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
This study investigates the effect of explicit vs.implicit prosody teaching on the quality of consecutive interpretation byFarsi-English interpreter trainees. Three groups of student interpreters... Show moreThis study investigates the effect of explicit vs.implicit prosody teaching on the quality of consecutive interpretation byFarsi-English interpreter trainees. Three groups of student interpreters wereformed. All were native speakers of Farsi who studied English translation andinterpreting at the BA level at the University of Applied Sciences, Tehran,Iran. Participants were assigned to groups at random, but with equal divisionbetween genders (6 female and 6 male students in each group). No significantdifferences in English language skills (TOEFL scores) could be establishedbetween the groups. Participants took a pretest of consecutive interpretingbefore starting the program. The control group listened to authentic audiotracks and did exercises in consecutive interpreting. The fi rst experimentalgroup received explicit instruction of English prosody and did exercises basedon the theoretical explanation which was provided by their Iranian instructor.The second experimental group received implicit instruction of English prosodythrough the use of recasts. The total instruction time was the same for all thegroups, i.e. 10 hours. Students then took a posttest in consecutive interpretation.The results showed that explicit teaching of prosody had a significantlypositive effect on the overall quality of interpreting from Farsi into Englishcompared with that of implicit prosody instruction. These results havepedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreter trainingprograms, material producers and all who are involved in language study andpedagogy. Show less
The perception and production of emotional and linguistic (focus) prosody were compared in children with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) peers. Thirteen CI and thirteen hearing-age... Show moreThe perception and production of emotional and linguistic (focus) prosody were compared in children with cochlear implants (CI) and normally hearing (NH) peers. Thirteen CI and thirteen hearing-age-matched school-aged NH children were tested, as baseline, on non-verbal emotion understanding, non-word repetition, and stimulus identification and naming. Main tests were verbal emotion discrimination, verbal focus position discrimination, acted emotion production, and focus production. Productions were evaluated by NH adult Dutch listeners. All scores between groups were comparable, except a lower score for the CI group for non-word repetition. Emotional prosody perception and production scores correlated weakly for CI children but were uncorrelated for NH children. In general, hearing age weakly predicted emotion production but not perception. Non-verbal emotional (but not linguistic) understanding predicted CI children's (but not controls’) emotion perception and production. In conclusion, increasing time in sound might facilitate vocal emotional expression, possibly requiring independently maturing emotion perception skills. 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
The present study applied functional partition to investigate disyllabic lexical tonal pattern categories in an underresourced Chinese dialect, Jinan Mandarin. A two-stage partitioning procedure... Show moreThe present study applied functional partition to investigate disyllabic lexical tonal pattern categories in an underresourced Chinese dialect, Jinan Mandarin. A two-stage partitioning procedure was introduced to process a multi-speaker corpus that contains irregular lexical variants in a semi automatic way In the first stage, a program provides suggestions for the phonetician to decide the lexical tonal variants for the recordings of each word, based on the result of a functional k-means partitioning algorithm and tonal information from an available pronunciation dictionary of a related Chinese dialect, i.e. Standard Chinese. The second stage iterates a functional version of k-means partitioning with silhouette-based criteria to abstract an optimal number of tonal patterns from the whole corpus, which also allows the phoneticians to adjust the results of the automatic procedure in a controlled way and so redo partitioning for a subset of clusters.The procedure yielded eleven disyllabic tonal patterns for Jinan Mandarin, representing the tonal system used by contemporary Jinan Mandarin speakers from a wide range of age groups. The procedure used in this paper is different from previous linguistic descriptions which were based on more elderly speakers' pronunciations . This method incorporates phoneticians' linguistic knowledge and preliminary linguistic resources into the procedure of partitioning. It can improve the efficiency and objectivity in the investigation of lexical tonal pattern categories when building pronunciation dictionaries for underresourced languages. 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
This study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the quality of interpreting by interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were... Show moreThis study investigates the effect of prosodic feature awareness training on the quality of interpreting by interpreter trainees. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups at random, but with equal division between genders (seven males in each group). The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the experimental group spent part of the time instead on theoretical explanation and practical exercises emphasizing prosodic differences between Farsi and English. Three raters assessed the quality of the interpreter trainees’ performance in a post-test in terms of accuracy, omissions, overall coherence, grammar, expression, word choice, terminology, accentedness, pace and voice. The results show that prosodic feature awareness training did have a statistically significant effect on the quality measures: the overall assessment of the experimental group was 14 pointsbetter (on a scale between 0 and 100) than that of the control group. Moreover, the difference was larger for the phonetic/prosodic quality scales (accentedness, pace, voice) than for the other scales. These results have implications for designers of curricula for training interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in foreign-language study and pedagogy. Show less
