Rhotic contrasts in Arabana

Arabana has a three-way rhotic phoneme contrast: /r/ (alveolar trill) vs /ɾ/ (alveolar tap) vs /ɻ/ (retroflex continuant). The rhotic contrasts are prosodically restricted in Arabana. The triple contrast only appears following the tonic vowel, which is the first vowel. In other onset positions /ɻ/ is contrastive, but there is no /r/ vs /ɾ/ contrast. There is no contrast in coda positions. We undertook the first-ever production study of Arabana rhotics. Recorded audio materials were independently coded in PRAAT by two trained transcribers. We found the following allophony: /r/ [r, ɾ, ɹ]; /ɾ/ [ɾ, ɹ], /ɻ/ [ɻ]. The /r/ vs /ɾ/ contrast is thus negatively determined, /r/ permits [r] realizations, but /ɾ/ does not. The commonest realization of both /r/ and /ɾ/ is [ɹ]. The phoneme in neutralized coda position is /r/. The high degree of overlap in realizations between /r/ and /ɾ/ accords with reported perception difficulties

Computational perception of information foci produced by Chinese English learners and American English speakers

This study used computational perception, via SVM and Random Forest models, to examine phonetic features used by American English speakers (AE) and Chinese second language learners of English (CE1 with low proficiency and CE2 with high proficiency) in realizing different information foci. For all participant groups, the machine learning models achieved above chance level accuracy. Coda duration and the duration of the rising contour were two phonetic features that ranked top across three participant groups in terms of their importance to the models. The SVM models trained with the AE data classified different foci by CE1 and CE2 with above chance level accuracy, but English proficiency had little effect on the classification results

Towards a socio-cultural account of literary canon's retranslation and reinterpretation : the case of The Journey to the West

This paper aims to chart the diachronic progression of the English retranslations of Xi You Ji (The Journey to the West) and the intercultural trajectories of this ancient Chinese fictional canon. Empirically informed by WorldCat, the world’s largest library catalogue, this study shows that retranslation progressively enables a national literature from a third world to exert a global influence. The century-long retranslation of The Journey to the West has undergone four cohesive phases from religious hybridism, secularisation, religious restoration to multimedia adaptation, registering an enormous proliferation since the twenty-first century. In addition, inter-semiotic translation, in the form of children’s books, films, and television products, contributes strikingly to the literary impact of the source text. Reformulation and reinterpretation are also important themes in the process of retranslation, and they can be regarded as an intricate result of the relevant ideology, poetics, patronage and other socio-cultural factors

Native phonological and phonetic influences in perceptual assimilation of monosyllabic Thai lexical tones by Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners

A cross tone-language perceptual assimilation study investigated native categorisations and goodness ratings of non-native Thai tones by Thai-naive listeners differing in their native tone systems: Mandarin, Northern Vietnamese and Southern Vietnamese. We derived hypotheses from the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM: Best, 1995), which considers both native phonological and phonetic influences on perceptual assimilation of non-native speech contrasts. Mandarin listeners reliably categorised the Thai mid level tone to their single native level tone category, reflecting a native phonological effect, but they also showed high residual phonetic sensitivity to differences between the non-native tone and the native tone it was assimilated to, indicated by low category-goodness ratings. Native phonological and phonetic differences in tones of the two Vietnamese dialects also affected perceptual assimilation of the Thai high level and rising tones. In addition, categorisation responses were faster overall for Categorised than Uncategorised assimilations, revealing the processing cost of perceptual uncertainty due to phonological competition among and/or phonetic discrepancies from multiple native categories. This indicates, furthermore, a more focused and thus stronger native phonological contribution for Categorised than Uncategorised assimilations. PAM principles thus extend to non-native tone assimilations and indicate the importance of both native phonological and phonetic contributions to non-native speech perception

Phonological and phonetic contributions to perception of non-native lexical tones by tone language listeners : effects of memory load and stimulus variability

