812 research outputs found

    An exploration of the rhythm of Malay

    Get PDF
    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

    The use and teaching of discourse markers in Hong Kong: students' production and teachers' perspectives

    Get PDF
    The present study attempts to investigate discourse markers from a functional and attitudinal perspective. Based on the pedagogical sub-corpus from CANCODE and the audio-recordings of class discussion of 49 secondary pupils in Hong Kong, Part I explores the roles discourse markers play in spoken discourse on a contextual basis and compares the different use of discourse markers by British and Hong Kong speakers of English using quantitative and qualitative methods. Discourse markers are found to serve as useful contextual coordinates to structure and organise speech on interpersonal (marking shared knowledge, attitudes and responses), referential (indicating textual relationships such as cause, contrast, coordination, digression, consequence, etc. ), structural (summarising opinions, marking sequence, opening and closing of topics, transition and continuation of topics) and cognitive (denoting hesitation and thinking process, marking reformulation, self- correction or elaboration, and assessing the listener's knowledge about the utterances) realms, bearing a probabilistic relationship with the various role(s) on a multifunctional dimension in pedagogic discourse. Functionally, non-native speakers are found to display a highly restricted use of discourse markers, especially those interactive ones (e.g. initial and, yeah, you know, ), whereas native speakers tend to use discourse markers more for a variety of pragmatic functions. Part II contains a questionnaire survey (N=132) and an interview study (N=3) of Hong Kong teachers. Reliability test and factor analysis were conducted In the quantitative part. The results indicate a very positive perception of the pragmatic and pedagogic value of discourse markers by the teachers where students at intermediate-advanced level are challenged to acquire them for both receptive and productive purposes. The findings also reveal teachers' preference to conform to an exonormative speaking model and their less favourable attitude towards the Hong Kong variety. They are not certain regarding the representation of discourse markers in the existing teaching materials and their actual teaching. The study has implications for second language teaching in five areas: (1) introducing discourse markers as a communication strategy; (2) developing learners' linguistic awareness of discourse markers as an instructional strategy; (3) utilising corpus-based research for materials development; (4) equipping teachers with a World English perspective; and (5) creating space for the development of Hong Kong English to prepare learners to communicate in a dynamic linguistic world

    Phonological features of Hong Kong English : patterns of variation and effects on local acceptability

    Full text link
    The changing dynamics of international communication in English have led to a intense questioning of the relevance of native-speaker pronunciation models in language teaching and testing. In addition, the World Englishes approach to local varieties has increased their level of recognition. Both of these developments suggest that English pronunciation models need to be reviewed, and Hong Kong represents an interesting case study. Although it has been claimed that Hong Kong English is at the ‘nativization’ stage, the existence of exonormative attitudes towards English is also well known. Two important questions arise from this inherent tension, neither of which has been intensively addressed in previous studies. Firstly, although many of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation have been described, patterns of inter-speaker variation have not been investigated in detail. Secondly, the attitudes of Hong Kong English users towards the phonological features of their own variety have not been studied in ways that take account of such variation. This dissertation addresses both of these questions by being features-based in approach and using local listeners to evaluate accent samples. After an initial review of the features of Hong Kong English pronunciation, a preliminary study surveys the occurrence of consonantal phonological features within a mini-corpus of speech samples taken from local television programmes. Its findings are presented in the form of an implicational scale, which not only shows the relative frequencies with which different features occurred, but also indicates the existence of implicational patterns of co-occurrence. In the main study, twelve authentic accent samples (eleven Hong Kong speakers and one British speaker) were presented to 52 first-year undergraduate students for evaluation as to their acceptability, defined here as acceptability for pedagogical purposes. Multivariate statistical analysis discovered firstly that phonological ‘errors’, as marked by the student listeners, were the most important measured factor in determining the acceptability scores, and secondly that only certain types of ‘error’ or ‘feature’ had significant effects. These features were either related to L1 transfer or involved other salient phenomena such as idiosyncratic alterations to syllable structure. The explanatory part of the study includes acceptability as one of the factors determining feature persistence, in an ‘ecological’ or ‘evolutionary’ model of L2 phonology acquisition and development that combines the findings of the preliminary and main studies. Among the other factors that determine feature persistence or disappearance, salience, intelligibility and markedness are invoked as important influences. The acceptability data also has pedagogical implications, in that local listeners did not give the British accent the highest acceptability rating. This contrasts with the findings of previous studies regarding the pedagogical acceptability of the Hong Kong English accent. However, the features-based approach indicates that only certain types of local accent were acceptable to these listeners, and that these accents were more, rather than less, ‘native-like’. In various ways, the study contributes to an understanding of accent variation and acceptability within a new variety of English

    Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

    Get PDF
    Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody

    Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

    Get PDF
    Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody

    Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

    Get PDF
    Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody

    The use and teaching of discourse markers in Hong Kong: students' production and teachers' perspectives

