Accents of English at Czech schools: Students’ attitudes and recognition skills

The study investigates the attitudes of 254 Czech students towards English as the main language taught at secondary schools. The questionnaire enquired about their perspectives on learning English in general, British and American cultures and accents of English. Such preferences may have implications for pronunciation model selection in TEFL. In addition, the participants evaluated 12 words pronounced in British or American English for pleasantness, and also assigned them to one of the varieties. Despite the predominance of American culture and despite equal distribution of cultural preferences and equal aesthetic evaluation of the accents, the British variety was marked as more prestigious and was also identified more successfully. Interestingly, the findings differed between students from the capital city and those from regional schools

K osmdesátinám profesorky Zdeny Palkové

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Language Proficiency and Sonorant Devoicing in English Plosive-Sonorant Clusters

This article explores the timing of phonetic voicing in plosive-sonorant clusters in English. VOT was measured in two groups of Czech learners with different proficiency levels and a native English control group. The hypothesis was that cross-language differences in the implementation of the voicing contrast would be reflected in lower devoicing by the non-native speakers, modulated by proficiency. 24 participants read a text with plosive-sonorant clusters (such as in plan or troops). The study found that less proficient speakers exhibited smaller degrees of devoicing compared to more proficient speakers, who however did not differ from the native controls. In line with the absence of devoicing in Czech secondary-school textbooks, the results provide insight into the interplay between language proficiency and pronunciation details in L2 acquisition. The research was supported by the European Regional Development Fund-Project ‘Creativity and Adaptability as Conditions of the Success of Europe in an Interrelated World’ (No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/16_019/0000734). The study was created within the Charles University programme ‘Cooperatio’, scientific field Linguistics

Ráz ve španělštině, italštině a portugalštině českých mluvčích

Glottal stops placed before words starting with a vowel are an integral part of the sound patterns of Czech; however, in Romance languages glottal stops are quite rare and linking to the previous word is much more common. In this study, we examine the extent to which more and less experienced Czech learners of Spanish, Italian and Portuguese (51 in total) use glottal stops or linking in their target language, and compare them with native speakers (29 in total). Analyses of word- and also morpheme-initial contexts reveal that the glottal stop is transferred into the learners’ target language word initially but almost never within words. In line with our hypotheses, the more experienced groups are found to use fewer glottal stops than the less experienced speakers, but still considerably more than the native control groups. We also consider the effect of lexical stress, segmental context and semantic status of the respective words on glottalization. Methodological implications for the teaching of Romance languages in the Czech context are also discussed

The Glottal Stop in Czech Learners’ Spanish, Italian and Portuguese

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Assimilation of Voicing in Czech Speakers of English: The Effect of the Degree of Accentedness

Czech and English are languages which differ with respect to the implementation of voicing. Unlike in English, there is a considerable agreement between phonological (systemic) and phonetic (actual) voicing in Czech, and, more importantly, the two languages have different strategies for the assimilation of voicing across the word boundary. The present study investigates the voicing in word-final obstruents in Czech speakers of English with the specific aim of ascertaining whether the degree of the speakers’ foreign accent correlates with the way they treat English obstruents in assimilatory contexts. L2 speakers, divided into three groups of varying accentedness, were examined employing categorization and a voicing profile method for establishing the presence/absence of voicing. The results suggest that speakers with a different degree of Czech accent do differ in their realization of voicing in the way predicted by a negative transfer of assimilatory habits from Czech

Pre-Fortis Shortening in Czech English: A Production and Reaction-Time Study

This study focuses on the production and perception of English words with a fortis vs. lenis obstruent in the syllable coda. The contrast is mostly cued by the duration of the preceding vowel, which is shorter before fortis than before lenis sounds in native speech. In the first experiment we analyzed the production of 10 Czech speakers of English and compared them to two native controls. The results showed that the Czech speakers did not sufficiently exploit duration to cue the identity of the word-final obstruent. In the second experiment we manipulated C and V durations in target words to transplant the native ratios onto the Czech-accented speech, enhancing the fortis-lenis contrast, and vice versa. 108 listeners took part in a word-monitoring task in which reaction times were measured. The hypothesized advantage to items in which the target word (with a fortis or lenis obstruent) was semantically congruent with the following context was not confirmed, and subsequent analyses showed that the words’ frequency of use and the collocations they enter into strongly affect speech processing and correlate to a large degree with the reaction times

