1,745 research outputs found
Fluency in dialogue: Turnโtaking behavior shapes perceived fluency in native and nonnative speech
Fluency is an important part of research on second language learning, but most research on language proficiency typically has not included oral fluency as part of interaction, even though natural communication usually occurs in conversations. The present study considered aspects of turn-taking behavior as part of the construct of fluency and investigated whether these aspects differentially influence perceived fluency ratings of native and non-native speech. Results from two experiments using acoustically manipulated speech showed that, in native speech, too โeagerโ (interrupting a question with a fast answer) and too โreluctantโ answers (answering slowly after a long turn gap) negatively affected fluency ratings. However, in non-native speech, only too โreluctantโ answers led to lower fluency ratings. Thus, we demonstrate that acoustic properties of dialogue are perceived as part of fluency. By adding to our current understanding of dialogue fluency, these lab-based findings carry implications for language teaching and assessmen
Production, perception and online processing of prominence in the post-focal domain
This dissertation presents a fundamentally new and in-depth investigation of the distribution of prominence in different focal structures in two varieties of Italian (the one spoken in Udine and the one spoken in Bari), by means of the implementation of a categorical analysis with the continuous prosodic parameters related to F0 and periodic energy. Results provide evidence of the fact that prominence in these varieties of Italian is conveyed by both a categorical three-way distinction and a gradual modulation: absence or presence of pitch movement in the distinction between background (post-focal position) and the focal conditions, and a gradual modification of energy and duration. The degree of prominence of words occurring in different focal structures was also investigated in perception. The reportedly different distribution of prominence found in questions for the variety of Italian spoken in Bari is shown to have an influence in the degree of perceived prominence. This influence is found in the comparison between prominenceโs ratings of Bari and Udine native speakers, as well as of Bari native speakers and German native speakers, with Italian as L2. Furthermore, the present dissertation tests the real-time processing of the pitch excursion registered in the post-focal region of questions in the Bari variety. Findings confirmed that the fine-grained changes in prominence are processed in real time. Moreover, results indicate that top-down expectations play a crucial role in modulating general cognitive processes. Overall, this thesis supports the view of prosodic prominence as characterised by a bundle of cues, probabilistically distributed in the listenerโs perceptual space, which form top-down expectations that play a role both in offline perception and in online processing. Signal-based factors also play a role in perception and online processing, but can however be overridden by expectations
English prosodic marking of Information Structure by L1-Japanese second language learners
Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiสปi at Mฤnoa 2018
The Pitch Range of Italians and Americans. A Comparative Study
Linguistic experiments have investigated the nature of F0 span and level in cross-linguistic comparisons. However, only few studies have focused on the elaboration of a general-agreed methodology that may provide a unifying approach to the analysis of pitch range (Ladd, 1996; Patterson and Ladd, 1999; Daly and Warren, 2001; Bishop and Keating, 2010; Mennen et al. 2012).
Pitch variation is used in different languages to convey different linguistic and paralinguistic meanings that may range from the expression of sentence modality to the marking of emotional and attitudinal nuances (Grice and Baumann, 2007). A number of factors have to be taken into consideration when determining the existence of measurable and reliable differences in pitch values. Daly and Warren (2001) demonstrated the importance of some independent variables such as language, age, body size, speaker sex (female vs. male), socio-cultural background, regional accents, speech task (read sentences vs. spontaneous dialogues), sentence type (questions vs. statements) and measure scales (Hertz, semitones, ERB etc.). Coherently with the model proposed by Mennen et al. (2012), my analysis of pitch range is based on the investigation of LTD (long-term distributional) and linguistic measures. LTD measures deal with the F0 distribution within a speakerโs contour (e.g. F0 minimum, F0 maximum, F0 mean, F0 median, standard deviation, F0 span) while linguistic measures are linked to specific targets within the contour, such as peaks and valleys (e.g. high and low landmarks) and preserve the temporal sequences of pitch contours.
