Fluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness are considered importantparameters of interpreting quality but have rarely been studiedsystematically in training programs of interpreting. Therefore,... Show moreFluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness are considered importantparameters of interpreting quality but have rarely been studiedsystematically in training programs of interpreting. Therefore, the presentstudy was set up to investigate the effect of fluency training on speechfluency, comprehensibility, and accentedness of interpreter trainees. Twogroups of interpreter trainees at a university in Iran took part in the study,receiving the same amount of instruction and practice (12 hours over 4weeks). The experimental group (N=30) spent 33% of the time (i.e., 4 of the12 hours in the training program) on dedicated fluency strategy training,encouraging the memorization, repetition, and retelling of audio and videomaterials. The remaining 67% was spent on training general speaking skills.The control group (N=30) were only taught general speaking skills in thetraining program but received no dedicated fluency training. Systematicinterviews were run to assess the interpreter trainees’ speech fluency,comprehensibility and accentedness, which were judged independently bythree expert raters at three moments of testing, i.e., pretest, immediateposttest, and delayed posttest (one month later). The findings revealed thatthe fluency training significantly enhanced the interpreter trainees’ fluency,and to a lesser extent the students’ comprehensibility but had only amarginal effect on accentedness. The pedagogical implication would be thatawareness training on speech fluency Show less
The present study investigated the use of the iBrainstorm app in a collaborative argumentation-based learning context for developing listening comprehension skills by EFL learners. Two groups of... Show moreThe present study investigated the use of the iBrainstorm app in a collaborative argumentation-based learning context for developing listening comprehension skills by EFL learners. Two groups of students were formed. All of them studied English as a foreign language at the BA level at Bu-Ali Sina University, Iran. Participants were assigned to groups at random. Participants took a pre-test of listening comprehension skills before starting the programme. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, discussed issues in the movies in pairs in the classroom. The experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, argumentation-based learning by the iBrainstorm application. The total instruction time was the same for two groups, i.e., 32 hours. Students then took a post-test and, a month later, a delayed post-test in listening comprehension skills. The results show that the use of the iBrainstorm app significantly improved the students’ listening comprehension skills, and significantly more so than those of the control group. These results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, material producers, and all who are involved in language study and pedagogy Show less
This study examines the effect of native vs. non-native prosody instruction on developing interpreter trainees’ speech comprehensibility in English as a foreign language (EFL) using a pretest... Show moreThis study examines the effect of native vs. non-native prosody instruction on developing interpreter trainees’ speech comprehensibility in English as a foreign language (EFL) using a pretest-posttest-delayed posttest design. Twenty-three groups of 28 interpreter trainees at a University in Iran (six different branches) took part in the study, all groups receiving the same amount of instruction (9 hours over 3 weeks). Three control groups listened to/viewed authentic audio recordings and movies in English, discussed their contents, and completed a variety of speaking tasks but received no specific prosody instruction. Twenty experimental groups spent part of the instruction time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody by thirteen nonnative instructors, and seven native instructors. Three experts evaluated the comprehensibility of the trainees in elicited speech samples collected during the pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest, and subsequently presented in random order. The findings revealed that the experimental groups gained between 1 and 2 points on the 0 to 10 comprehensibility scale, and lost little in the delayed posttest; however, hardly any changes were observed in the control groups. We conclude that native and non-native English instructors’ prosody teaching were equally effective in enhancing EFL students’ speech comprehensibility. Show less
Yenkimaleki and van Heuven (2021) studied the effects of teaching either segmental or suprasegmental (prosodic) aspects of English, in combination with either perception or production-focused... Show moreYenkimaleki and van Heuven (2021) studied the effects of teaching either segmental or suprasegmental (prosodic) aspects of English, in combination with either perception or production-focused practice (four combinations in all) on the speech intelligibility and comprehensibility of Persian L1 learners of English as a foreign language. Generally, production-focused exercises were more effective but there was no overall effect of teaching segmentals versus prosody. However, the specific combination of emphasis on prosody and production-oriented exercises was most beneficial. We summarize the results of the study and present, more systematically and in more detail than in the original article, the materials and teaching methods used. Show less
We investigated the intelligibility of written Danish for Swedes, and in particular the role of inherited words compared to non-Germanic loanwords. To assess whether shared loanwords are easier to... Show moreWe investigated the intelligibility of written Danish for Swedes, and in particular the role of inherited words compared to non-Germanic loanwords. To assess whether shared loanwords are easier to understand than inherited words, we conducted two experiments. First, we tested the intelligibility of isolated Danish words (inherited words and loanwords) among Swedes. Second, we constructed two versions of a reading test, one with a large percentage of loanwords and one with few loanwords. Our results show that it is easier for Swedish listeners to identify and understand Danish cognate loanwords than inherited words and that texts with many loanwords are easier to read than texts with few loanwords. We explain these results by the fact that (recent) loans in Swedish have diverged less and are therefore more similar to the Danish counterparts than inherited words. Show less
