Rhythmic Abilities Correlate with L2 Prosody Imitation Abilities in Typologically Different Languages (original) (raw)
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L2 rhythm production and musical rhythm perception in advanced learners of English
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics, 2022
The aim of this research is to investigate the relation between musical aptitude and the acquisition of L2 rhythm by Polish advanced learners of English. A longitudinal study was conducted among 50 Polish students of English reading the “Please Call Stella” passage before and after an intensive two-semester accent training course supplemented by an extensive practical course in English phonetics and phonology. Participants also completed two musical hearing tests (Mandell 2009) and a survey on musical experience. Automated alignment was performed in DARLA (Reddy and Stanford 2015) and reviewed in Praat (Boersma and Weenink 2019). We compared the rhythm metrics calculated in Correlatore (Mairano and Romano 2010) before and after training and juxtaposed them against the pronunciation teachers’ results. We reported a significant difference between the scores for vocalic intervals across all rhythm metrics, indicating that participants’ produced higher vocalic variation after training, ...
Methodological Perspective on Second Language Prosody
The stress-timed vs. syllable-timed dichotomy between English and other languages (e.g. French), is at the origin of a major challenge for teachers and students of English L2 alike. Lexical stress-not a free parameter in English words-plays a fundamental role in the intelligibility of the message. As the rhythmic, basic beatbearer of the utterance, its absence or misplacement can dramatically impair interaction with a native speaker. The experimentation described in this paper is based on an original pedagogical approach targeted at the acquisition of rhythm, using a metronome frequently during oral production tasks in class. An identical test was used, before and after the work with the metronome, enabling the measurement and analysis of progressrelated data. The productions of 75 students were recorded during the test, so as to build a corpus. A preliminary single case study is related here. Using PRAAT software, measures were made and the collected data analyzed in order to determine whether there was progress. First results show definite progress in some parameters (vowel duration, pitch) and stagnation in others (intensity, vowel quality). This preliminary study paves the way to a future broader study based on part, or all, of the recorded corpus.
Does prosodic similarity matter in L2 production? The case of Korean learners of French
French and Korean share similar prosodic characteristics as far as rhythm and intonation are concerned. In order to determine how this prosodic similarity affects the second language production, we propose in this paper to examine these prosodic parameters in read productions by Korean learners of French as a second language compared to French native speakers. We show that the productions of Korean learners and French native speakers present minor differences: concerning rhythm, Korean learners are less systematic in lengthening the last vowel at a phrase-final position while the overall pitch contour is similar for both groups of speakers, especially for the subject and object phrases. We argue that these minor differences are not sufficient enough for the detection of a "foreign accent" only with prosodic cues.
The acquisition of English rhythm as a function of changes in phrase-level prosody
Journal of The Acoustical Society of America, 2011
This study investigated the integration of word-and phrase-level prominences in speech produced by 25 school-aged children (6;2 to 7;3) and 25 adults. Participants produced disyllabic number words in a straight count condition and in two phrasal conditions, namely, a stress clash and non-clash phrasal context. Duration and amplitude measures of syllable rhymes were used to assess the realization of lexical stress, and fundamental frequency (F0) measures were used to assess the realization of phrasal pitch accents across conditions. Results showed that the duration and F0 correlates varied independently of each other as a function of condition in child speech, but much less so in adult speech. The group differences were taken to indicate that 6-year-old children have yet to develop prosodic structures with integrated prominence. Structural and pragmatic interpretations of the results are discussed.
Interspeech 2017
This study investigates the cumulative effect of (non-)native intonation, rhythm, and speech rate in utterances produced by Spanish learners of Dutch on Dutch native listeners' perceptions. In order to assess the relative contribution of these language-specific properties to perceived accentedness and comprehensibility, speech produced by Spanish learners of Dutch was manipulated using transplantation and resynthesis techniques. Thus, eight manipulation conditions reflecting all possible combinations of L1 and L2 intonation, rhythm, and speech rate were created, resulting in 320 utterances that were rated by 50 Dutch natives on their degree of foreign accent and ease of comprehensibility. Our analyses show that all manipulations result in lower accentedness and higher comprehensibility ratings. Moreover, both measures are not affected in the same way by different combinations of prosodic features: For accentedness, Dutch listeners appear most influenced by intonation, and intonation combined with speech rate. This holds for comprehensibility ratings as well, but here the combination of all three properties, including rhythm, also significantly affects ratings by native speakers. Thus, our study reaffirms the importance of differentiating between different aspects of perception and provides insight into those features that are most likely to affect how native speakers perceive second language learners.