This investigation analyzed the characteristics of pitch range production and perception in English sentences uttered by Americans and Italians. Four experiments were conducted to examine different phenomena: i) the contrast between measures of F0 level and span in utterances produced by Americans and Italians (experiments 1-2); ii) the contrast between the pitch range produced by males and females in L1 and L2 (experiment 1); iii) the F0 patterns in different sentence types, that is, yes-no questions, wh-questions, and exclamations (experiment 2); iv) listenersโ evaluations of pitch span in terms of ยฑinteresting, ยฑexcited, ยฑcredible, ยฑfriendly ratings of different sentence types (experiments 3-4); v) the correlation between pitch span of the sentences and the evaluations given by American and Italian listeners (experiment 3); vi) the listenersโ evaluations of pitch span values in manipulated stimuli, whose F0 span was re-synthesized under three conditions: narrow span, original span, and wide span (experiment 4); vii) the different evaluations given to the sentences by male and female listeners.
The results of this investigation supported the following generalizations. First, pitch span more than level was found to be a cue for non-nativeness, because L2 speakers of English used a narrower span, compared to the native norm. What is more, the experimental data in the production studies indicated that the mode of sentences was better captured by F0 span than level. Second, the Italian learners of English were influenced by their L1 and transferred L1 pitch range variation into their L2. The English sentences produced by the Italians had overall higher pitch levels and narrower pitch span than those produced by the Americans. In addition, the Italians used overall higher pitch levels when speaking Italian and lower levels when speaking English. Conversely, their pitch span was generally higher in English and lower in Italian. When comparing productions in English, the Italian females used higher F0 levels than the American females; vice versa, the Italian males showed slightly lower F0 levels than the American males. Third, there was a systematic relation between pitch span values and the listenersโ evaluations of the sentences. The two groups of listeners (the Americans and the Italians) rated the stimuli with larger pitch span as more interesting, exciting and credible than the stimuli with narrower pitch span. Thus, the listeners relied on the perceived pitch span to differentiate among the stimuli. Fourth, both the American and the Italian speakers were considered more friendly when the pitch span of their sentences was widened (wide span manipulation) and less friendly when the pitch span was narrowed (narrow span manipulation). This happened in all the stimuli regardless of the native language of the speakers (American vs. Italian)
A Sound Approach to Language Matters: In Honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn
The contributions in this Festschrift were written by Ockeโs 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 Ockeโs career, in connection with his teaching and/or his academic productions: โSegmentsโ, โPerception of Accentโ, โBetween Sounds and Graphemesโ, โProsodyโ, โMorphology and Syntaxโ and โSecond Language Acquisitionโ.ย Each one of these illustrates a sound approach to language matters
ํ๊ตญ์ธ ์์ด ํ์ต์์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ฌ์ฉ ์ฐ๊ตฌ: ์ 2์ธ์ด ์ดํด๋์ ๋ฐํ์์ ์๊ด ์ํฅ ์ ํธ๋ฅผ ์ค์ฌ์ผ๋ก
ํ์๋
ผ๋ฌธ (๋ฐ์ฌ)-- ์์ธ๋ํ๊ต ๋ํ์ : ์ธ๊ตญ์ด๊ต์ก๊ณผ(์์ด์ ๊ณต), 2015. 8. ์ํ๊ธฐ.์ ์ ํ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ์ฌ์ฉ์ ์์ด ๋ชจ๊ตญ์ด ์ฒญ์๋ค์ ๋ฐํ ์ดํด๋ฅผ ์ฉ์ดํ๊ฒ ํด์ฃผ๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ์๋ ค์ ธ ์๋ค. ๋ณธ ์ฐ๊ตฌ๋ ํ๊ตญ์ธ ์์ด ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ฌ์ฉ์ด ์์ด๋ฏผ๋ค์ด ์ธ์ํ ๋ฐํ์ ์ดํด๋์ ์ ์๋ฏธํ๊ฒ ์ํฅ์ ์ฃผ๋ ์์๋ผ๋ ๊ฒ์ ํ์ธํ๊ณ , ํ๊ตญ์ธ ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๋ฐํ์์ ๋ํ๋ ์์ด ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ฌ์ฉ ์์์ ๊ด์ฐฐํ์ฌ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๊ต์ก์์ ์ด์ ์ ๋์ด์ผ ํ๋ ๋ถ๋ถ์ ํ์ํ๊ณ ์ ํ์๋ค.
