Non-Native Attitudes to /θ/ and /ð/: A European Case Study

This paper investigates the evaluation of the English sounds /θ/ and /ð/ as produced by European non-native speakers. Using the data from a larger web survey, we compared the error judgements by different native and non-native users of English. This was done to establish whether there is any normative convergence among European non-native speakers, or if this was counteracted by other patterns, such as the presence or absence of these sounds in their L1s. Our analysis shows that while European non-native judges do not differ consistently from native-speakers in their judgements, there are also subtle differences between different groups of non-native speakers, implying that we should be careful not to generalise across groups about non-native attitudes to these sounds

Long-term within-speaker consistency of filled pauses in native and non-native speech

Filled pauses are widely considered as a relatively consistent feature of an individual's speech. However, acoustic consistency has only been observed within single-session recordings. By comparing filled pauses in two recordings made >2.5 years apart, this study investigates within-speaker consistency of the vowels in the filled pauses uh and um, in both first language (L1) Dutch and second language (L2) English, produced by student speakers who are known to converge in other speech features. Results show that despite minor within-speaker differences between languages, the spectral characteristics of filled pauses in L1 and L2 remained stable over time

What is the Just Noticeable Difference for tempo in speech?

Tempo (speaking rate) varies both between and within speakers. Such variations in tempo are easily noticeable. But what is the just noticeable difference for tempo in speech? As a first approximation, between-speaker tempo variation is quantified in a sample of similar interviews with 80 speakers of Dutch. Second, the JND is assessed using a somewhat unconventional method, viz. detection of tempo drift. This results in a JND of 15%; it is argued that this value is upwardly biased. Third, the JND is assessed using a conventional same~different pairwise comparison, yielding a JND of about 10%. Tempo variations between and within speakers typically exceed this JND, and are therefore potentially important in speech communication

Statistics with R

Booklet and materials used as accompaniment for the tutorial on "Statistics with R", held as part of the workshop on Experimental Methods in Language Acquisition Research (EMLAR), 16-17 April 2020