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

Nuclear Intonation in Swedish : Evidence from Experimental-Phonetic Studies and a Comparison with German

This thesis investigates Swedish intonation patterns and their interaction with word accent realisation in various pragmatic conditions, using German as a reference language. The point of departure is the wide-spread assumption that Swedish, as a language with a tonal word accent distinction, has a considerably smaller repertoire of nuclear intonation contours than German and other so-called intonation languages. In particular, whereas only one sentence accent has been modelled for Swedish so far (a high focal accent H-), a multiple paradigmatic contrast of sentence accents (e.g. H*, L*+H, H+L*) has been assumed for German. It is hypothesised, however, that the contemporary models of German and Swedish intonation are based on different research traditions, and hence, that the intonation of the two languages might be more similar than commonly assumed. Three production studies, based on recordings from 21 speakers, and one perception (reaction time) experiment involving 20 listeners are reported. In the first two production studies, the intonation of test phrases elicited in German and Swedish speakers in a variety of pragmatic conditions is compared by analysing F0 and to some degree duration patterns. The most central pragmatic distinction treated in this thesis involves the focussing of new vs. given information, the latter case occurring in confirmations. The main result of these studies is that Swedish and German seem to have a similar inventory of nuclear intonation patterns, which have basically the same pragmatic functions in the two languages. For instance, an "early fall", a pattern involving a fall onto a low-pitched stressed vowel, can signal a confirmation in both German and Swedish. This result suggests that, in addition to the well-established high accent (H-), Swedish also has a paradigmatic choice of sentence accents, involving a falling accent (H+L-). The third production study and the reaction time experiment concentrate on the "early fall" found in confirmations and investigate the interaction of word accent and intonation. The results show that the Swedish word accent distinction can be neutralised in connection with the "early fall", a situation which may be related to the perceptual enhancement of the intonational contrast between a high (H-) and a falling (H+L-) sentence accent

Production and Perception of Swedish Word Accents by Somali L1 Speakers

In this thesis, the production and perception of Swedish word accents by Somali L1 speakers is investigated. The Feature hypothesis, stating that it is easier to acquire a phonological feature in an L2 if the same phonological feature is used in the L1 will be the framework used. Somali is a language that also makes us of word accents. Therefore, the two languages are placed in the same level of the Tonal prominence hierarchy and the L2 acquisition of Swedish word accents by Somali L1 speakers is suitable to test. The production is tested by analyzing read speech, with elicited target words in focal position with either accent 1 or accent 2. The perception is tested with a discrimination test of the two word accents, and two different Swedish varieties are used: Central Swedish and South Swedish. Two groups are tested. One consists of Somali L1 speakers with Swedish L2 and one consists of speakers with both Somali and Swedish L1. The results show that the L2 group does make the distinction between A1 and A2 in the production test, but the result for the 2L1 group is less clear and can be interpreted as that they did not make use of the Swedish word accents. In the perception test, none of the two groups performed better than chance and had significantly lower scores than a Swedish L1 control group. The findings in this thesis confirm the Feature hypothesis in the production part, but contradict it in the perception part

New Approach to Teaching Japanese Pronunciation in the Digital Era - Challenges and Practices

Pronunciation has been a black hole in the L2 Japanese classroom on account of a lack of class time, teacher\u2019s confidence, and consciousness of the need to teach pronunciation, among other reasons. The absence of pronunciation instruction is reported to result in fossilized pronunciation errors, communication problems, and learner frustration. With an intention of making a contribution to improve such circumstances, this paper aims at three goals. First, it discusses the importance, necessity, and e ectiveness of teaching prosodic aspects of Japanese pronunciation from an early stage in acquisition. Second, it shows that Japanese prosody is challenging because of its typological rareness, regardless of the L1 backgrounds of learners. Third and finally, it introduces a new approach to teaching L2 pronunciation with the goal of developing L2 comprehensibility by focusing on essential prosodic features, which is followed by discussions on key issues concerning how to implement the new approach both inside and outside the classroom in the digital era

Language-specificity in the perception of continuation intonation

This paper addressed the question of how British English, German and Dutch listeners differ in their perception of continuation intonation both at the phonological level (Experiment 1) and at the level of phonetic implementation (Experiment 2). In Experiment 1, preference scores of pitch contours to signal continuation at the clause-boundary were obtained from these listener groups. It was found that among contours with H%, British English listeners had a strong preference for H*L H%, as predicted. Unexpectedly, British English listeners rated H* H% noticeably more favourably than L*H H%; Dutch listeners largely rated H* H% more favourably than H*L H% and L*H H%; German listeners rated these contours similarly and seemed to have a slight preference for H*L H%. In Experiment 2, the degree to which a final rise was perceived to express continuation was established for each listener group in a made-up language. It was found that although all listener groups associated a higher end pitch with a higher degree of continuation likelihood, the perceived meaning difference for a given interval of end pitch heights varied with the contour shape of the utterance final syllable. When it was comparable to H* H%, British English and Dutch listeners perceived a larger meaning difference than German listeners; when it was comparable to H*L H%, British English listeners perceived a larger difference than German and Dutch listeners. This shows that language-specificity in continuation intonation at the phonological level affects the perception of continuation intonation at the phonetic level

