Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-85
Wenwei Xu, Chunyu Ge, Wentao Gu, P. Mok
Previous studies have established that phonation contrasts can be, apart from pitch, an important dimension of tonal contrasts in some languages, and modern Wu Chinese is a good example in which the lower register tones are produced with breathier phonation than the upper register tones. Nevertheless, researchers have shown that such phonation contrast is declining among young speakers in Shanghai and Suzhou Wu. This pilot study is thus motivated to investigate children’s production in Kunshan Wu, a neighboring yet rather understudied dialect with more tones, in order to see if a similar trend is ongoing. Two male and two female school-age children (8;4 to 10;4) were recorded reading isolated monosyllabic words with different lexical tones, and simultaneous acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) data were collected. Results of EGG and acoustic parameters demonstrate that at least near the onset of the vowel, glottal constriction is smaller and glottal closure is less abrupt in the lower register tones than in the upper register tones, suggesting that the lower register tones are generally produced with breathier phonation. Therefore, school-age child speakers of Kunshan Wu are still able to produce the phonation contrast between the tone registers.
{"title":"A preliminary analysis on children’s phonation contrast in Kunshan Wu Chinese tones","authors":"Wenwei Xu, Chunyu Ge, Wentao Gu, P. Mok","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-85","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-85","url":null,"abstract":"Previous studies have established that phonation contrasts can be, apart from pitch, an important dimension of tonal contrasts in some languages, and modern Wu Chinese is a good example in which the lower register tones are produced with breathier phonation than the upper register tones. Nevertheless, researchers have shown that such phonation contrast is declining among young speakers in Shanghai and Suzhou Wu. This pilot study is thus motivated to investigate children’s production in Kunshan Wu, a neighboring yet rather understudied dialect with more tones, in order to see if a similar trend is ongoing. Two male and two female school-age children (8;4 to 10;4) were recorded reading isolated monosyllabic words with different lexical tones, and simultaneous acoustic and electroglottographic (EGG) data were collected. Results of EGG and acoustic parameters demonstrate that at least near the onset of the vowel, glottal constriction is smaller and glottal closure is less abrupt in the lower register tones than in the upper register tones, suggesting that the lower register tones are generally produced with breathier phonation. Therefore, school-age child speakers of Kunshan Wu are still able to produce the phonation contrast between the tone registers.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121591501","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-26
J. Kruyt, S. Benus, C. Faget, C. Lançon, M. Champagne-Lavau
Entrainment refers to the tendency people have to speak more similarly during a conversation. Although entrainment has been observed frequently, the underlying mechanisms of the phe-nomenon are debated. A specific point of disagreement is the role of social or higher-order cognitive factors in entrainment. The present study aimed to explore prosodic and lexical entrainment in small groups of individuals with schizophrenia, a dis-order that has been associated with theory of mind impairments and social difficulties, and a control group without schizophrenia. All participants completed a referential communication task with an experimenter. To determine prosodic entrainment, the measures proposed by Levitan and Hirshberg [1] were used. Results seem to suggest that the effect of task role on prosodic entrainment was larger than any possible effects of group, suggesting that social factors affect prosodic entrainment behaviour more than individual differences in cognition or other factors. Conversely, lexical entrainment was not affected by task role or group. Importantly, no clear patterns in entrainment on different dimensions, levels, or features could be observed, highlighting the complex and multifaceted nature of entrainment.
