150 research outputs found

    Exploring the influence of suprasegmental features of speech on rater judgements of intelligibility

    Get PDF
    A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe importance of suprasegmental features of speech to pronunciation proficiency is well known, yet limited research has been undertaken to identify how raters attend to suprasegmental features in the English-language speaking test encounter. Currently, such features appear to be underrepresented in language learning frameworks and are not always satisfactorily incorporated into the analytical rating scales that are used by major language testing organisations. This thesis explores the influence of lexical stress, rhythm and intonation on rater decision making in order to provide insight into their proper place in rating scales and frameworks. Data were collected from 30 raters, half of whom were experienced professional raters and half of whom lacked rater training and a background in language learning or teaching. The raters were initially asked to score 12 test taker performances using a 9-point intelligibility scale. The performances were taken from the long turn of Cambridge English Main Suite exams and were selected on the basis of the inclusion of a range of notable suprasegmental features. Following scoring, the raters took part in a stimulated recall procedure to report the features that influenced their decisions. The resulting scores were quantitatively analysed using many-facet Rasch measurement analysis. Transcriptions of the verbal reports were analysed using qualitative methods. Finally, an integrated analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data was undertaken to develop a series of suprasegmental rating scale descriptors. The results showed that experienced raters do appear to attend to specific suprasegmental features in a reliable way, and that their decisions have a great deal in common with the way non-experienced raters regard such features. This indicates that stress, rhythm, and intonation may be somewhat underrepresented on current speaking proficiency scales and frameworks. The study concludes with the presentation of a series of suprasegmental rating scale descriptors

    Phonological issues in the production of prosody by francophone and sinophone learners of english as a second language

    Get PDF
    Un accent de non-natif peut mener Ă  une incomprĂ©hension ou Ă  la perception de degrĂ©s diffĂ©rents d'accent d'Ă©trangetĂ©. La prosodie, qui est maintenant reconnue comme un Ă©lĂ©ment important de l'impression d'Ă©trangetĂ©, est relativement peu abordĂ©e en recherche en acquisition des langues Ă©trangĂšres. Ceci contraste avec l'intĂ©rĂȘt grandissant envers la prosodie en tant qu'Ă©lĂ©ment de la langue maternelle. Dans cette thĂšse, la recherche phonologique est Ă©valuĂ©e quant Ă  sa pertinence dans la recherche sur la prosodie des langues Ă©trangĂšres. Deux aspects de la thĂ©orie phonologique sont Ă©tudiĂ©s: la typologie et l'organisation phonologique. Ce choix est justifiĂ© par la prĂ©somption gĂ©nĂ©rale que l'Ă©trangetĂ© prosodique est crĂ©Ă©e soit par une diffĂ©rence de typologie entre langue maternelle (L1) et langue Ă©trangĂšre (L2) soit par un transfert de traits prosodiques de la L1. La critique de la recherche en typologie phonologique conclut que, Ă  ce stade, aucun modĂšle de classification prosodique n'est applicable Ă  l'acquisition d'une L2. En particulier, l'Ă©tude dĂ©montre que certaines typologies, en particulier la thĂ©orie de l'isochronie accentuelle/l'isochronie syllabique de Pike, devraient ĂȘtre exclues parce qu'elles entravent les progrĂšs en recherche sur l'acquisition et la production de la prosodie des langues Ă©trangĂšres. Le second aspect de la thĂ©orie phonologique Ă©tudiĂ© dans cette thĂšse est l'organisation phonologique. La prĂ©misse est que les diffĂ©rences sous-jacentes Ă  l'organisation prosodique plutĂŽt que les diffĂ©rences phonologiques de surface sont transfĂ©rĂ©es de L1 Ă  L2. Les analyses approfondies de l'anglais nord amĂ©ricain, le français et le chinois standard rĂ©vĂšlent d'importantes diffĂ©rences phonologiques entre l'anglais nord amĂ©ricain et les deux autres langues. Quatre expĂ©riences Ă©valuent certaines de ces diffĂ©rences. La prosodie de l'anglais produite par des locuteurs natifs du français est analysĂ©e dans des phrases rythmiquement simples et des phrases rythmiquement plus complexes. Les rĂ©sultats dĂ©montrent que l'accentuation lexicale est moins problĂ©matique que l'accentuation prosodique supra-lexicale. En particulier, il est dĂ©montrĂ© que les montĂ©es de frĂ©quence fondamentale (F0) de dĂ©but et de fin de syntagme accentuel (SA), typiques du français, sont source d'erreur dans la prosodie de l'anglais langue seconde. Il est cependant montrĂ© que cette erreur, bien que remarquĂ©e par les locuteurs natifs de l'anglais, n'affecte pas la perception de placement d'accentuation par ces derniers. La prosodie de l'anglais produite par des locuteurs natifs du chinois est analysĂ©e en termes de transfert de ton et d'alignement de pic de F0. Les rĂ©sultats indiquent que les locuteurs du chinois utilisent les tons chinois quand ils produisent des tons accentuels de l'anglais; plus spĂ©cifiquement, la majoritĂ© des locuteurs utilisent le ton 2 (ton montant) quand ils produisent un ton accentuel montant. La derniĂšre expĂ©rience rĂ©vĂšle que les locuteurs natifs du chinois alignent le ton accentuel avec la syllabe accentuĂ©e Ă  laquelle elle correspond de maniĂšre plus stricte que les locuteurs natifs de l'anglais nord amĂ©ricain le font. Les rĂ©sultats de cette thĂšse gĂ©nĂšrent un aperçu de la progression de la performance de la prosodie d'une langue Ă©trangĂšre. Les conclusions comportent des implications sur le contenu pĂ©dagogique et le format de l'enseignement de la prononciation. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Phonologie, PhonĂ©tique, Phonologie prosodique, Prosodie, Rythme, ESL, Français du QuĂ©bec, Français de France, Chinois

