Tone and intonation: introductory notes and practical recommendations

International audienceThe present article aims to propose a simple introduction to the topics of (i) lexical tone, (ii) intonation, and (iii) tone-intonation interactions, with practical recommendations for students. It builds on the authors' observations on various languages, tonal and non-tonal; much of the evidence reviewed concerns tonal languages of Asia. With a view to providing beginners with an adequate methodological apparatus for studying tone and intonation, the present notes emphasize two salient dimensions of linguistic diversity. The first is the nature of the lexical tones: we review the classical distinction between (i) contour tones that can be analyzed into sequences of level tones, and (ii) contour tones that are non-decomposable (phonetically complex). A second dimension of diversity is the presence or absence of intonational tones: tones of intonational origin that are formally identical with lexical (and morphological) tones

A glottalized tone in Muong (Vietic): a pilot study based on audio and electroglottographic recordings

Proceedings of ICPhS XIX (19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences). Melbourne.International audienceThe combination of pitch and glottalization (glottal constriction or lapse into creaky voice) as relevant phonetic/phonological dimensions of lexical tone is found in several language families in Asia. The Vietic subbranch of Austroasiatic stands out in that all its languages have at least one glottalized tone. Vietnamese is a well documented example, but the others remain little studied. The research reported here contributes experimental evidence on one of these languages: Muong (Mường). Excerpts from a database of audio and electroglottographic recordings of twenty speakers allow for a characterization of this dialect's glottalized tone, as contrasted with the four other tones of this five tone system. The ultimate goal is to determine what (sub)types of glottalized tones exist in the world's languages, bringing out typological differences in terms of (i) phonetic realizations and (ii) degree of importance of glottalization as a feature of linguistic tones

Strata of standardization: the Phong Nha dialect of Vietnamese (Quảng Bình Province) in historical perspective

International audienceThe present research, based on first-hand data, is intended as a contribution to the study of the present-day diversity of lesser-described Vietnamese dialects, and of the range of evolutionary paths to which they testify. The Vietnamese dialect of the hamlet of Phong Nha (commune of Sơn Trạch, county of Bố Trạch, Quảng Bình) is one of the "heterodox" dialects of Vietnamese, which are known to present considerable interest for the historical study of Vietnamese and of the Vietic group at large. These dialects are the product of the southerly expansion of Vietnamese over related (Vietic) languages, a process which involved various interferences. Comparative evidence reveals strata of standardization: some words are phonologically identical to Standard Vietnamese; others are of Southern Vietic stock, as demonstrated by the absence of telltale historical changes that took place in Vietnamese, such as the spirantization of medial stops; still others appear to be the result of hybridization

Perception of nonnative tonal contrasts by Mandarin-English and English-Mandarin sequential bilinguals

This study examined the role of acquisition order and crosslinguistic similarity in influencing transfer at the initial stage of perceptually acquiring a tonal third language (L3). Perception of tones in Yoruba and Thai was tested in adult sequential bilinguals representing three different first (L1) and second language (L2) backgrounds: L1 Mandarin-L2 English (MEBs), L1 English-L2 Mandarin (EMBs), and L1 English-L2 intonational/non-tonal (EIBs). MEBs outperformed EMBs and EIBs in discriminating L3 tonal contrasts in both languages, while EMBs showed a small advantage over EIBs on Yoruba. All groups showed better overall discrimination in Thai than Yoruba, but group differences were more robust in Yoruba. MEBs’ and EMBs’ poor discrimination of certain L3 contrasts was further reflected in the L3 tones being perceived as similar to the same Mandarin tone; however, EIBs, with no knowledge of Mandarin, showed many of the same similarity judgments. These findings thus suggest that L1 tonal experience has a particularly facilitative effect in L3 tone perception, but there is also a facilitative effect of L2 tonal experience. Further, crosslinguistic perceptual similarity between L1/L2 and L3 tones, as well as acoustic similarity between different L3 tones, play a significant role at this early stage of L3 tone acquisition.Published versio

