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1
Islam, S. M. Arifull. "English Vowels: A World English Perspective." Thesis, Högskolan Dalarna, Engelska, 2005. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:du-1241.
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In spite of having a fixed standard of pronunciation, English is being used in various ways in parts of the world, particularly in its way of utterance. English vowel is playing one of the significant roles in making different varieties of English language. This essay tries to see into detail how some phonetic features (formant movement, frequency, pitch) of English vowels vary in relation to Bengali, Catalan, Italian, Spanish and Swedish speakers. It has been found that all these speakers vary a lot from each other in the utterance of English vowels.
2
McMahon, April M. S. "Constraining lexical phonology : evidence from English vowels." Thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.236336.
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Bekker, Ian. "The vowels of South African English / Ian Bekker." Thesis, North-West University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/2003.
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This thesis provides a comparative analysis of vowel quality in South African English (SAE)
using the following data: firstly, the existing impressionistic literature on SAE and other
relevant accents of English, the former of which is subject to a critical review; secondly,
acoustic data from a similar range of accents, including new SAE data, collected and instrumentally
analyzed specifically for the purposes of this research. These various data are
used to position, on both a descriptive and theoretical level, the SAE vowel system.
In addition, and in the service of providing a careful reconstruction of the linguistic history
of this variety, it offers a three-stage koin´eization model which helps, in many respects,
to illuminate the respective roles played by endogenous and exogenous factors in SAE’s
development.
More generally, the analysis is focussed on rendering explicit the extent to which the
synchronic status and diachronic development of SAE more generally, and SAE vowel quality
more particularly, provides support for a number of descriptive and theoretical frameworks,
including those provided in Labov (1994), Torgersen and Kerswill (2004), Trudgill
(2004) and Schneider (2003; 2007). With respect to these frameworks, and based on the results
of the analysis, it proposes an extension to Schneider’s (2007) Dynamic Model, shows
Trudgill’s (2004) model of new-dialect formation to be inadequate in accounting for some
of the SAE data, provides evidence that SAE is a possibly imminent but ‘conservative’
member of Torgersen and Kerswill’s (2004) SECS-Shift and uses SAE data to question the
applicability of the SECS-Shift to FOOT-Fronting.
Furthermore, this thesis provides evidence that SAE has undergone an indexicallydriven
arrestment of the Diphthong and Southern Shifts and a subsequent and related diffusion
of GenSAE values at the expense of BrSAE ones. Similarly, it shows that SAE’s possible participation in the SECS-Shift constitutes an effective chain-shift reversal ‘from
above’. It stresses that, in order to understand such phenomena, recourse needs to be made
to a theory of indexicality that takes into account the unique sociohistorical development of
SAE and its speakers.
Lastly, the adoption of the three-stage koin´eization model mentioned above highlights
the merits of considering both endogenous and exogenous factors in the historical reconstruction
of new-dialect formation and, for research into SAE in particular, strengthens the
case for further investigation into the possible effects of 19th-century Afrikaans/Dutch, Yiddish
and north-of-English dialects on the formation of modern SAE.Thesis (Ph.D. (English))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.
4
Tunley, Alison. "Coarticulatory influences of liquids on vowels in English." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1999. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.423951.
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Park, Chi-youn 1981. "Recognition of English vowels using top-down method." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28538.
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Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 69-70).
Many recognizers use bottom-up methods for recognizing each phoneme or feature, and use the cues and the context to find the most appropriate words or sentences. But humans recognize words not just through bottom-up processing, but also top-down. In many cases of listening, one can usually predict what will come based on the preceding context, or one can determine what has been pronounced by listening to the following sounds. Therefore, if some cues to a word are given, it would be possible to refine the recognition by using the top-down method. This thesis deals with the improvement of the performance of recognition by using the top-down method. And most of the work will be concentrated on the problem of vowel recognition, when the adjacent consonants are known.
by Park Chi-youn.
S.M.
6
Srinivasan, Nandini. "Acoustic Analysis of English Vowels by Young Spanish-English Bilingual Language Learners." Thesis, The George Washington University, 2018. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=10815722.
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Several studies across various languages have shown that monolingual listeners perceive significant differences between the speech of monolinguals and bilinguals. However, these differences may not always affect the phoneme category as identified by the listener or the speaker; differences may often be found between tokens corresponding to unique phonological categories and, as such, be more easily detectable through acoustic analysis. We hypothesized that unshared English vowels produced by young Spanish-English bilinguals would have measurably different formant values and duration than the same vowels produced by young English monolinguals because of Spanish influence on English phonology. We did not find significant differences in formant values between the two groups, but we found that SpanishEnglish bilinguals produced certain vowels with longer duration than English monolinguals. Our findings add to the ever-growing body of literature on bilingual language acquisition and the perception of accentedness.
7
Shin, D. J. "Training Korean speakers on English vowels and prosody : individual differences in perception, production and vowel epenthesis." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1425728/.
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This paper investigates whether intangibles might explain the UK productivity puzzle. We note that since the recession: (a) firms have upskilled faster than before; (b) intangible investment in R&D and software has risen whereas tangible investment has fallen; and (c) intangible and telecoms equipment investment slowed in advance of the recession. We have therefore tested to see if: (a) what looks like labour hoarding is actually firms keeping workers who are employed in creating intangible assets; (b) the current slowdown in TFP growth is due to the spillover effects of the past slowdown in R&D and telecoms equipment investment. Our main findings are: (a) measured market sector real value added growth since the start of 2008 is understated by 1.6% due to the omission of intangibles; (b) 0.75pppa of the TFP growth slowdown can be accounted for by the slowdown in intangible and telecoms investment in the early 2000s. Taken together intangible investment can therefore account for around 5 percentage points of the 16% productivity puzzle.
8
Shames, Yonit A. "Perception of acoustically similar vowels from English and Hebrew." Tallahassee, Fla. : Florida State University, 2008. http://purl.fcla.edu/fsu/lib/digcoll/undergraduate/honors-theses/341800.
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Thesis (Honors paper)--Florida State University, 2008.Advisor: Dr. Richard Morris, Florida State University, College of Communication, Dept. of Communication Disorders. Includes bibliographical references.
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Yeung, Ho-yan. "Vowels of Hong Kong English from an acoustic perspective /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKU Scholars Hub, 2007. http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B42006235.
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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-30). Also available in print.
10
Gordon, Leslie S. "Factors affecting English speakers' perception of L2 Spanish vowels." Connect to Electronic Thesis (ProQuest) Connect to Electronic Thesis (CONTENTdm), 2008. http://worldcat.org/oclc/436442802/viewonline.
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Samoylova, Ekaterina. "The production and perception of whispered vowels in English." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.504007.
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Lam, Sin-ting Stephanie. "Spectral and temporal features of tense-lax vowel contrast produced by Cantonese speakers of English a comparative study /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKU Scholars Hub, 2007. http://lookup.lib.hku.hk/lookup/bib/B42005528.
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Thesis (B.Sc)--University of Hong Kong, 2007."A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Bachelor of Science (Speech and Hearing Sciences), The University of Hong Kong, June 30, 2007." Includes bibliographical references (p. 31-32). Also available in print.
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Rauber, Andréia Schurt. "Perception and production of english vowels by brazilian efl speakers." Florianópolis, SC, 2006. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/88701.
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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-22T12:34:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 238173.pdf: 2149679 bytes, checksum: fbde6055bdb20a80e1248ce1a22ce198 (MD5)
This study investigated the relationship between the perception and production of English vowels by 18 highly proficient Brazilian EFL speakers, most of them M.A. and doctoral students of the Graduate Program in English of the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Two experiments were carried out: A production test to measure the first two formants of the learners' English and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowels, and an identification test with synthetic stimuli to investigate the L2 (second language) perception of English vowels. The production and perception results reveal that the Euclidean distance between the three English target pairs (/i/-/I/, /E/-/ae/, /U/-/u/) was significantly larger for the American English monolinguals than for the L2 learners, thus indicating that the Brazilians have difficulty in both producing and perceiving these vowels in a native-like fashion. Importantly, some relationship between vowel perception and production was found because the target pairs which were better perceived were also the ones produced more accurately by the L2 learners. These results provide further evidence for the fact that L2 perception outperforms L2 production.
