This study investigates the extent to which word stress facilitates word disambiguation in Papuan Malay. Although there is consistent acoustic support for word stress patterns in this language, the... Show moreThis study investigates the extent to which word stress facilitates word disambiguation in Papuan Malay. Although there is consistent acoustic support for word stress patterns in this language, the function of word stress in Indonesian languages, including Papuan Malay, has been disputed in several studies. Based on a word list of phonetically transcribed Papuan Malay words, an analysis of wordembeddings was carried out. The number of words that are embedded in other words was shown to explain the role of word stress in the word recognition processes crosslinguistically. The results of the lexical analysis indicate that Papuan Malay is somewhat similar to English, a language where word stress differences are mainly signalled by vowel quality and to a lesser extent by suprasegmental cues. The results are discussed within the context of cross-linguistic cues to word stress and shed a new light on the controversy concerning word stress in Indonesian languages. Show less
Identifying speakers by their spoken output is a specialist task for forensic investigators. In the present study we focused on cross-linguistic speaker (Chinese, English, Dutch) identification... Show moreIdentifying speakers by their spoken output is a specialist task for forensic investigators. In the present study we focused on cross-linguistic speaker (Chinese, English, Dutch) identification based on (components of) English stops and fricatives, /p, b, t, d, k, g/ and the fricatives /f, v, θ, ð, s, z, ʃ, ʒ/. English noise bursts’ contribution to native language identification is presented and the special tokens which contribute the most were analyzed. Show less
Sloos, M.; Dijkstra, J.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van 2019
West-Frisian has a highly frequent suffix -/ən/ in which the schwa is usually deleted. This results in a single nasal which is analysed as ‘syllabic’, at least after obstruents. However, it is... Show moreWest-Frisian has a highly frequent suffix -/ən/ in which the schwa is usually deleted. This results in a single nasal which is analysed as ‘syllabic’, at least after obstruents. However, it is unclear what happens if schwa deletion occurs after a stem-final nasal as in hûn-en ‘dog.PL’. We consider several options, including nasal deletion, nasal contraction, and gemination. We compare the duration of an underlyingly single nasal in stem-final position with that of the nasal after schwa deletion in -/nən/ as in hûn ~ hûnen. The results reveal that the nasal in hûnen after schwa deletion is more than twice as long as in hûn and also longer than after schwa deletion in -/tən/. This suggests that the nasal is geminated. We discuss the status of this nasal in light of the fact that gemination has not been reported elsewhere in the phonology of West-Frisian. Show less
Automatic identification of a speaker’s native language background may have forensic applications. This paper explores the feasibility of automatic identification of the native language background... Show moreAutomatic identification of a speaker’s native language background may have forensic applications. This paper explores the feasibility of automatic identification of the native language background of a foreign speaker of English, using phonetically interpretable measurements. The production of the ten monophthongs of (American) English by Dutch, Mandarin Chinese and American speakers was used as a test case. Vowel formants F1 (corresponding to articulatory vowel height), F2 (capturing vowel backness and lip rounding) and vowel duration were extracted. Clearly different duration and patterning of the vowels in the vowel space were seen. Automatic classification of the speaker’s native language was 90 percent correct when all acoustic parameters were used as predictors. Language identification was slightly poorer when only formant data were used (85% correct) and substantially poorer – but much better than chance – when only vowel duration was used (60% correct). We conclude that vowel duration provides a weaker cue to foreign-accent identification in English than the spectral properties but that the combination of both information sources yields the best results. Show less
Automatic identification of a speaker’s native language background may have forensic applications. This paper explores the feasibility of automatic identification of the native language background... Show moreAutomatic identification of a speaker’s native language background may have forensic applications. This paper explores the feasibility of automatic identification of the native language background of a foreign speaker of English, using phonetically interpretable measurements. The production of the ten monophthongs of (American) English by Dutch, Mandarin Chinese and American speakers was used as a test case. Vowel formants F1 (corresponding to articulatory vowel height), F2 (capturing vowel backness and lip rounding) and vowel duration were extracted. Clearly different duration and patterning of the vowels in the vowel space were seen. Automatic classification of the speaker’s native language was 90 percent correct when all acoustic parameters were used as predictors. Language identification was slightly poorer when only formant data were used (85% correct) and substantially poorer – but much better than chance – when only vowel duration was used (60% correct). We conclude that vowel duration provides a weaker cue to foreign-accent identification in English than the spectral properties but that the combination of both information sources yields the best results. Show less
Michaux, M.; Caspers, J.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Hiligsmann, P. 2015
This tutorial-like presentation provides a survey of acoustical correlates of word and sentence stress, with emphasis on Germanic languages such as Dutch and English. It also reviews what is known... Show moreThis tutorial-like presentation provides a survey of acoustical correlates of word and sentence stress, with emphasis on Germanic languages such as Dutch and English. It also reviews what is known about the perceptual cue value of the acoustic correlates of stress, and show that highly reliable correlates are not necessarily strong perceptual cues, and conversely that the strongest perceptual cue (pitch change) is an unreliable correlate. Show less