{"title":"Prosodic and lexical entrainment in adults with and without schizophrenia","authors":"J. Kruyt, S. Benus, C. Faget, C. Lançon, M. Champagne-Lavau","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-26","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-26","url":null,"abstract":"Entrainment refers to the tendency people have to speak more similarly during a conversation. Although entrainment has been observed frequently, the underlying mechanisms of the phe-nomenon are debated. A specific point of disagreement is the role of social or higher-order cognitive factors in entrainment. The present study aimed to explore prosodic and lexical entrainment in small groups of individuals with schizophrenia, a dis-order that has been associated with theory of mind impairments and social difficulties, and a control group without schizophrenia. All participants completed a referential communication task with an experimenter. To determine prosodic entrainment, the measures proposed by Levitan and Hirshberg [1] were used. Results seem to suggest that the effect of task role on prosodic entrainment was larger than any possible effects of group, suggesting that social factors affect prosodic entrainment behaviour more than individual differences in cognition or other factors. Conversely, lexical entrainment was not affected by task role or group. Importantly, no clear patterns in entrainment on different dimensions, levels, or features could be observed, highlighting the complex and multifaceted nature of entrainment.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121455741","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-128
Hua Wei, Yifei He, C. Kauschke, Mathias Scharinger, Ulrike Domahs
Previous behavioral studies on the processing of emotional prosody in L2 learners showed similarities and differences between L1- and L2-processing and suggested that emotional perception has both universal and culture-specific aspects. However, little is known about the processing of emotional prosody in L2 learners' brains. Therefore, the present study used event-related potentials to compare the processing of emotional prosodies between German native speakers and Chinese L2 learners of German. Participants performed a prosody recognition task with semantically neutral German words recorded with emotional "neutral" , "like" , and "disgust" prosodies. The accuracy ratings of categorizing emotional prosodies of L2 learners were above chance but significantly better for the L1 speakers. Both groups yielded an early and a late positivity for processing "like" in comparison to "disgust" , reflecting the emotional prosodic predictive processing. However, an early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and a late anterior negativity observed in the L2 learners suggest that they are more sensitive to acoustic differences of the presented stimuli. Overall, our findings support the assumption that the processing of emotional prosody is in principle universal across languages, but that in addition to the general mechanisms involved in the processing of emotional speech language-specific aspects also modify emotional processing.
{"title":"An EEG-study on L2 categorization of emotional prosody in German","authors":"Hua Wei, Yifei He, C. Kauschke, Mathias Scharinger, Ulrike Domahs","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-128","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-128","url":null,"abstract":"Previous behavioral studies on the processing of emotional prosody in L2 learners showed similarities and differences between L1- and L2-processing and suggested that emotional perception has both universal and culture-specific aspects. However, little is known about the processing of emotional prosody in L2 learners' brains. Therefore, the present study used event-related potentials to compare the processing of emotional prosodies between German native speakers and Chinese L2 learners of German. Participants performed a prosody recognition task with semantically neutral German words recorded with emotional \"neutral\" , \"like\" , and \"disgust\" prosodies. The accuracy ratings of categorizing emotional prosodies of L2 learners were above chance but significantly better for the L1 speakers. Both groups yielded an early and a late positivity for processing \"like\" in comparison to \"disgust\" , reflecting the emotional prosodic predictive processing. However, an early left anterior negativity (ELAN) and a late anterior negativity observed in the L2 learners suggest that they are more sensitive to acoustic differences of the presented stimuli. Overall, our findings support the assumption that the processing of emotional prosody is in principle universal across languages, but that in addition to the general mechanisms involved in the processing of emotional speech language-specific aspects also modify emotional processing.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"63 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115926113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-31
B. Otundo, M. Grice
We examine salient prosodic features used in advice-giving in Kenyan English and Kiswahili from a radio phone-in programme. Our pilot corpus constitutes 40 sequences taken from The Breakfast Show , a Kenyan radio phone-in aired on Classic 105 fm. Although the programme is moderated in English, advice is given in both English and Kiswahili, since Kenya is highly multilingual with frequent code-switching. In this paper, we focus on the pragmatic strategies of expressing advice involving forms that furnish the recipient with little optionality in carrying out the suggested action, including, imperatives, declaratives with modal verbs, and conditional forms. In both languages, we observe a terminal falling intonation in advice-giving. However, whilst the global pitch contours in Kenyan English follow a marked downtrend for expressing advice in imperative, declarative and conditional forms, interpreted as a downstepping sequence of H* accents, those in Kiswahili have alternating rises and falls, suggesting a more elaborate intonational phonology. In instances of code-switching, imperative forms of advice generally reveal alternating rises and falls. This pattern is also found in declarative and conditional forms, although with a greater pitch range. These preliminary findings are useful in applications such as identification of language and variety, especially in multilingual interactions.