14
Samimi, Hamed. "Automatic Recognition of Speech-Evoked Brainstem Responses to English Vowels." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/32975.
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The objective of this study is to investigate automatic recognition of speech-evoked
auditory brainstem responses (speech-evoked ABR) to the five English vowels (/a/, /ae/, /ao (ɔ)/, /i/ and /u/). We used different automatic speech recognition methods to
discriminate between the responses to the vowels. The best recognition result was
obtained by applying principal component analysis (PCA) on the amplitudes of the first ten harmonic components of the envelope following response (based on spectral components at fundamental frequency and its harmonics) and of the frequency following response (based on spectral components in first formant region) and combining these two feature sets. With this combined feature set used as input to an artificial neural network, a recognition accuracy of 83.8% was achieved. This study could be extended to more complex stimuli to improve assessment of the auditory system for speech communication in hearing impaired individuals, and potentially help in the objective fitting of hearing aids.
15
Van, den Heever Cornelius Marthinus. "Tswana first language interference on English vowels / C.M. van den Heever." Thesis, Potchefstroom University for Christian Higher Education, 1999. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/2283.
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Schultheiss, Lore Katharina Gerti. "Cross-Language Perception of German Vowels by Speakers of American English." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2406.pdf.
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Lopez, Lydda. "Vowels in the 305: A First Pass at Miami Latino English." FIU Digital Commons, 2015. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1797.
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In this paper, I present preliminary findings of the first-large scale, systematic study of English Latino vowels in Miami. Sociolinguistic interviews were conducted with 25 Miami-born participants: 10 Anglo Whites and 15 Latinos with varying degrees of Spanish fluency. Here I focus on the vowel quality (/i, ɪ, ai, æ, ɔ, u /) in the speech of the 2nd and 3rd generations to examine the nature of influence of Spanish on English in Miami over the past 60 years. I conduct an in-depth analysis of the vowel productions of two female speakers, Maria & Blaze, to show the range of vowel productions in Miami Latino English. The vocalic analysis is comprised of a minimum of 15 non-repeating tokens of each vowel. These vowels were extracted from interview data and analyzed for F1, F2, and F3 values using PRAAT. Two allophones of /æ/ were considered: pre-nasal and pre-non-nasal, since Latinos in other regions have shown to resist pre-nasal /æ/ raising (Thomas 2001).
18
Ehrhardt, Brooke. "Mary/merry and horse/hoarse: Mergers in Southern American English." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2004. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc4523/.
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Phonetic mergers in American English have been studied throughout the last half century. Previous research has contributed social and phonetic explanations to the understanding of front and back vowel mergers before /l/, front vowel mergers before nasals and phonetically unconditioned back vowel mergers. Using data from the Linguistic Atlas of the Gulf States (LAGS) and the Linguistic Atlas of the Middle and South Atlantic States (LAMSAS), this thesis examines the spread of the front vowel mergers in Mary and merry and the back vowel mergers in horse and hoarse. The two complementary sources of data allow for a social and phonetic approach to the examination of the merger.
19
Isono, Toru. "Japanese learners' interlanguage phonology : with special reference to English vowels and plosives." Thesis, University of Essex, 2003. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.252268.
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Sun, Rui. "Classification of Frequency Following Responses to English Vowels in a Biometric Application." Thesis, Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa, 2020. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/40552.
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The objective of this thesis is to characterize and identify the representation of four short English vowels in the frequency following response (FFR) of 22 normal-hearing adult subjects. The results of two studies are presented, with some analysis.
The result of the first study indicates how the FFR signal of four short vowels can be used to identity different subjects. Meanwhile, a rigorous test was conducted to test and verify the quality and consistency of responses from each subject between test and retest, in order to provide strong and representative features for subject identification.
The second study utilized machine learning and deep learning classification algorithms to exploit features extracted from the FFRs, in both time and frequency domains, to accurately identify subjects from their responses. We used three kinds of classifiers with respect to three aspects of the features, yielding a highest classification accuracy of 86.36%.
The results of the studies provide positive and important implications for establishing a biometric authentication system using speech-evoked FFRs.
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Le, Roux Maria. "An acoustic investigation of English vowels as produced by English L1 and Setswana L1 foundation phase learners." Thesis, University of Pretoria, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/2263/60376.
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This thesis provides a literature review on various topics related to the aims of the research project. In the process of sketching the rationale of this study, the language-in-education policy (LiEP) of South Africa is examined. The reasons why this policy is not successful, is discussed. Emanating from this discussion, the low literacy scores amongst young learners in South Africa are described and possible reasons for this occurrence are cited (Howie, Van Staden, Tshele, Dowse, & Zimmerman, 2012).
The hypothesis that perceptual and articulation training of the vowels of English would enhance young English second language (Setswana first language-speaking) learners? awareness of English vowels, is posited and defended by referring to previous research (Moats, 2007; Trehearne, 2011; Seeff-Gabriel, 2003). In addition, it is stated that increased knowledge of the vowel system of English will improve English second language (EL2) learners? literacy skills (Moats, 2007). In order to explain and discuss the results of the investigations into the literacy skills of the EL2 learners participating in this study, the notions of literacy acquisition, phonological awareness skills, and language acquisition and language learning are examined.
The main aim of this study is to assess the effects of intervention on the auditory perception and articulatory skills of English second language-speaking (EL2) (Setswana L1-speaking) learners in Grade 3, in the production of the monophthongs and diphthongs of the standard variety of South African English, namely White South African English (WSAfE) (Bekker, 2009). The effects are determined by acoustically comparing the vowel spaces of the participants before and after intervention. Therefore, a discussion of acoustic concepts such as the vowel space and the parameters thereof are provided. In addition, the vowels of WSAfE, those of Black South African English (BSAE), and the vowels of Setswana are discussed and compared according to their acoustic features.
The results of this quasi-experimental, comparative study indicate that the vowel spaces of the EL1 and EL2 participants differ markedly before intervention, especially when comparing those of the short and long monophthongs of English. After intervention, the vowel spaces of especially the Experimental group are seen to approximate those of the EL1 participants in the Norm group. Interesting findings concerning the central schwa vowels and the diphthongs were made. These indicate that young EL2 (Setswana L1-speaking) learners do not use BSAE, but use a new? variety of English that is closer to WSAfE (Mesthrie, 2008).
Pertaining to the measurable sub-aims of this study, the phonological awareness skills and literacy skills of the participants are assessed and compared, before and after intervention. The improvement of the phonological awareness skills and literacy skills of the Experimental group, as well as the changes in the vowel spaces that are noted for this group, prove the hypothesis that intervention in the form of additional input concerning the English vowels will enhance second language learners? perception and articulation. This strengthens the opinion that second language learners need quality teaching of the sound system of the language of learning and teaching.Thesis (DPhil)--University of Pretoria, 2016.
African Languages
DPhil
Unrestricted
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Gibson, Andy. "Production and perception of vowels in New Zealand popular music." AUT University, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10292/962.
