How credible is a non-native speaker? Prosody and surroundings

In order to evaluate the segmental and suprasegmental acoustic credibility correlates in the perception of native and non-native speech, a study was conducted on native and non-native speakers (NSs and NNS) of Italian. NNSs were chosen on the basis of L2 level of competence (A2, B1, C1 of CEFR), mother tongues (Chinese, Arabic, Japanese and Vietnamese) and degree of foreign accent (mild vs. strong). Four perceptive tests were carried out, two of them based on natural speech and the other two on modified speech. The corpus, formed by bizarre-but-true news read in Italian by all the involved subjects, was organized in form of radio news magazines and was used to conduct the tests. Native Italian listeners were asked to assess the truthfulness of each news item and its comprehensibility. Results revealed that the correlation between foreign accent and credibility is delivered by comprehensibility: poor comprehensibility generally lowers the credibility level of an utterance. When comprehensibility is high, a reduced tonal range and longer silent pauses, i.e. the suprasegmental features of the utterance, determine a significant increase of trustworthiness

Transplanting Credibility into a Foreign Voice. An Experiment on Synthesized L2 Italian

This study intends to verify through perceptual tests conducted on original and artificially modified speech whether a relationship exists among the degree of comprehensibility of an utterance, the foreign accent and the credibility of the message. Four bizarre-but-true news read in Italian by four non-native speakers were artificially modified with Praat and WaveSurfer. Each piece of news was transplanted, so that segmental and prosodic features of a text read by a native speaker were transferred onto the same text uttered by a non-native speaker. The corpus was administered to 265 native Italian listeners, who were requested to indicate the degree of comprehensibility, the level of foreign accent and the truthfulness of each item. The results point out the existence of a close inverse relationship between comprehensibility and credibility. The presence of foreign accent, providing an impediment to the understanding of the message, tends to create an attitude of distrust in the listener. The most important features for the foreign accent reduction are the suprasegmental ones and, in particular, the durations of the phones and the pitch movement

La maestra diceva bambini c’è un bambino nero. L’italiano tra dominanza e comunicazione interculturale

Il lavoro propone una riflessione sulle problematiche che interferiscono nello sviluppo della competenza pragmatica in italiano L2. In particolare si affronta il disagio dei minori e delle seconde generazioni nell'inserimento scolastico e quello degli adulti nel mondo del lavoro, per concludere sottolineando il ruolo positivo dell'ibridazione delle culture e del contatto fruttuoso e rispettoso delle lingue che le veicolano

An acoustic-perceptual approach to the prosody of Chinese and native speakers of Italian based on yes/no questions

The present study investigates the prosody of yes/no questions (in comparison with statements) in Chinese learners and native speakers of Italian. Acoustic analyses and a perceptual test were performed, in order to identify the main trends in non-native productions. Results show the relevance of prosody, which differentiates elementary, intermediate and advanced Chinese learners of Italian. Listening tests based on prosody transplantation also suggest that non-native segments with a native Italian prosody are rated as less accented than are native Italian segments with a non-native prosody. Similar trends were found, overall, in terms of question/assertion discrimination, confirming the relative importance of prosody. These findings could be helpful for teachers and learners of Italian as a foreign language

Increasing information accessibility on the Web: a rating system for specialized dictionaries

The paper illustrates the features of the WLR (Web Linguistic Resources) portal, which collects specialized online dictionaries and asses their suitability for different functions using a specifically designed rating system. The contribution aims to demonstrate how the existing tool has improved the usefulness of lexico-graphical portals and how its effectiveness can be further increased by transforming the portal into a collaborative resource.Questo contributo descrive le caratteristiche del portale WLR (Web Linguistic Resources) che raccoglie dizionari specialistici della Rete e ne stima l’utilizzabilità per diverse funzioni, avvalendosi di uno specifico sistema di valutazione. Viene quindi mostrato come questo strumento incrementi l’utilizzabilità dei portali lessicografici finora sviluppati e come la sua efficacia possa essere ulteriormente migliorata trasformandolo in risorsa collaborativa

Acoustic characteristics of Italian Parkinsonian speech: a study on early-stage patients

Parkinson’s Disease (PD) is a neurological illness which also has effects on speech production, resulting in segmental and suprasegmental abnormalities. The aim of the current study is to test the validity of two acoustic parameters - %V and VtoV - for the detection of rhythmical variation in early-stage PD speech, in comparison to healthy speech. 40 Italian native speakers were enrolled in the research, 20 early-stage PD subjects and 20 neurologically healthy and matched controls, and a corpus of read speech was collected. The results of voice analysis confirmed an alteration of vocalic duration and %V in PD productions. In particular, %V could be a reliable cue for PD speech characterization, even at the very early onset of the disease

Mappe di probabilità di sito archeologico : un passo avanti

La necessità di disporre di mappe di probabilità di sito archeologico è un tema attualmente al centro di un rinnovato interesse anche grazie alla disponibilità di una moltitudine di informazioni territoriali gestite ed elaborate con l’ausilio della tecnologia GIS. Gli studi che finora si sono occupati del problema, hanno fatto riferimento a modellistiche di tipo regressivo od autoregressivo che, sebbene centrate sulle peculiarità del fenomeno, si sono dimostrate sensibilmente dipendenti dalla presenza di dati anomali nella stima dei parametri e da ipotesi specifiche sui casi in esame. L’intento del presente lavoro è invece quello di proporre una soluzione più robusta e generalizzabile in linea con i recenti sviluppi nel campo della modellistica non parametrica la quale potrebbe dare un forte impulso all’uso congiunto della statistica e della tecnologia GIS. L’informazione geografica ricavabile dai dati fisici e satellitari relativi all’area di studio rappresenta infatti, grazie al dettaglio che la caratterizza, una fonte ausiliaria insostituibile per spiegare la presenza o meno di un sito in una data posizione della mappa. L’approccio proposto è stato sviluppato ed applicato per l’area test di Cures Sabini ottenendo dei risultati abbastanza incoraggianti, soprattutto se letti in termini della estrema facilità di interpretazione dei risultati da parte di non statistici e della riscontrata possibilità di rendere automatico il processo di produzione delle mappe di probabilità. Questa evidenza permetterebbe ad operatori del settore non professionalmente preparati da un punto di vista metodologico, di estendere il modello a situazioni anche molto diverse da quella analizzata