VALIDATING ACOUSTIC MEASURES OF SPEECH RHYTHM FOR SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION (original) (raw)
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English speech rhythm in instructed learners. Its development as shown by Varco V, 2019
Speech rhythm is viewed as the product of different phonetic and phonological properties. This work shows the rhythmic acquisition of instructed learners of English as an L2 whose mother tongue is Spanish. Two main variables are considered: levels of language proficiency at university and type of elicitation task. Taking into account that rhythm can be measured acoustically, the production of speech is computed by means of the metric VarcoV, which considers the duration of vocalic intervals. The metric measurements reflect the development of L2 spea-like rhythm affected by the type of task.
L2 Speech Rhythm and Language Experience in New Immigrants
Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2019), 2019
This study is a longitudinal investigation of second language (L2) speech rhythm in Cantonese-first-language (L1) immigrants. Seven Hong Kong students were recorded five times throughout a two-year period while they were living abroad in English-speaking countries. The speech rhythm of the read utterances in these recordings was then measured using several durational variability metrics. In addition, the participants were surveyed on their use of L1 and L2 speech during their time abroad. The results suggest that significant increases in durational variability and speech rate occurred during the first year abroad. Additionally, there seems to be inverse correlation between the use of L1 Cantonese and rhythmic changes in the expected direction. These findings were further supported by ratings of accentedness, comprehensibility and intelligibility of their speech production by a group of native English speakers.
Rhythmic variability between speakers: Articulatory, prosodic, and linguistic factors
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2015
Between-speaker variability of acoustically measurable speech rhythm [%V, ΔV(ln), ΔC(ln), and Δpeak(ln)] was investigated when within-speaker variability of (a) articulation rate and (b) linguistic structural characteristics was introduced. To study (a), 12 speakers of Standard German read seven lexically identical sentences under five different intended tempo conditions (very slow, slow, normal, fast, very fast). To study (b), 16 speakers of Zurich Swiss German produced 16 spontaneous utterances each (256 in total) for which transcripts were made and then read by all speakers (4096 sentences; 16 speaker × 256 sentences). Between-speaker variability was tested using analysis of variance with repeated measures on within-speaker factors. Results revealed strong and consistent between-speaker variability while within-speaker variability as a function of articulation rate and linguistic characteristics was typically not significant. It was concluded that between-speaker variability of a...
This study investigates the speech rhythm of Cantonese, Beijing Mandarin, Cantonese-accented English and Mandarinaccented English using acoustic rhythmic measures. They were compared with four languages in the BonnTempo corpus: German and English (stress-timed) and French and Italian (syllable-timed). Six Cantonese and six Beijing Mandarin native speakers were recorded reading the North Wind and the Sun story with a normal speech rate, telling the story semi-spontaneously and reading the English version of the story. Both raw and normalised rhythmic measures were calculated using vocalic, consonantal and syllabic durations (∆C, ∆V, ∆S, %V, VarcoC, VarcoV, VarcoS, rPVI_C, rPVI_S, nPVI_V, nPVI_S). Results confirm the syllabletiming impression of Cantonese and Mandarin. Data of the two foreign English accents poses a challenge to the rhythmic measures because the two accents are syllable-timed impressionistically but were classified as stress-timed by some of the rhythmic measures (∆C, rPVI_C, nPVI_V, ∆S, VarcoS, rPVI_S and nPVI_S). VarcoC and %V give the best classification of speech rhythm in this study.
Towards Understanding the Protracted Acquisition of English Rhythm
Proceedings of the ... International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2011
Several global and specific rhythm metrics and speech rate were used to characterize differences in the rhythms of 5- and 8-year-olds' spoken English. The results were that only speech rate and the rate-normalized Pairwise Variability Index (nPVI) differentiated between 5- and 8-year-olds' speech. A further result was that the variance in nPVI values was better explained by a specific measure devised to capture patterns of supralexical accenting than by the factor of age expressed in months. These results are taken to suggest that the protracted acquisition of English rhythm may be due in part to the slow rate at which children acquire prosodically conditioned vowel reduction.
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.
Speech rhythm of english as L2
Journal of Speech Sciences, 2020
When speaking a foreign language (L2), non-native speakers (NNS) produce different phonetic features perceivable by the native speakers (NS) of that language. Such features are based on the production of phonetic gestures characteristic of their mother tongue (L1), and differ from those of the L2 in terms of the segmental (vowels and consonants) and prosodic (stress, rhythm and intonation) features. Causes such as neuro-plasticity and length of residence (Flege, 1995), for example, have been claimed to interfere in L2 production. This work aims to analyze how L2 speech rhythm of English is produced by Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers and how prosodic variables such as, metric and acoustic correlates, interfere in the production. This research is based on Barbosa (2006) for the dynamic determination of speech rhythm in addition to Ramus et al. (1999) and so, on the choice of metrics and segmentation procedures. As for the Methods, we collected phonetic data from twenty BP and four American speakers. Next, the data were segmented and labeled into six different units; vowels, consonants, pauses, (phonetic) syllables, sentences and higher units for the acoustic analysis. From these units, we extracted values from metric and acoustic parameters for the statistical analysis, in which we ran one-way ANOVA statistics to check the variability between both groups. Results pointed out to a significant difference between L1 and L2 rhythm of English produced by the groups. These results have confirmed our hypothesis and sparked some implications for understanding L2 English rhythm produced by Brazilian speakers, such as lower speech rate, syllabic and F0 variability. This study has contributed to fill a gap on studies of L2 rhythm of English spoken by L1 BP speakers as well as to L2 (experimental) prosody in Brazil.