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An acoustic comparison of sung and spoken vowels for three New Zealand singers investigates the phonetics of pronunciation in popular music. The singers recited the lyrics to their songs and recordings of their sung vocals were also obtained, creating a dataset of paired sung and recited words. Interviews with the singers were conducted so that the pronunciation used in reciting could be compared with a more conversational style. Eight vowels were analysed in these three conditions: DRESS, TRAP, THOUGHT, LOT, START, GOOSE, GOAT and PRICE. As well as providing data for phonetic analysis, the interviews elicited information about the singers’ musical influences, and investigated the singers’ stances towards the use of New Zealand English (NZE) in singing. The results of the comparison of singing and speech reflect the singers’ various stances to some extent. Overall, however, there are strikingly few cases where pairs of sung and spoken vowels have similar pronunciations. The predominance of ‘American’ vowels in the singing of all three participants, despite stated intentions to use New Zealand forms, suggests that the American-influenced singing style is the default in this context. This finding contrasts with early research on singing pronunciation in popular music, which described the use of American pronunciation in pop music as an act of identity which involved effort and awareness (Trudgill, 1983). The results presented here support the claims of more recent studies which suggest, conversely, that it is the use of non-American accent features which requires a wilful act of identity (Beal, 2009; O'Hanlon, 2006). An important consideration in the interpretation of vowel differences between singing and speech is the role played by the act of singing itself. It has been argued that there may be a general preference for increased sonority in singing (Morrissey, 2008) which would lead to the use of more open vowel sounds. This issue is explored and some evidence is found for a sonority-related effect. However, singing inherent effects like this can only explain a portion of the variability between singing and speaking. Most of the differences between singing and speech appear to be caused by social and stylistic motivations. To investigate why American-influenced pronunciation might be the default in the singing of pop music, a perception experiment was conducted to examine the phenomenon from the perspective of the listener. Participants were played words from a continuum that ranged between bed and bad, and they responded by circling whichever word they heard on a response sheet. The perception of ambiguous tokens was found to differ significantly according to whether or not the words were expected to be spoken or sung. These results are discussed with reference to exemplar theories of speech perception, arguing that the differences between singing and speech arise due to context-specific activation of phonetically detailed memories. This perspective can also be applied to the processes which underlie the production of vowels in sung contexts. Singers draw on their memories of popular music when they sing. Their use of American pronunciation in singing is therefore the result of the fact that a majority of their memories of pop singing involve American-influenced phonetic forms.
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MacLeod, Andrea Asenath Nora. "Production and perceptions of VOT and high vowels by bilingual and monolingual speakers of Canadian English and Canadian French /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/8248.
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Almotairi, Adel Mater. "THE PERCEPTION OF ENGLISH TENSE AND LAX VOWELS BY SAUDI SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNERS." OpenSIUC, 2015. https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/theses/1693.
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The present study examined the perception of English tense-lax vowel pairs by adult Saudi English as a second language (ESL) learners. More specifically, it looked at the effect of experience and length of exposure to the target language on the perception of these vowels. Thirty-eight male Saudi participants were recruited for the purpose of this study and were divided into two groups based on their level of proficiency and length of residence in the US, referred to as the experienced group and the inexperienced group, respectively. The research instrument contained four tense-lax vowel pairs, including /i/-/ɪ/, /e/-/ɛ/, /u/-/ʊ/, and /o/-/ɔ/. In order to control for the effect of the environment, all of the vowels were embedded in /hVd/ contexts as illustrated by the following examples: heed (/i/), hid (/ɪ/), hayed (/e/), head (/ɛ/), hawed (/ɔ/), hoed (/o/), hood (/ʊ/), and who'd (/u/). Native-speaker recordings of each vowel token were used to test participants’ perception accuracy. The recordings included both male and female voices. According to the statistics provided by the t-tests, there were significant differences in the perception of five out of the eight vowels that were examined in this study. In all five cases, the experienced group had a significantly better perception accuracy. The vowel that showed the highest magnitude of difference between the experienced and inexperienced students was the tense mid front vowel /e/ with an effect size of 1.5. It was followed by the lax high back vowel /ʊ/ with an effect size of 1.08. The third in magnitude of difference was the lax mid front vowel /ɛ/ (effect size = 1.02), followed by the lax mid back vowel /ɔ/ (effect size = 0.79), and finally the tense mid back vowel /o/ (effect size = 0.72). On the other hand, vowels that did not show significant differences between the two groups were the tense and lax high front vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ and the tense high back vowel /u/. However, although the experienced group showed a significantly higher level of perception accuracy in five out of the eight tense-lax vowel contrasts, the participants in this group reached the 80% accuracy level with only two vowels: /i/ and /e/. On the other hand, the inexperienced group did not show mastery of any of the eight vowels as their perception accuracy scores were below 80%. In terms of related theories, some of the results supported the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1994), the Speech Learning Model (Flege, 1995), and the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (Eckman, 1977), whereas other findings provided contradictory evidence. Overall, this study concluded that experience and exposure had a positive effect on Saudi ESL speakers’ perceptions of the tense-lax vowel contrasts in English. Even though this effect was not the same for all vowel contrasts, it carried the implication that perception accuracy can be facilitated through systematic training and practice.
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Brown, Justin. "Focusing and diffusion in 'Cape Flats English': a sociophonetic study of three vowels." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/12078.
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Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.
This research contributes to the wider fields of sociophonetics and the social dialectology of English in South Africa. The study looks at three vowel sets; GOOSE, BATH and KIT taken from Wells (1982). The study was designed to identify and attempt to explain potential differences in pronunciation amongst speakers in an English-speaking community living in Cape Town and classified as 'Coloured' during apartheid. The community in question has used English as their first language for several generations and has enjoyed some of the economic advantages attached to this while at the same time being the victims (historically) of discrimination and marginalization. The study looks at the speech of twenty speakers. Using the methods of variationist sociolinguistics, it aims to investigate what correlations can be drawn between these speakers. It examines whether the speech of the informants can be correlated along lines of social class, education, personal background and occupation. In addition, the study looks (albeit briefly) at issues of language usage and social identity with regard to these twenty speakers.
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Kendall, Richard Ryan. "The Perception and Production of Portuguese Mid-Vowels by Native Speakers of American English." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2004. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5.
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This thesis examines the difficulties that beginning and advanced American learners of Portuguese have correctly perceiving and producing the Portuguese mid-vowels {o} and {e}. The beginning learners were enrolled in their second semester of Portuguese and had rudimentary knowledge of Portuguese. The advanced learners had all lived in Brazil for nearly two years and were enrolled in a more advanced Portuguese course. To test for production, informants were asked to read a group of sentences that contained one hundred occurrences of the Portuguese mid-vowels. Each production occurrence was evaluated as being correct or incorrect by linguistically trained native Brazilians. To test for perception, informants were evaluated on their ability to distinguish between tokens (individual vowel sounds) spoken in context by native Brazilian speakers. These tokens used to test perception were recorded in a professional recording studio in Brazil. The study found that beginning and advanced learners had difficulty perceiving and correctly producing the Portuguese mid-vowels. In the perception study, beginners scored 70% on the {o} section and 68% on the {e} section, for a combined score of 69%. The advanced learners scored 78% on the {o} section and 78% on {e} section, for an average score of 78%. In the production study, the advanced learners scored an average of 42% on the open vowels and 84% on the closed vowels. The beginners scored 23% on the open vowels and 97% on the closed vowels. The most striking finding in the study was that advanced learners scored lower on the closed vowel production section than did the beginners. This was due to a hypercorrection phenomenon in the advanced learners. The advanced learners, once they learned that open vowels exist in Portuguese, seemed to produce them sporadically in their speech. They tended to open many vowels that should have been closed. Beginners, however, rarely used any open vowels in their speech. Beginners showed a strong correlation between perception and production capabilities. Advanced learners, however, did not demonstrate a strong perception-production correlation. The author of this thesis can be contacted at richard@medlar.com
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Pereira, Reyes Y. I. "Perception and production of English vowels by Chilean learners of English : effect of auditory and visual modalities on phonetic training." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2014. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1417190/.
