Language and Speech最新文献

Studies of word recognition have demonstrated that listeners show graded sensitivity to mispronunciations of consonants in words, as well as better mispronunciation detection for more familiar words. However, little research has considered whether this graded sensitivity to mispronunciation can also be found for vowels and how that might interact with word familiarity. In this study, 73 English-speaking adults learned novel consonant-vowel-consonant (CVC) labels for novel objects, with varying amounts of exposure to those labels during learning. Participants were then tested on their learning of these word-referent pairs, as well as on their responses when these newly learned words were mispronounced with a vowel that either had the same backness (±) as the original vowel (small mispronunciation) or the opposite backness as the original vowel (large mispronunciation). Participants reliably matched learned words to referents when the words were correctly pronounced but sometimes selected a distractor referent when the words were mispronounced, suggesting interpretation as a new word. Larger mispronunciations, particularly of more familiar words, increased the likelihood of distractor selection. These findings add to the growing body of evidence that perception of mispronounced words is affected by both lexical familiarity and degree of mispronunciation.

Articulatory setting, the underlying tendency of the articulators to assume a certain overall configuration during speech, is language-specific and can be measured by observing the inter-speech posture (ISP) of the articulators during the brief pauses between utterances. To determine a given language's ISP, observing bilingual speakers in each of their languages is ideal, so that questionable normalization across different vocal tracts does not have to be done. In this study, four English-Japanese bilinguals of various English proficiencies participated. To this end, we quantitatively tested for the existence of two settings in each bilingual, and the results showed no systematic differences between the tongue ISPs of Japanese and English. We also tried to shed light on the origin of articulatory setting, which is thought to emerge from the configurations of the most frequent phonemes of a language. We qualitatively compared the predicted ISP based on Japanese spoken frequency of occurrence data with the mean measured ISP in Japanese. Ultrasound movies of the tongue were recorded and analyzed, and the results showed that for three participants, the predicted ISP's tongue tip and blade were substantially lower than for the mean measured ISP. The mean measured ISPs also displayed greater variability in English (L2) than in Japanese (L1), much more so in the lower proficiency English speakers.

This study tested whether the Perceptual Assimilation Model of Second Language Speech Learning (PAM-L2) predicts second language (L2) Cantonese tone discrimination across different perceptual modes. Punjabi speakers of Cantonese completed the Cantonese tone assimilation and discrimination tasks. In the assimilation task, the Punjabi listeners assimilated the Cantonese tones as two-category (TC), single-category (SC), uncategorized-categorized without overlap (UC-no), and uncategorized-categorized with partial overlap (UC-po) pairs, yielding testable predictions for PAM-L2 in the discrimination task (TC = UC-no > UC-po > SC). In the discrimination task, the model-driven predictions were largely supported in the double-talker context but not in the single-talker and pure tone contexts. These results suggest that PAM-L2 applies to phonological but not non-phonological discrimination of L2 tones. Moreover, our findings indicate that the distinction between partial and complete overlap may not be necessary for UC pairs.

This study examines how L1 English-L2 French learners use L1 articulatory and acoustic categories to produce L2 vowels that are both similar to and different from their L1 vowels. Previous studies examining the relationship between L1 and L2 sound inventories have found that learners reuse L1 phone categories to produce L2 phones that are perceived as similar, but importantly, there is a lack of articulatory data included in these types of studies, which has reinforced the assumption that vowel categories can be solely represented by their acoustic properties. The present study uses ultrasound tongue imaging data and videos of lip rounding in addition to acoustic data to examine how L1 English-L2 French learners produce the French vowels /i y u e ø o/ compared with their English vowels /i u e o/. The results focus on individual paths to category formation to show how learners articulate L2 vowels, and reveal that they tend to reuse L1 tongue body gestures to produce the French vowels /i u e o/, and lip rounding gestures to produce the round vowels /y u o/. This study demonstrates that transfer of articulatory gestures depends on vowel quality and emphasizes the importance of using articulatory data to inform theories of L2 category formation.

In the introduction to this special issue on articulatory approaches to the study of L2 speech, we first highlight the interest and unique contributions of such methods to the investigation of speech production among second language speakers. This is followed by a brief overview of the four articulatory methods-electropalatography, nasometry, magnetic resonance imaging, and ultrasound-featured in the experimental studies presented in the seven articles that constitute the issue. We then turn to an overview of the speech phenomena investigated-consonants (laterals, rhotics), vowels (individual as well as entire inventories), and sequences (both phonemic vowel-nasal sequences as well as coarticulation in phonetic sequences)-as produced by L1 speakers of various target languages (L1s: English[-Croatian], Czech, French, Japanese, Mandarin, Spanish; Target languages: English, French, Swedish). This introduction concludes with a summary of recurring acquisition themes (L1-based crosslinguistic influence, relative difficulty and target-likeness, inter-learner variability including as conditioned by individual differences) and the general speech phenomena studied (articulatory settings, gestural timing/coarticulation, effects of phonetic context).