์ฒซ ๋ฒ์งธ ์คํ์์๋ ํ๊ตญ์ธ ํ์ต์์ ๋ฐํ์ ๋ํ ์์ด๋ฏผ ์ดํด๋(์์ด๋ฏผ ์ฒญ์๋ค์ด ์ธ์ํ ๋ฐํ์ ์ดํด ์ฉ์ด๋)์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ ์ ์ฑ์ด ์ ์๋ฏธํ ๊ธฐ์ฌ๋ฅผ ํ๋์ง๋ฅผ ํ์ธํ๊ณ ์ ํ์๋ค. ์ด๋ฅผ ์ํด ๋จผ์ 39๋ช
์ ํ๊ตญ์ธ ๋ํ์์๊ฒ ์์ด๋ํ๋ฌธ์ ์ฝ๋๋ก ํ์ฌ ๋
น์ํ์๋ค. ๋ค์์ผ๋ก 10๋ช
์ ์์ด๋ฏผ ์ฒญ์๋ค์ด ์์ ๋
น์ํ ๊ฐ ๋ฐํ๋ฅผ ๋ฃ๊ณ ์ดํด๋(comprehensibility)์ ์ธ๊ตญ์ธ ๋งํฌ ์ ๋(foreign-accentedness)๋ฅผ 7์ ์ฒ๋๋ก ํ๊ฐํ์๋ค. ๋ํ ๊ฐ ๋ฐํ์ ๋ํด 1) ๋ฌธ์ฅ๊ฐ์ธ ์ ์ ์ฑ, 2) ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๋น๋, 3) ๋ฐํ ๊ณ ์ ๋ฒ์, 4) ํด์ง ๋น๋, 5) ์ด ํด์ง ๊ธธ์ด, 6) ํ๊ท ๋ฐํ ๊ธธ์ด, 7) ์กฐ์ ์๋๋ฅผ ์ธก์ ํ ๋ค, ๋ค์คํ๊ท๋ถ์์ ๋จ๊ณ์ ์ ํ๋ฒ์ ์ด์ฉํ์ฌ ์ดํด๋์ ์ธ๊ตญ์ธ ๋งํฌ ์ ๋๋ฅผ ์์ธกํ๋ ๋ณ์ธ์ ์ ๋ณํ์๋ค.
๋ถ์ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ, ์ดํด๋ ์ ์๋ ํด์ง ๋น๋, ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ ์ ์ฑ, ์กฐ์ ์๋๋ฅผ ์์ธก ๋ณ์ธ์ผ๋ก ์ผ์์ ๋ ๋ชจํ์ ํฉ๋์ ์ค๋ช
๋ ฅ์ด ๊ฐ์ฅ ์ฐ์ํ๊ณ , ์ธ๊ตญ์ธ ๋งํฌ ์ ์๋ ํ๊ท ๋ฐํ ๊ธธ์ด, ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๋น๋, ์กฐ์ ์๋๊ฐ ์ ์๋ฏธํ ์์ธก์ธ์์ธ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ๋๋ฌ๋ฌ๋ค. ํนํ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ ์ ์ฑ์ด ํด์ง ๋น๋๋ ์กฐ์ ์๋์ ๋น๊ตํด ์ดํด๋ ์ ์์ ๋ํ ๊ธฐ์ฌ๋๊ฐ ์ ์ง ์์์ด ๋๋ฌ๋ฌ๋ค. ์ด๋ฌํ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ๋ ์์ฌ์ํต์ ๊ต์๋ฒ์์ ์์ด ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ๋ ์ค์ํ๊ฒ ๋ค๋ฃฐ ํ์๊ฐ ์๋ค๋ ๊ฒ์ ์์ฌํ๋ค.