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The aim of this thesis was to examine the perception of English vowels by L2 learners of English with Spanish as L1 (Chilean-Spanish), and more specifically the degree to which they are able to take advantage of visual cues to vowel distinctions. Two main studies were conducted for this thesis. In study 1, data was collected from L2 beginners, L2 advanced learners and native speakers of Southern British English (ENS). Participants were tested on their perception of 11 English vowels in audio (A), audiovisual (AV) and video-alone (V) mode. ENS participants were tested to investigate whether visual cues are available to distinguish English vowels, while L2 participants were tested to see how sensitive they were to acoustic and visual cues for English vowels. Study 2 reports the outcome of a vowel training study. To compare the effect of different training modalities, three groups of L2 learners (beginner level) were given five sessions of high-variability vowel training in either A, AV or V mode. Perception and production of English vowels in isolated words and sentences was tested pre/post training, and the participants’ auditory frequency discrimination and visual bias was also evaluated. To examine the impact of perceptual training on L2 learners’ vowel production, recordings of key words embedded in read sentences were made pre and post-training. Acoustic-phonetic analyses were carried out on the vowels in the keywords. Additionally, the vowels were presented to native listeners in a rating test to judge whether the perceptual training resulted in significant improvement in intelligibility. In summary, the study with native English listeners showed that there was visual information available to distinguish at least certain English vowel contrasts. L2 learners showed low sensitivity to visual information. Their vowel perception improved after training, regardless of the training mode used, and perceptual training also led to improved vowel production. However, no improvement was found in their overall sensitivity to visual information.
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Wang, Xinchun. "The acquisition of English vowels by Mandarin ESL learners, a study of production and perception." Thesis, National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque nationale du Canada, 1997. http://www.collectionscanada.ca/obj/s4/f2/dsk2/ftp04/mq24263.pdf.
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Oliveira, Denize Nobre. "The effect of perceptual training on the learning of english vowels by brazilian portuguese speakers." Florianópolis, SC, 2007. http://repositorio.ufsc.br/xmlui/handle/123456789/90286.
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Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro de Comunicação e Expressão. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Letras/Inglês e Literatura Correspondente.Made available in DSpace on 2012-10-23T08:06:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 242580.pdf: 1575864 bytes, checksum: 578abf7f7bc801538318265015883d4f (MD5)
Pesquisas recentes mostram que o treinamento perceptual é uma ferramenta eficaz para melhorar a habilidade de perceber certos sons não-nativos de aprendizes de uma L2, especialmente quando esse treinamento é feito com a manipulação das pistas acústico-perceptuais. O presente estudo investigou o efeito do treinamento perceptual no aprendizado das vogais do inglês /i/, /I/, /E/, /Q/, /U/ e /u/, cuja percepção deficiente pode causar problemas de compreensão. Os objetivos específicos incluem investigar (i) o efeito do treinamento com estímulo artificial, (ii) a generalização do novo conhecimento para novos contextos e novos falantes, (iii) a transferência da melhora na percepção auditiva para produção oral e (iv) os efeitos de longo prazo. O treinamento das vogais foi ministrado durante o período de três semanas para 29 aprendizes brasileiros distribuídos em dois grupos: 15 treinaram com estímulo natural (grupo NatS) e 14 com estímulo sintetizado (grupo SynS). O estímulo sintetizado consistiu em elocuções com pistas espectrais enfatizadas e sem variação de duração e foram geradas por computador, enquanto que o estímulo natural foi gravado por falantes nativos de inglês americano. Os resultados apontam para uma melhora significativa dos grupos experimentais após o treinamento, sendo que houve uma melhora maior no grupo SynS do que no grupo NatS. Considerando que o treinamento ministrado para o grupo SynS consistiu apenas de estímulos sintetizados e que os testes incluíam apenas estímulos naturais, esse resultado também sugere que houve uma transferência do conhecimento adquirido com estímulo artificial para estímulos produzidos naturalmente. A melhora na performance dos alunos também foi mantida durante um mês após o final do treinamento. Estes resultados mostram que o treinamento perceptual pode servir como uma ferramenta eficaz para professores auxiliarem seus alunos a superar dificuldades perceptuais, evitando possíveis mal entendidos. Recent research has shown perceptual training to be an effective tool for improving L2 learners# ability to perceive certain non-native sounds, especially when done with enhanced acoustic-perceptual cues. This study investigates the effect of perceptual training on the learning of the English vowels /i/, /I/, /E/, /Q/, /U/ and /u/, whose misperception can potentially cause comprehension problems. Secondary objectives include (i) the effect of training with enhanced stimuli, (ii) generalization of the acquired knowledge to new contexts and speakers, (iii) transfer of the perceptual improvement to the production domain, and (iv) long-term effects. The training on these vowels was given over a three-week period to twenty-nine Brazilian EFL learners, who were distributed within two groups: fifteen trained with natural stimuli (NatS group) and fourteen with synthesized stimuli (SynS group). The synthesized stimuli consisted of computer-generated utterances with enhanced spectral cues and no variation in duration, whereas the natural stimuli were recorded normally by native speakers of American English. Results show that the experimental groups improved significantly after training, and there was more improvement in the SynS group than in the NatS group. Considering that the training given the SynS group involved only synthesized stimuli and the tests involved only natural stimuli, this finding suggests also that the knowledge acquired with artificially enhanced stimuli is transferred to stimuli produced naturally. The improvement was also maintained one month after the training was over. These findings support the claim that perceptual training may serve as an effective tool for teachers to help learners overcome potential perceptual difficulties, and thus prevent potential miscomprehension.
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Radhakrishnan, Sreedivya. "Perception of synthetic vowels by monolingual and bilingual Malayalam speakers." [Kent, Ohio] : Kent State University, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=kent1258953613.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Kent State University, 2009.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed May 17, 2010). Advisor: John Hawks. Keywords: Speech perception; Vowels; Malayalam; Second Language. Includes bibliographical references (p. 198-216).
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York, Bradley J. "The Effects of Experience on the Perception of German Rounded Vowels by Native Speakers of American English." Diss., CLICK HERE for online access, 2008. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/ETD/image/etd2663.pdf.
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Qin, Chuan. "The perception and production of English vowel contrasts by Vietnamese speakers." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2010. http://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/1207.
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Havlíková, Petra. "Production Accuracy in L2 English Checked Vowels: Cross-sectional Study of Czech Secondary and Post-Secondary School Students." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Fakulteten för kultur och samhälle (KS), 2020. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-23914.
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In Czechia, teaching L2 English pronunciation is underestimated, which might lead to potential production slips and affect the intelligibility of the learners. This study investigates accuracy in L2 English pronunciation of checked vowels (/ʌ, ɛ, ɪ, ɒ, ʊ, æ/) as produced by Czech students. I applied cross-sectional approach and analysed participants from two distinct school classes who are divided by an 8-year study period. The pronunciation accuracy is analysed with the help of the computer program Praat, which generates frequencies for both Czech and English vowel phonemes produced by the participants reading out loud a set of monosyllabic citation words. The formant frequencies are later compared to a reference set of SSBE frequency values, which represents the targeted native language model. The results of this work show that the L2 English values are influenced by the students’ inventories of L1 Czech, leading to inaccuracy in production of the phonemes /ʌ, ɛ, ɪ, ɒ, ʊ/ and setting constraints to the L2 /æ/ acquisition.
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Alshangiti, W. M. M. "Speech production and perception in adult Arabic learners of English : a comparative study of the role of production and perception training in the acquisition of British English vowels." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2015. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1466643/.