The determination of syllable boundaries in Czech

This thesis deals with syllable boundaries in Czech and the issue of their determination. The theoretical part discusses the concept of the syllable in terms of both phonetics and phonology, introduces several approaches to syllabification (i.e. division of words into syllables) along with factors that are relevant in syllabification, and it also presents a survey of methods used in syllable boundary investigation. The following chapters describe a series of experiments that are to be a basis for formulating a syllabification model of Czech. The first group of experiments examines the phonetic correlates of syllable affiliation of intervocalic consonants (using electropalatography and temporal parameters). A phonotactic analysis of a spoken and a written corpus follows, in which we computed type and token frequencies of occurrence of word-initial and word-final clusters. The subsequent chapter introduces three behavioural experiments, in which the participants work with words and syllables without explicitly focusing on syllable boundaries (synchronization of syllables with a metronome pulse; syllable permutation; inserting silence into words). The first two experiments examined what phonetic and phonological factors are relevant in the syllabification of Czech words. The aim of the third..

Perceptual Impact of Two Syllabification Procedures in English

The subject of the thesis is the determination of syllable boundaries in English with respect to its perceptual relevance. The hypothesis is based on two different theoretical conceptions. The Maximum Onset Principle (MOP), a traditional approach widespread among linguists, assigns intervocalic consonants to neighbouring syllables in such a way that the longest possible onsets are created in the syllables that follow. An alternative view, advocated by John Wells, advises to utilize more complex parameters, such as morphological structure, prosodic structure or, most importantly, the allophonic realization of phonemes as determined by position within the syllable. A word monitoring experiment measuring reaction times, in which listeners pressed a key if they heard a given word in the auditory stimulus, yielded data about listeners' performance in two conditions: in one the items were divided into syllables according to the MOP, in the other according to Wells. The latter was associated with faster reactions, which might be interpreted as cognitively less strenuous. However, the difference between the two conditions was not robust, mainly because of the limited number of listeners.Tématem diplomové práce je určování slabičných hranic v angličtině s ohledem na jeho percepční relevantnost. Hypotéza práce vychází ze dvou odlišných teoretických pojetí. Princip maximální prétury (PMP), tradiční a mezi lingvisty velmi rozšířený přístup, přiřazuje intervokalické konsonanty sousedním slabikám tak, aby vznikaly co nejdelší možné prétury následujících slabik. Alternativní přístup, podporován Johnem Wellsem, navrhuje zapojit komplexnější parametry, jako je např. morfologická stavba slova, jeho prozodická struktura a zejména též alofonická realizace fonémů závislá na pozici ve slabice. Monitorovací experiment s reakční dobou, ve kterém posluchači reagovali stiskem tlačítka v případě, že ve zvukovém stimulu slyší zadané slovo, poskytl data ohledně výkonu posluchačů za dvou podmínek: v jedné byly položky segmentovány na slabiky podle PMP, v druhé podle Wellse. Wellsův princip byl spojen s rychlejšími reakcemi, což může být interpretováno jako kognitivně méně náročné zpracování. Rozdíl však nebyl příliš robustní, zejména z důvodu omezeného počtu posluchačů.Institute of PhoneticsFonetický ústavFilozofická fakultaFaculty of Art

Segmental duration as a cue to syllable boundaries in Czech

The aim of the study is to establish whether the acoustic signal contains cues to the syllabification of words that are perceptually relevant, as suggested by previous research. Syllabification preferences of 27 speakers of Czech were examined in a behavioural experiment using disyllabic nonsense words with 10 CC clusters as stimuli. The C1/C2 duration ratio of the intervocalic cluster was manipulated by shortening and lengthening of both consonants. Participants repeated auditorily presented stimuli by syllables, with clear pauses between them (a pause-insertion task). Logistic regression analyses revealed significant effects of sonority type of the cluster, word-edge phonotactics and syllabification strategy reported by the participants in a post-test interview (only half of the participants reported not to have followed any strategy). However, the manipulation condition did not turn out to be a significant predictor, although the C1/C2 ratio correlated negatively with the rate of cluster division. The correlation was in compliance with the hypothesis stating that when C1 is longer than C2, the cluster has a higher probability of being maintained as the onset of the following syllable