Sound Symbolism in Foreign Language Phonological Acquisition

The paper aims at investigating the idea of a symbolic nature of sounds and its implications for in the acquisition of foreign language phonology. Firstly, it will present an overview of universal trends in phonetic symbolism, i.e. non-arbitrary representations of a phoneme by specific semantic criteria. Secondly, the results of a preliminary study on different manifestations of sound symbolism including emotionally-loaded representations of phonemes and other synaesthetic associations shall be discussed. Finally, practical pedagogical implications of sound symbolism will be explored and a number of innovative classroom activities involving sound symbolic associations will be presented

In search of a new perspective: Cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of third language phonology

The books explores the phenomenon of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in phonological acquisition from a multilingual perspective. A distinction is made between second vs. third language acquisition and the complexity of the latter process as well as its conditioning factors are elaborated on. The contribution aims to test the tenets of the current theoretical models of multilingual acquisition including the L2 Status Model, the Cumulative Enhancement Model and the Typological Primacy Model. To this end, three studies were conducted in parallel on four groups of participants with varying language combinations (i.e. mirrored L2 and L3 sets). The studies involved (1) accentedness, comprehensibility and accuracy ratings assessing the perceived phonetic performance in the L3, (2) acoustic measurements of voice onset time (VOT) in the L1, L2 and L3 as a correlate of foreign accentedness, and (3) the degree of metaphonological awareness generated from oral protocols. The results were analysed separately for each study as well as globally by means of across groups and across studies comparisons. The findings indicate that CLI in the L3 phonological acquisition may have multiple sources including both the native and non-native languages, that it's gradual and structure dependent and that the proposed models can account only partially for its specificity

PRESISTANT: Learning based assistant for data pre-processing

Data pre-processing is one of the most time consuming and relevant steps in a data analysis process (e.g., classification task). A given data pre-processing operator (e.g., transformation) can have positive, negative or zero impact on the final result of the analysis. Expert users have the required knowledge to find the right pre-processing operators. However, when it comes to non-experts, they are overwhelmed by the amount of pre-processing operators and it is challenging for them to find operators that would positively impact their analysis (e.g., increase the predictive accuracy of a classifier). Existing solutions either assume that users have expert knowledge, or they recommend pre-processing operators that are only "syntactically" applicable to a dataset, without taking into account their impact on the final analysis. In this work, we aim at providing assistance to non-expert users by recommending data pre-processing operators that are ranked according to their impact on the final analysis. We developed a tool PRESISTANT, that uses Random Forests to learn the impact of pre-processing operators on the performance (e.g., predictive accuracy) of 5 different classification algorithms, such as J48, Naive Bayes, PART, Logistic Regression, and Nearest Neighbor. Extensive evaluations on the recommendations provided by our tool, show that PRESISTANT can effectively help non-experts in order to achieve improved results in their analytical tasks

Production of L3 Vowels: Is it Possible to Separate them from L1 and L2 Sounds?