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This thesis presents the results of four studies that investigated the perception and production of English by Saudi Arabic learners. Additionally, the thesis sought to investigate the role of different types of training, production- or perception-based, in learning, with the aim of understanding how training in different domains contributes to second language acquisition. A preliminary study (Study 1) investigated problematic phonemic contrasts for Arabic speakers, confirming that accuracy in perception and production depends on the similarity between L1 and L2 phonemes. Study 2 investigated the specificity of second language phonetic training by comparing the effect of three training programmes on the acquisition of British English vowels. Saudi Arabic learners were randomly assigned to one of three training programmes; Production Training (PT), High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT), and a Hybrid Training Program (HTP). They completed a battery of tests before and after training. All participants improved after training, but improvements were largely domain-specific; production training led to improvements in production but not perception, whilst perception training led to improvements in perception but not production. Participants in the HTP showed improvements in both production and perception, indicating that only a small amount of training in production appears to be necessary to effect changes in production. Additionally, improvement on particular tasks appeared to be linked to initial L2 proficiency, and learning in perception and production was retained (Study 3) and production training appeared to be more beneficial for participants who were trained in a non-immersion setting (Study 4). In brief, the results suggest that L2 learners improve in both perception and production if training explicitly trains these domains. Production training was beneficial not only for L2 learners in an L2-speaking country, but also in non-immersion settings. Overall, these results suggest that a hybrid training programme would be most beneficial for L2 learners.
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George, Becky Jean. "Investigating Vowel Duration as a Perceptual Cue to Voicing in the English of Native Spanish Speakers." PDXScholar, 1996. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/5185.
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Researchers in the cognitive sciences, and in particular those in acoustic phonetics, investigate the acoustic properties in the speech signal that enable listeners to perceive particular speech sounds. Temporal cues have been found to convey information about the linguistic content of an utterance. One acoustic characteristic that is particularly well documented in American English is the difference in vowel duration preceding voiced and voiceless consonants, which has been found to play a role in the perception of the voicing of postvocalic word-final consonants. Research on vowel duration and its role in the perception of the voicing distinction of the following consonant has primarily involved data from native English speakers. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the vowel durations preceding word-final voiced and voiceless stops in the English production of four native Spanish speakers. This study sought to determine if differences in vowel duration are exhibited preceding voiced and voiceless consonants in the English production of the native Spanish speakers, and to determine if the vowel durations affected the perception of the voicing distinction of the postvocalic stop by four native English speakers A significant effect of voicing on the vowel durations in the English production of the native Spanish speakers was found. However, the degree of variation in the vowel lengths with respect to voicing was much less than the degree of difference exhibited in native English, and similar to the variation produced in native Spanish. The average mean difference in length with respect to the voicing of the following consonant was 17.8 msec. in the present study. In native English the mean difference between vowels preceding voiced and voiceless consonants ranges from 79 msec. to 92 msec. and in Spanish the average mean difference is 18 msec. Statistical analysis performed to quantify the contribution of vowel duration on the perception of the voicing distinction found only minimal affect. It was concluded that although the cue of vowel duration variation was present in the speech signal of this data, the listeners generally did not utilize it as a cue to the voicing distinction of the following stops.
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Díaz, Granado Miriam. "L2 and L3 Acquisition of the Portuguese Stressed Vowel Inventory by Native Speakers of English." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/225892.
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This dissertation explores the potential differences in the acquisition of the sound system of a second language (L2) versus a third language (L3), building on recent research on adult L2 speech learning and testing the hypothesis that new category acquisition is available across the lifespan. On the one hand, recent influential theories of L2 speech learning predict that new sound categories will be difficult to acquire due to complex interactions among the phonetic categories residing in one same perceptual space. On the other, there exists the common assumption that the more sound categories one’s native language contains, the less difficult it will be to acquire new ones in a native-like fashion. My work provides additional evidence to this discussion, while providing speech data from the following five different speaker groups: (1) native speakers of American English; (2) native speakers of Mexican Spanish; (3) native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese; (4) native speakers of English learning Portuguese as their L2, and (5) native speakers of English learning Portuguese as their L3, who speak Spanish as their L2.The dissertation consists of three content chapters. The first of the content chapters describes the vowel systems of Mexican Spanish, American English and Brazilian Portuguese as informed by production data of the three native speaker groups above (1, 2 and 3). The second and third chapters describe and contrast the vowel system(s) of the two learner groups (4 and 5) as informed by their production and perception of Portuguese vowels respectively. The results from the analysis of the data from the various production and perception experiments performed as part of this dissertation provide evidence for (a) phonetic category assimilation and dissimilation processes in post-L1 speech learning and phonetic category interactions in general; (b) the relevance of quality and quantity of input in language learning; (c) the discussion on the relation between perception and production in post-L1 speech learning; and (d) the need for an extension of current models of L2 speech learning and cross-linguistic speech perception in order for these to address post-L2 speech learning processes, among other topics.
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Aliaga-Garcia, Cristina. "The effect of auditory and articulatory phonetic training on the perception and production of L2 vowels by Catalan-Spanish learners of English." Doctoral thesis, Universitat de Barcelona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/471451.
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Adult second language learners often experience major difficulties in perceiving and producing non-native speech sounds. Several perception training studies (Iverson & Evans, 2007; Nishi, & Kewley-Port, 2007; Carlet & Cebrian, 2014) have shown that second- language (L2) learners can improve their L2 perception, also demonstrating significant gains in L2 production (Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997; Kartushina et al., 2016). However, research on the assessment of methods other than perceptual training for non-native vowels is still scarce, and none of the previous vowel studies has compared the impact of auditory vs. production-based training on a full set of vowels. The purpose of this study was to evaluate two training methods that might be used to improve learners’ identification and articulation of the 11 English RP monophthongal vowels (/i: ɪ e ɜ: æ ʌ ɑ: P N9 ʊ u:/).
A total of 84 bilingual Catalan/Spanish learners of English were divided into two experimental groups and a control group, and all were tested on vowel identification, identification of synthesized vowels (with manipulated duration), vowel discrimination and vowel production based on a delayed repetition task. Two groups of bilingual Catalan/Spanish learners of English (N=64) were assigned to different types of audiovisual High Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) based on natural CVC words from multiple talkers, either identification (ID) or articulatory (ART) training. Both training procedures comprised 10 one-hour computer-based sessions over 5 weeks, which guaranteed exposure to a minimum of 132 trials/ session. Whereas the ID training required learners to focus on the critical audiovisual cues to recognize the vowel category within a vowel subset, ART training learners were expected to focus on the relevant audiovisual cues for more accurate
vowel articulation. Auditory feedback provided assistance to correct identification, or to change erroneous articulations. This paper compares some remarkable effects of perceptual and production-based audiovisual HVPT on the perception and production of the fullset of English vowels.