{"title":"Intonation in advice-giving in Kenyan English and Kiswahili","authors":"B. Otundo, M. Grice","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-31","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-31","url":null,"abstract":"We examine salient prosodic features used in advice-giving in Kenyan English and Kiswahili from a radio phone-in programme. Our pilot corpus constitutes 40 sequences taken from The Breakfast Show , a Kenyan radio phone-in aired on Classic 105 fm. Although the programme is moderated in English, advice is given in both English and Kiswahili, since Kenya is highly multilingual with frequent code-switching. In this paper, we focus on the pragmatic strategies of expressing advice involving forms that furnish the recipient with little optionality in carrying out the suggested action, including, imperatives, declaratives with modal verbs, and conditional forms. In both languages, we observe a terminal falling intonation in advice-giving. However, whilst the global pitch contours in Kenyan English follow a marked downtrend for expressing advice in imperative, declarative and conditional forms, interpreted as a downstepping sequence of H* accents, those in Kiswahili have alternating rises and falls, suggesting a more elaborate intonational phonology. In instances of code-switching, imperative forms of advice generally reveal alternating rises and falls. This pattern is also found in declarative and conditional forms, although with a greater pitch range. These preliminary findings are useful in applications such as identification of language and variety, especially in multilingual interactions.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"80 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123240362","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-47
Irene De la Cruz-Pavía
From early in development infants integrate auditory and visual facial information while processing language. The potential role of visual cues in the acquisition of grammar remains however virtually unexplored. Phrasal prosodic prominence correlates systematically with basic word order in natural languages. Co-verbal gestures—head and eyebrow motion—act in turn as markers of auditory prosody. Here, we examine whether co-verbal gestures could help infants parse the input into prosodic units such as phrases, and discover the basic word order of the native language. In a first study we show that adult talkers spontaneously produce co-verbal gestures signaling phrase boundaries across languages and speech styles: Japanese and English, adult- and infant-directed speech. A second study shows that adult speakers use co-verbal information, specifically head nods marking phrasal prosodic prominence, to parse an artificial language into phrase-like units that follow the native language’s word order. Finally, a third study shows that the presence of co-verbal gestures—i.e. head nods—also impacts 8-month-old infants’ segmentation preferences of a structurally ambiguous artificial language. However, infants’ ability to use this cue is still limited, suggesting that co-verbal gestures might be acquired later in development than visual speech, presumably due to their greater inter-/intra-speaker variability.
{"title":"The role of audio-visual phrasal prosody in bootstrapping the acquisition of word order","authors":"Irene De la Cruz-Pavía","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-47","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-47","url":null,"abstract":"From early in development infants integrate auditory and visual facial information while processing language. The potential role of visual cues in the acquisition of grammar remains however virtually unexplored. Phrasal prosodic prominence correlates systematically with basic word order in natural languages. Co-verbal gestures—head and eyebrow motion—act in turn as markers of auditory prosody. Here, we examine whether co-verbal gestures could help infants parse the input into prosodic units such as phrases, and discover the basic word order of the native language. In a first study we show that adult talkers spontaneously produce co-verbal gestures signaling phrase boundaries across languages and speech styles: Japanese and English, adult- and infant-directed speech. A second study shows that adult speakers use co-verbal information, specifically head nods marking phrasal prosodic prominence, to parse an artificial language into phrase-like units that follow the native language’s word order. Finally, a third study shows that the presence of co-verbal gestures—i.e. head nods—also impacts 8-month-old infants’ segmentation preferences of a structurally ambiguous artificial language. However, infants’ ability to use this cue is still limited, suggesting that co-verbal gestures might be acquired later in development than visual speech, presumably due to their greater inter-/intra-speaker variability.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"7 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124317281","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-8
Simon Wehrle, F. Cangemi, K. Vogeley, M. Grice
Since the very beginnings of research into Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), there have been contradicting descriptions of speech in ASD as being “singsongy” or melodic on the one hand and “robotic” or monotonous on the other. We highlight some issues regarding the terminology and methodologies used in previous studies as well as their comparability, concluding that previous accounts, particularly of monotonous speech in ASD, may have been misleading. We expand on a previous pilot study in using the same method of quantifying the spaciousness and liveliness of speech along two dimensions in order to analyse an extended data set (~ 5 hours) of semi-spontaneous conversations. We compare 14 German adults diagnosed with ASD and 14 matched control speakers (CTR), recorded in disposition-matched dyads (ASD-ASD; CTR-CTR). Using Bayesian modelling, we present evidence that most (but not all) ASD speakers in our corpus produced a more melodic intonation style than non-autistic CTR speakers, while, crucially, none produced a more monotonous intonation style. We emphasise the importance of inter-individual variability in groups of autistic speakers and point out that our results align with a clear tendency in recent studies to report more melodic speech in ASD.
