13 research outputs found
Dialectal phonology constrains the phonetics of prominence
Accentual prominence has well-documented effects on various phonetic properties, including timing, vowel quality, amplitude, and pitch. These cues can exist in trading relationships and can differ in magnitude in different languages. Less is understood about how phonetic cues to accentuation surface under different phonological constraints, such as those posed by segmental phonology, aspects of the prosodic hierarchy, and intonational phonology. Dialectal comparisons offer a valuable window on these issues, because dialects of a language share basic aspects of structure and function, but can differ in key segmental and suprasegmental constraints which may affect the cues that realise accentual prominence. We compared the realisation of trochaic words (e.g. cheesy, picky) in accented/unaccented and phrase-final/non-final positions in two dialects of British English, Standard Southern British English, and Standard Scottish English as spoken in Glasgow. We found generally shallower prominence gradients for Glasgow than SSBE with respect to intensity and duration, and very little evidence of accentual lengthening of vowels in Glasgow, compared to robust effects in SSBE. In contrast, phrase-finality had similar effects across the two dialects. The differences observed illustrate how the expression of accentual prominence reflects and reveals the different segmental and intonational systems that operate within dialects of the same language
Designing a Bilingual Speech Corpus for French and German Language Learners: a Two-Step Process
International audienceWe present the design of a corpus of native and non-native speech for the language pair French-German, with a special emphasis on phonetic and prosodic aspects. To our knowledge there is no suitable corpus, in terms of size and coverage, currently available for the target language pair. To select the target L1-L2 interference phenomena we prepare a small preliminary corpus (corpus1), which is analyzed for coverage and cross-checked jointly by French and German experts. Based on this analysis, target phenomena on the phonetic and phonological level are selected on the basis of the expected degree of deviation from the native performance and the frequency of occurrence. 14 speakers performed both L2 (either French or German) and L1 material (either German or French). This allowed us to test, recordings duration, recordings material, the performance of our automatic aligner software. Then, we built corpus2 taking into account what we learned about corpus1. The aims are the same but we adapted speech material to avoid too long recording sessions. 100 speakers will be recorded. The corpus (corpus1 and corpus2) will be prepared as a searchable database, available for the scientific community after completion of the project
On the role of articulatory prosodies in German message decoding
A theoretical framework for speech reduction is outlined in which 'coarticulation' and 'articulatory control' operate on sequences of 'opening-closing gestures' in linguistic and communicative settings, leading to suprasegmental properties - 'articulatory prosodies' - in the acoustic output. In linking this gestalt perspective in speech production to the role of phonetic detail in speech understanding, this paper reports on perception experiments that test listeners' reactions to varying extension of an 'articulatory prosody of palatality' in message identification. The point of departure for the experimental design was the German utterance ich kann Ihnen das ja mal sagen 'I can mention this to you' from the Kiel Corpus of Spontaneous Speech, which contains the palatalized stretch [kÌ(h)ΔÌn(j)n(j)És] for the sequence of function words /kan i.n(kÉ)n das/ kann Ihnen das. The utterance also makes sense without the personal pronoun Ihnen. Systematic experimental variation has shown that the extent of palatality has a highly significant influence on the decoding of Ihnen and that the effect of nasal consonant duration depends on the extension of palatality. These results are discussed in a plea to base future speech perception research on a paradigm that makes the traditional segment-prosody divide more permeable, and moves away from the generally practised phoneme orientation
The perception of lexical stress in German: effects of segmental duration and vowel quality in different prosodic patterns