๋ ๋ฒ์งธ ์คํ์์๋ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ๋ํ ๊ต์-ํ์ต์ ํจ๊ณผ์ ์ผ๋ก ์ํํ๊ธฐ ์ํ ๋ฐฉ์์ ํ์ํ๊ธฐ ์ํด ํ๊ตญ์ธ ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๋ฐํ ์์๊ณผ ๊ทธ ํน์ง์ ๊ด์ฐฐํ์๋ค. ๋ถ์์ ์ํด 39๋ช
์ ์ฐธ์ฌ์๋ค์ ์์ด๊ถ ๊ฑฐ์ฃผ ๊ธฐ๊ฐ์ ๋ฐ๋ผ ์ค์์ด๋ฏผ(8~19๋
), ์์ ์์ค ํ์ต์(1๊ฐ์ ๋ฐ~2๋
), ํ์ ์์ค ํ์ต์(๊ฒฝํ ์์)์ ์ธ ์ง๋จ์ผ๋ก ๋ถ๋ฅํ์๋ค. ํ๊ตญ์ธ ์ฐธ์ฌ์๋ค์ด ๋ฐํํ 10๊ฐ์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ์ด์ ์ ํ(๊ด์ ์ด์ ๊ณผ ํ์ ์ด์ )๊ณผ ๋จ์ด ์ ํ(๋ด์ฉ์ด์ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ด)๋ก ๋๋์ด ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์์ ๋ชจ์๊ณผ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ ๋จ์ด ํน์ ๋ค์ ๋จ์ด์ ๊ฐ์ธ ๋ชจ์์ ๊ธธ์ด, ๊ณ ์ , ์ธ๊ธฐ๋ฅผ ์ธก์ ํ์ฌ ๊ฐ ์ํฅ ์ ํธ์ ๋ณํ๋ฅผ ๊ด์ฐฐํ์๋ค. ๋ํ 3๊ฐ์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๋จ์ด์ ๋ํด, ๋์ผ ๋จ์ด๊ฐ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์์ด ๋ฐ๋ณต๋๋ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ(์ฆ, ๊ตฌ์ ๋ณด๊ฐ ๋๋ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ)์๋ ๊ฐ ์ํฅ ์ ํธ์ ๋ณํ๊ฐ ์๋์ง๋ฅผ ์ดํด๋ณด์๋ค.
์คํ ๊ฒฐ๊ณผ, ์์ด๊ถ ๊ตญ๊ฐ์์ ์๋นํ ๊ธฐ๊ฐ ๋์ ์์ด๋ฅผ ํ์ตํ ํ๊ตญ์ธ ์ค์์ด๋ฏผ ์ง๋จ์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ์์ด๋ฏผ ์ฐธ์ฌ์์ ๋ฐํ์ ํฌ๊ฒ ๋ค๋ฅด์ง ์์์ผ๋, ์์ด๋ฅผ ์ฃผ๋ก ์ธ๊ตญ์ด๋ก์ ํ์ตํ ์์ ์์ค ํ์ต์์ ํ์ ์์ค ํ์ต์์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋ค์๊ณผ ๊ฐ์ ํน์ง์ ๋ณด์ฌ์ฃผ์๋ค.
์ฒซ์งธ, ์์ ์์ค ํ์ต์์ ํ์ ์์ค ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๋ชจ๋ ํ์ ์ด์ ๋ฐํ๋ ์๋์ ์ผ๋ก ์ ๋ฐ์ํ์ผ๋ ๊ด์ ์ด์ ๋ฐํ์์๋ ์ด๋ ค์์ ๊ฒช๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ๋ํ๋ฌ๋ค. ์์ ์์ค ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ์ด๋ฌํ ํน์ง์ด ํนํ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ด๊ฐ ๊ด์ ์ด์ ๋ด์์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ๊ฐ์ง ๋ ๋๋๋ฌ์ง๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ํ์ธ๋์๋ค. ์ด๋ค์ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ด๊ฐ ์ฃผ๋ก ์ฝํ๋๋ค๋ ์ฌ์ค์ ์๊ณ ์๊ณ , ์ด์ ๋ฐ๋ผ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ์ ๋ฌด์ ์๊ด์์ด ์ฝํ๋ฅผ ์ํค๋ ๊ฒฝํฅ์ ๋ณด์๋ค. ๋ฐ๋ฉด, ํ์ ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋ด์ฉ์ด์ ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ด์ ์๊ด์์ด ๊ด์ ์ด์ ์์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ์ ๋ฐํํ์ง ๋ชปํ์๋ค.
