Segmental foreign accent

200 p.Tradicionalmente, el acento extranjero se ha estudiado desde una perspectiva holística, es decir, tratándolo como un todo en lugar de como una serie de rasgos individuales que suceden simultáneamente. Los estudios previos que se han centrado en alguno de estos rasgos individuales lo han hecho generalmente en el plano suprasegmental (Tajima et al., 1997, Munro & Derwing, 2001, Hahn, 2004, etc.). En esta tesis se lleva a cabo un análisis del acento extranjero desde un punto de vista segmental. Considerando que no existe mucha investigación en este campo, nuestro principal objetivo es averiguar si los resultados de estudios holísticos previos pueden ser extrapolados al nivel segmental. Con el objetivo de analizar el nivel segmental en detalle, en esta tesis se presentan técnicas que hacen uso de nuevas tecnologías. Para recabar la mayor información posible, los experimentos perceptivos son llevados a cabo con oyentes con muy distintos perfiles lingüísticos en términos de primera lengua o conocimiento de la segunda lengua y comparados con la literatura existente. Nuestros resultados muestran que algunos efectos importantes relativos a la producción y percepción de segmentos acentuados pueden pasar inadvertidos en un análisis holístico y acreditan la necesidad de continuar realizando estudios de unidades mínimas para comprender en profundidad los efectos del acento extranjero en la comunicación

Segmental foreign accent

200 p.Tradicionalmente, el acento extranjero se ha estudiado desde una perspectiva holística, es decir, tratándolo como un todo en lugar de como una serie de rasgos individuales que suceden simultáneamente. Los estudios previos que se han centrado en alguno de estos rasgos individuales lo han hecho generalmente en el plano suprasegmental (Tajima et al., 1997, Munro & Derwing, 2001, Hahn, 2004, etc.). En esta tesis se lleva a cabo un análisis del acento extranjero desde un punto de vista segmental. Considerando que no existe mucha investigación en este campo, nuestro principal objetivo es averiguar si los resultados de estudios holísticos previos pueden ser extrapolados al nivel segmental. Con el objetivo de analizar el nivel segmental en detalle, en esta tesis se presentan técnicas que hacen uso de nuevas tecnologías. Para recabar la mayor información posible, los experimentos perceptivos son llevados a cabo con oyentes con muy distintos perfiles lingüísticos en términos de primera lengua o conocimiento de la segunda lengua y comparados con la literatura existente. Nuestros resultados muestran que algunos efectos importantes relativos a la producción y percepción de segmentos acentuados pueden pasar inadvertidos en un análisis holístico y acreditan la necesidad de continuar realizando estudios de unidades mínimas para comprender en profundidad los efectos del acento extranjero en la comunicación

Akustické vlastnosti slovního přízvuku ve čtené české anglictině

klíčová slova: česká angličtina, cizí přízvuk, slovní přízvuk, přízvučná slabika, trvání, f0, akustické vlastnosti. Tato studie zkoumá akustické vlastnosti slovního přízvuku v české angličtině. První kapitola vysvětluje problém cizího přízvuku z různých úhlů pohledu. Dále se zabývá různými vlivy na pociťovanou sílu cizího přízvuku. Závěrem je, že chybná realizace slovního přízvuku má jistě negativní vliv jak na hodnocení mluvčího tak na srozumitelnost řeči (Benrabah, 1997; Hahn, 2004; Cutler, 1984). V druhé kapitole porovnáváme výsledky studií, které zkoumaly mluvčí různých jazyků a předkládáme všeobecnou teorii osvojování akustických vlastností slovního přízvuku. Zajímají nás především f0 a trvání. Tato teorie, založená na hypotéze rysů (feature hypothesis) (McAllister et al., 2002 v Lee, Guion & Harada, 2006), říká, že jazyky, jejichž systém slovního přízvuku se podobá angličtině (např. holandština a arabština), používají akustické vlastnosti užívané v jejich rodném jazyce. Oproti tomu mluvčí jazyků s nekontrastivním slovním přízvukem (např. vietnamština a čeština) dávají přednost těm akustickým vlastnostem, které jsou v jejich rodném jazyce fonologicky aktivní na úrovni segmentů. Mluvčí vietnamštiny, tónového jazyka, preferují f0 před trváním vokálu (Nguyen, 2003), takže pro mluvčí češtiny,...key words: Czech English, foreign accent, word stress, word accent, stressed syllable, duration, f0, acoustic cues. This study investigates the acoustic properties of word stress in Czech English. The notion of foreign accent is introduced and its drawbacks are presented. Further on the various influences on the perceived degree, or strength, of foreign accent are discussed. Faulty realization of word stress is identified as one of the factors that contribute to unintelligibility of non-native speech (Benrabah, 1997; Hahn, 2004; Cutler, 1984). In Chapter 2 we compare the results of studies that used speakers of a variety of languages and form a basic theory on the acquisition of acoustic cues to word stress. We are mostly interested in f0 and duration. This theory, based on the feature hypothesis (McAllister et al., 2002 in Lee, Guion & Harada, 2006), states that languages that have a similar stress system to that of English (Dutch, Arabic) use their native cues to signal word stress, while non-contrastive languages (Vietnamese, Czech) prefer cue/s that are phonologically active on segmental level in their native language. Speakers of Vietnamese, a tone language, were found to prefer f0 over duration (Nguyen, 2003), so for Czech, a language that uses phonological vowel duration, it is expected that...Institute of PhoneticsFonetický ústavFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Variabilita trvání segmentů ve čtených textech českých a britských mluvčích angličtiny

