Cross-Linguistic Differences in Bilinguals’ Fundamental Frequency Ranges

Accepted December 13, 2016Purpose We investigated cross-linguistic differences in fundamental frequency range (FFR) in Welsh-English bilingual speech. This is the first study that reports gender-specific behavior in switching FFRs across languages in bilingual speech. Method FFR was conceptualized as a behavioral pattern using measures of span (range of fundamental frequency—in semitones—covered by the speaker's voice) and level (overall height of fundamental frequency maxima, minima, and means of speaker's voice) in each language. Results FFR measures were taken from recordings of 30 Welsh-English bilinguals (14 women and 16 men), who read 70 semantically matched sentences, 35 in each language. Comparisons were made within speakers across languages, separately in male and female speech. Language background and language use information was elicited for qualitative analysis of extralinguistic factors that might affect the FFR. Conclusions Cross-linguistic differences in FFR were found to be consistent across female bilinguals but random across male bilinguals. Most female bilinguals showed distinct FFRs for each language. Most male bilinguals, however, were found not to change their FFR when switching languages. Those who did change used different strategies than women when differentiating FFRs between languages. Detected cross-linguistic differences in FFR can be explained by sociocultural factors. Therefore, sociolinguistic factors are to be taken into account in any further study of language-specific pitch setting and cross-linguistic differences in FFR

Intonation in neurogenic foreign accent syndrome

Foreign accent syndrome (FAS) is a motor speech disorder in which changes to segmental as well as suprasegmental aspects lead to the perception of a foreign accent in speech. This paper focuses on one suprasegmental aspect, namely that of intonation. It provides an in-depth analysis of the intonation system of four speakers with FAS with the aim of establishing the intonational changes that have taken place as well as their underlying origin. Using the autosegmental-metrical framework of intonational analysis, four different levels of intonation, i.e. inventory, distribution, realisation and function, were examined. Results revealed that the speakers with FAS had the same structural inventory at their disposal as the control speakers, but that they differed from the latter in relation to the distribution, implementation and functional use of their inventory. In contrast to previous findings, the current results suggest that these intonational changes cannot be entirely attributed to an underlying intonation deficit but also reflect secondary manifestations of physiological constraints affecting speech support systems and compensatory strategies. These findings have implications for the debate surrounding intonational deficits in FAS, advocating a reconsideration of current assumptions regarding the underlying nature of intonation impairment in FAS

Phonetic and phonological influences in non-native intonation: an overview for language teachers.

This is a draft of a chapter entitled Phonological and phonetic influences in non-native intonation submitted to Jurgen Trouvan and Ulrike Gut (eds)Non-native prosody: phonetic descriptions and teaching practice.Just as poor pronunciation can make a foreign language learner very difficult to understand, poor prosodic and intonational skills can have an equally devastating effect on communication and can make conversation frustrating and unpleasant for both learners and their listeners. Language teachers have lately become more aware of this and have shifted the focus of their pronunciation teaching more towards the inclusion of suprasegmentals alongside segmentals with a view of improving general comprehensibility (Celce-Murcia, Brinton and Goodwin 1996). It is therefore crucial for language teachers to be aware of current research findings in the area of foreign (second) language learning of prosody and intonation, the type of prosodic and intonational 'errors' second language (L2) learners are likely to make, and in particular where these 'errors' stem from. The focus of this paper will be on intonation in L2 learning, but some related prosodic phenomena such as stress and rhythm will be touched upon.caslunpub151unpubWP-

Acquisition of Greek phonology: an overview

This series consists of unpublished working- papers. They are not final versions and may be superseded by publication in journal or book form, which should be cited in preference. All rights remain with the author(s) at this stage, and circulation of a work in progress in this series does not prejudice its later publication. Comments to authors are welcome. This is a draft of a chapter that appears in Sharynne McLeod (Ed.) The International Guide to Speech Acquisition Thomson Delmar Publishing (ISBN 1-4180-5360-0) published in 2007. The International Guide to Speech Acquisition, Part II. Delmar Thomson, 398-411. Greek speech acquisition.Modern Greek (henceforth Greek) is the descendent of Ancient Greek. It is spoken by most inhabitants of Greece (approximately 11 million speakers) and is the official language of Greece. The linguistic situation in Greece has been characterized by diglossia from the middle of the 19th century until 1976. The two varieties of Greek diglossia are called Katharevousa and Dhimotiki. Katharevousa was created during the early 19th century and was the midpoint between Ancient and Modern Greek. It had many archaized forms of modern words and an archaic grammar. Dhimotiki was the variety spoken by Greeks in their daily lives and it became the official language in 1976 when Katharevousa was officially abolished. However, remnants of Katharevousa have remained in the Greek language, particularly in its written form.caslunpub153unpubWP-1