๋์งธ, ์์ ์์ค ํ์ต์๋ค์ ์ค์์ด๋ฏผ ์ง๋จ๊ณผ ์์ด๋ฏผ ํ์, ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ํ์ ์์ค ํ์ต์๋ณด๋ค ๋ชจ์ ๊ณ ์ ๋ฅผ ๊ณผ๋ํ๊ฒ ๋ณํ์ํค๋ ๊ฒฝํฅ์ ๋ณด์๋ค. ํ๊ตญ์ธ๋ค์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋ชจ์ ๊ธธ์ด๋ฅผ ๋ณํ์ํค๋ ๋ฐ ์ด๋ ค์์ ๋๋ผ๋ ํ์ ๊ทธ๋ณด๋ค ์๋์ ์ผ๋ก ์ฌ์ด ๋ชจ์ ๊ณ ์ ์ ๋ณํ๋ฅผ ํตํด ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ๋ฐ์ํ๋ ค ํ๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ํด์๋์๋ค. ํ์ ์์ค ํ์ต์์๊ฒ์๋ ๋ชจ์ ๊ณ ์ ์ ๋ํ ์์กด์ ๊ด์ฐฐ๋์ง ์์๋ค. ๋ชจ์์ ๊ณ ์ ์ ๋ํ ๊ด์ฐฐ์ ์ด๋ค์ ๋ชจ์ ๊ธธ์ด ์ฌ์ฉ๊ณผ ์ฐ๊ด์์ผ ๋ณผ ๋, ํ์ ์์ค ํ์ต์๋ค์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๋ถ์ฌ ๊ท์น ์์ฒด์ ๋ํ ์ง์์ด ๋ถ์ฌํ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ๋ณด์ด๊ณ , ์์ ์์ค ํ์ต์์ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ์์ฑ ์คํ์ ๋ฌธ์ ๊ฐ ์๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ํด์๋ ์ ์์๋ค. ์ด๋ ๋ํ ์ธ๊ตญ์ด๋ก์์ ์์ด ํ๊ฒฝ์์๋ง ์์ด๋ฅผ ํ์ตํ๋ ๊ฒฝ์ฐ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ์ต๋ํ๋ ๊ฒ์ด ๋งค์ฐ ์ด๋ ต๋ค๋ ๊ฒ์ ๋ํ๋ด๊ธฐ๋ ํ๋ค.