{"title":"New evidence for melodic speech in Autism Spectrum Disorder","authors":"Simon Wehrle, F. Cangemi, K. Vogeley, M. Grice","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-8","url":null,"abstract":"Since the very beginnings of research into Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), there have been contradicting descriptions of speech in ASD as being “singsongy” or melodic on the one hand and “robotic” or monotonous on the other. We highlight some issues regarding the terminology and methodologies used in previous studies as well as their comparability, concluding that previous accounts, particularly of monotonous speech in ASD, may have been misleading. We expand on a previous pilot study in using the same method of quantifying the spaciousness and liveliness of speech along two dimensions in order to analyse an extended data set (~ 5 hours) of semi-spontaneous conversations. We compare 14 German adults diagnosed with ASD and 14 matched control speakers (CTR), recorded in disposition-matched dyads (ASD-ASD; CTR-CTR). Using Bayesian modelling, we present evidence that most (but not all) ASD speakers in our corpus produced a more melodic intonation style than non-autistic CTR speakers, while, crucially, none produced a more monotonous intonation style. We emphasise the importance of inter-individual variability in groups of autistic speakers and point out that our results align with a clear tendency in recent studies to report more melodic speech in ASD.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"48 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114557457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-137
Yike Yang, Si Chen
The interaction between segment and prosody has been receiving increasing attention. While speakers of European languages are found to hyper-articulate their speech to maintain the distinction between the focused and unfocused portions, little is known about focus effects on vowels in Chinese languages. This study investigated the potential interaction between prosodic focus and vowels and tested whether the effects of focus function differently in Cantonese and Mandarin, two closely related Chinese languages. In a focus production experiment, the target vowels were analysed on the duration, formants and distances. The results showed that prosodic focus influenced the open vowel /a/ differently in Cantonese and Mandarin. Although focus increased the vowel duration in both languages, the on-focus vowels were lengthened to a greater extent in Cantonese. The effect of focus was minimal on the vowel formants, especially in Cantonese. For the Euclidean distances between the vowels under broad focus and those under the remaining focus types, no difference was found, but Cantonese and Mandarin diverged in the directions in which each focus type moved away from broad focus. These results suggest that, while speakers of both languages hyper-articulate on-focus vowels, there are more differences than similarities between the two languages.
{"title":"Does prosody influence segments differently in Cantonese and Mandarin? A case study of the open vowel /a/","authors":"Yike Yang, Si Chen","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-137","url":null,"abstract":"The interaction between segment and prosody has been receiving increasing attention. While speakers of European languages are found to hyper-articulate their speech to maintain the distinction between the focused and unfocused portions, little is known about focus effects on vowels in Chinese languages. This study investigated the potential interaction between prosodic focus and vowels and tested whether the effects of focus function differently in Cantonese and Mandarin, two closely related Chinese languages. In a focus production experiment, the target vowels were analysed on the duration, formants and distances. The results showed that prosodic focus influenced the open vowel /a/ differently in Cantonese and Mandarin. Although focus increased the vowel duration in both languages, the on-focus vowels were lengthened to a greater extent in Cantonese. The effect of focus was minimal on the vowel formants, especially in Cantonese. For the Euclidean distances between the vowels under broad focus and those under the remaining focus types, no difference was found, but Cantonese and Mandarin diverged in the directions in which each focus type moved away from broad focus. These results suggest that, while speakers of both languages hyper-articulate on-focus vowels, there are more differences than similarities between the two languages.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"9 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122370500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-90
Mortaza Taheri-Ardali, D. Hirst
OMProDat is an open multilingual prosodic database, which aims to collect, archive and distribute recordings and annotations of directly comparable data from different languages. As part of the OMProDat project, this paper focuses on the creation of a bilingual Persian-English prosodic database read by native speakers of Persian. This collection contains 40 continuous, thematically connected paragraphs, each of five sentences, originally created during the European SAM project. Our collection was recorded by 5 male and 5 female speakers of standard Persian, all from monolingual families. The Persian texts were romanised and transcribed phonetically using the ASCII phonetic alphabet SAMPA. The database includes TextGrid annotations, which will be obtained semi-automatically from the sound and the orthographic transcription using the SPPAS alignment software. The Momel and INSINT algorithms will be used to provide prosodic annotation of the corpus. This considerable amount of data will allow us to compare the production of Persian and English as L1 and L2, respectively. In addition, a cross-linguistic comparison with other languages in OMProDat is easily feasible.
