In forensisch zaakonderzoek komt steeds vaker spraakmateriaal in verschillende talen voor. Dit roept de vraag op of er taalonafhankelijke spreker-specifieke kenmerken zijn. De bilabiale nasaal /m/... Show moreIn forensisch zaakonderzoek komt steeds vaker spraakmateriaal in verschillende talen voor. Dit roept de vraag op of er taalonafhankelijke spreker-specifieke kenmerken zijn. De bilabiale nasaal /m/ is één van de meest spreker-specifieke segmenten, wat wordt toegeschreven aan de rigiditeit van de neusholte [1]. Tegelijkertijd is de mondholte ook betrokken bij de productie en heeft de tong daarbij geen vaste positie [2]. Hierdoor is er ruimte voor binnen-sprekervariatie, die mogelijk taalafhankelijk is. Wij onderzochten in hoeverre de realisatie van /m/ verschilt tussen de eerste (L1) en tweede taal (L2) van meertalige sprekers.Er zijn monologen gebruikt van 53 vrouwelijke sprekers uit D-LUCEA [3], in hun L1 Nederlands en L2 Engels. De sprekers waren eerstejaarsstudenten van University College Utrecht en hadden een bovengemiddelde beheersing van het Engels. De nasalen werden gesegmenteerd in Praat en geanalyseerd op verschillende akoestische kenmerken.De resultaten laten zien dat de verschillen tussen de realisaties in de L1 en L2 minimaal zijn. Alleen de tweede nasale formant (N2) liet een taalverschil zien: hoger in de L2 dan in de L1. Sprekers verschilden in de mate waarin ze deze verschuiving vertoonden en voor sommigen was het resultaat in tegengestelde richting.Hoewel de gevonden L1−L2 verschillen in de uitspraak van de /m/ klein zijn, lijkt de bilabiale nasaal niet geheel taalonafhankelijk. De N2 wordt gerelateerd aan de mond- en neusholte [4], wat duidt op een aanpassing in de productie. Rekening houdend met deze aanpassing zou de /m/ bruikbaar kunnen zijn in meertalige sprekervergelijkingen. Vervolgstappen zijn om dit te onderzoeken met sprekerclassificatie. Show less
Achtergrond en doelDe Nederlandse politie tapt gemiddeld meer dan duizend telefoons per dag af [1]. Forensisch spraakwetenschappers kunnen onderzoeken of de stem op de opname bij de verdachte past.... Show moreAchtergrond en doelDe Nederlandse politie tapt gemiddeld meer dan duizend telefoons per dag af [1]. Forensisch spraakwetenschappers kunnen onderzoeken of de stem op de opname bij de verdachte past. In tegenstelling tot andere biometrische gegevens is variatie binnen een stem inherent aan spraak: dezelfde mond moet immers allerlei verschillende klanken maken. Ook binnen klanken is er onbewust variatie in de uitspraak. En een spreker kan de klank bewust aanpassen. Een klank die relatief robuust lijkt te zijn voor dit soort invloeden is de aarzelingsklank ‘eh’ [2]. In deze studie onderzochten we in hoeverre verschillende taalkundige factoren invloed uitoefenen op de uitspraak van ‘eh’.Methode: data en analyses Ons onderzoek is gebaseerd op 2106 aarzelingen in spontane spraak van 59 Utrechtse studentes [3]. De studentes spraken in hun eerste taal (Nederlands) en in hun tweede taal (Engels). De aarzelingen zijn gemeten op akoestische variabelen zoals duur en toonhoogte. Vervolgens hebben we in R [4] per akoestische variabele linear mixed-effects models gebouwd om te onderzoeken of de akoestische vorm van aarzelingen wordt beïnvloed door: 1) de taal; 2) de variant (eh of ehm); 3) de positie; en 4) de spreker.Resultaten en conclusieSprekers verschilden van elkaar in hun uitspraak van ‘eh’ en ‘ehm’, maar de uitspraak bleek ook afhankelijk van de positie, de variant en de taal. Dit resultaat laat zien dat vergelijkend spraakonderzoek naast variatie tussen personen ook rekening te houden heeft met variatie binnen personen. Deze alertheid is ook geboden bij relatief onbewust geuite klanken zoals aarzelingen.Bronnen[1] Ministerie van Justitie en Veiligheid (2018). Jaarverslag en slotwet. Tweede Kamer, vergaderjaar 2018-2019, 35 200 VI, nr. 1.[2] Hughes, V., Foulkes, P., & Wood, S. (2016). Strength of forensic voice comparison evidence from the acoustics of filled pauses. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 23, 99−132.[3] Orr, R., & Quené, H. (2017). D-LUCEA: Curation of the UCU Accent Project data. In: J. Odijk & A. van Hessen (red.), CLARIN in the Low Countries. Berkeley: Ubiquity Press (pp. 177−190).[4] R Core Team (2018). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. Wenen: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. . Show less