The present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. The effect of treatment on decreasing the rate of message omissions is studied as well. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their overall performance on a TOEFL pre-test, but with equal division between genders. The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the other, experimental, group spent part of the time on memory training tasks and exercises, e.g. imagination and story retelling. Three raters assessed quality measures of accuracy, omissions, additions, grammar, expression, terminology, pace and accentuation of the interpreter trainees in pre-test and post-test performance. Statistical analysis shows that the memory training had a positive effect on the quality of interpretation and also on decreasing the rate of message omission. The results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in interpreting studies and its pedagogy. Show less
The present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English... Show moreThe present study investigates the effect of memory training through story retelling exercises and imagination tasks and their effect on the quality of interpretation by Farsi-to-English interpreter trainees. The effect of treatment on decreasing the rate of message omissions is studied as well. Two groups of student interpreters were formed. Participants were assigned to groups on the basis of their overall performance on a TOEFL pre-test, but with equal division between genders. The control group was then taught interpreting skills by the routine curriculum, while the other, experimental, group spent part of the time on memory training tasks and exercises, e.g. imagination and story retelling. Three raters assessed quality measures of accuracy, omissions, additions, grammar, expression, terminology, pace and accentuation of the interpreter trainees in pre-test and post-test performance. Statistical analysis shows that the memory training had a positive effect on the quality of interpretation and also on decreasing the rate of message omission. The results have pedagogical implications for curriculum designers, interpreting programs for training future interpreters, material producers and all who are involved in interpreting studies and its pedagogy. Show less
This article summarizes earlier research done on the prosodic marking of interrogativity and imperatives in Dutch on the basis of recorded speech from male and female speakers. The first part of... Show moreThis article summarizes earlier research done on the prosodic marking of interrogativity and imperatives in Dutch on the basis of recorded speech from male and female speakers. The first part of this article compares statements (ST) and three types of question. The form of questions may differ in various respects from statements: Wh-questions (WH) have a question word in initial position and exhibit subject-verb inversion, yes/no-questions (YN) have inversion only, while declarative questions (DE) have the same structure as ST. Our functional hypothesis that the intensity of interrogativity marking through prosody counterbalances the degree of syntactic marking in the order ST Show less
We administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text... Show moreWe administered six functional intelligibility tests, i.e., spoken and written versions of (i) an isolated word recognition test, (ii) a cloze test at the sentence level and (iii) a picture-to-text matching task at the paragraph level. The scores on these functional tests were compared with each other and with intersubjective measures obtained for the same materials through opinion testing, i.e., estimated and perceived intelligibility. The native language of the speakers and listeners belonged to one of three groups of European language families, i.e., Germanic (Danish, Dutch, English, German, Swedish, yielding 20 within- family pairs of different speaker and listener languages), Romance (French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish, yielding 20 language pairs) and Slavic (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish, Slovak, Slovene, i.e., 30 pairs). Results from 13,566 participants were analyzed for the 70 within-family combinations of speaker and listener languages. The word recognition test and the cloze test revealed similar patterns of intelligibility but correlated poorly with the picture-to-text matching scores. Both measures of judged intelligibility (estimated and perceived) correlated highly with one another and with the functional test scores, especially those of the cloze test. We conclude that lay listeners are able to judge the intelligibility of a non-native test language from within their own language family. Moreover, participants understood writ- ten language better than the spoken forms. Advantages and disadvantages of the various intelligibility measures we used are discussed. We conclude that the written cloze procedure which we developed is the optimal cross-language intelligibility test in the European language area. Show less
