Native Speaker Perceptions of Accented Speech: The English Pronunciation of Macedonian EFL Learners

The paper reports on the results of a study that aimed to describe the vocalic and consonantal features of the English pronunciation of Macedonian EFL learners as perceived by native speakers of English and to find out whether native speakers who speak different standard variants of English perceive the same segments as non-native. A specially designed computer web application was employed to gather two types of data: a) quantitative (frequency of segment variables and global foreign accent ratings on a 5-point scale), and b) qualitative (open-ended questions). The result analysis points out to three most frequent markers of foreign accent in the English speech of Macedonian EFL learners: final obstruent devoicing, vowel shortening and substitution of English dental fricatives with Macedonian dental plosives. It also reflects additional phonetic aspects poorly explained in the available reference literature such as allophonic distributional differences between the two languages and intonational mismatch

French Learners of L2 English: Intonation Boundaries and the Marking of Lexical Stress

To test my hypothesis, I collected passages of read speech by thirteen upper intermediate/advanced French learners of English along with the same passage read by ten native English speakers. Two trisyllabics carrying primary stress on the second syllable (com'puter, pro'tection) were placed in a series of intonational contexts under observation. The test-words were then extracted and submitted to native English listeners. The perceptual results show that the predicted ‘challenging’ contexts indeed caused substantial instability in the learners’ placement of lexical stress as perceived by native English listeners

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

Comprehensibility and Prosody Ratings for Pronunciation Software Development

In the context of a project developing software for pronunciation practice and feedback for Mandarin-speaking learners of English, a key issue is how to decide which features of pronunciation to focus on in giving feedback. We used naïve and experienced native speaker ratings of comprehensibility and nativeness to establish the key features affecting comprehensibility of the utterances of a group of Chinese learners of English. Native speaker raters assessed the comprehensibility of recorded utterances, pinpointed areas of difficulty and then rated for nativeness the same utterances, but after segmental information had been filtered out. The results show that prosodic information is important for comprehensibility, and that there are no significant differences between naïve and experienced raters on either comprehensibility or nativeness judgements. This suggests that naïve judgements are a useful and accessible source of data for identifying the parameters to be used in setting up automated feedback

Relative Salience of Speech Rhythm and Speech Rate on Perceived Foreign Accent in a Second Language

We investigated the independent contribution of speech rate and speech rhythm to perceived foreign accent. To address this issue we used a resynthesis technique that allows neutralizing segmental and tonal idiosyncrasies between identical sentences produced by French learners of English at different proficiency levels and maintaining the idiosyncrasies pertaining to prosodic timing patterns. We created stimuli that (1) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rhythm while controlling for the differences in speech rate between the utterances; (2) preserved the idiosyncrasies in speech rate while controlling for the differences in speech rhythm between the utterances; and (3) preserved the idiosyncrasies both in speech rate and speech rhythm. All the stimuli were created in intoned (with imposed intonational contour) and flat (with monotonized, constant F0) conditions. The original and the resynthesized sentences were rated by native speakers of English for degree of foreign accent. We found that both speech rate and speech rhythm influence the degree of perceived foreign accent, but the effect of speech rhythm is larger than that of speech rate. We also found that intonation enhances the perception of fine differences in rhythmic patterns but reduces the perceptual salience of fine differences in speech rate

Corsican French questions: is there a prosodic transfer from Corsican to French and how to highlight it?