In many English varieties, /l/ is produced differently in onsets and codas. Compared with "light" syllable-initial realizations, "dark" syllable-final variants involve reduced tongue tip-alveolar ridge contact and a raised/retracted tongue dorsum. We investigate whether native French and Spanish speakers whose L1 lacks such positionally conditioned variation can acquire English-/l/ allophony, testing the hypotheses that (1) the allophonic pattern will be acquired by both groups but (2) learners will differ from native speakers in their phonetic implementation, particularly in codas; and (3) French-speaking learners will outperform their Spanish-speaking counterparts. The production of syllable-initial and -final /l/ (singletons and clusters) in words read in isolation and a carrier sentence by 4 French- and 3 Spanish-speaking learners as well as three native English speakers was analyzed via electropalatography and acoustic analysis. While some learners produced distinct onset and coda variants and all learners had moved away to some extent from their L1 production, they differed from the native speakers in certain ways. Moreover, between- and within-group variability was observed including greater target-like anterior and posterior contact reduction in codas in the L1 French versus L1 Spanish group and generally higher F2 values in both learner groups compared with their native speaker peers. A comparison of the learners' L1 and L2 production revealed L1-based patterns of positional reduction of the tongue tip and dorsum gestures. We conclude by addressing the contributions of EPG to our understanding of L2 speech and highlight avenues for future research including the study of both linguistic and speaker variables.

Rhotic sounds are some of the most challenging sounds for L2 learners to acquire. This study investigates the production of English rhotic sounds by Mandarin-English bilinguals with two English proficiency levels. The production of the English /ɹ/ by 17 Mandarin-English bilinguals was examined with ultrasound imaging and compared with the production of native English speakers. The ultrasound data show that bilinguals can produce native-like bunched and retroflex gestures, but the distributional pattern of tongue shapes in various contexts differs from that of native speakers. Acoustically, the English /ɹ/ produced by bilinguals had a higher F3 and F3-F2, as well as some frication noise in prevocalic /ɹ/, features similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/. Mandarin-English bilinguals did produce language-specific phonetic realizations for the English and Mandarin /ɹ/s. There was a positive correlation between language proficiency and English-specific characteristics of /ɹ/ by Mandarin-English bilinguals in both articulation and acoustics. Phonetic similarities facilitated rather than hindered L2 speech learning in production: Mandarin-English bilinguals showed better performance in producing the English /ɹ/ allophones that were more similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/ (syllabic and postvocalic /ɹ/s) than producing the English /ɹ/ allophone that was less similar to the Mandarin /ɹ/ (prevocalic /ɹ/). This study contributes to our understanding of the mechanism of speech production in late bilinguals.

Segment-to-segment timing overlap between Vowel-Nasal gestures in /VN/ sequences varies cross-linguistically. However, how bilinguals may adjust those timing gestures is still unanswered. Regarding timing strategies in a second language (L2), research finds that native (L1) strategies can be partially transferred to the L2, and that higher L2 proficiency promotes a more successful phonetic performance. My goal is to answer whether bilingual speakers can adjust their L1 coarticulatory settings in their L2 and to observe whether their L2 accentedness plays a role in ultimate attainment. Ten native speakers of Spanish (L1Sp) who were highly proficient L2 English speakers participated in Spanish and English read-aloud tasks. A control group of 16 L1 English speakers undertook the English experiment. Aerodynamic data were collected using pressure transducers. Each participant produced tokens with nasalized vowels in CVN# words and oral vowels in CV(CV) words. Four linguistically trained judges (two per target language) evaluated a set of pseudo-randomized sentences produced by the participants containing words with nasalized vowels and rated the speech on a 1 (heavily accented) to 9 (native-like) Likert-type scale. Measurements for onset and degree of overall nasality were obtained. Results indicate the L1Sp group can accommodate gestural timing strategies cross-linguistically as they exhibit an earlier nasality onset and increment nasality proportion in L2 English in a native-like manner. In addition, a positive correlation between greater vowel nasality degree and native-like accentedness in the L2 was found, suggesting L2 timing settings might be specified in higher spoken proficiency levels.

Itunyoso Triqui (Otomanguean: Mexico) has a typologically uncommon contrast between singleton and geminate consonants which occurs only in word-initial position of monosyllabic words. In this paper, we examine how functional factors contribute to the observed phonetic variation in production for this marked contrast. Geminate and singleton onsets are not equally distributed in the language-singleton onsets greatly outnumber geminate onsets. Moreover, the distribution of geminate and singleton onsets varies by manner of articulation and consonant onset. Functional factors also vary across the contrast space. In our first study, we focus on durational data from a smaller, 2-hr corpus and test the degree to which functional factors (Shannon entropy, functional status, lexical competitor size, and segment frequency) influence the production of the contrast. With the exception of entropy, we find that several of these factors play a role in predicting the robustness/hyperarticulation of the contrast realization. Content words with onset singleton obstruents are more likely to be lengthened than content words with onset singleton sonorants. Segments with a larger token frequency from a larger, 90K word corpus are more likely to be hyperarticulated. In our second study, we examine how the observed durational factors lead to differential patterns of consonant undershoot by examining patterns of lenition. Combined, our findings demonstrate how functional factors influence language variation and may lead toward particular diachronic trajectories in the evolution of rare sound contrasts like these in human language.

Previous research exploring the learnability of vowel harmony (a phonetically natural pattern) and vowel disharmony (a phonetically unnatural pattern) has shown mixed evidence for a naturalness bias. This study aims to clarify these mixed results by introducing a more sensitive and indirect measure of learning-a modified phoneme monitoring task. Participants listened to CV-me/CV-mo words and pressed a button to indicate the final vowel (either [e] or [o]). In the first set of trials, participants responded to words that either always obeyed harmony (HarmonyFirst) or always obeyed disharmony (DisharmonyFirst). In the second set of trials, the rule switched. Results from two studies support a learning bias for vowel harmony; participants generally showed greater decreases in response times for harmonic blocks, and greater increases in response time when the rule switched from vowel harmony to disharmony.