The two HVPT groups showed higher accuracy in vowel perception, as well generalization to new words, talkers and contexts. HVPT not only improved vowel identification and discrimination, but also reduced the learners’ heavy reliance on vowel duration and improved their use of spectral cues in English vowel perception. However, a clear advantage of the ID group was seen in a better identification of trained words and a lesser degree of error dispersion per vowel. Both HVPT methods were effective in leading to significant formant movement for some vowels, with less spectral overlap, but differences in the amount of spectral shift after each training method suggest that ART training was more effective in vowel production. Training was effective in making the production of contrastive vowels more distinct and revealed a conscious attempt of learners to produce acoustically distinct vowel quality targets, with a great deal less spectral overlapping. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.Los hablantes de segundas lenguas a menudo experimentan grandes dificultades en lo que respecta a la percepción y la producción de sonidos no nativos. Numerosos estudios sobre el entrenamiento de la percepción (Iverson & Evans, 2007; Nishi, & Kewley-Port, 2007; Carlet & Cebrian, 2014) han demostrado que los hablantes de segundas lenguas (L2) pueden mejorar la percepción a la vez que obtienen mejoras significativas en la producción de los sonidos de la L2 (Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997; Kartushina et al., 2016). Sin embargo, los estudios sobre métodos de entrenamiento vocálico distintos al entrenamiento perceptivo escasean, y no existe hasta la fecha ningún estudio de las vocales que haya comparado entrenamientos de percepción y producción que abarque todo el sistema vocálico de la L2. Este estudio tiene como objetivo evaluar y comparar dos métodos de entrenamiento vocálico que puedan ser eficaces para mejorar la percepción y producción de todas las 11 vocales monoftongales del inglés RP (/i: ɪ e ɜ: æ ʌ ɑ: P N9 ʊ u:/). Un total de 84 estudiantes de inglés bilingües, con catalán y español como lenguas maternas, fueron distribuidos entre dos grupos experimentales y un grupo de control. Todos los grupos realizaron pruebas de identificación de vocales naturales, identificación de vocales sintetizadas (con manipulación de la duración), discriminación vocálica y producción basada en la repetición. Cada grupo experimental (de N= 32) fue asignado a un tipo de entrenamiento audiovisual de alta variabilidad fonética (HVPT), entrenamiento de identificación (ID) o bien entrenamiento articulatorio (ART), ambos basados en una gran variedad de palabras CVC producidas por diversos hablantes. Los dos métodos de entrenamiento consistían en 10 sesiones de 1 hora con un ordenador durante cinco semanas, y ambos garantizaron la exposición a un mínimo de 132 estímulos por sesión. El entrenamiento ID requería prestar atención a las señales audio-visuales para una identificación correcta de la vocal dentro de las opciones disponibles por pantalla, mientras que el entrenamiento ART requería reconocer las señales acústicas y visuales esenciales para una correcta articulación de la vocal. En cualquier caso se proporcionaba corrección o ‘feedback’ inmediato de los errores en identificación o articulación. Este estudio evalúa los efectos más significativos y destacados que los dos tipos de entrenamiento de alta variabilidad fonética tienen en la percepción y producción de las 11 vocales inglesas. Los dos grupos de entrenamiento de alta variabilidad demostraron mayor precisión en la percepción de todas las vocales, y la mejora fue generalizable a distintas vocales, palabras y contextos ‘no entrenados’ producidos por ‘nuevos’ hablantes nativos. Además de una clara mejora en la percepción vocálica, los resultados demuestran que el entrenamiento de alta variabilidad contribuye a reducir significativamente la excesiva atención que los estudiantes prestan a la “duración” de las vocales, ayudándoles a hacer un uso más eficiente de las características “espectrales” para distinguir las distintas vocales del inglés. Cabe destacar que el grupo ID obtuvo una mejor puntuación que el grupo ART en la identificación de palabras “entrenadas” así como mejores resultados con respecto al grado de dispersión de los errores de identificación. Por lo que respecta a la producción, ambos métodos de entrenamiento dieron lugar a un movimiento general de los formantes vocálicos, generando así un menor grado de superposición espectral en el sistema vocálico de la L2. Sin embargo, el entrenamiento ART resulto ser más efectivo que el ID para conseguir una mejora en la articulación vocálica, y una menor superposición de las categorías vocálicas dentro del sistema vocálico de la L2. En definitiva, los resultados en producción señalan que el entrenamiento de alta variabilidad fonética contribuyó a mejorar la producción de las vocales del inglés, mostrando categorías vocálicas distintas entre ellas tras cinco semanas. Los resultados muestran que el entrenamiento hizo más visibles las características espectrales de las vocales. Estos resultados pueden ser de gran utilidad para aplicaciones prácticas de aprendizaje de la pronunciación del inglés.
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Sjösteen, Sigrid. ""You must stay for dinner; we're having cud" : A study of the relationship between Swedish speakers' perception and production of English vowels." Thesis, Karlstad University, Faculty of Arts and Education, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:kau:diva-5464.
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Learning a second language is different from learning our first one. A lot of rules from the first language, concerning e.g. grammar, intonation and phonology, are so firmly rooted within learners that they will transfer them to the new language regardless of whether they are correct or not. Studies show that the way we are tuned in to the sounds of our first language can make it difficult for us to perceive the phonemes of a new language correctly. In order to study the relationship between Swedish speakers’ faulty production of English vowels and their perception of them, ten subjects participated in a perception test to find out how well they could distinguish between minimal pairs containing phonemes that Swedes often have problems pronouncing correctly. They were also recorded while reading sentences containing the same minimal pairs. The results from the perception test were compared to graphs showing how consistent the subjects were in their pronunciation of these phonemes. The study shows that although some phonemes proved to be more difficult for the subjects to perceive a difference between, a faulty production of these sounds cannot be explained by misperception alone.
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Foresti, Carlet Angélica. "L2 perception and production of English consonants and vowels by Catalan speakers: The effects of attention and training task in a cross-training study." Doctoral thesis, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10803/403758.
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Este estudio compara el efecto de dos métodos de entrenamiento de alta variabilidad fonética o ‘high variability phonetic training’ (HVPT) sobre sonidos específicamente entrenados y sobre sonidos no entrenados pero implícitamente presentados. Con este fin, se implementan diversos regímenes de entrenamiento fonético cuyo objetivo es mejorar la percepción y la producción de 5 vocales del inglés británico (/i ɪ æ ʌ ɜː/) y de las consonantes oclusivas en posición inicial y final de palabra por hablantes bilingües de catalán y castellano. Así, este estudio investiga: (a) si el entrenamiento fonético recibido puede mejorar la percepción y la producción de segmentos entrenados y no entrenados, (b) si la mejora se generaliza a nuevos estímulos y hablantes, (c) si la mejora se mantiene un tiempo después, (d) qué método de entrenamiento, identificación (ID) o discriminación categórica (DIS) es más eficaz, y (e) cuáles son las impresiones de los participantes sobre el entrenamiento fonético como una herramienta de instrucción fonética. Cien estudiantes de inglés como lengua extranjera fueron divididos en cuatro grupos experimentales y un grupo de control. Los grupos entrenados diferían tanto en método de entrenamiento (ID, DIS) como en el enfoque del entrenamiento (consonantes, vocales) dando lugar a cuatro grupos diferentes. Crucialmente, los cuatro grupos fueron entrenados con los mismos estímulos CVC (por ejemplo, zat, zut, zad, zud), exponiendo a los participantes a los contrastes fonéticos entrenados y a los contrastes fonéticos no entrenados.