The effects of home language and bilingualism on the realization of lexical stress in Welsh and Welsh English

This study investigates effects of long-term language contact and individual linguistic experience on the realization of lexical stress correlates in Welsh and Welsh English. To this end, a production study was carried out in which participants were asked to read out Welsh and English disyllabic words with stress on the penultimate syllable, placed within carrier phrases. Recordings were made of the productions of Welsh and English target words, by two groups of Welsh-English bilinguals differing in home language, as well as the productions of English target words by Welsh English monolinguals and speakers of Southern Standard British English (SSBE). Acoustic measures were taken of fundamental frequency (f0) and intensity ratios of stressed and unstressed vowels, duration of stressed and unstressed vowels, and duration of the post-stress consonant. The results of acoustic comparisons of Welsh English with SSBE and Welsh revealed that SSBE differs from the other groups in all measures of lexical stress. Welsh and Welsh English, however, show considerable phonetic overlap, albeit with language-specific differences in two of the five measures (unstressed vowel duration, intensity ratio). These findings suggest cross-language convergence in the realization of lexical stress in Welsh and Welsh English disyllabic words with penultimate stress. Individual linguistic experience, in turn, did not play a major role in the realization of lexical stress in these words. Bilinguals did not differ from monolinguals when speaking English, and home language also had no effect on any measure. This suggests that other factors must be responsible for the observed patterns. We discuss the possibility that the varieties of Welsh and Welsh English spoken in this community function as a sign of regional or peer group identity, rather than as markers of linguistic experience

Pitching it differently : a comparison of the pitch ranges of German and English speakers

We thank Frank K_gler and his colleagues for the collection of the German data.This paper presents preliminary findings of a largescale systematic comparison of various measures of pitch range for female speakers of Southern Standard British English (SSBE) and Northern Standard German (NSG). The purpose of the study as a whole is to develop the methodology to allow comparisons of pitch range across languages and regional accents, and to determine how they correlate with listeners' perceptual sensitivity to cross-language/accent differences. In this paper we report on how four measures of pitch range in read speech (text, sentences) compare across the two groups of female speakers. Preliminary results show that the measures of the difference between the 90th and 10th percentile (in semitones), and +/- 2 standard deviations around the mean in ST differentiate the groups of speakers in the direction predicted by the stereotypical beliefs described in the literature about German and English speakers. Furthermore, these differences are most obvious in the read text and longer sentences and the effect disappears in sentences of a short duration.casl[1] Boersma, P., Weenink, D. 2006. Praat (Version 4.5). http://www.praat.org. [2] Brown, A., Docherty, G. J. 1995. Phonetic Variation in Dysarthric Speech As a Function of Sampling Task. Eur. J. Disorder. Comm. 30(1), 17-35. [3] Bruce, G. 1982. Textual Aspects of Prosody in Swedish. Phonetica 39, 274-287. [4] De Pijper, J. R. 1983. Modelling British English Intonation. Foris Publications. [5] Dolson, M. 1994. The Pitch of Speech As a Function of Linguistic Community. Music. Percept. 11(3), 321-331. [6] Eckert, H., Laver, J. 1994. Menschen und ihre Stimmen: Aspekte der vokalen Kommunikation. Weinheim: Psychologie Verlags Union. [7] Estebas-Vilaplana, E. 2000. Peak F0 Downtrends in Central Catalan Neutral Declaratives. Speech, Hearing and Language: work in progress. London, 16- 41. [8] Gibbon, D. 1998. German Intonation. In: Hirst, D. J., Di Christo, A. (eds), Intonation Systems: A Survey of Twenty Languages, Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press, 78-95. [9] Gilles, P., Peters, J. 2004. Regional Variation in Intonation. T_bingen: Niemeyer Verlag. [10] Grabe, E., Post, B., Nolan, F., Farrar, K. 2000. Pitch Accent Realization in Four Varieties of British English. J. Phonetics 28(2), 161-185. [11] Ladd, D. R. 1988. Declination Reset and the Hierarchical Organization of Utterances. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 84(2), 530-544. [12] Ladd, D. R., Terken, J. 1995. Modelling Intra- and Inter-Speaker Pitch Range Variation. Proc.of ICPhS. Stockholm, 386-389. [13] Liberman, M., Pierrehumbert, J. 1984. Intonational Invariance Under Changes in Pitch Range and Length. In: Aronoff, M., Oehrle, R., Kelley, F., Stephens, B. W. (eds), Language Sound Structure, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 157-233. [14] Mennen, I. 2007. Phonological and Phonetic Influences in Non-Native Intonation. In: Trouvain, J., Gut, U. (eds), Non-Native Prosody: Phonetic Descriptions and Teaching Practice, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. [15] Prieto, P., Shih, C., Nibert, H. 2007. Pitch Downtrend in Spanish. J. Phonetics 24(4), 445-473. [16] Thorsen, N. 1983. Standard Danish Sentence Intonation - Phonetic Data and Their Representation. Folia Linguist. 17, 187-220. [17] Ulbrich, C. 2006. Pitch Range Is Not Pitch Range. Proc.Speech Prosody 2006. Dresden. [18] van Bezooijen, R. 1995. Sociocultural Aspects of Pitch Differences Between Japanese and Dutch Women. Lang. Speech 38, 253-265.pub42pu

