Transphonologization of voicing in Chru:Studies in production and perception

Chru, a Chamic language of south-central Vietnam, has been described as combining contrastive obstruent voicing with incipient registral properties (Fuller, 1977). A production study reveals that obstruent voicing has already become optional and that the voicing contrast has been transphonologized into a register contrast based primarily on vowel height (F1). An identification study shows that perception roughly matches production in that F1 is the main perceptual cue associated with the contrast. Structured variation in production suggests a sound change still in progress: While younger speakers largely rely on vowel height to produce the register contrast, older male speakers maintain a variety of secondary properties, including optional closure voicing. Our results shed light on the initial stages of register formation and challenge the claim that register languages must go through a stage in which breathiness or aspiration is the primary contrastive property (Haudricourt, 1965; Wayland & Jongman, 2002; Thurgood, 2002). This article also complements several recent studies about the transphonologization of voicing in typologically diverse languages (Svantesson & House, 2006; Howe, 2017; Coetzee, Beddor, Shedden, Styler, & Wissing, 2018)

How may the basal ganglia contribute to auditory categorization and speech perception?

Listeners must accomplish two complementary perceptual feats in extracting a message from speech. They must discriminate linguistically-relevant acoustic variability and generalize across irrelevant variability. Said another way, they must categorize speech. Since the mapping of acoustic variability is language-specific, these categories must be learned from experience. Thus, understanding how, in general, the auditory system acquires and represents categories can inform us about the toolbox of mechanisms available to speech perception. This perspective invites consideration of findings from cognitive neuroscience literatures outside of the speech domain as a means of constraining models of speech perception. Although neurobiological models of speech perception have mainly focused on cerebral cortex, research outside the speech domain is consistent with the possibility of significant subcortical contributions in category learning. Here, we review the functional role of one such structure, the basal ganglia. We examine research from animal electrophysiology, human neuroimaging, and behavior to consider characteristics of basal ganglia processing that may be advantageous for speech category learning. We also present emerging evidence for a direct role for basal ganglia in learning auditory categories in a complex, naturalistic task intended to model the incidental manner in which speech categories are acquired. To conclude, we highlight new research questions that arise in incorporating the broader neuroscience research literature in modeling speech perception, and suggest how understanding contributions of the basal ganglia can inform attempts to optimize training protocols for learning non-native speech categories in adulthood

Effects of variance and input distribution on the training of L2 learners' tone categorization

Recent psycholinguistic findings showed that (a) a multi-modal phonetic training paradigm that encodes visual, interactive information is more effective in training L2 learners' perception of novel categories, (b) decreasing the acoustic variance of a phonetic dimension allows the learners to more effectively shift the perceptual weight towards this dimension, and (c) using an implicit word learning task in which the words are contrasted with different lexical tones improves naïve listeners' categorization of Mandarin Chinese tones. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of video game training, variance manipulation and high variability training in the context of implicit word learning, in which American English speakers without any tone language experience learn four Mandarin Chinese tones by playing a video game. A video game was created in which each of four different animals is associated with a Chinese tone. The task for the participants is to select each animal's favorite food to feed it. At the beginning of the game, each animal is clearly visible. As the game progresses, the images of the animals become more and more vague and eventually visually indistinguishable. However, the four Chinese tones associated with the animals are played all through the game. Thus, the participants need to depend on the auditory information in order to clear the difficult levels. In terms of the training stimuli, the tone tokens were manipulated to have a greater variance on the pitch height dimension, but a smaller variance on the pitch direction dimension, in order to shift the English listeners' perception to pitch direction, a dimension that native Chinese listeners crucially rely on. A variety of pretests and posttests were used to investigate both the English speakers' perception of the tones and their weighting of the acoustic dimensions. These training stimuli were compared to other types of training stimuli used in the literature, such as the high variability natural stimuli and tones embedded in non-minimal pairs. A group of native English speakers was used as the control group without any tone input. A native control group was also included. The video game training for each speaker consisted of four 30-minute sessions on four different days, and 60 participants (including both the non-native control and native control group) participated in the experiments. The crucial findings in the study include (1) all naïve listeners in the training condition successfully associated lexical tones with different animals without any explicit feedback after only 2 hours of training; (2) both the resynthesized stimuli with smaller variance on pitch direction and the multi-talker stimuli allowed native English speakers to shift their cue-weighting toward pitch direction and the multi-talker stimuli were more robust in terms of shifting the cue-weighting despite their more heterogeneous distribution in the acoustic space; (3) the multi-talker training allowed for better generalization as the trainees in multi-talker training identified the tones produced by new talkers better than trainees in other conditions; (4) there was a main effect of tone on tone identification and the falling tone was the most challenging one; (5) there is a correlation between cue-weighting and the tone discrimination performance before and after the training; (6) due to individual variability, individuals differed in terms of the amount of tone input they received during the video game training and the number of tone tokens was a significant predictor for the sensitivity to tones calculated as d'. Overall, the study showed an effect of talker variability and variances of multidimensional acoustic space on English speakers' cue-weighting for tone perception and their tone categorization