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

    Get PDF
    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

    Universal and language-specific processing : the case of prosody

    Get PDF
    A key question in the science of language is how speech processing can be influenced by both language-universal and language-specific mechanisms (Cutler, Klein, & Levinson, 2005). My graduate research aimed to address this question by adopting a crosslanguage approach to compare languages with different phonological systems. Of all components of linguistic structure, prosody is often considered to be one of the most language-specific dimensions of speech. This can have significant implications for our understanding of language use, because much of speech processing is specifically tailored to the structure and requirements of the native language. However, it is still unclear whether prosody may also play a universal role across languages, and very little comparative attempts have been made to explore this possibility. In this thesis, I examined both the production and perception of prosodic cues to prominence and phrasing in native speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese. In focus production, our research revealed that English and Mandarin speakers were alike in how they used prosody to encode prominence, but there were also systematic language-specific differences in the exact degree to which they enhanced the different prosodic cues (Chapter 2). This, however, was not the case in focus perception, where English and Mandarin listeners were alike in the degree to which they used prosody to predict upcoming prominence, even though the precise cues in the preceding prosody could differ (Chapter 3). Further experiments examining prosodic focus prediction in the speech of different talkers have demonstrated functional cue equivalence in prosodic focus detection (Chapter 4). Likewise, our experiments have also revealed both crosslanguage similarities and differences in the production and perception of juncture cues (Chapter 5). Overall, prosodic processing is the result of a complex but subtle interplay of universal and language-specific structure

    De-centering the Monolingual: A Psychophysiological Study of Heritage Speaker Language Processing

    Full text link
    Models of grammar, processing and acquisition are primarily built on evidence from monolinguals and adult learners of a second language. Heritage speakers, who are bilinguals of a societal minority language, acquire and use their heritage language in informal settings; but who live, work, and are educated in the societal majority language. The differences between heritage speakers and both monolinguals and adult second language learners are extensive: heritage speakers are not educated in the heritage language, their input is typically not from a prestige variety of the heritage language, and they are dominant in the majority language, using it more frequently (Valdés, 1989). Previous research of heritage speaker characterized their grammars as simple, decayed/attrited, and incomplete (Benmamoun, Montrul, & Polinsky, 2010; Scontras, Fuchs, & Polinsky, 2015), and are compared to intermediate second language learner grammars (Montrul, 2005). The present study: 1) explores the language use and exposure of heritage speakers, 2) examines their performance on metalinguistic tasks, and 3) measures language processing using implicit measures (event-related potentials and pupillometry). Heritage speakers are compared to adult late second language learners living and working in a second language dominant society from the same community. The study focuses on fluent Spanish and English Latinx bilinguals living in the anglophone US. Spanish heritage speakers are appropriately compared to their time-apparent parents (English speaking Latinx immigrants who moved to the anglophone US in adulthood). Online language processing of subject- and object-relative clauses are examined as the subject-object relative clause processing asymmetry has been well-established in both Spanish and English, is early acquired, and is not confounded by prescriptive rules or literacy