Several decades of research, focusing on English, Dutch and German, have set up a hierarchy of acoustic properties for cueing lexical stress. It attributes the strongest cue to criterial-level f0 change, followed by duration, but low weight to energy and to stressed-vowel spectra. This paper re-examines the established view with new data from German. In the natural productions of the German word pair Kaffee 'coffee' - Café 'locality' (with initial vs. final stress in a North German pronunciation), vowel duration was manipulated in a complementary fashion across the two syllables in five steps, spanning the continuum from initial to final stress on each word. The two base words provided different vowel qualities as the second variable, the intervocalic fricative was varied in two values, long and short, taken from Café and Kaffee, and the generated test words were inserted in a low f0 tail and in a high f0 hat-pattern plateau, which both eliminated f0 change as a cue to lexical stress. The sentence stimuli were judged in two listening experiments by 16 listeners in each as to whether the first or the second syllable of the test word was stressed. The results show highly significant effects of vowel duration, vowel quality and fricative duration. The combined vowel-quality and fricative variable can outweigh vowel duration as a cue to lexical stress. The effect of the prosodic frame is only marginal, especially related to a rhythmic factor. The paper concludes that there is no general hierarchy with a fixed ranking of the variables traditionally adduced to signal lexical stress. Every prosodic embedding of segmental sequences defines the hierarchy afresh
Constitution d'un Corpus de Français Langue EtrangÚre destiné aux Apprenants Allemands
International audienceLa plupart des corpus en langue se focalisent sur les phĂ©nomĂšnes linguistiques Ă©crits et concernent lâanglais (voir le site web : « Learner corpora around the world » de lâUniversitĂ© de Louvain - Belgique). La recherche phonĂ©tique sur lâacquisition dâune L2 est gĂ©nĂ©ralement orientĂ©e vers lâĂ©tude des phĂ©nomĂšnes segmentaux et la plupart des Ă©tudes ont Ă©galement lâanglais comme langue cible. Les modĂšles de parole en L2 actuels - voir par exemple Speech Learning Model (Flege, 1995) ou Bestâs Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1995) â nĂ©gligent bien souvent les aspects prosodiques. Notre Ă©tude concerne le français en tant que langue seconde et sâinscrit dans un projet plus vaste menĂ© en partenariat avec une universitĂ© allemande, dont lâun des buts est le dĂ©veloppement de lâapprentissage des langues par ordinateur. (Projet ANR-DFG â Agence Nationale de la Recherche et Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft attribuĂ© Ă lâĂ©quipe Parole du LORIA UMR 7503, Nancy â France et Ă lâEquipe de Linguistique Computationnelle et de PhonĂ©tique FR 4.7 de lâUniversitĂ© de la Sarre Sarrebruck â Allemagne) dans lequel le français et lâallemand sont des langues cibles. Pour la paire allemand-français, peu de corpus parallĂšles sont disponibles. Nous prĂ©sentons ici lâĂ©laboration dâun corpus de productions orales de locuteurs natifs et non natifs pour la paire allemand-français. Notre corpus entend mettre au jour les dĂ©viations phonĂ©tiques et phonologiques que les locuteurs allemands produisent lorsquâils apprennent le français. Ce travail sâinsĂšre dans un projet plus global, Ce projet entend Ă©tudier les difficultĂ©s que les locuteurs français rencontrent lorsquâils apprennent lâallemand, et rĂ©ciproquement. Aussi, cinquante locuteurs allemands seront recrutĂ©s dans des milieux universitaires et scolaires (niveau lycĂ©e) en Allemagne et cinquante locuteurs français dans les mĂȘmes milieux en France. Il sâagit pour les deux populations de produire dâune part le corpus en langue Ă©trangĂšre (en langue française pour les locuteurs allemands et en langue allemande pour les locuteurs français) mais Ă©galement le corpus en langue maternelle (en allemand pour les allemands et en français pour les français). Les corpus ainsi obtenus devraient nous permettre dâidentifier les difficultĂ©s que les locuteurs allemands ou français rencontrent lorsquâils apprennent le français ou lâallemand. Les donnĂ©es de contrĂŽle sont doubles puisque lâon pourra Ă la fois se rĂ©fĂ©rer aux productions des apprenants dans leur langue maternelle (ici lâallemand), mais Ă©galement Ă celles de locuteurs natifs (ici germanophones). Nous ne prĂ©senterons ici que la constitution du corpus en français
Why is prosody in speech-language pathology so difficult?
