for frequency of phonatory breaks, pitch breaks, harshness, creak, breathiness and falsetto voice, rate of production, and quantity of speech output. In contrast to English SD, the French speaking SD patients demonstrated no evidence pitch breaks, but phonatory breaks, harshness and breathiness were prominent features. This verifies the French authors’ (1993) clinical description. These findings suggest that phonetic properties of a specific language may affect the manifestation of pathology in neurogenic voice disorders

Methods in prosody

This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study

ESL speakers\u27 production of English lexical stress: The effect of variation in acoustic correlates on perceived intelligibility and nativeness

Non-native speakers of English often experience problems in pronunciation as they are learning English, many such problems persisting even when the speaker has achieved a high degree of fluency. Research has shown that for a non-native speaker to sound most natural and intelligible in his or her second language, the speaker must acquire proper prosody, such as native-like speech rhythms (Tajima et al., 1997; Wenk, 1985; Wennerstrom, 2001). This dissertation investigates how native English and Spanish ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers compare in their production of three acoustic correlates of lexical stress in English, namely the relative durations of stressed and unstressed vowels and their relative intensities and fundamental frequency (F0) values. A set of three-syllable words, including cognates and non-cognates, was analyzed. The results from the production study were used to design a listening task that investigated how the ESL speakers varying productions of these acoustic cues affected native English listeners\u27 perception of their speech intelligibility and nativeness. The ESL speakers produced a wider range of values than did the native speakers for all three acoustic correlates. The ESL and native speakers differed statistically in their productions of Spanish/English cognates with different stress patterns in each language and often differed on non-cognates. The ESL group produced the most native-like patterns in cognates with the same stress pattern in each language. The stimuli for the listening task were words recorded by native English participants and subsequently modified to emulate the production of the acoustic correlates of lexical stress by the ESL speakers. Listeners\u27 ratings of speech intelligibility were statistically higher for words in which intensity was increased on the vowel that is expected to receive lexical stress compared to the adjacent unstressed vowel. Increasing vowel duration on the unstressed vowel led to statistically lower ratings of both intelligibility and nativeness. This dissertation contributes to a small body of research regarding the production of prosody in second language speech. The results suggest that a speaker\u27s prosody alone can influence a native listener\u27s perception of speech intelligibility and nativeness