In several languages, filled pauses (i.e. uh, um) have been described as speaker-specific (e.g. Horváth, 2010; Hughes et al., 2016; Künzel, 1997). In ongoing work we evaluate the speaker... Show moreIn several languages, filled pauses (i.e. uh, um) have been described as speaker-specific (e.g. Horváth, 2010; Hughes et al., 2016; Künzel, 1997). In ongoing work we evaluate the speaker-specificity of filled pauses across languages, specifically in speakers with L1 Dutch and L2 English: do speakers maintain their hesitation behavior across languages?So far, filled pauses have been largely ignored in phonetic descriptions of Dutch, whereas they are highly frequent (De Jong, 2017). The most specific paper describes Dutch uh as a schwa (Swerts, 1998). Whereas the same description has been given to filled pauses in English (e.g. Hughes et al., 2016) and Hungarian (Horváth, 2010), phonetic measurements in these languages show between-language differences in mean formant values of over 100 Hz.The data collected to answer our main research question also allows for a phonetic description of Dutch filled pauses. We analyzed 2,962 tokens from 20 male and 59 female native speakers of Dutch. Measurements included type (i.e. uh or um), fundamental frequency, duration, and vowel formants.ReferencesDe Jong, N. (2017). Spreekvaardigheid en vloeiendheid. Vakwerk 11: Selectie uit de lezingen en presentaties conferentie BVNT2, Amsterdam 2017 (pp. 37-45).Horváth, V. (2010). Filled pauses in Hungarian: Their phonetic form and function. Acta Linguistica Hungarica, 57(2-3), 288-306.Hughes, V., Foulkes, P., & Wood, S. (2016). Strength of forensic voice comparison evidencefrom the acoustics of filled pauses. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 23, 99-132.Künzel, H. J. (1997). Some general phonetic and forensic aspects of speaking tempo. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law, 4(1), 48-83.Swerts, M. (1998). Filled pauses as markers of discourse structure. Journal of pragmatics, 30(4), 485-496. Show less
The idiosyncrasy of filled pauses in L2 English in the context of phonetic convergenceUniversity College Utrecht (UCU) brings together students from different language backgrounds, who use English... Show moreThe idiosyncrasy of filled pauses in L2 English in the context of phonetic convergenceUniversity College Utrecht (UCU) brings together students from different language backgrounds, who use English as a lingua franca. Only a small minority of the students speaks English as a native language (L1); the majority is Dutch (Orr & Quené, 2017). Prior studies have shown that the speakers in this multilingual community converge towards a shared accent of English: after three years on campus, students’ /s/ pronunciations have become more similar (Quené et al., 2017), as has their speech rhythm (Quené & Orr, 2014).This study aims to investigate how this convergence may affect the idiosyncrasy of non-native (L2) English filled pauses ‘uh’ and ‘um’. Filled pauses (FPs) are considered useful features in forensic speaker comparisons, since they are highly speaker-specific (e.g. Künzel, 1997). This not only means that there is variation in how FPs are used by different speakers, but also that they are a consistent feature in an individual’s speech (Braun & Rosin, 2015). Moreover, it is possible that speakers are consistent in using FPs in their L1 and L2, because FPs tends to not be explicitly taught. However, because languages differ in FP use (De Leeuw, 2007), ongoing practice in speaking the L2 may affect their realization, as well as the community’s converging language.To investigate the idiosyncrasy of filled pauses in the context of convergence, 20 Dutch female UCU students were selected from the LUCEA corpus (Orr & Quené, 2017). FPs were segmented from 2-minute English monologues, recorded at the beginning and the end of their Bachelor studies. Together, they produced 680 FPs. The first and second formant of the vowels in ‘uh’ and ‘um’ showed convergence – measured as reduced variance – whereas the third formant and F0 showed more variance over time. Linear mixed-effects models showed that only part of the students changed their FP realizations with time. While changes were minimal, they resulted in a drop in speaker classification performance in cross-time comparisons.References:Braun, A. & A. Rosin (2015). On the speaker-specificity of hesitation markers. Proc. 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences: 10-14.De Leeuw, E. (2007). Hesitation markers in English, German, and Dutch. Journal of Germanic Linguistics19: 85-114.Künzel, H.J. (1997). Some general phonetic and forensic aspects of speaking tempo. Forensic Linguistics4: 48-83.Hughes, V. et al. (2016). Strength of forensic voice comparison evidence from the acoustics of filled pauses. International Journal of Speech, Language and the Law 23: 99-132.Orr, R. & H. Quené (2017). D-LUCEA: Curation of the UCU Accent Project data. In Odijk, J. & A. Van Hessen (eds.): CLARIN in the Low Countries: 177-190. London: Ubiquity Press.Quené, H., & R. Orr (2014). Long-term convergence of speech rhythm in L1 and L2 English. Social and Linguistic Speech Prosody 7: 342-345.Quené, H. et al. (2017). Phonetic similarity of /s/ in native and second language: Individual differences in learning curves. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 142: 519-524. Show less