The present study investigated the training benefits of segmental vs. suprasegmental aspects for the intelligibility and comprehensibility of spoken English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Five groups... Show moreThe present study investigated the training benefits of segmental vs. suprasegmental aspects for the intelligibility and comprehensibility of spoken English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Five groups of lower intermediate EFL learners were formed by random assignment. A pretest of the speaking skills, intelligibility, and comprehensibility of the learners' speech confirmed that the five groups were homogeneous before starting the training program. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English, and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, and did exercises to improve speaking skills without receiving explicit segmental and suprasegmental explanations and exercises. The experimental groups received an explanation of segmental or suprasegmental features (during one-sixth of the teaching time) followed by production-focused or perception-focused practice (during another one-sixth of the teaching time). The total instruction time was the same for all five groups, i.e., 15 h. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills targeting their speech intelligibility and comprehensibility. The findings revealed that the speech intelligibility of learners who received segmental training followed by production-focused practice was better than that of all other groups. Learners who received suprasegmental instruction followed by production-focused practice outperformed all other groups in terms of comprehensibility. Show less
The present study investigated the training benefits of segmental vs. suprasegmental aspects for the intelligibility and comprehensibility of spoken English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Five groups... Show moreThe present study investigated the training benefits of segmental vs. suprasegmental aspects for the intelligibility and comprehensibility of spoken English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Five groups of lower intermediate EFL learners were formed by random assignment. A pretest of the speaking skills, intelligibility, and comprehensibility of the learners’ speech confirmed that the five groups were homogeneous before starting the training program. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English, and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, and did exercises to improve speaking skills without receiving explicit segmental and suprasegmental explanations and exercises. The experimental groups received an explanation of segmental or suprasegmental features (during one-sixth of the teaching time) followed by production-focused or perception-focused practice (during another one-sixth of the teaching time). The total instruction time was the same for all five groups, i.e., 15 h. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills targeting their speech intelligibility and comprehensibility. The findings revealed that the speech intelligibility of learners who received segmental training followed by production-focused practice was better than that of all other groups. Learners who received suprasegmental instruction followed by production-focused practice outperformed all other groups in terms of comprehensibility. Show less
The existence of word stress in Indonesian languages has been controversial. Recent acoustic analyses of Papuan Malay suggest that this language has word stress, counter to other studies and unlike... Show moreThe existence of word stress in Indonesian languages has been controversial. Recent acoustic analyses of Papuan Malay suggest that this language has word stress, counter to other studies and unlike closely related languages. The current study further investigates Papuan Malay by means of lexical (non-acoustic) analyses of two different aspects of word stress. In particular, this paper reports two distribution analyses of a word corpus, 1) investigating the extent to which stress patterns may help word recognition and 2) exploring the phonological factors that predict the distribution of stress patterns. The facilitating role of stress patterns in word recognition was investigated in a lexical analysis of word embeddings. The results show that Papuan Malay word stress (potentially) helps to disambiguate words. As for stress predictors, a random forest analysis investigated the effect of multiple morpho-phonological factors on stress placement. It was found that the mid vowels /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ play a central role in stress placement, refining the conclusions of previous work that mainly focused on /ɛ/. The current study confirms that non-acoustic research on stress can complement acoustic research in important ways. Crucially, the combined findings on stress in Papuan Malay so far give rise to an integrated perspective to word stress, in which phonetic, phonological and cognitive factors are considered. Show less
This chapter presents an experimental study of consecutive interpreting which investigates whether: (a) judged fluency can be predicted from computer-based quantitative prosodic measures including... Show moreThis chapter presents an experimental study of consecutive interpreting which investigates whether: (a) judged fluency can be predicted from computer-based quantitative prosodic measures including temporal and melodic measures. Ten raters judged six criteria of accuracy and fluency in two consecutive interpretations of the same recorded source speech, from Chinese ‘A’ into English ‘B’, by twelve trainee interpreters (seven undergraduates, five postgraduates). The recorded interpretations were examined with the speech analysis tool Praat. From a computerized count of the pauses thus detected, together with disfluencies identified by raters, twelve temporal measures of fluency were calculated. In addition, two melodic measures, i.e., pitch level and pitch range, were automatically generated. These two measures are often considered to be associated with speaking confidence and competence. Statistical analysis shows: (a) strong correlations between judged fluency and temporal variables of fluency; (b) no correlation between pitch range and judged fluency, but a moderate (negative) correlation between pitch level and judged fluency; and (c) the usefulness of effective speech rate (number of syllables, excluding disfluencies, divided by the total duration of speech production and pauses) as a predictor of judged fluency. Other important determinants of judged fluency were the number of filled pauses, articulation rate, and mean length of pause. The potential for developing automatic fluency assessment in consecutive interpreting is discussed, as are implications for informing the design of rubrics of fluency assessment and facilitating formativeassessment in interpreting education. Show less
