The Impact of Rhythmic Distortions in Speech on Personality Assessment

The perennial question as to how perceived otherness in speech projects into listener assessment of one’s personality has been systematically investigated within the field of foreign accentedness, vocal communication of affective states and vocal stereotyping. In the present study, we aimed at exploring non-native listeners’ capacity to respond to differences in natural and modified native speech, particularly whether the manipulation of temporal structure in both stressed and unstressed syllables gives rise to any changes in the perception of the speaker’s personality. The respondents’ intuitive judgements were captured in the domain of the ‘nervousness category’ taken from the five-factor model of personality. Our results indicate an effect of temporal modifications on the listeners’ judgements. Analysis of variance for repeated measures confirmed a highly significant shift of personality evaluations towards the undesired traits (e.g., nervousness, anxiety, querulousness). Several interesting interactions with the semantic contents of the utterances and with the intrinsic qualities of the speakers’ voices were also found. We argue that the effects of accented speech go beyond conscious willingness to accept “otherness” and suggest a method for studying them

Acoustic Correlates of Word Stress as A Cue to Accent Strength

Due to the clear interference of their mother tongue prosody, many Czech learners produce their English with a conspicuous foreign accent. The goal of the present study is to investigate the acoustic cues that differentiate stressed and unstressed syllabic nuclei and identify individual details concerning their contribution to the specific sound of Czech English. Speech production of sixteen female non-professional Czech and British speakers was analysed with the sounds segmented on a word and phone level and with both canonical and actual stress positions manually marked. Prior to analyses the strength of the foreign accent was assessed in a perception test. Subsequently, stressed and unstressed vowels were measured with respect to their duration, amplitude, fundamental frequency and spectral slope. Our results show that, in general, Czech speakers use much less acoustic marking of stress than the British subjects. The difference is most prominent in the domains of fundamental frequency and amplitude. The Czech speakers also deviate from the canonical placement of stress, shifting it frequently to the first syllable. On the other hand, they seem to approximate the needed durational difference quite successfully. These outcomes support the concept of language interference since they correspond with the existing linguistic knowledge about Czech and English word stress. The study adds specific details concerning the extent of this interference in four acoustic dimensions

The effect of word-initial glottalization on word monitoring in Slovak speakers of English

The study investigates the impact of glottal elements before word-initial vowels on the speed of processing of the phrases taken from natural continuous speech. In many languages a word beginning with a vowel can be preceded by a glottal stop or a short period of creaky voice. However, languages differ in the extent of use and functions of this glottalization: it may be used to mark the word boundary, for instance, or to add special prominence to the word. The aim of the experiment was to find out whether the presence of the glottal element can influence reaction times in a word-monitoring paradigm. Users of different languages - Slovak and Czech learners of English, as well as native speakers of English - were participating in perception testing so that the influence of the mother tongue could be determined. The results confirm the effect of both glottalization and the L1 of the listeners. In addition, a significant effect of test item manipulations was found. Although the phrases with added or deleted glottal stops displayed no obvious acoustic artefacts, they produced longer reaction times than items with naturally present or absent glottalizations. We believe that this finding underlines the importance of inherent stress patterns, whose alterations lead to the increase in processing load

Perceptual Impact of Speech Melody Hybridization: English and Czech English

The current paper examines the role of intonation in the perception of foreign-accented speech. In order to assess how difficult it is to mentally process native, non-native and modified speech melodies, four conditions were analyzed and compared: native English, native English with Czech melody, Czech English with native melody and Czech English. The method of reaction times measurement in a word monitoring task was employed, in which 108 Czech listeners heard English sentences in the explored conditions and pressed a button when hearing a target word. Speech melody turned out to have a relatively weak but discernible impact on perceptual processing. Interestingly, Czech English proved to be more difficult to process than native English, although the listeners were Czech. The implementation of English F0 contours on Czech English speech slightly alleviated the cognitive load, however, the second hybrid, native English with Czech melody, pointed to the opposite direction. The causes of this discrepancy were investigated, particularly higher degrees of collocability in certain expressions

Spectral Characteristics of Schwa in Czech Accented English

The English central mid lax vowel (i.e., schwa) often contributes considerably to the sound differences between native and non-native speech. Many foreign speakers of English fail to reduce certain underlying vowels to schwa, which, on the suprasegmental level of description, affects the perceived rhythm of their speech. However, the problem of capturing quantitatively the differences between native and non-native schwa poses difficulties that, to this day, have been tackled only partially. We offer a technique of measurement in the acoustic domain that has not been probed properly as yet: the distribution of acoustic energy in the vowel spectrum. Our results show that spectral slope features measured in weak vowels discriminate between Czech and British speakers of English quite reliably. Moreover, the measurements of formant bandwidths turned out to be useful for the same task, albeit less direc