Melodické charakteristiky ukrajinské češtiny

This study focused on the characteristics of speech melody of Czech as spoken by native speakers of Ukrainian. Samples of read-out speech were obtained from 18 Ukrainian respondents. A number of long-term frequency measures was extracted in order to compare the Ukrainian respondents with a sample of native Czech speakers. Other possible factors such as age, gender, exposure and motivation to learn the target language were also investigated. Ukrainian female speakers reached lower values of pitch level measures relative to Czech female speakers. At the same time, Ukrainian male participants reached higher values for the same measures compared to Czech male speakers. A possible explanation of the disparity between the native Czech and Ukrainian speakers lies in different cultural stereotypes in the two language communities. Ukrainian speakers demonstrated a narrower pitch span, suggesting uncertainty or anxiety associated with speaking a foreign language. Of the sociolinguistic parameters, moderate correlations with the investigated frequency measures were found for the attitude towards the majority population and the length of residence in the target language area. The analysis of individual utterances has revealed a high level of agreement between the two language groups, indicating that the...Tato práce se zabývá charakteristikami řečové melodie češtiny rodilých mluvčích ukrajinštiny. Pořídili jsme záznamy čtené řeči 18 ukrajinských respondentů. Pro srovnání ukrajinské skupiny se vzorkem rodilých mluvčích češtiny jsme extrahovali řadu dlouhodobých frekvenčních parametrů. Kromě jazyka byly zkoumany i další možné faktory, jako například věk, pohlaví, míra vystavení cílovému jazyku a míra motivace k jeho osvojení. Ukrajinské respondentky dosáhly nižších hodnot výšky tónu než rodilé mluvčí češtiny. Naopak, ukrajinští muži dosáhly vyšších hodnot stejných parametrů ve srovnání s českými respondenty. Možné vysvětlení rozdílů mezi skupinami rodilých mluvčích češtiny a ukrajinštiny spočívá v rozdílných kulturních stereotypech v příslušných jazykových komunitách. Rodilí mluvčí ukrajinštiny vykázali úžší intonační rozpětí, což naznačuje nejistotu nebo úzkost spojenou s mluvením v cizím jazyce. Mezi zkoumanými frekvenčním parametry a sociolingvistickými parametry, jako například postoj k většinové populaci a délka ukázala velkou míru shody mezi dvěma jazykovými skupinami, což naznačuje, že jazykový obsah promluv významně ovlivňuje vybrané frekvenční parametry. Klíčova slova prozodie, řečová melodie, základní hlasivková přízvuk,Fonetický ústavInstitute of PhoneticsFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Souhláskové a samohláskové rozdíly v české angličtině s potlačenou a zvýrazněnou cizostí

Cílem této práce je identifikovat konkrétní rysy českého přízvuku v angličtině, které jsou nejprominentnější v percepci českého posluchače a které mohou působit rušivě v komunikační situaci. Úvodní kapitola si klade za cíl přiblížit čtenáři problematiku cizineckého přízvuku, stručně shrnuje současný stav výzkumu v této oblasti a představuje řadu empirických studií. Ve výzkumné části práce jsou analyzovány jednotlivé realizace vybraných hlásek /θ, ð, ŋ, r, w, æ, ɜː/ a následná interpretace výsledků přináší odpovídající závěry. Analyzováno bylo celkem 3568 hláskových realizací od 9 mužských a 19 ženských mluvčích. Od každého z respondentů byly pořízeny dvě nahrávky čteného textu, přičemž první byla v britském modu a ve druhé se mluvčí snažil o napodobení českého cizineckého přízvuku. Každá z 3568 realizací byla samostatně ohodnocena a poté byly srovnány oba mody pro každého mluvčího. Z výsledků vyplývá, že nejčastějším ukazatelem českého přízvuku bylo v této studii /r/, zatímco /θ, ð, ŋ/ byly často hodnoceny stejně v obou modech. Před ustanovením konečných závěrů je však potřeba vzít v úvahu další faktory, kterými jsou například jazykové dovednosti mluvčích anebo počty realizací jednotlivých hlásek. Klíčová slova souhláska, samohláska, cizinecký přízvuk, česká angličtinaThe objective of this thesis is to identify those features of the Czech accent in English that are the most salient in the perception of the Czech listener and that may disturb the communication process. The purpose of the introductory chapter is to familiarize the reader with the subject of the foreign accent, to provide a brief summary of the current state of research and to introduce a series of empirical studies. The research part of the thesis analyzes the individual realizations of the selected speech sounds /θ, ð, ŋ, r, w, æ, ɜː/ and ventures to draw meaningful conclusions from the results. The material analyzed consists of a total of 3568 speech sound tokens, recorded by 9 male and 19 female speakers. Each respondent produced two recordings, one in the British standard mode and another where the speaker imitated the Czech foreign accent. The 3568 tokens were individually rated and the two modes were then compared for each speaker. The results showed /r/ to be favoured by the largest number of speakers as an indicator of the Czech accent, while /θ, ð, ŋ/ often had the same rating in both modes. However, additional factors such as speaker proficiency and number of tokens from individual speech sounds must be taken into consideration before any final conclusions can be drawn from the raw data....Institute of PhoneticsFonetický ústavFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art