Cognitive factors in perception and imitation of Thai tones by Mandarin versus Vietnamese speakers

The thesis investigates how native language phonological and phonetic factors affect non-native lexical tone perception and imitation, and how cognitive factors, such as memory load and stimulus variability (talker and vowel context variability), bias listeners to a phonological versus phonetic mode of perception/imitation. Two perceptual experiments and one imitation experiment were conducted with Thai tones as the stimuli and with Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners, who had no experience with Thai (i.e., naive listeners/imitators). The results of the perceptual experiments (Chapters 5 and 6) showed phonological effects as reflected in assimilation types (Categorised vs. UnCategorised assimilation) and phonetic effects indicated by percent choice and goodness ratings in tone assimilation, largely in line with predictions based on the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995). In addition, phonological assimilation types and phonological overlap of the contrasts affected their discrimination in line with predictions based on PAM. The thesis research has revealed the influence of cognitive factors on native language influences in perception and imitation of non-native lexical tones, which contribute differently to different tasks. The findings carry implications for current non-native speech perception theories. The fact that non-native tone imitation deviations can be traced back to native phonological and phonetic influences on perception supports and provides new insights about perception-production links in processing non-native tones. The findings uphold the extrapolation of PAM and ASP principles to non-native tone perception and imitation, indicating that both native language phonological and phonetic influences and their modulation by cognitive factors hold implications for non-native speech perception/learning theories, as well as for second language instruction

Language independent and unsupervised acoustic models for speech recognition and keyword spotting

Copyright © 2014 ISCA. Developing high-performance speech processing systems for low-resource languages is very challenging. One approach to address the lack of resources is to make use of data from multiple languages. A popular direction in recent years is to train a multi-language bottleneck DNN. Language dependent and/or multi-language (all training languages) Tandem acoustic models (AM) are then trained. This work considers a particular scenario where the target language is unseen in multi-language training and has limited language model training data, a limited lexicon, and acoustic training data without transcriptions. A zero acoustic resources case is first described where a multilanguage AM is directly applied, as a language independent AM (LIAM), to an unseen language. Secondly, in an unsupervised approach a LIAM is used to obtain hypotheses for the target language acoustic data transcriptions which are then used in training a language dependent AM. 3 languages from the IARPA Babel project are used for assessment: Vietnamese, Haitian Creole and Bengali. Performance of the zero acoustic resources system is found to be poor, with keyword spotting at best 60% of language dependent performance. Unsupervised language dependent training yields performance gains. For one language (Haitian Creole) the Babel target is achieved on the in-vocabulary data

Historical Ethnolinguistic Notes on Proto-Austroasiatic and Proto-Vietic Vocabulary in Vietnamese

This study provides updated numbers of and historical ethnolinguistic observations on Austroasiatic and Vietic etyma in Vietnamese. Lexical data from two dozen Vietic lects were assembled, half from the Mon-Khmer Etymological Database (MKED hereafter) and half from various other published and unpublished sources. Based on Ferlus’s preliminary reconstructions of Proto-Vietic (by Ferlus 2007 in the MKED), and data from Austroasiatic, Proto-Tai, and Old and Middle Chinese, approximately 800 items have been evaluated as viable reconstructions. However, of these, nearly 100 are Chinese loanwords of differing periods, and several are early Tai loanwords. The remaining nearly 700 items are native, including about 200 Proto-Austroasiatic etyma, with a few dozen local Austroasiatic words, and over 460 items specific to Vietic. Statistics have been gathered for cultural domains of the reconstructed vocabulary. A combination of etymological sources, semantic domains, and ethnohistorical data (i.e. archaeology, historical texts, and ethnographic information) allow for hypotheses about the ethnolinguistic circumstances of the early Vietic speech community and language contact situations. Many of the cultural domains are readily identified as part of a Neolithic lifestyle (i.e. words related to the natural environment, generic actions, etc.). Some, on the other hand, demonstrate social stratification (e.g. words related to economic practices) and developed agricultural practices (e.g. a large set of terms related to rice production). Others shed light on regional spread of cultural practices (e.g. betel-nut chewing and tooth-blackening) and intergroup contact (e.g. with Sinitic and Tai). Questions related to the spread of metallurgy and metal implements strongly support the influence of Chinese in metal terms and implements