    Verbing and nouning in French : toward an ecologically valid approach to sentence processing

    Full text link
    La présente thèse utilise la technique des potentiels évoqués afin d’étudier les méchanismes neurocognitifs qui sous-tendent la compréhension de la phrase. Plus particulièrement, cette recherche vise à clarifier l’interaction entre les processus syntaxiques et sémantiques chez les locuteurs natifs et les apprenants d’une deuxième langue (L2). Le modèle “syntaxe en premier” (Friederici, 2002, 2011) prédit que les catégories syntaxiques sont analysées de façon précoce: ce stade est reflété par la composante ELAN (Early anterior negativity, Négativité antérieure gauche), qui est induite par les erreurs de catégorie syntaxique. De plus, ces erreurs semblent empêcher l’apparition de la composante N400 qui reflète les processus lexico-sémantiques. Ce phénomène est défini comme le bloquage sémantique (Friederici et al., 1999). Cependant, la plupart des études qui observent la ELAN utilisent des protocoles expérimentaux problématiques dans lesquels les différences entre les contextes qui précèdent la cible pourraient être à l’origine de résultats fallacieux expliquant à la fois l’apparente “ELAN” et l’absence de N400 (Steinhauer & Drury, 2012). La première étude rééevalue l’approche de la “syntaxe en premier” en adoptant un paradigme expériemental novateur en français qui introduit des erreurs de catégorie syntaxique et les anomalies de sémantique lexicale. Ce dessin expérimental équilibré contrôle à la fois le mot-cible (nom vs. verbe) et le contexte qui le précède. Les résultats récoltés auprès de locuteurs natifs du français québécois ont révélé un complexe N400-P600 en réponse à toutes les anomalies, en contradiction avec les prédictions du modèle de Friederici. Les effets additifs des manipulations syntaxique et sémantique sur la N400 suggèrent la détection d’une incohérence entre la racine du mot qui avait été prédite et la cible, d’une part, et l’activation lexico-sémantique, d’autre part. Les réponses individuelles se sont pas caractérisées par une dominance vers la N400 ou la P600: au contraire, une onde biphasique est présente chez la majorité des participants. Cette activation peut donc être considérée comme un index fiable des mécanismes qui sous-tendent le traitement des structures syntagmatiques. La deuxième étude se concentre sur les même processus chez les apprenants tardifs du français L2. L’hypothèse de la convergence (Green, 2003 ; Steinhauer, 2014) prédit que les apprenants d’une L2, s’ils atteignent un niveau avancé, mettent en place des processus de traitement en ligne similaires aux locuteurs natifs. Cependant, il est difficile de considérer en même temps un grand nombre de facteurs qui se rapportent à leurs compétences linguistiques, à l’exposition à la L2 et à l’âge d’acquisition. Cette étude continue d’explorer les différences inter-individuelles en modélisant les données de potentiels-évoqués avec les Forêts aléatoires, qui ont révélé que le pourcentage d’explosition au français ansi que le niveau de langue sont les prédicteurs les plus fiables pour expliquer les réponses électrophysiologiques des participants. Plus ceux-ci sont élevés, plus l’amplitude des composantes N400 et P600 augmente, ce qui confirme en partie les prédictions faites par l’hypothèse de la convergence. En conclusion, le modèle de la “syntaxe en premier” n’est pas viable et doit être remplacé. Nous suggérons un nouveau paradigme basé sur une approche prédictive, où les informations sémantiques et syntaxiques sont activées en parallèle dans un premier temps, puis intégrées via un recrutement de mécanismes contrôlés. Ces derniers sont modérés par les capacités inter-individuelles reflétées par l’exposition et la performance.The present thesis uses event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate neurocognitve mechanisms underlying sentence comprehension. In particular, these two experiments seek to clarify the interplay between syntactic and semantic processes in native speakers and second language learners. Friederici’s (2002, 2011) “syntax-first” model predicts that syntactic categories are analyzed at the earliest stages of speech perception reflected by the ELAN (Early left anterior negativity), reported for syntactic category violations. Further, syntactic category violations seem to prevent the appearance of N400s (linked to lexical-semantic processing), a phenomenon known as “semantic blocking” (Friederici et al., 1999). However, a review article by Steinhauer and Drury (2012) argued that most ELAN studies used flawed designs, where pre-target context differences may have caused ELAN-like artifacts as well as the absence of N400s. The first study reevaluates syntax-first approaches to sentence processing by implementing a novel paradigm in French that included correct sentences, pure syntactic category violations, lexical-semantic anomalies, and combined anomalies. This balanced design systematically controlled for target word (noun vs. verb) and the context immediately preceding it. Group results from native speakers of Quebec French revealed an N400-P600 complex in response to all anomalous conditions, providing strong evidence against the syntax-first and semantic blocking hypotheses. Additive effects of syntactic category and lexical-semantic anomalies on the N400 may reflect a mismatch detection between a predicted word-stem and the actual target, in parallel with lexical-semantic retrieval. An interactive rather than additive effect on the P600 reveals that the same neurocognitive resources are recruited for syntactic and semantic integration. Analyses of individual data showed that participants did not rely on one single cognitive mechanism reflected by either the N400 or the P600 effect but on both, suggesting that the biphasic N400-P600 ERP wave can indeed be considered to be an index of phrase-structure violation processing in most individuals. The second study investigates the underlying mechanisms of phrase-structure building in late second language learners of French. The convergence hypothesis (Green, 2003; Steinhauer, 2014) predicts that second language learners can achieve native-like online- processing with sufficient proficiency. However, considering together different factors that relate to proficiency, exposure, and age of acquisition has proven challenging. This study further explores individual data modeling using a Random Forests approach. It revealed that daily usage and proficiency are the most reliable predictors in explaining the ERP responses, with N400 and P600 effects getting larger as these variables increased, partly confirming and extending the convergence hypothesis. This thesis demonstrates that the “syntax-first” model is not viable and should be replaced. A new account is suggested, based on predictive approaches, where semantic and syntactic information are first used in parallel to facilitate retrieval, and then controlled mechanisms are recruited to analyze sentences at the interface of syntax and semantics. Those mechanisms are mediated by inter-individual abilities reflected by language exposure and performance