Substantive consequences of insolveny of an obligor for his business partners

Hmotněprávní následky úpadku dlužníka pro jeho obchodní partnery Abstrakt Tato práce si klade za cíl popsat hmotněprávní následky úpadku dlužníka pro jeho obchodní partnery. Tohoto cíle chce dosáhnout srovnáním úpravy insolvenčního řízení vycházející ze zákona č. 182/2006 Sb., o úpadku a způsobech jeho řešení (insolvenční zákon), s obecnou úpravou závazkového práva za použití odborné literatury, judikatury a právních předpisů. V práci jsou popsány zejména dílčí přímé následky vycházející z insolvenčního zákona a jejich účel. Zároveň jsou v práci vymezeny možnosti pro obchodní partnery, jak se potenciálním pro ně nežádoucím následkům vyhnout. Práce je konkrétně zaměřena na existenci, možnosti zániku a vymahatelnost pohledávek obchodních partnerů, a je rozdělena do tří kapitol. První kapitola obsahuje popis základních zásad insolvenčního řízení, které pomáhají pochopit smysl a účel úpravy, a zároveň jsou i výkladovými pravidly pro právní úpravu vycházející z insolvenčního zákona. Dále jsou v první kapitole stručně charakterizovány jednotlivé etapy insolvenčního řízení a povaha jednotlivých řešení úpadku. Tato charakteristika slouží k pochopení účelu jednotlivých hmotněprávních následků, které s sebou úpadek dlužníka přináší. Ty jsou totiž často dány právě účelem, který jednotlivé etapy insolvenčního řízení...Substantive consequences of insolvency of an obligor for his business partners Abstract This thesis has a goal to describe substantive consequences of insolvency or bankruptcy of an obligor for his business partners. This goal is achieved by a comparison of norms influencing the insolvency proceedings arising from the Act no. 182/2006 Coll., about bankruptcy and methods of its solution (Insolvency Act), with the general norms of obligation law, while using academic literature, case law and legislation. The thesis describes especially single consequences which arise directly from the Insolvency Act and the purpose of these consequences. Additionally, possibilities for the business partners are included regarding avoidance of some of the consequences that might negatively affect them. Particularly, the thesis focuses on existence, extinguishment and enforceability of receivables of obligor's business partners. The text is divided into three chapters. The first chapter describes basic principles of the insolvency proceedings, which helps to understand the meaning and the purpose of the legislation pertinent to the insolvency proceedings. These principles are also interpretation rules for the Insolvency Act. Furthermore, individual phases of the insolvency proceedings are described in the first chapter of the...Department of Business LawKatedra obchodního právaPrávnická fakultaFaculty of La

Speech Melody Properties in English, Czech and Czech English: Reference and Interference

Two major objectives were set for the present study: to provide reference data for the description of Czech and English F0 contours, and to investigate the limits of the ‘interference hypothesis’ on Czech English data. Altogether, the production of 40 speakers in 2392 breath-group F0 contours was analyzed. The speech of 32 professional speakers of English and Czech provides reference values for various acoustic correlates of pitch level, pitch span and downtrend gradient. These values were subsequently used as a benchmark for a confirmation of the interference hypothesis through comparison with a further sample of 8 non-professional speakers of English and Czech-accented English. The native English speakers of both genders produced significantly higher pitch level indicators, wider pitch span and a steeper downtrend gradient than the reference native speakers of Czech. Although the pitch level of the Czech-accented material lies in between the two reference groups, the pitch span of this group is the narrowest, which indicates that factors of foreign-accentedness other than simply interference are in effect

Examining Temporal Structure of Speech with a Local Articulation Rate Metric

The primary goal of our study is to propose a method of calculating and visualising local articulation rate for research in temporal structure of speech. The method builds on proportional durations of vowels and consonants in Czech, which normalizes for inherent durations of phones. We first demonstrate the importance of temporal structure on several conspicuous features: phrase-final deceleration, prominence marking, parentheticals, and information structure constituents. We then describe our method stepwise so that it could be tested by interested parties. We illustrate such testing on a sample of news bulletin sentences produced by 26 speakers. The results confirm that our procedure can meaningfully reflect various temporal features, including the ‘information status’ of words in contextually grounded utterances

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