Audible aspects of speech preparation

Noises made before the acoustic onset of speech are typically ignored, yet may reveal aspects of speech production planning and be relevant to dis-course turn-taking. We quantify the nature and tim-ing of such noises, using an experimental method designed to elicit naturalistic yet controlled speech initiation data. Speakers listened to speech input, then spoke when prompt material became visible onscreen. They generally inhaled audibly before uttering a short sentence, but not before a single word. In both tasks, articulatory movements caused acoustic spikes due to weak click-like articulatory separations or stronger clicks via an ingressive, lingual airstream. The acoustic onset of the sen-tences was delayed relative to the words. This does not appear to be planned, but seems a side-effect of the longer duration of inhalation.caslpub2509pu

Global foreign accent in native German speech

The results of this study suggest that German monolingual listeners were more likely to perceive a global foreign accent in the native German speech of consecutive bilinguals in Anglophone Canada and the Dutch Netherlands than in the speech of a control group of monolingual Germans in Germany. The results furthermore suggest that contact with the native German language may have a more significant effect on predicting global foreign accent in native speech than age of arrival or length of residence. More specifically, for both English and Dutch second language groups, a global foreign accent was more likely to be perceived in immigrants who had less contact with their native German language than in those who had more contact, although this effect was more evident in consecutive bilinguals who immigrated after 22 years of age.casl[1] Field, A. 2000. Discovering Statistics Using SPSS. London. Sage Publications. [2] Flege, J. E. 1987. The production of new- and similar- phones in a foreign language: Evidence for the effect of equivalence classification. Journal of Phonetics 15, 47 - 65. [3] Flege, J. E., Fletcher, K. L. 1992. Talker and listener effects on degree of perceived foreign accent. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 91, 370-389. [4] Jaspaert, K., Kroon, S. 1989. Social determinants of language loss. ITL Review of Applied Linguistics 83/84, 75-98. [5] Major, R.C. 1992. Losing English as a first language. Modern Language Journal 76, 190-208. [6] Moyer, A. 1999. Ultimate Attainment in L2 Phonology: The Critical Factors of Age, Motivation, and Instruction. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 21, 81-108. [7] Piske, T., MacKay, I., Flege, J. E. 2001. Factors Affecting Degree of Foreign Accent in an L2: A Review. Journal of Phonetics 29, 191-215. [8] Sancier, M. L., Fowler, C. A. 1997. Gestural drift in a bilingual speaker of Brazilian Portuguese and English. Journal of Phonetics 25, 421 - 436. [9] Yamur, K. 1997. First language Attrition Among Turkish Speakers in Sydney. Tilburg: Tilburg University Press.pub50pu

Disentangling the effects of long-term language contact and individual bilingualism: The case of monophthongs in Welsh and English

Aims and Objectives: This study investigates the effects of individual bilingualism and long-term language contact on monophthongal vowel productions in English and Welsh. Design: To this end, we recorded the Welsh and English vowel productions of two sets of Welsh-English bilinguals differing in home language use, as well as the English vowel productions of English monolinguals. Data and analysis: The data were analysed acoustically, with a focus on spectral and temporal properties. Comparisons were then made within each language and cross-linguistically. Findings: The results of a cross-linguistic acoustic comparison revealed a high degree of convergence in the monophthong systems of Welsh and English, but also some language-specific categories. Interestingly, at the individual level we found no effect of linguistic experience on vowel production: the two sets of bilinguals and the English monolinguals did not differ in their realisation of English vowels, and the two sets of bilinguals did not differ in their realisation of Welsh vowels. Originality: This is one of few studies to examine the effect of linguistic background on variation in Welsh and English bilingual speech, and the first to compare the speech of Welsh-English bilinguals and English monolinguals. More specifically, it investigates the extent to which a speaker’s home language can affect phonetic variation in a close-knit community of speakers and in a situation characterised by long-term language contact. Implications: The findings demonstrate pervasive phonetic convergence in a language contact situation with a historical substrate. They also indicate that a homogeneous peer group with shared values can override the effects of individual linguistic experience. Keywords vowel productions; acoustic analysis; language contact; phonetic convergence; linguistic experience; Welsh-English bilingualis