    Film Dialogue Translation And The Intonation Unit : Towards Equivalent Effect In English And Chinese

    Get PDF
    This thesis proposes a new approach to film dialogue translation (FDT) with special reference to the translation process and quality of English-to-Chinese dubbing. In response to the persistent translation failures that led to widespread criticism of dubbed films and TV plays in China for their artificial \u27translation talk\u27, this study provides a pragmatic methodology derived from the integration of the theories and analytical systems of information flow in the tradition of the functionalist approach to speech and writing with the relevant theoretical and empirical findings from TS and other related branches of linguistics. It has developed and validated a translation model (FITNIATS) which makes the intonation unit (IU) the central unit of film dialogue translation. Arguing that any translation which treats dubbing as a simple script-to-script process, without transferring the prosodic properties of the spoken words into the commensurate functions of TL, is incomplete, the thesis demonstrates that, in order to reduce confusion and loss of meaning/rhythm, the SL dialogue should be rendered in the IUs with the stressed syllables well-timed in TL to keep the corresponding information foci in sync with the visual message. It shows that adhering to the sentence-to-sentence formula as the translation metastrategy with the information structure of the original film dialogue permuted can result in serious stylistic as well as communicative problems. Five key theoretical issues in TS are addressed in the context of FDT, viz., the relations between micro-structure and macro-structure translation perspectives, foreignizing vs. domesticating translation, the unit of translation, the levels of translation equivalence and the criteria for evaluating translation quality. lf equivalent effect is to be achieved in all relevant dimensions, it is argued that \u27FITness criteria\u27 need to be met in film translation assessment, and four such criteria arc proposed. This study demonstrates that prosody and word order, as sensitive indices of the information flow which occurs in film dialogue through the creation and perception of meaning, can provide a basis for minimizing cross-linguistic discrepancies and compensating for loss of the FIT functions, especially where conflicts arise between the syntactic and/or medium constraints and the adequate transfer of cultural-specific content and style. The implications of the model for subtitling arc also made explicit
    • 

    corecore