{"title":"Building a Persian-English OMProDat Database Read by Persian Speakers","authors":"Mortaza Taheri-Ardali, D. Hirst","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-90","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-90","url":null,"abstract":"OMProDat is an open multilingual prosodic database, which aims to collect, archive and distribute recordings and annotations of directly comparable data from different languages. As part of the OMProDat project, this paper focuses on the creation of a bilingual Persian-English prosodic database read by native speakers of Persian. This collection contains 40 continuous, thematically connected paragraphs, each of five sentences, originally created during the European SAM project. Our collection was recorded by 5 male and 5 female speakers of standard Persian, all from monolingual families. The Persian texts were romanised and transcribed phonetically using the ASCII phonetic alphabet SAMPA. The database includes TextGrid annotations, which will be obtained semi-automatically from the sound and the orthographic transcription using the SPPAS alignment software. The Momel and INSINT algorithms will be used to provide prosodic annotation of the corpus. This considerable amount of data will allow us to compare the production of Persian and English as L1 and L2, respectively. In addition, a cross-linguistic comparison with other languages in OMProDat is easily feasible.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"28 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129915457","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2022-05-23DOI: 10.21437/speechprosody.2022-166
Sichang Gao, Mingwei Pan
This study aims to develop a rating scale for evaluating speech prosody of learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). The researchers first gathered 41 descriptors that were perceived as crucial indicators of prosody ability through interviewing ten CSL teachers, analyzing existing Chinese speaking proficiency scales from five universities in Mainland China. After rating the perception of the selected descriptors by ninety-four CSL teachers and consulting with four expert-teachers, 15 out of 41 descriptors remained to form a rating scale. Principal component analysis revealed that 15 descriptors with three different dimensions (prosodic strategic competence, fluency, prosodic naturalness) could meaningfully describe CSL prosody. Finally, using the 15 descriptors, 29 samples of CSL learners’ speech were evaluated by four raters. A combination of the structural equation modeling and the Many-Facets Rasch modeling confirmed that all the 15 descriptors fit well with the construct of prosody ability measured, demonstrating a good validity of this rating scale.
{"title":"Developing and validating a rating scale of speaking prosody ability for learners of Chinese as a second language","authors":"Sichang Gao, Mingwei Pan","doi":"10.21437/speechprosody.2022-166","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21437/speechprosody.2022-166","url":null,"abstract":"This study aims to develop a rating scale for evaluating speech prosody of learners of Chinese as a second language (CSL). The researchers first gathered 41 descriptors that were perceived as crucial indicators of prosody ability through interviewing ten CSL teachers, analyzing existing Chinese speaking proficiency scales from five universities in Mainland China. After rating the perception of the selected descriptors by ninety-four CSL teachers and consulting with four expert-teachers, 15 out of 41 descriptors remained to form a rating scale. Principal component analysis revealed that 15 descriptors with three different dimensions (prosodic strategic competence, fluency, prosodic naturalness) could meaningfully describe CSL prosody. Finally, using the 15 descriptors, 29 samples of CSL learners’ speech were evaluated by four raters. A combination of the structural equation modeling and the Many-Facets Rasch modeling confirmed that all the 15 descriptors fit well with the construct of prosody ability measured, demonstrating a good validity of this rating scale.","PeriodicalId":442842,"journal":{"name":"Speech Prosody 2022","volume":"97 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2022-05-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126867657","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：