Speech Rhythm Production In A Multilingual Setting
مجلة الأكاديمية للدراسات الاجتماعية والإنسانية
Algerian learners majoring in English as a foreign language have already been exposed to a second standard language, French, early in their learning curriculum, in addition to their mother tongue, dialectal Arabic. This multilingual profile of Algeria has been proved to affect different aspects of English acquisition mainly in the area of phonetics and phonology. However, studies dealing with the influence of the previously linguistic systems on the production of L3 speech rhythm are very scant. Therefore, the present study is conducted to classify the interlanguage rhythm and to find out whether it is conceived as a stress-timed vs. syllable-timed dichotomy or as a continuum. Audio recordings of 63 third year Algerian EFL students at Mentouri Brothers University, Constantine were segmented into vowels and consonants' sequences, and their derived rhythm metrics (%V and ∆C) were calculated using PRAAT, speech analysis software. The results of the two measured rhythm metrics yield that the informants' speech rhythm is rather 'intermediate' , merging a stress-timed ∆C and a syllable-timed %V. Accordingly, this study reveals that crosslinguistic interference in the area of phonology touches not only segments but also speech rhythm.
This paper presents results from an ongoing research on the evaluation of the prosody of British English spoken by French learners and native speakers. This pilot study examines two potential rhythmic criteria: the analysis of the anacrusis/narrow rhythm unit and that of the pairwise variability index (PVI). The method used is a comparative analysis of French and native speakers' productions with on the one hand a subjective evaluation of the prosody of the speakers including the natives, and on the other hand an objective evaluation aiming at correlating acoustic parameters with the level of the speakers. This preliminary study showed interesting results: even though the level of significance was not reached the two rhythmic parameters could be considered as relevant prosodic criteria and are in need of further investigation.
Rhythm metrics and the production of English L1/L2
This study investigates rhythmic parameters in the production of French learners in a dual perspective: (i) to analyse the influence of rhythm of the native language (L1=French) on the target language (L2=English) and, (ii) to provide prosodic evaluative criteria for French speakers' productions. The method used is a comparative analysis of French and native speakers' productions using different rhythm metrics. Based on the analyses of the ANGLISH corpus, the results show that it is possible to foresee the rhythmic tendencies and to distinguish between native and non-native speakers by a combination of rhythmic parameters. A discriminant analysis allows the classification of the speakers into three different levels of group.
This paper presents a system named MusicSpeak, which strives to capitalize on musical rhythm for prosodic training in second language acquisition. The system targets for Chinese (L1) speakers learning English (L2). Their speech rhythms are considered to be syllable-timed and stress-timed respectively. Hence, language transfer creates a challenge for Chinese learners in acquiring English rhythm. We develop an automatic procedure that can be applied to any English sentence, to cast rhythmic patterns in speech (based on alternating stressed and unstressed syllables) into rhythmic patterns in music (based on musical bars and beats). We collected speech recordings from 9 speakers uttering 15 English sentences, first in natural style and then in synchrony with the generated musical rhythm. Comparison between the two styles based on rhythm metrics suggests that the latter has higher variability and better approximates stress-timed rhythm.
Probing rhythmic patterns in english-L2
Journal of Speech Sciences, 2017
Languages are traditionally classified as mora-timed, syllable-timed or stress-timed in relation to their rhythmic patterns. The distinction between syllable-timed and stress-timed languages, however, lacks solid evidence in the literature. Syllable-timed languages typically have similar duration across unstressed and stressed syllables, whereas stress-timed languages tend to have similar inter-stress intervals, and unstressed syllables are shorter than stressed syllables. According to this categorical classification, English is a stress-timed language, thus having more reduction in unstressed vowels. Brazilian Portuguese, on the other hand, is typically classified as syllable-timed, and thus has little reduction of unstressed vowels. If these categorical rhythmic differences are correct, then acquiring the rhythmic patterns of English should be a challenging task to Brazilian learners, who are not expected to produce unstressed vowels with as much reduction as English native speake...