Individual variation in filled pauses in the native and second language Meike de Boer & Willemijn Heeren Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Hesitation behavior is a relatively unconscious... Show moreIndividual variation in filled pauses in the native and second language Meike de Boer & Willemijn Heeren Leiden University Centre for Linguistics Hesitation behavior is a relatively unconscious part of language [1], which shows much between-speaker variation [2−4]. Furthermore, individuals are rather consistent in how they hesitate in their native language [2, 5]. This study investigates between-speaker variation in hesitation behavior in the first (L1) and second (L2) language, and within-speaker consistency of filled pauses across languages. In Dutch and English, two fillers are mainly used to express hesitation: uh and um. However, their exact phonetic realization and the ratio between the two are different for these languages [6, 7]. Flege’s Speech Learning Model [8] says that L2 learners only adapt their pronunciation when they perceive a difference between the L1 and L2. Therefore, we expect that Dutch speakers of English more clearly adapt their uh:um proportions than their vowel formants of the uh/um vowels. For other pronunciation features of uh and um, e.g. duration and fundamental frequency (F0), we expect speakers to be consistent across languages [9, 2]. We investigated the speech of 40 Dutch students of University College Utrecht (20 females; 20 males). The speakers were selected from the Longitudinal Corpus of University College English Accents (LUCEA), collected by Orr and Quené [10]. Students from University Colleges have advanced L2 proficiency. Preliminary results show substantial between-speaker variation in the filled pauses uh and um in both Dutch and English. The within-speaker consistency was low where expected: when speaking English, students used the um variant more often than in Dutch. Also, the vowel quality of their filled pauses was pronounced more open and more backwards in English than in Dutch. According to the SLM, this suggests that differences in vowel realization between Dutch and English were sufficiently salient to these speakers, as were the different uh:um ratios. As expected, filled pauses’ durations and F0 remained relatively stable across languages. References [1] Clark, H. H., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002). Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. Cognition, 84, 73−111. [2] Braun, A., Rosin, A. (2015). On the speaker-specificity of hesitation markers. Proc. 18th ICPhS Glasgow, 731−736. [3] Hughes, V., Wood, S., & Foulkes, P. (2016). Filled pauses as variables in forensic voice comparison. Int. J. Speech Lang. Law, 23, 99−132. [4] McDougall, K., & Duckworth, M. (2017). Profiling fluency: An analysis of individual variation in disfluencies in adult males. Speech Comm., 95, 16−27. [5] Künzel, H. F. (1997). Some general phonetic and forensic aspects of speaking tempo. For. Linguist., 4, 48−83. [6] De Leeuw, E. (2007). Hesitation markers in English, German, and Dutch. J. Germ. Ling. 19, 85–114. [7] Wieling, M., Grieve, J., Bouma, G., Fruehwald, J., Coleman, J., & Liberman, M. (2016). Variation and change in the use of hesitation markers in Germanic languages. Language Dynamics and Change, 6, 199−234. [8] Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In: Strange, W. (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research. York: York Press, 233−277. [9] Kolly, M. J., Leemann, A., De Mareüil, P. B., & Dellwo, V. (2015). Speaker-idiosyncrasy in pausing behavior: Evidence from a cross-linguistic study. Proc. 18th ICPhS Glasgow, 294−299. [10] Orr, R., & Quené, H. (2017). D-LUCEA: Curation of the UCU Accent Project data. In: Odijk, J., & Van Hessen, A. (Eds.), CLARIN in the Low Countries. London: Ubiquity Press, 177–190. Show less
We investigated the speaker-specificity of filled pauses across languages and time. The filled pauses uh and um contain speaker-specific information in a speaker’s native language. Since speakers... Show moreWe investigated the speaker-specificity of filled pauses across languages and time. The filled pauses uh and um contain speaker-specific information in a speaker’s native language. Since speakers are relatively unaware of their hesitation behavior, it might transfer from their first (L1) to their second language (L2). We examined filled pauses using several phonetic-acoustic features in spontaneous L1 Dutch and L2 English speech of 20 female speakers, recorded at two times, three years apart.Using linear mixed-effects models, we found that speakers differ in their first and second formants of uh and um in L1 versus L2, while duration and fundamental frequency remain stable. Speaker classification models trained on filled pauses in one language perform worse – but still relatively well – on the other language. With the exception of a few speakers, hesitation behavior remained stable over time. In spite of L1-L2 differences, some speaker characteristics of filled pauses remain. Show less