The present study examined native language phonological and phonetic factors in non-native lexical tone perception by tone language listeners, manipulating memory load and stimulus variability to bias listeners towards a more phonological or more phonetic mode of perception. Mandarin and Vietnamese listeners categorised the five Thai lexical tones to their native tones, and discriminated five selected Thai tone contrasts that were predicted by the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM, Best, 1995) to be discriminated differently. Categorisation responses showed more phonologically-based patterns under high than low memory load but were unaffected by talker and vowel variability, whereas discrimination accuracy was reduced by talker and vowel variability but not by memory load. Phonological factors indicated by type of categorisation and category overlap generally predicted the discrimination of non-native tone contrasts in line with PAM principles. Phonetic factors reflected in category overlap scores and fit index difference scores predicted variations in discriminating contrasts of the same contrast categorisation type. These findings uphold the extension of PAM principles to non-native tone perception by native listeners of other tone languages. Native phonological and phonetic contributions to non-native speech perception differ between categorisation and discrimination tasks, as reflected in differential modulation by memory load and stimulus variability

Cognitive factors in Thai-naive Mandarin speakers' imitation of Thai lexical tones

The present study investigated how cognitive factors, memory load and attention control, affected imitation of Thai tones by Mandarin speakers with no prior Thai experience. Mandarin speakers lengthened the syllable duration, enlarged the F0 excursion and moved some F0 max location earlier compared with the stimuli, even in the immediate imitation condition. Talker variability had a larger impact on imitation than memory load, whereas vowel variability did not have any effect. Perceptual assimilation patterns partially influenced imitation performance, suggesting phonological categorization in imitation and a perception-production link

Tone differentiation as a means for assessing non-native imitation of Thai tones by Mandarin speakers

Non-native tone production and imitation have been found to be phonetically deviant from native production for some discrete measures. However, it remains unresolved whether nonnative imitation differs from native production in terms of the differentiation of tones in acoustic tone space. 32 native Mandarin speakers who had no experience with Thai imitated five Thai tones, and each participant produced 160 tokens in total under differing memory load and stimulus variability conditions to determine effects of cognitive demands. We calculated two tone differentiation indices (i.e. Index 1: tone differentiation within the tonal space; Index 2: differentiation among tones, both as in Barry & Blamey, 2004) based on F0 onset and F0 offset for Thai tones and the non-native imitations of these Thai tones by Mandarin imitators. There was a significant memory load by vowel variability interaction for Index 1 and a main effect of talker variability and a three-way interaction (memory load ´ talker variability ´ vowel variability) for Index 2, suggesting that tone differentiation is affected by cognitive factors. Nonetheless, non-native tone imitations were not significantly different from native productions on either index, indicating that non-native imitation resembles native production in terms of tone differentiation in an onset-offset F0 space

Cross-language categorisation of monosyllabic Thai tones by Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers : L1 phonological and phonetic influences

This study explores the influences of listeners’ native tone inventory on cross-language tone perception. Mandarin, Northern Vietnamese and Southern Vietnamese listeners (n = 13 per group; naive to Thai) categorised Thai tones into their native tone categories. Results show that all three groups categorised most Thai tones into their native tone categories. Their performance suggests that they attended to the phonetic details of the non-native tones, and that their assimilation patterns were influenced by the organisation of their native tone phonological systems as well as by the phonetic distances between native and non-native tones

SVM-based evaluation of Thai tone imitations by Thai-naive Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers

Native listener judgements and acoustic comparisons are sensitive to deviations between non-native speech and native productions, but both have drawbacks and are inefficient for evaluating large databases. To probe whether Support Vector Machines (SVM) might offer an efficient alternative, we used three SVM models trained with native Thai lexical tones to eval-uate new native stimuli and non-native imitations by Mandarin and Vietnamese speakers. The optimal SVM model categorized native tones accurately but showed lower accuracy with non-native imitations, like native judges do, thus confirming its sensitivity to deviations from native productions. Thai falling tone imitations yielded the lowest classification accuracy, indicating that both groups' imitations were constrained by their native falling tones. Thai rising tones were better recognized for Viet-namese than Mandarin imitators, reflecting differences between their native rising tones. Thus, SVM modeling may provide an effective alternative to traditional perceptual- or acoustic-based evaluations of non-native speech