Tato práce se zabývá variabilitou trvání segmentů ve čtených textech českých a britských mluvčích angličtiny. Variabilita v trvání segmentů byla v řeči tří českých a tří britských mluvčích zkoumána z hlediska příslušnosti k jednotlivým vokalickým a konsonan-tickým třídám segmentů a dále byl zkoumán i vliv přízvuku a hranice promluvového úseku. V řeči českých mluvčích byly pozorovány následující tendence. Jednak se českým mluvčím nedařilo zcela postihnout rozdíly v trvání mezi jednotlivými třídami samohlásek a jejich dlouhé samohlásky byly tedy o něco kratší než u britských mluvčích. Dále samohláskám českých mluvčích částečně chyběl potřebný kontrast daný rozdílem v trvání v přízvučných a nepřízvučných pozicích. A z hlediska vlivu hranice, jak samohlásky tak i souhlásky českých mluvčích nedosahovaly takového stupně prodloužení v poslední slabice promluvového úseku, ke kterému docházelo u mluvčích britských. Teoretická část práce se zabývá dvěma hlavními tématy. Prvním je cizinecký přízvuk s ohledem na stupeň přízvuku, jeho objektivní i subjektivní srozumitelnost a také na jeho důsledky pro komunikaci a na faktory, které mohou ovlivnit jeho míru. Druhá část pojednává o temporální doméně řeči vzhledem k trvání segmentů v češtině a angličtině a oblasti rytmu. Zmiňuje se též o významnosti trvání v percepci a...The study focuses on durational variation of segments in read speech of Czech and British speakers of English. The variation in segmental duration was examined in the speech of three Czech and three British speakers with respect to individual vowel and consonant categories. Furthermore, stress and intonation phrase boundary were explored as possible factors influencing segmental duration. The theoretical part of the study focuses on two main topics. The first is foreign accent with regard to accentedness, intelligibility and comprehensibility as well as in connection to its implications and factors which might influence its degree. The second part contains theoretical background about the time domain of speech concerning segmental duration in Czech and English, the area of rhythm, the importance of durational cues in perception and a short survey of factors reported to affect segmental duration. Czech accent in English and the importance of duration in foreign language are also covered. In the empirical part of the study, Czech speakers were found to miss the appropriate proportions between individual vowel categories and realize their long vowels as slightly too short. They lacked an adequate degree of durational contrast in stressed and unstressed vowels when compared to the British speakers. With regard...Institute of PhoneticsFonetický ústavFaculty of ArtsFilozofická fakult

Accent rating by native and non-native listeners

This study investigates the influence of listener native language with respect to talker native language on perception of degree of foreign accent in English. Listeners from native English, Finnish, German and Mandarin backgrounds rated the accentedness of native English, Finnish, German and Mandarin talkers producing a controlled set of English sentences. Results indicate that non-native listeners, like native listeners, are able to classify non-native talkers as foreign-accented, and native talkers as unaccented. However, while non-native talkers received higher accentedness ratings than native talkers from all listener groups, non-native listeners judged talkers with non-native accents less harshly than did native English listeners. Similarly, non-native listeners assigned higher degrees of foreign accent to native English talkers than did native English listeners. It seems that non-native listeners give accentedness ratings that are less extreme, or closer to the centre of the rating scale in both directions, than those used by native listeners. Index Terms — Perceptual evaluation, native vs non-native listeners 1

Vowel Perception and Transcription Trainer for Learners of English as a Foreign Language

We use the freely available program Praat to create a vowel-training application for learners of English familiar with IPA transcription. The application is easy to operate, allowing users to change the training difficulty, providing the listeners with immediate feedback, and adapting to their performance during a training session. To evaluate the effectiveness of the Trainer, performance of 59 Czech learners during a single training session and across multiple sessions was tracked. Results showed improvement both between sessions and within sessions. In the final training session, vowel identification accuracy showed considerable resistance to gradual addition of increasing levels of noise. Testing the trainer with additional 52 learners showed significantly higher error-rates for low-frequency words and supported the importance of top-down lexical effect in vowel identification

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

Universal and language-specific processing : the case of prosody

A key question in the science of language is how speech processing can be influenced by both language-universal and language-specific mechanisms (Cutler, Klein, & Levinson, 2005). My graduate research aimed to address this question by adopting a crosslanguage approach to compare languages with different phonological systems. Of all components of linguistic structure, prosody is often considered to be one of the most language-specific dimensions of speech. This can have significant implications for our understanding of language use, because much of speech processing is specifically tailored to the structure and requirements of the native language. However, it is still unclear whether prosody may also play a universal role across languages, and very little comparative attempts have been made to explore this possibility. In this thesis, I examined both the production and perception of prosodic cues to prominence and phrasing in native speakers of English and Mandarin Chinese. In focus production, our research revealed that English and Mandarin speakers were alike in how they used prosody to encode prominence, but there were also systematic language-specific differences in the exact degree to which they enhanced the different prosodic cues (Chapter 2). This, however, was not the case in focus perception, where English and Mandarin listeners were alike in the degree to which they used prosody to predict upcoming prominence, even though the precise cues in the preceding prosody could differ (Chapter 3). Further experiments examining prosodic focus prediction in the speech of different talkers have demonstrated functional cue equivalence in prosodic focus detection (Chapter 4). Likewise, our experiments have also revealed both crosslanguage similarities and differences in the production and perception of juncture cues (Chapter 5). Overall, prosodic processing is the result of a complex but subtle interplay of universal and language-specific structure