Los resultados revelan que todos los grupos experimentales superaron significativamente al grupo de control en su identificación de sonidos entrenados (vocales y consonantes oclusivas en posición inicial), mostrando la eficacia de ambas metodologías de entrenamiento fonético (ID y AX DIS). Sin embargo, mientras que ambos grupos experimentales mejoran su percepción de las oclusivas iniciales de manera similar, los aprendices de ID superan a los aprendices de DIS en la percepción de vocales específicamente entrenadas después del entrenamiento fonético. Estos resultados sugieren que la modificación de la percepción de los diferentes tipos de segmentos (vocales, consonantes) puede requerir diferentes procedimientos y duraciones de entrenamiento distintas. Curiosamente, sólo los aprendices de DIS mostraron una mejora significativa en la percepción de los sonidos no específicamente entrenados, lo que indica que este método de entrenamiento puede proporcionar mejoras en la percepción de sonidos entrenados y sonidos no entrenados pero implícitamente presentados. En cuanto a la generalización y a la retención de los efectos del entrenamiento, los resultados con sonidos vocálicos apuntan a la superioridad de la tarea de ID sobre la tarea categórica de DIS. Además, ambos métodos son adecuados para entrenar consonantes iniciales de manera similar. Con respecto a la producción, sólo los aprendices de ID entrenados en vocales fueron capaces de mejorar significativamente su producción de los sonidos vocálicos. Por último, las opiniones de los estudiantes acerca del entrenamiento fonético como una herramienta de enseñanza de L2 fueron en general positivas, e ID fue más valorado que DIS como un método de formación. Globalmente, estos resultados sugieren que ambos métodos son efectivos para entrenar la percepción de una L2. Sin embargo, los métodos pueden promover mejoras, generalización y retención de los distintos segmentos en diferentes grados. Los mejores resultados obtenidos con el método ID, en particular con las vocales, y el hecho de que sólo el método DIS proporcione la mejora de sonidos no entrenados pueden estar relacionados con la naturaleza y el fin de cada metodología y/o con las propiedades acústicas de cada segmento. Las consecuencias teóricas y prácticas de estos resultados pueden ser de utilidad para futuros trabajos de investigación y aplicaciones prácticas de aprendizaje de la pronunciación.This study compares the effect of two high variability phonetic training (HVPT) methods on specifically attended sounds and on implicitly exposed but unattended sounds. Several training regimes are implemented aimed at improving the perception and production of a subset of English vowels (/i ɪ æ ʌ ɜː/) and initial and final stops by Spanish/Catalan bilingual learners of English. Thus this study addresses the following questions: (a) whether training can improve the perception and production of trained as well as untrained segments, (b) whether improvement generalizes to novel stimuli and talkers, (c) if improvement is retained over time, (d) which training method (Identification (ID) or categorical Discrimination (DIS)) is more effective, and (e) what are the participants’ impressions of phonetic training as a L2 training tool. A total of 100 bilingual Catalan/Spanish learners of English were divided into four experimental groups and a control group and were tested on their identification of English sounds presented in CVC non-words before and after a five-week training period, and two months later. L2 production was assessed before and immediately after training through a picture naming task and analysed by means of native speaker judgments. The trained groups differed either in terms of training method (ID, DIS) or focus of training (consonants, vowels), resulting in four different groups. Crucially, all four groups were trained with the same sets of CVC non-words (e.g. zat, zut, zad, zud), exposing learners to attended contrasts within trials and to unattended contrasts across trials. The results reveal that all experimental groups significantly outperform the controls in their identification of trained sounds (vowels and initial stops), showing the efficacy of both phonetic training methodologies (ID and categorical AX DIS). However, while both experimental groups perform similarly when modifying initial stop perception, the ID trainees outperform the DIS trainees on trained vowel perception. These results suggest that modifying the perception of different types of segments might require different training procedures and amounts of training time. Interestingly, only the DIS trainees show a significant improvement in the perception of untrained/unattended L2 sounds, indicating that this training method may be more suited to enhance learners’ perception of attended as well as unattended target sounds. Regarding generalization and retention, the results point to the superiority of the ID task over a categorical DIS task when training vowel sounds. Moreover, the results indicate that both methods are well suited for training initial consonants to the same extent. With respect to production, only the vowel ID trainees are able to significantly improve their production of trained sounds, which shows that pronunciation improvement might take place as a result of an identification perceptual training regime, even in the absence of production training. Finally, students’ opinions of phonetic training as an EFL tool are overall positive and ID is favoured over DIS as a training method. Globally, these findings suggest that while both methods are effective for training L2 perception, ID and DIS methods may promote improvement, generalization and retention for vowels and for consonants to different degrees. The better results obtained with ID training, particularly for vowels, and the fact that only DIS promoted improvement with untrained sounds (cross-training effects) may be related to the nature and focus of the tasks and/or to the acoustic characteristics of the target sounds. These results may have implications for future research on phonetic training and practical applications in the teaching of L2 pronunciation.
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Wijetunge, Sumudu Nishamani. "The Stigma of "Not Pot English" in Sri Lanka: A Study of Production of /o/ and /O/ and Implications for Instructions." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2008. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/alesl_theses/1.
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The inability to differentiate the English vowels /o/ and / O/ has become a stigmatized marker of a lower prestige and widespread dialect of Sri Lankan English. This lower prestige (LP) dialect is often referred to with the derogative phrase “Not pot English”. This study aims to investigate the production of the vowel contrast by native Sinhala speakers of English. To this end, speech samples of three adult learners were analyzed. The findings of the study are discussed according to hypotheses of the Speech Learning Model, which suggests that the existent L1 specific phonetic categories hinder the formation of new L2 sound categories. Here, sounds that are similar, but not identical to L1 sounds are considered to be the most difficult to acquire. Also, the percentage of L1 use and the age of second language acquisition seem to have influenced the production of the vowels. Finally, in order to address this pronunciation issue, an instructional framework to teach pronunciation is proposed.
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Linton, Tanner Charles. ""It's Not Me, It's /u/: An Acoustic Analysis of Target-Language Immersion's Effect on L1 English Speakers' Spanish Vowel Production" and "Tener: ¿Lo tenemos entendido?"." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2017. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6638.
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Within the field of second language acquisition of phonology, the role of immersion experiences on language learners' pronunciation has recently become a topic of greater interest. While students of a foreign language with study abroad experience (one to six months) have shown relatively little progress in pronunciation gains, language learners group with extended immersion experience—approximately 24 months abroad—have demonstrated more native-like pronunciation. This study compares the pronunciation of L2 Spanish /u/ among native English speakers enrolled in the same third-year Spanish course who belong to two different groups based on the context of their previous language learning: extended immersion in a Spanish-speaking country or traditional classroom instruction. The effects of syllabic stress and speech task type on the pronunciation of these two groups are also examined. Acoustic data from participants' speech is used to conduct statistical analyses. Words and phrases are subject over time to a process called grammaticalization, especially those that are used frequently. This process causes a gradual shift from use as lexical items to use as grammatical devices. Semantic bleaching also occurs, which means that the earlier or original lexical content of a word or phrase is partially or completely lost. Verbs expressing the idea of possession are particularly susceptible to this type of change. The Spanish verb tener ('to have'), while still retaining its lexical content, has come to be used in constructions that do not represent the explicit idea of possession—they incorporate a bleached usage of the word. This alteration is evident in four construction types examined in this paper. These constructions all have three essential elements: a "possessor" argument, a "possessed" argument, and a third modifying component. The analyses of these constructions include templates that describe both their semantic content and their syntactic structure.
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Rodgers, Jonathan. "Vowel devoicing in English." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.313845.
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Sacchi, Aline Cristina. "A percepção das vogais do inglês norte-americano por falantes de inglês como le." Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2018. https://tede2.pucsp.br/handle/handle/21591.