์์ด์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๊ฐ ์์ด ์์ด๋ฏผ ์ฒญ์๋ค์ ๋ฐํ ์ดํด์ ์ง์ ์ ์ผ๋ก ์ํฅ์ ์ค๋ค๋ ์ ์ ์ค๋ ์ ๋ถํฐ ์คํ์ ์ผ๋ก ์ฆ๋ช
๋์ด ์์ง๋ง ์ธ๊ตญ์ด ๊ต์ก์์๋ ์ ํ๋ ์๊ฐ๊ณผ ์ธ์ด ์
๋ ฅ ๊ทธ๋ฆฌ๊ณ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ๋ค์ ๋ณตํฉํ ์คํ ๊ธฐ์ ํ์ ๊ทธ ๋์ ๊ต์กํ์ฅ์์ ์ฐ์ ์ ์ผ๋ก ๋ค๋ฃจ์ด ์ง์ง ์์๋ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ๋ณด์ธ๋ค. ๋ณธ ์ฐ๊ตฌ๋ ์์ฌ์ํต ๋งฅ๋ฝ์์ ์์ด๊ถ ์ฒญ์๊ฐ ๋น์์ด๊ถ ํ์์ ๋ฐํ๋ฅผ ์ดํดํ ๋ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๊ฐ ์ค์ํ ์ญํ ์ ํจ์ ํ์ฆํ์์ผ๋ฉฐ ์ด๋ฅผ ํตํด ์ธ๊ตญ์ด๋ก์์ ์์ด ํ์์ ๋ํ ์์ด ๊ต์ก์์ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ๊ต์ก์ด ์ค์ํจ์ ๊ฐ์กฐํ์๋ค. ๋ํ ๋ณธ ์ฐ๊ตฌ๋ ํ๊ตญ์ธ ํ์ต์๋ค์ด ์์ด ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ ์ฌ์ฉ์์ ์ฃผ๋ก ์ด๋ ค์์ ๊ฒช๋ ๋ถ๋ถ์ด ์ด๋์ธ์ง๋ฅผ ํ์ธํ์๊ณ , ์ด๋ฅผ ๋ฐํ์ผ๋ก ํจ์จ์ ์ด๋ฉด์๋ ํจ๊ณผ์ ์ธ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ๊ต์ ๋ฐ ์ฌ์ฉ์ ์ํด ์ด๋ค์ด ์ด๋ ค์์ ๊ฒช๋ ๋ถ๋ถ์ ์ด์ ์ ๋ ๊ต์ก์ ์ฒ์น๊ฐ ์ด๋ฃจ์ด์ ธ์ผ ํจ์ ์ฃผ์ฅํ์๋ค. ์ฆ, ํ๊ตญ์ธ ํ์ต์๋ค์ ์ํด์๋ ๊ทธ๋ค์ด ๊ด์ ์ด์ ์ ์ ์ฉ๋๋ ๊ท์น์ ์ ํํ ํ์
ํ๊ณ , ๊ธฐ๋ฅ์ด๊ฐ ๋ดํ์์ค์ ๋งฅ๋ฝ์ ๋ฐ๋ผ์๋ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ๋ฅผ ์ง๋ ์๋ ์์์ ์ธ์ํ ์ ์๋๋ก ์ง๋๊ฐ ์ด๋ฃจ์ด์ง ํ์๊ฐ ์๋ค. ๋์ผ๋ก, ์ด๋ฌํ ๋ฌธ์ฅ ๊ฐ์ธ์ ์ฌ์ฉ์ ๋ณธ์ง์ ์ผ๋ก ๋๋ช
์ฌ ๋ฐ ์ง์ํํ์ ์ฌ์ฉ๊ณผ ๋ฐ์ ํ ์ฐ๊ด์ด ์์ผ๋ฏ๋ก ๋ดํ ์์ค์ ๋ฌธ๋ฒ๊ณผ ๊ฒฐํฉํ์ฌ ์ง๋๊ฐ ์ด๋ฃจ์ด์ง๋ ๊ฒ์ด ํจ๊ณผ์ ์ผ ๊ฒ์ผ๋ก ํ๋จ๋๋ค.It has been widely accepted that English sentence stress directly affects speech comprehension. The present study explored the contribution of English sentence stress to perceived comprehensibility of L2 speech, and revealed Korean learners use of English sentence stress.
For this purpose, two experiments were conducted. First, speech samples of 39 Korean speakers reading an English dialogue were recorded. Each learners speech characteristics were examined to determine how they contributed to the L2 speech comprehensibility and foreign-accentedness perceived by native listeners. The speech characteristics consisted of sentence stress appropriacy, sentence prominence frequency, pitch range, the number of pauses, the total duration of pauses, the mean length of run, and the articulation rate. The relative contribution of each characteristic was examined by stepwise multiple regression with each pronunciation score as a dependent variable, and each suprasegmental measure as an independent variable.