    Get PDF
    The present study attempts to investigate discourse markers from a functional and attitudinal perspective. Based on the pedagogical sub-corpus from CANCODE and the audio-recordings of class discussion of 49 secondary pupils in Hong Kong, Part I explores the roles discourse markers play in spoken discourse on a contextual basis and compares the different use of discourse markers by British and Hong Kong speakers of English using quantitative and qualitative methods. Discourse markers are found to serve as useful contextual coordinates to structure and organise speech on interpersonal (marking shared knowledge, attitudes and responses), referential (indicating textual relationships such as cause, contrast, coordination, digression, consequence, etc. ), structural (summarising opinions, marking sequence, opening and closing of topics, transition and continuation of topics) and cognitive (denoting hesitation and thinking process, marking reformulation, self- correction or elaboration, and assessing the listener's knowledge about the utterances) realms, bearing a probabilistic relationship with the various role(s) on a multifunctional dimension in pedagogic discourse. Functionally, non-native speakers are found to display a highly restricted use of discourse markers, especially those interactive ones (e.g. initial and, yeah, you know, ), whereas native speakers tend to use discourse markers more for a variety of pragmatic functions. Part II contains a questionnaire survey (N=132) and an interview study (N=3) of Hong Kong teachers. Reliability test and factor analysis were conducted In the quantitative part. The results indicate a very positive perception of the pragmatic and pedagogic value of discourse markers by the teachers where students at intermediate-advanced level are challenged to acquire them for both receptive and productive purposes. The findings also reveal teachers' preference to conform to an exonormative speaking model and their less favourable attitude towards the Hong Kong variety. They are not certain regarding the representation of discourse markers in the existing teaching materials and their actual teaching. The study has implications for second language teaching in five areas: (1) introducing discourse markers as a communication strategy; (2) developing learners' linguistic awareness of discourse markers as an instructional strategy; (3) utilising corpus-based research for materials development; (4) equipping teachers with a World English perspective; and (5) creating space for the development of Hong Kong English to prepare learners to communicate in a dynamic linguistic world

    A spoken Chinese corpus : development, description, and application in L2 studies : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

    Get PDF
    This thesis introduces a corpus of present-day spoken Chinese, which contains over 440,000 words of orthographically transcribed interactions. The corpus is made up of an L1 corpus and an L2 corpus. It includes data gathered in informal contexts in 2018, and is, to date, the first Chinese corpus resource of its kind investigating non-test/task-oriented dialogical interaction of L2 Chinese. The main part of the thesis is devoted to a detailed account of the compilation of the spoken Chinese corpus, including its design, the data collection, and transcription. In doing this, this study attempts to answer the question: what are the key considerations in building a spoken Chinese corpus of informal interaction, especially in building a spoken L2 corpus of L1–L2 interaction? Then, this thesis compares the L1 corpus and the L2 corpus before using them to carry out corpus studies. Differences between and within the two subcorpora are discussed in some detail. This corpus comparison is essential to any L1–L2 comparative studies conducted on the basis of the spoken Chinese corpus, and it addresses the question: to what extent is the L1 corpus comparable to the L2 corpus? Finally, this thesis demonstrates the research potential of the spoken Chinese corpus, by presenting an analysis of the L2 use of the discourse marker 就是 jiushi in comparison with the L1 use. Analysis considers mainly the contribution就是 jiushi makes as a reformulation marker to utterance interpretation within the relevance theoretic framework. To do this, it seeks to answer the question: what are the features that characterise the L2 use of the marker 就是 jiushi in informal speech? The results of this study make several useful contributions to the academic community. First of all, the spoken Chinese corpus is available to the academic community through the website, so it is expected the corpus itself will be of use to researchers, Chinese teachers, and students who are interested in spoken Chinese. In addition to the obtainable data, this thesis presents transparent accounts of each step of the compilation of both the L1 and L2 corpora. As a result, decisions and strategies taken with regard to the procedures of spoken corpus design and construction can provide some valuable suggestions to researchers who want to build their own spoken Chinese corpora. Finally, the findings of the comparative analysis of the L2 use of the marker 就是 jiushi will contribute to research on the teaching and learning of interactive spoken Chinese

    Methods in prosody

    Get PDF
    This book presents a collection of pioneering papers reflecting current methods in prosody research with a focus on Romance languages. The rapid expansion of the field of prosody research in the last decades has given rise to a proliferation of methods that has left little room for the critical assessment of these methods. The aim of this volume is to bridge this gap by embracing original contributions, in which experts in the field assess, reflect, and discuss different methods of data gathering and analysis. The book might thus be of interest to scholars and established researchers as well as to students and young academics who wish to explore the topic of prosody, an expanding and promising area of study
    corecore