An important question for speech-language pathologists is how best to define and characterize atypical prosody, with the eventual aim of designing effective intervention for it. With a view to investigating why prosodic atypicality should be hard to define and what considerations a speech-language pathologist should keep in mind, this paper begins by setting out some established functions of prosody and the forms that convey them, and goes on to review the neurological bases of prosodic disorder and some of the conditions in which prosodic disorder is known to occur. Factors in the perception of prosodic disorder are discussed, including the relationship between prosody and other aspects of communication, to identify the problems of distinguishing between prosody and interacting factors. The relationship between phonological prosodic categories and disordered prosody is considered, i.e., the problems of assigning disordered prosody to these categories for clinicians. Current methods of assessment, transcription and approaches to treatment are briefly considered, and an evaluation is made of how much progress has been made towards answering the initial question.casl11pub1162pub
IdĆzĂtĂ©si mintĂĄzatok a magyar beszĂ©dben
A BeszĂ©d â KutatĂĄs â AlkalmazĂĄs sorozat nyolcadik kötetekĂ©nt megjelenĆ mƱ egy olyan
vizsgĂĄlatsorozatot mutat be, amely hiĂĄnypĂłtlĂł a magyar beszĂ©ddel foglalkozĂł szakirodalomban. BĂĄr ĂĄltalĂĄnossĂĄgban a magyar beszĂ©d idĆzĂtĂ©sĂ©vel kapcsolatban sok leĂrĂĄs megjelent
mĂĄr, a beszĂ©dritmus eddigi megközelĂtĂ©sei, az ezzel kapcsolatos korĂĄbbi ĂĄllĂtĂĄsok a ritmus
sajĂĄtossĂĄgainak megragadhatatlansĂĄgĂĄt, a sok vĂĄltozĂłbĂłl adĂłdĂł bizonytalansĂĄgot sugalltĂĄk,
nem vĂ©letlenĂŒl. A jelensĂ©g valĂłban soktĂ©nyezĆs, az adatok gyakran ellentmondĂĄsosak, nehĂ©z fogĂłdzĂłkat talĂĄlni a megfelelĆ mĂłdszertan kialakĂtĂĄsĂĄhoz. KohĂĄri Anna azonban vette
a bĂĄtorsĂĄgot, hogy erre az ingovĂĄnyos talajra lĂ©pjen, Ă©s ĂștjĂĄt siker koronĂĄzta. A nemzetközi
szakirodalom szĂ©les körĂ©nek ismeretĂ©ben Ășj, korĂĄbban a (magyar) beszĂ©dre mĂ©g nem alkalmazott mĂłdszertanokat hasznĂĄlva, kĂŒlönfĂ©le metĂłdusokat ötvözve, szorgalmas, aprĂłlĂ©kos Ă©s
szisztematikus elemzĆ munkĂĄval jutott el azon eredmĂ©nyekig Ă©s megĂĄllapĂtĂĄsokig, amelyek
ebben a kötetben napvilågot låtnak, és amelyek a legkorszerƱbb ismereteinket foglaljåk össze
a (magyar) beszéd ritmusånak vonatkozåsåban.
A kötet bevezetése tananyagként is hasznålható, mivel åttekinti és értelmezi a vonatkozó
tudomånyos fogalomkészletet és terminológiåt, tovåbbå szåmot ad a nemzetközi és a magyar
kutatĂĄsi eredmĂ©nyekrĆl a legutĂłbbi idĆkig bezĂĄrĂłlag. A mĂĄsodik fejezettĆl kezdĆdĆen a szerzĆ sajĂĄt kutatĂĄsĂĄnak lĂ©pĂ©seit ismerjĂŒk meg, az elemzett anyag, az alkalmazott mĂłdszerek Ă©s
az eredmĂ©nyek rĂ©szletes, jĂłl illusztrĂĄlt ĂĄttekintĂ©sĂ©t kapja az olvasĂł. KohĂĄri Anna arra is rĂĄmutat, hogy a kapott eredmĂ©nyek mely terĂŒleteken Ă©s milyen mĂłdon hasznosulhatnak, valamint
kijelöli a tovåbbi kutatåsok lehetséges irånyait is.
Mindezek alapjĂĄn a kötet nemcsak a szƱkebb, fonetikusokbĂłl ĂĄllĂł olvasĂłtĂĄbor Ă©rdeklĆdĂ©sĂ©re tarthat szĂĄmot, hanem olyan terĂŒletek mƱvelĆi is Ă©pĂthetnek a benne foglalt ismeretekre, amelyek a beszĂ©d idĆzĂtĂ©sĂ©hez bĂĄrmilyen mĂłdon kapcsolĂłdnak, a logopĂ©diĂĄtĂłl a beszĂ©dtechnolĂłgiĂĄig. Az a kutatĂĄsmĂłdszertani innovĂĄciĂł, amelyre a kötet pĂ©ldĂĄt ad, azonban mĂ©g
tĂĄvolabbi, a beszĂ©dhez nem vagy kevĂ©sbĂ© kapcsolĂłdĂł, de az idĆzĂtĂ©s mintĂĄzatait magĂĄban
rejtĆ jelensĂ©gek leĂrĂĄsĂĄban is haszonnal kecsegtet. Ăgy a könyv bĂĄtran ajĂĄnlhatĂł a szĂ©lesebb
Ă©rdeklĆdĆ közönsĂ©g szĂĄmĂĄra is