Comprehensibility was best predicted by the combination of the number of pauses, sentence stress appropriacy, and articulation rate. In addition, the strength of the relationship between each of the three variables and the comprehensibility score was more or less the same. In contrast, foreign-accentedness was mainly determined by sentence prominence frequency and speech rate factors. The results of the first experiment support the claim that sentence stress appropriacy is a significant factor for speech comprehension in the L2 context. Further, this study revealed that the importance of sentence stress is not negligible compared with other previously attested factors such as speech rate and pause use.
In the second experiment, based on the importance of English sentence stress in L2 speech comprehensibility, the overall characteristics of Korean learners use of English sentence stress were examined. The investigation was conducted both syntagmatically and paradigmatically in terms of acoustic cues (vowel duration, f0, and intensity) used for 13 accented words. In syntagmatic observation, comparisons were made between two focus types (broad vs. narrow) and two word types (content vs. function). A total of 39 participants were divided into three groups based on their length of residence in an English speaking country: Long Residence Group (8 ~ 19 years), Experienced Group (one and a half months ~ two years), and Inexperienced Groups.
The results showed that the Long Residence Group did not differ from a native speaker in their production of sentence stress. However, the Korean learners who learned English most of the time in an EFL context showed the following characteristics.
First, narrow focus was more easily learned than broad focus by Korean learners of English. The accentuation in broad focus is especially problematic for Korean learners when it occurs on function words. It seemed that the Experienced Groups knowledge of function word reduction according to English rhythm hindered them from accenting words when they did need to be accented at the discourse-level. As for the Inexperienced Group, they showed a more consistent pattern regarding the accentuation in broad focus. The acoustic changes indicated that they failed to apply the sentence stress rule to the last lexical item in broad focus, and this failure was observed for both content and function words. This implies that knowledge of sentence stress placement is not easily obtainable without ample exposure to English.
Second, Korean learners (especially the Experienced Group) marked the accented words by varying f0 cues with ease. In some cases, they delayed the declination in the transition from pre-accent to accent, while lowering the pitch more substantially from accent to post-accent than the other two groups and the native speaker. It seemed that the Experienced Group compensated for the lack of durational change by varying vowel pitch more. This partly shows that the participants in this group have some knowledge about accentuation but have a problem with the phonetic realization of it.
The findings of this study support the importance of English sentence stress in communicative context. In a Communicative Language Teaching approach, more consideration of English sentence stress is needed in the instruction of English pronunciation. In addition, in teaching English sentence stress to Korean speakers, it should be considered important that Korean learners be taught not to reduce function words and not to rely on the f0 cues too heavily when accentuation is needed in the given context. Furthermore, given that English sentence stress operates at the discourse level and is inherently related to the use of anaphoric and referential expressions in English, sentence stress should be instructed along with the discourse level grammar in an integrated way.TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract i
List of Tables ix
List of Figures xii
List of Abbreviations xiii
Chapter 1 Introduction 1
1.1 Aims of the Study 1
1.2 Rationale for the Study 2
1.3 Research Questions 6
1.4 Organization of the Dissertation 8
Chapter 2 Theoretical Background 10
2.1 Focus Marking in English and Korean Prosody 10
2.1.1 Pragmatic Functions of English Intonation 11
2.1.2 English Sentence Stress 14
2.1.3 Givenness and Prosody in English and Korean 21
2.1.4 Sentence Stress and Speech Comprehension 29
2.1.5 Acoustic Correlates of English and Korean Focus 31
2.2 Prosody and L2 Speech Comprehensibility 35
2.2.1 L2 Pronunciation in Communicative Context 36
2.2.2 Comprehensibility and Foreign-Accentedness 38
2.2.3 Predictors of Comprehensibility and Foreign-Accentedness 40
2.3 Sentence Stress in L2 Speech 44
2.3.1 Sentence Stress and L2 Comprehensibility 45