Rozdíly realizace tónů hanojského a saigonského dialektu vietnamštiny mezi čteným a polospontánním mluveným projevem

Hlavním cílem této disertace je popis rozdílů realizací tónů mezi hanojským s saigonským dialektem se zaměřením na situaci ve čteném a polospontánním mluveném projevu. Výzkum se zabývá zejména produkcí, avšak je doplněn i oddílem, který řeší problematiku percepce tónů s využitím percepčního testu. Oddíl 2.1. popisuje tonalitu a tónové jazyky v obecném smyslu. V oddíle 2.2. se popisuje vietnamský jazyk s důrazem na tónové inventáře obou zkoumaných dialektů. Zmiňuje se též vznik a vývoj tónů obecně i v rámci vietnamštiny. Třetí kapitola představuje metodu výzkumu, zejména výběr mluvčích, přípravu materiálu a nahrávek, extrakce dat a přípravu analýz a percepčního testu. Čtvrtá kapitola je rozdělena do tří oddílů. Oddíl 4.1. hovoří o realizacích tónů v izolaci a ve speciálně zvoleném kontextu. Jeho účelem je popsat chování tónů co nejméně ovlivněných okolními proměnnými. Výsledky této analýzy by měly být srovnatelné s již publikovanými studiemi na stejné téma. V oddíle 4.2. je na data nahlédnuto z kvantitativní perspektivy a výsledky této analýzy by měly věrněji reflektovat jazykovou realitu. Oddíl 4.3. představuje percepční test, jehož účelem je zmapovat schopnost rozlišování tónů mimo přirozený kontext. Výsledky analýz indikují zásadní rozdíly mezi konturami tónů hanojského a saigonského dialektu....The chief objective of this dissertation is the description of tone realization differences in Hanoian and Saigonese dialects based on a representative sample of recorded material, with special focus on read monologue and semi-spontaneous conversational speech. The research discusses mainly issues of tone production but it is complemented by a section on tone perception in form of a perception test. The theoretical background in Section 2.1. describes the topic of tonality and tonal languages in general. Section 2.2. is devoted to the description of the Vietnamese language and attention is specifically paid to tonal inventories of both researched dialects. Tonogenesis is mentioned on a general level as well as in the Vietnamese language in particular. Chapter 3 introduces the research methodology, namely the speaker selection, speech material preparation and recording, data extraction and preparation for the analyses and the perception test. Chapter 4 is divided into three sections. Section 4.1. speaks about tone realizations in isolation and carefully preselected context. Its goal is to investigate the behaviour of tonal contours influenced by as few variables as possible. The results should be comparable to the findings of previously conducted studies. Section 4.2. strives to assess data from a...Institute of PhoneticsFonetický ústavFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Negation in Low Katu

In Low Katu (or Western Katu; ISO 639-3: kuf) there are five common words used to mark negation: kah, məʔ, jɨəʔ, ˀɛh and ˀɔːʔ. This variety in negators hints at differential syntactic or semantic uses. In this paper I illustrate the syntactic properties of these negators and, where possible, describe what semantic or pragmatic backgrounds they might have. I do this by comparing negative sentences from Katu folk tales and stories and investigating how they behave with respect to the typology of negation. Understanding the negation of Low Katu can unveil aspects on the scarcely researched syntactic behavior of this language, for instance on the position of verbs. This paper is intended to be the groundwork for further, more corpus-based research on negation or other grammatical aspects of Low Katu