It is incontrovertible that acquisition of a sound system of a second language is always a complex phenomenon and presents a great challenge for L2 learners (e.g. Rojczyk, 2010a). There are numerous studies (e.g. Nowacka, 2010; Flege, 1991) which show that L2 learners whose first language has a scarce number of sounds, have problems to distinguish L2 sound categories and tend to apply their L1 segments to new contexts. It may be easily detectable in the case of vowels. There is abundance of studies examining L2 learners’ successes and failures in production of L1 and L2 vowels (e.g. Flege, 1992; Nowacka, 2010; Rojczyk, 2010a). Usually such projects show how difficult it is for L2 learners to separate “old” and “new” vowel categories. However, the situation becomes much more complicated when we think of third language (L3) production. While in the case of L2 segmental production the number of factors affecting L2 sounds is rather limited (either interference from learners’ L1 or some kind of L2 intralingual influence), in the case of L3 segmental production we may encounter L1→L3, L2→L3 or L3 intralingual interference. This makes separation of L3 sounds a much more complex process. The aim of this study is to examine whether speakers of L1 Polish, L2 English and L3 German are able to separate new, L3 vowel categories from their native and L2 categories. Being a part of a larger project, this time the focus is on German /œ/. This vowel was chosen since it is regarded as especially difficult for Polish learners of German and it is frequently substituted with some other sounds. A group of English philology (Polish-English-German translation and interpretation programme) students was chosen to participate in this project. They were advanced speakers of English who did not encounter any difficulties in communication with native speakers of this language and upper-intermediate users of German. They had been taught both English and German pronunciation/practical phonetics during their studies at the University of Silesia. The subjects were asked to produce words containing analysed vowels, namely: P /u/, P /ɔ/, P /ɛ/, E /u/, E /ɔ / and G /œ/. All examined vowels were embedded in a /bVt/ context. The target /bVt/ words were then embedded in carrier sentences I said /bVt/ this time in English, Ich sag’ /bVt/ diesmal in German and Mówię /bVt/ teraz in Polish, in a non-final position. The sentences were presented to subjects on a computer screen and the produced chunks were stored in a notebook’s memory as .wav files ready for inspection. The Praat 5.3.12 speech-analysis software package (Boersma, 2001) was used to scroll through the audio files in order to locate an onset and offset of target vowels, measure the F1 and F2 frequencies and plot vowels on the plane. All analyses were also performed using Praat. The obtained results shed new light on L3 segmental production and L1 and L2 interference

L2-accented speech in L3 production

The paper is aimed at investigating the sources of cross-linguistic influence in the third language (L3) phonology, and, particularly, the impact of the second language (L2) on the phonological acquisition of another foreign language. The study consisted in foreign accent judgements performed by a group of expert judges who were presented with recorded samples of L3 English. The findings confirm the results of some previous studies on the phenomenon of 'L2 status' and demonstrate a tendency for the L2 phonological transfer in L3 production at the initial stages of acquisition that decreases with growing third language proficiency

Smoothie or Fruit Salad? Learners’ Descriptions of Accents as Windows to Concept Formation

This paper explores the linguistically naive descriptions which one set of EFL learners provided when identifying and describing accents. First and second-year English majors at a French university were asked to do two tasks. First, they listened to two extracts to determine whether the speaker’s accent sounded more British or American, and to explain which features helped them to decide. Later they answered two questions: a) What do you do when you want to sound more like an American? and b) more like a British person? The analysis of their answers highlights learners’ underlying representations of accents as well as concept formation in relation to English pronunciation. I argue that this cognitive aspect of L2 learning should be addressed explicitly in instruction

Cross-modal Reinforcements in Phonetics Teaching and Learning: An Overview of Innovative Trends in Pronunciation Pedagogy

The present contribution provides an overview of some innovative approaches to pronunciation pedagogy, focusing on cross-modal reinforcements aimed at facilitating the process of L2 phonological perception and production. The paper starts with a brief introduction into recent theories of multisensory integration and proceeds with practical suggestions for multimodal reinforcements integrating visual, auditory, kinaesthetic and metacognitive domains of L2 pronunciation teaching and learning. The proposal includes sensory stimulations in the form of articulatory warm-up exercises, assigning vivid symbolic characteristics to target language sounds, phonetic colour coding and the development of conscious metacognitive phonetic strategies

Cross-linguistic Influence in Third Language Acquisition of Voice Onset Time

The paper aims to investigate the sources of cross-linguistic influence in the acquisition of voice onset time patterns in third language phonology. Thirty two learners of L3 French with L1 Polish and L2 English were recorded reading lists of words in carrier phrases in the three respective languages. The recordings were analyzed for the degree of aspiration of voiceless stops in stressed onset positions. The results revealed interlanguage VOT patterns, including compromise values for L3 VOT that could be attributed to a combined influence of L1 and L2, thus substantiating the existence of both native and non-native cross-linguistic influence in L3 phonology