2.3.2 Sentence Stress in L2 Production 49
Chapter 3 Sentence Stress and L2 Comprehensibility 52
3.1 Methodology 52
3.1.1 Speakers 53
3.1.2 Recordings 55
3.1.3 Listeners 57
3.1.4 Variables 59
3.1.5 Statistical Treatment 67
3.2 Predictions 68
3.3 Results 69
3.3.1 Rating Scores and Suprasegmental Measurements 69
3.3.2 Predictors of L2 Comprehensibility and Foreign-Accentedness 73
3.4 Summary and Discussion 77
Chapter 4 Sentence Stress Production by Korean Learners 85
4.1 Methodology 85
4.1.1 Speakers 86
4.1.2 Recordings and Measurements 88
4.2 Predictions 92
4.3 Results 94
4.3.1 Syntagmatic Observation 94
4.3.1.1 Comparing the Three Groups 95
4.3.1.2 Focus Type 100
4.3.1.3 Focus Type X Word Type 110
4.3.1.4 Transition from Accent to Post-accent 118
4.3.2 Paradigmatic Observation 127
4.4 Summary and Discussion 129
Chapter 5 Conclusion 136
5.1 Findings and Pedagogical Implications 136
5.2 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research 138
References 141
Appendices 155
Abstract in Korean 165Docto
Recommended from our members
The Production and Perception of Subject Focus Prosody in L2 Spanish
New information can be introduced in discourse through different strategies, including syntactic and prosodic ones. This project provides an account of the syntactic and intonational strategies used for focus-marking in Peninsular Spanish, Mainstream American English and L2 Spanish using parallel experimental designs and a unitary method of analysis within the Autosegmental-Metrical framework for the study of intonation. It provides a comprehensive description of specific phonological categories and their phonetic implementation not only in monolingual speech, but also as they develop in the L2 grammar of Spanish learners with different experiences with the target language, following the premises of the L2 Intonation Learning Theory (LILt). Additionally, the perception of L2 intonation by native speakers was examined using an acceptability judgment task. Findings show that the intonational grammars of Spanish learners develop despite the lack of formal instruction, which allows them to produce native-like contours in certain contexts even if they have not been immersed in the target language for an extended period of time. This development is, nonetheless, constrained by different linguistic (i.e. transfer, universal patterns) and individual factors (i.e. onset of acquisition, proficiency). Furthermore, results from the acceptability judgment task suggest that learnersโ communicative intentions are correctly identified by native speakers when they use target-like contours, but they are misinterpreted when they fail to produce a target-like contour. This study contributes to the understanding of the role of transfer, linguistic interdependencies and interlanguage representations in the development of intonational grammars. Moreover, it shows that the acquisition of intonation is not so different from the L2 acquisition of morpho-syntax or segmental phonology and may be examined through similar approaches, including feature-based ones
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ACOUSTIC FEATURES OF SECOND LANGUAGE SPEECH AND LISTENER EVALUATION OF SPEECH QUALITY
Second language (L2) speech is typically less fluent than native speech, and differs from it phonetically. While the speech of some L2 English speakers seems to be easily understood by native listeners despite the presence of a foreign accent, other L2 speech seems to be more demanding, such that listeners must expend considerable effort in order to understand it. One reason for this increased difficulty may simply be the speakerโs pronunciation accuracy or phonetic intelligibility. If a L2 speakerโs pronunciations of English sounds differ sufficiently from the sounds that native listeners expect, these differences may force native listeners to work much harder to understand the divergent speech patterns. However, L2 speakers also tend to differ from native ones in terms of fluency โ the degree to which a speaker is able to produce appropriately structured phrases without unnecessary pauses, self-corrections or restarts. Previous studies have shown that measures of fluency are strongly predictive of listenersโ subjective ratings of the acceptability of L2 speech: Less fluent speech is consistently considered less acceptable (Ginther, Dimova, & Yang, 2010). However, since less fluent speakers tend also to have less accurate pronunciations, it is unclear whether or how these factors might interact to influence the amount of effort listeners exert to understand L2 speech, nor is it clear how listening effort might relate to perceived quality or acceptability of speech. In this dissertation, two experiments were designed to investigate these questions
- โฆ