Poster, 4 pagesInternational audienceThis study investigates whether a prosodic transfer can be highlighted from Corsican (an Italo-Romance language) to French spoken in Corsica, where French is now the dominant language. A corpus of transparent sentences such as la touriste trouve la caserne (French) or a turista trova a caserna (Corsican) was designed and the productions of bilingual speakers, recorded in Corsica, were compared with the French counterparts of Parisian reference speakers. The melody of yes/no questions turns out to contrast Corsican and Corsican French (both with high tones followed by final pitch falls) and standard French (with utterance-final high tones). The former pattern can be interpreted as a prosodic transfer from Corsican to French. Various methods are considered to validate this hypothesis and an experimental paradigm is proposed. Index Terms: prosody in contact, questions, Corsican accent in French, endangered languagesCette étude examine si un transfert prosodique peut être mis en évidence du Corse (une langue Italo-romane) au français parlé en Corse, où le français est maintenant la langue dominante. Un corpus de phrases simples comme touriste la trouve la caserne (français) ou a turista trova a caserna (corse) a été conçu et les productions des locuteurs bilingues, enregistré en Corse, ont été comparé aux homologues françaises de locuteurs de référence Parisiens. La mélodie des yes/no questions s'avèrent contraster le français de corse et le corse (tous deux avec de hauts tons suivis par des chutes de pic final) alors que le français standard connait des pics finaux hauts. Le contour mélogique peut être interprété comme un transfert prosodique du Corse au français. On considère diverses méthodes pour valider cette hypothèse et on propose un paradigme expérimental

Imitation/self-imitation in computer-assisted prosody training for Chinese learners of L2 Italian.

Recent studies on L2 acquisition, speech synthesis and automatic identification of foreign accents argue for a major role of prosody in the perception of non-native speech. Research on the relationship between pronunciation improvement and student/teachers’ voice similarities has also shown that the better the match between the learners' and native speakers' voices in terms of f0 and articulation rate, the more positive the impact on pronunciation training. This study investigates the effects of imitation and self-imitation on the acquisition of L2 suprasegmental patterns. Degree of foreign accent, improvements in intelligibility, and effectiveness of communication were measured to determine the success of each technique. For this purpose, a prosodic transplantation technique and a computer-assisted learning methodology were used. Recent studies on L2 acquisition, speech synthesis and automatic identification of foreign accents argue for a major role of prosody in the perception of non-native speech. Research on the relationship between pronunciation improvement and student/teachers’ voice similarities has also shown that the better the match between the learners' and native speakers' voices in terms of f0 and articulation rate, the more positive the impact on pronunciation training. This study investigates the effects of imitation and self-imitation on the acquisition of L2 suprasegmental patterns. Degree of foreign accent, improvements in intelligibility, and effectiveness of communication were measured to determine the success of each technique. For this purpose, a prosodic transplantation technique and a computer-assisted learning methodology were used

An exploration of the rhythm of Malay

In recent years there has been a surge of interest in speech rhythm. However we still lack a clear understanding of the nature of rhythm and rhythmic differences across languages. Various metrics have been proposed as means for measuring rhythm on the phonetic level and making typological comparisons between languages (Ramus et al, 1999; Grabe & Low, 2002; Dellwo, 2006) but the debate is ongoing on the extent to which these metrics capture the rhythmic basis of speech (Arvaniti, 2009; Fletcher, in press). Furthermore, cross linguistic studies of rhythm have covered a relatively small number of languages and research on previously unclassified languages is necessary to fully develop the typology of rhythm. This study examines the rhythmic features of Malay, for which, to date, relatively little work has been carried out on aspects rhythm and timing. The material for the analysis comprised 10 sentences produced by 20 speakers of standard Malay (10 males and 10 females). The recordings were first analysed using rhythm metrics proposed by Ramus et. al (1999) and Grabe & Low (2002). These metrics (∆C, %V, rPVI, nPVI) are based on durational measurements of vocalic and consonantal intervals. The results indicated that Malay clustered with other so-called syllable-timed languages like French and Spanish on the basis of all metrics. However, underlying the overall findings for these metrics there was a large degree of variability in values across speakers and sentences, with some speakers having values in the range typical of stressed-timed languages like English. Further analysis has been carried out in light of Fletcher’s (in press) argument that measurements based on duration do not wholly reflect speech rhythm as there are many other factors that can influence values of consonantal and vocalic intervals, and Arvaniti’s (2009) suggestion that other features of speech should also be considered in description of rhythm to discover what contributes to listeners’ perception of regularity. Spectrographic analysis of the Malay recordings brought to light two parameters that displayed consistency and regularity for all speakers and sentences: the duration of individual vowels and the duration of intervals between intensity minima. This poster presents the results of these investigations and points to connections between the features which seem to be consistently regulated in the timing of Malay connected speech and aspects of Malay phonology. The results are discussed in light of current debate on the descriptions of rhythm