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Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq
This dissertation aims to study how bilinguals perceive English vowels. The subjects are students from a Canadian school in Sao Paulo who speak both English and Brazilian Portuguese fluently. The English language will be considered a foreign language (FL) in this context, because the subjects learn and use the language within a country in which English is not the first language. In the process of learning a new language some differences in terms of (FL) foreign language sounds may not be perceived due to interference of the first language (L1). Assimilation of L2 to L1 sounds may occur as the Speech Learning Model states, which explains the importance of formal teaching to train students to improve their fluency and intelligibility. The goal of this project is to investigate how bilingual speakers perceive English vowels using perception identification and discrimination tests. The judges are 27 students who study at a Canadian school in Sao Paulo, and whose L1 is Brazilian Portuguese and FL is English, and their average age is 9 years old. A Canadian native speaker of English at the age of 50 recorded the stimuli for the perception test containing the English vowels analyzed in this study. The hypothesis is that the subjects will not be able to discriminate between some sounds contrasts and will associate different sound pairs to only one Portuguese sound (Speech Learning Model, Flege). We conducted an experiment and analyzed the stimuli acoustic-articulatory characteristics based on acoustic inspection, formants and durations of the vowels were measured. The software PRAAT developed by Paul Boersma and Weenink from Amsterdam University was used to analyze the data collected. The results indicated that the identification task showed more accuracy compared with the discrimination task. The assimilation of two sounds in English (med-low and low vowels) to one sound in Portuguese (med-low vowel) confirmed the hypothesis that the absence of perceptual targets confers difficulties to the speakers in the production of sounds in a foreign language. The results confirmed the Speech Learning Model hypothesis. This research aims to contribute to the pronunciation teaching in a FL, because an accurate sound production may prevent communication problem, and it is essential for learner’s development in terms of oral communication and fluency
Esta dissertação tem como objetivo investigar a percepção de sons vocálicos da língua inglesa, variante canadense, por estudantes de uma escola bilíngue canadense da cidade de São Paulo em contexto de Inglês como Língua Estrangeira (LE). Ao sermos expostos a uma LE, segundo o Speech Learning Model, certas características dessa língua podem não ser percebidas devido à interferência da L1 (Primeira Língua, Língua Nativa ou Língua Materna) na LE. Dado isso, destaca-se a importância do trabalho com contrastes sonoros para que aprendizes possam melhorar a percepção e consequentemente a produção dos sons da LE. Como hipótese de pesquisa postulamos que os aprendizes não discriminam certos contrastes e assimilam pares de sons distintivos do Inglês a um som do Português. A investigação da percepção de sons vocálicos da língua inglesa nesta pesquisa foi realizada por meio de testes de discriminação e identificação, tendo, como juízes da pesquisa, 27 alunos de uma escola canadense em São Paulo com idade média de 9 anos, os quais possuem o Português Brasileiro (PB) como L1 e Inglês como LE. Os estímulos que contêm as vogais, utilizadas nesta pesquisa para a construção do teste de percepção, foram gravados por uma canadense, falante nativa de Inglês, com 50 anos de idade. Medições das frequências dos formantes (F1, F2 e F3) em Hz e de duração em ms das vogais dos estímulos dos testes de percepção foram efetuadas com o auxílio do software PRAAT e os resultados do teste de percepção submetidos à análise estatística multidimensional. Os resultados mostraram que a tarefa de identificação apresentou um nível de acerto maior do que a de discriminação. O contraste entre as vogais anteriores média-baixa e a baixa do Inglês foi o que causou maior dificuldade de discriminação aos juízes do teste de percepção. Os resultados confirmam a hipótese do Speech Learning Model sobre a assimilação de sons da LE a sons da L1. Diante do apresentado, esta pesquisa contribuiu com subsídios para o ensino de pronúncia em língua estrangeira, pois dificuldades de percepção levam comumente à produção dos sons de uma língua de forma inadequada e podem causar problemas de comunicação. Consideramos que o desenvolvimento da percepção de contrastes sonoros da LE tem repercussões positivas para a evolução dos aprendizes em termos de compreensão, comunicação oral e fluência na LE
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Byers, Emily. "Reduced vowel production in American English among Spanish-English bilinguals." FIU Digital Commons, 2012. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/800.
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Prominent views in second language acquisition suggest that the age of L2 learning is inversely correlated with native-like pronunciation (Scovel, 1988; Birdsong, 1999). The relationship has been defined in terms of the Critical Period Hypothesis, whereby various aspects of neural cognition simultaneously occur near the onset of puberty, thus inhibiting L2 phonological acquisition. The current study tests this claim of a chronological decline in pronunciation aptitude through the examination of a key trait of American English – reduced vowels, or “schwas.” Groups of monolingual, early bilingual, and late bilingual participants were directly compared across a variety of environments phonologically conditioned for vowel reduction. Results indicate that late bilinguals have greater degrees of difficulty in producing schwas, as expected. Results further suggest that the degree of differentiation between schwa is larger than previously identified and that these subtle differences may likely be a contributive factor to the perception of a foreign accent in bilingual speakers.
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Kleinman, Scott. "Vowel loss in Old English and Germanic." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.627105.
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Gore, Martin. "English and Japanese dipthongs and vowel sequences." Thesis, University of Reading, 2006. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.433446.
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Ryan, Ann Margaret Gitzean. "Vowel blindness in Arabic learners of English." Thesis, Swansea University, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.570310.
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Yun, Gwan Hi. "The Interaction Between Palatalization and Coarticulation in Korean and English." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/195270.
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This study investigates phonetic and phonological factors which influence the degree of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation in Korean and English, especially around palatalization rules. Two phonetic factors and two phonological factors were examined in investigating the degree of anticipatory or carryover coarticulation in VCV sequences. The phonetic factors were the intervening consonants (alveolar stop vs. (alveo)palatals), and the second vowels (/i/ vs. /a/); the phonological factors were the effect of palatalization, and the lexical status of palatalization (lexical vs. postlexical palatalization). Ultrasound imaging techniques and F2 measurements are employed to see how much further front the articulation of V1 in V1CV2 sequences is due to influence of V2 across the consonants. Ultrasound images of vowels and their F2 values were quantified and statistically analyzed with ANOVA.First, it was found that V1 in V1CV2 sequences in Korean was articulated further front when intervening consonants were palatals than when they were alveolars, while there was no difference in frontness of V1 between two consonantal conditions in English. This indicates that Korean palatals are a stronger barrier to vowel-to-vowel coarticulation, while English alveopalatals are not. Next, V1 in both languages was articulated further front when V2 was /i/ than when V2 was /a/. Third, we had striking findings that palatalization rules caused stronger vowel-to-vowel coarticulation than in nonpalatalized words. Results showed that V1s were articulated further front across derived palatals than across underlying palatals in V1Ci sequences. Last, it was determined that V2 was articulated further front in words which underwent postlexical palatalization than in words which underwent lexical palatalization. Such findings indicate that postlexical palatalization causes greater gestural overlap than lexical palatalization, showing stronger degree of coarticulation.Based on the experimental results that phonetic details such as the degree of vowel-to-vowel coarticulation are highly conditioned by the lexical status of palatalization as well as the application of palatalization, I suggest a unified model of phonology and phonetics, using feature-and-gesture based OT frameworks. Second, I follow the proposal that abstract intergestural timing relations should be incorporated into phonological representations either in the input or output (Cho 1998, Gafos 2002, Yun 2005b).
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Langstrof, Christian. "Vowel Change in New Zealand English - Patterns and Implications." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Linguistics, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/930.
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This thesis investigates change in a number of phonological variables in New Zealand English (NZE) during a formative period of its development. The variables under analysis are the short front vowels /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /æ/, the front centring diphthongs /ɪə/ and /ɛə/, and the so-called 'broad A' vowel. The sample includes 30 NZE speakers born between the 1890s and the 1930s (the 'Intermediate period'). Acoustic analysis reveals that the short front vowel system develops into one with two front vowels and one central vowel over the intermediate period via a push chain shift. There is evidence for complex allophonisation in the speech of early intermediate speakers. I argue that duration plays an important role in resolving overlap between vowel distributions during this time. With regard to the front centring diphthongs there is approximation of the nuclei of the two vowels in F1/F2 space over the intermediate period as well as incipient merger in the speech of late intermediate speakers. Although the merger is mainly one of gradual approximation, it is argued that patterns of expansion of the vowel space available to both vowels are also found. The analysis carried out on the 'broad A' vowel reveals that whereas flat A was still present in the speech of the earlier speakers from the sample, broad A had become categorical toward the end of the intermediate period. It is shown that, by and large, the process involves discrete transfer of words across etymological categories. The final chapters discuss a number of theoretical implications. Processes such as the NZE front vowel shift suggest that a number of previously recognised concepts, such as 'tracks' and 'subsystems', may either have to be relaxed or abandoned altogether. It is argued that chain shifts of this type come about by rather simple mechanisms that have a strong resemblance to functional principles found in the evolution of organisms. A case for 'fitness' of variants of a given vowel will be made. Phonological optimisation, on the other hand, is not a driving force in this type of sound change.
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Gilfert, Kaitlyn Emily. "The Directionality of English Vowel Substitution Errors in /hVt/ Context." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2017. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1493727644000904.
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