Vowel dynamics for Polish learners of English (original) (raw)
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Dynamic information for Polish and English vowels in syllable onsets and offsets
Unpublished BA thesis, 2010
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the dynamic information for both English and Polish vowels that is present in syllable onsets and offsets. In order to establish how much dynamic information is needed for correct vowel identification, I have conducted an experiment on vowel perception using a set of modified recordings of Polish and English vowels set in a /d/V/d/ context and tested a group of 3BA IFA students of English and a group of students from various non-linguistic studies. The results where compared to the ones that were originally recorded by Jenkins and Strange in their research (Jenkins, Strange 1999). In the first chapter of my paper I present a short outline of the recent studies on vowel perception, describe the most significant theories and approaches in this field and gather the necessary information that is needed for explaining my experiment. In the second chapter I thoroughly describe the purpose, the stimulus and the procedure of my experiment, as well as my expectations and hypotheses concerning it. In the third and last chapter I present the results of the experiment and discuss upon their possible explanation. Moreover, I also present possible directions for further studies in this field. This paper is very much experiment-oriented and all information has its purpose in defining and explaining the research. Instead of writing a thorough analysis of vowel perception studies, I focused on a specific topic that needs to be addressed. The results of this study will hopefully clarify vowel identification for Poles learning English as a foreign language and compare Polish and English vowel perception.
English vowel perception by Polish advanced learners of English
Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 2018
This article examines English vowel perception by advanced Polish learners of English in a formal classroom setting (i.e., they learnt English as a foreign language in school while living in Poland). The stimuli included 11 English noncewords in bilabial (/bVb/), alveolar (/dVd/) and velar (/gVg/) contexts. The participants, 35 first-year English majors, were examined during the performance of three tasks with English vowels: a categorial discrimination oddity task, an L1 assimilation task (categorization and goodness rating) and a task involving rating the (dis-)similarities between pairs of English vowels. The results showed a variety of assimilation types according to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and the expected performance in a discrimination task. The more difficult it was to discriminate between two given vowels, the more similar these vowels were judged to be. Vowel contrasts involving height distinctions were easier to discriminate than vowel contrasts with tongue advancement distinctions. The results also revealed that the place of articulation of neighboring consonants had little effect on the perceptibility of the tested English vowels, unlike in the case of lower proficiency learners.Unlike previous results for naïve listeners, the present results for advanced learners showed no adherence to the principles of the Natural Referent Vowel framework. Generally, the perception of English vowels by these Polish advanced learners of English conformed with PAM’s predictions, but differed from vowel perception by naïve listeners and lower-proficiency learners.
Dynamic Targets in the Acquisition of L2 English Vowels
Research in Language, 2016
This paper presents acoustic data on the dynamic properties of the FLEECE and TRAP vowels in the speech of two groups of Polish users of English. Results reveal that the more proficient group users, made up of teachers and professors with professional-level proficiency in English, produce more dramatic patterns of formant movement, reminiscent of native productions, than first year students. It is argued that vowel inherent spectral change (VISC) is an inherent aspect of English phonology, originated in interactions between vowels and neighboring consonants, and later generalized to the vowel system as a whole. By contrast, Polish is a language with a minimal role of VISC. Consequently, successful acquisition of L2 English vowels involves not only the mastery of vowels in F1- F2 space, but also formant trajectories over time.
Perceptual Identification of Polish Vowels Due to F0 Changes
Archives of Acoustics, 2019
The paper investigates the interdependence between the perceptual identification of the vocalic quality of six isolated Polish vowels traditionally defined by the spectral envelope and the fundamental frequency F0. The stimuli used in the listening experiments were natural female and male voices, which were modified by changing the F0 values in the ±1 octave range. The results were then compared with the outcome of the experiments on fully synthetic voices. Despite the differences in the generation of the investigated stimuli and their technical quality, consistent results were obtained. They confirmed the findings that in the perceptual identification of vowels of key importance is not only the position of the formants on the F1 × F2 plane but also their relationship to F0, the connection between the formants and the harmonics and other factors. The paper presents, in quantitative terms, all possible kinds of perceptual shifts of Polish vowels from one phonetic category to another ...
Vowel variation in advanced Polish learners of English
The vowels of TRAP, DRESS and STRUT from a wordlist read by 52 female advanced Polish students of English were measured acoustically in terms of F1 and F2. In the entire sample treated as a whole, TRAP showed the most variation, and its distribution overlapped almost completely with those of STRUT and DRESS. Statistical analysis showed that, for the entire sample, there was a significant difference between the three vowels, but a post-hoc test revealed that contrast between TRAP and either DRESS or STRUT was lacking for many subjects. A qualitative analysis of the individual systems showed four patterns: (1) "TREP" systems, where TRAP lacked contrast with DRESS; (2) "TRUP" systems, where it lacked contrast with STRUT; (3) "BIMODAL" systems, where it showed a bimodal distribution, with some instances in DRESS territory, and some in STRUT territory and (4) systems where TRAP formed a more or less separate category. An analysis of the variability within TRAP showed that, for F2, the interaction between preceding and following consonantal context was a stronger effect than following context only, pointing to possible lexical conditioning.
Spectral dynamics in L1 and L2 vowel perception
0 Abstract This paper presents a study of L1 and L2 vowel perception by Polish learners of English. Employing the Silent Center paradigm (e.g. Strange et al. 1983), by which listeners are presented with different portions of a vowel, a force choice identification task was carried out. Due to differences in the vowel systems of the two languages, it was hypothesized that stimulus type should have minimal effects for L1 Polish vowel perception since Polish vowels are relatively stable in quality. In L2 English, depending on proficiency level, listeners were expected to adopt a more dynamic approach to vowel identification and show highest accuracy rates on the SC tokens. That is, listeners were expected to attend more to dynamic formant cues, or vowel inherent spectral change (VISC; Morrison & Assmann 2013) in vowel perception. Results for identification accuracy for the most part were consistent with these hypotheses. Implications of VISC for the notion of cross-language phonetic similarity, crucial to models of L2 speech acquisition, are also discussed.
The notion of cross-language phonetic similarity is often invoked in the study of L2 phonology, yet remains a somewhat elusive concept to define. This is particularly true in the case of external sandhi. In the Onset Prominence (OP) framework, cross-language differences in sandhi application are predicted by phonetically-derived representational parameters. An acoustic study of Polish learners of English investigates these predictions. The suppression of glottalization of word-initial vowels, which acts as a sandhi blocker in L1 Polish, facilitates the production of liaison in L2 English C#V sequences. Liaison in turn is conducive to the production of voiced obstruents, a notorious difficulty for Polish learners. Implications of the representational model for L2 speech learning are discussed. OP representational devices afford a new perspective on cross-language similarity.
Phonological factors affecting L1 phonetic realization of proficient Polish users of English
Research in Language
Acoustic phonetic studies examine the L1 of Polish speakers with professional level proficiency in English. The studies include two tasks, a production task carried out entirely in Polish and a phonetic code-switching task in which speakers insert target Polish words or phrases into an English carrier. Additionally, two phonetic parameters are studied: the oft-investigated VOT, as well as glottalization vs. sandhi linking of word-initial vowels. In monolingual Polish mode, L2 interference was observed for the VOT parameter, but not for sandhi linking. It is suggested that this discrepancy may be related to the differing phonological status of the two phonetic parameters. In the code-switching tasks, VOTs were on the whole more English-like than in monolingual mode, but this appeared to be a matter of individual performance. An increase in the rate of sandhi linking in the code-switches, except for the case of one speaker, appeared to be a function of accelerated production of L1 tar...