In this paper we argue that a comparison of vowel systems of L1 and L2 should not be limited to measuring formants and vowel duration in speech production but should also include a contrastive... Show moreIn this paper we argue that a comparison of vowel systems of L1 and L2 should not be limited to measuring formants and vowel duration in speech production but should also include a contrastive study of the perceptual representations of the vowel systems entertained by native and non‐native users of the target language. An incorrect perceptual representation of the target sounds often lies at the heart of pronunciation difficulties of L2 speakers. To facilitate such perceptual research the present paper offers a universal vowel space in which 43 artificial sounds are sampled at perceptually equidistant steps along the dimensions of vowel height (7 steps), backness/lip rounding (9 steps). Duration can be added as an additional variable in as many steps as required by the researcher. The facility was provisionally tested in a study of the perceptual representation of the monophthongs of American English by American native listeners and by Persian learners of English. Several ways of analyzing the results of such a study are presented. The results show that native listeners distinguish tense and lax members of vowel pairs in English primarily by differences in vowel quality, while the Persian L2 listeners use vowel duration as the primary cue and largely ignore the quality cue. Show less
Liu, H.; Liang, J.; Heuven, V.J.J.P. van; Heeringa, W. 2020
The aim of the present perceptual study is to weight tones and vowels as acoustic cues in Chinese subregional dialect identification, and to test the credibility of the subregional dialect... Show moreThe aim of the present perceptual study is to weight tones and vowels as acoustic cues in Chinese subregional dialect identification, and to test the credibility of the subregional dialect classification that has been proposed in the literature. Our findings show that listeners are able to pinpoint speakers’ subregional dialect even when only given monosyllabic Chinese word stimuli, either natural or tone-transplanted. The results agree with the impres- sionistic claim that both vowels and tones contribute to perceptual subregional dialect identification. However, vowel quality differences make a greater contribution than the tone differences –which contradicts the order of importance predicted in the impressionistic literature. Strong interactions between vowels and tones are also found. Show less
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
The present study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the intelligibility of speech produced by Iranian interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the intelligibility of speech produced by Iranian interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation and interpreting at the BA level. Participants took a pretest of speaking skills before starting the program so that their speech intelligibility level was rated. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies, discussed issues in the movies in pairs in the classroom. The experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills so that the effect of treatment on the intelligibility of their speech could be assessed. The results show that the prosody awareness training significantly improved the students’ speech intelligibility. Show less
The present study investigates the relative contribution of computer assisted prosody training (CAPT) vs. instructor based prosody teaching (IBPT) on developing speaking skills by interpreter... Show moreThe present study investigates the relative contribution of computer assisted prosody training (CAPT) vs. instructor based prosody teaching (IBPT) on developing speaking skills by interpreter trainees. Three groups of student interpreters were formed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation and interpreting at the BA level at the University of Applied Sciences in Tehran, Iran. Participants were assigned to groups at random. No significant differences in speaking skills could be established between the groups prior to the experiment. The control group listened to authentic audio tracks in English and discussed their contents, watched authentic English movies and did exercises based on these tasks for developing speaking skills. The first experimental group spent part of the time on theoretical explanation of, and practical exercises with, English prosody by an instructor. The second experimental group instead spent part of the time on English prosody instruction and practice through the Accent Master software for Farsi speakers (Bo & Bo 2005). The total instruction time was the same for all three groups, i.e. 12 h. Students then took a posttest in speaking skills. The results showed that the second experimental group (CAPT) performed better than the other groups in developing speaking skills. These results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreter training programs, and all who are involved in language study and pedagogy. Show less
We measured mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages inEurope. Intelligibility was determined for all 70 language combinations using the same uniform methodology (a cloze test)... Show moreWe measured mutual intelligibility of 16 closely related spoken languages inEurope. Intelligibility was determined for all 70 language combinations using the same uniform methodology (a cloze test). We analysed the results of 1833 listeners representing the mutual intelligibility between young, educated Europeans from the same 16 countries. Lexical, phonological, orthographic, morphological and syntactic distances were computed as linguistic variables. We also quantified non-linguistic variables (e.g. exposure, attitudes towards the test languages). Using stepwise regression analysis the importance of linguistic and non-linguistic predictors for the mutual intelligibility in the 70 language pairs was assessed. Exposure to the test language was the most important variable, overriding all other variables. Then, limiting the analysis to the prediction of inherent intelligibility, we analysed the results for a subset of listeners with no or little previous exposure to the test language. Linguistic distances, especially lexical distance, now explain a substantial part of the variance. 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