Struggling for Structure: cognitive origins of grammatical diversity and their implications for the Human Faculty of Language

There are between 5,000 and 8,000 distinct living languages spoken in the world today that are characterized by both exceptional diversity as well as significant similarities. Many researchers believe that at least part of this ability to communicate with language arises from a uniquely human Faculty of Language (c.f. Hauser, Chomsky, & Fitch, 2002; Pinker & Jackendoff, 2005)

Osvojování španělských vokálů českými mluvčími

(Čeština) Předkládaná disertační práce zkoumá samohláskový systém tzv. české španělštiny, formy vzniklé osvojováním španělštiny v roli třetího jazyka. Zaměřuje se na tři její aspekty: vokalická kvalita, kvantita a vokalické sekvence mezi slovy. V těchto oblastech funguje španělština a čeština odlišně a první předpoklady naznačují, že v produkci české španělštiny má čeština jasnou převahu. V oblasti vokalické kvality lze v rámci Mechanismu ekvivalence (Flege 1995, 1999, 2003) předvídat ztotožnění kategorií vokalických segmentů španělštiny s těmi českými (Čechová 2013, 2014); vokalická kvantita poskytuje méně jasný obraz, nicméně oddělení délky od přízvuku v češtině (Volín 2010) může vést k zajímavým realizacím v české podobě jazyka, který distinktivní délku nezná a trvání hlásek spíše propojuje s přízvukem (RAE 2011). U třetího aspektu, vokalických sekvencích na švu slov, se obecně předpokládá příklon ke glotalizaci (Skarnitzl et al. 2016), zatímco španělština propojuje sousední samohlásky mezi slovy v rámci, mj. i v rámci antihiátové tendence (RAE 2011). Výzkumem akustických parametrů vzorku 22 českých univerzitních studentů španělštiny (C1-C2) byly uvedené předpoklady částečně potvrzeny, ovšem v určitých aspektech byly odhaleny signifikantní rozdíly mezi konsonantickými kontexty, velká...(English) The dissertation explores the vowel system of Czech L3 Spanish, focusing on three facets of its architecture: vowel quality (following SLM by Flege 1995, 1999, 2003), vowel quantity and vocalic sequences between words. Preliminary studies (Čechová 2013, 2014) suggest that there might be some evidence for the Mechanism of Equivalence in Czech L3 Spanish, since the vowel spaces of both languages consist of the same categories, with different phonetic realizations. Hence, the more similar the sounds are, the harder it is to capture the relevant difference, necessary to attain native-like pronunciation. Vowel quantity, being traditionally associated with the phonological feature of length in Czech (Palková 1994), is not present in Spanish, and compensating for that property, some Czech speakers tend to pronounce accented syllables with extraordinarily longer durations. Finally, vowel sequences in Spanish are usually subjetct to resyllabification, whereas Czech prefers glottalization to keep morphemes of words separated. These predictions were tested in 22 university Czech students with advanced level of Spanish (C1-C1). Subsequent analysis revealed consistent inclination towards L1 in terms of vowel quality, in less extent in vowel quantity, and although the prevalecent strategy for majority...Institute of Romance StudiesÚstav románských studiíFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Speech production and perception in adult Arabic learners of English: A comparative study of the role of production and perception training in the acquisition of British English vowels

This thesis presents the results of four studies that investigated the perception and production of English by Saudi Arabic learners. Additionally, the thesis sought to investigate the role of different types of training, production- or perception-based, in learning, with the aim of understanding how training in different domains contributes to second language acquisition. A preliminary study (Study 1) investigated problematic phonemic contrasts for Arabic speakers, confirming that accuracy in perception and production depends on the similarity between L1 and L2 phonemes. Study 2 investigated the specificity of second language phonetic training by comparing the effect of three training programmes on the acquisition of British English vowels. Saudi Arabic learners were randomly assigned to one of three training programmes; Production Training (PT), High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT), and a Hybrid Training Program (HTP). They completed a battery of tests before and after training. All participants improved after training, but improvements were largely domain-specific; production training led to improvements in production but not perception, whilst perception training led to improvements in perception but not production. Participants in the HTP showed improvements in both production and perception, indicating that only a small amount of training in production appears to be necessary to effect changes in production. Additionally, improvement on particular tasks appeared to be linked to initial L2 proficiency, and learning in perception and production was retained (Study 3) and production training appeared to be more beneficial for participants who were trained in a non-immersion setting (Study 4). In brief, the results suggest that L2 learners improve in both perception and production if training explicitly trains these domains. Production training was beneficial not only for L2 learners in an L2-speaking country, but also in non-immersion settings. Overall, these results suggest that a hybrid training programme would be most beneficial for L2 learners