•Some late learners of L2-English can perceptually categorize new L2 English vowels in a nativelike manner.•L2 English vowel learning influences L1 Japanese vowel perception for late learners of ...English.•Relative L1/L2 dominance and nativelikeness of L2 perception together influence the nature of L1 perceptual drift.
The current study investigated second language (L2) vowel learning influence on first language (L1) vowel perception. We examined how late L2-English learners’ perception of L1-Japanese vowels is influenced by learning to perceive a new L2-English vowel. The study compared L1/L2 perception task results from 60 late L1-Japanese learners of L2-English with those of monolingual Japanese (N = 21) and English speakers (N = 16). To further test hypotheses put forward in the revised Speech Learning Model (SLM-r: Flege & Bohn, 2021), that L2 input distribution is associated with L1/L2 phonetic learning, information on L2-learner participants’ L2 dominance was gathered. The results showed clear L1 perceptual drift in a subgroup of L2-learner participants who were NOT nativelike in L2 English /i-ɪ/ categorization but were L2 dominant. The results support the claim that L2 input plays an important role in reorganizing the L1 phonetic system. However, they also highlight the importance of separating L2 dominance related factors (e.g., L2 input/use) and L2 perceptual ability in investigating L1-L2 phonetic interaction.
Migration to a foreign country can be a complex process involving the adjustment to a new culture and the acquisition of a second language (L2). Acculturation, the process by which an individual ...integrates their native values and behaviours with those of the host culture, is an integral part of this process. It has been suggested that the choice of acculturation strategy can either facilitate or hinder L2 acquisition (Schumann, 1986; Berry, 1997). Pronunciation is a vital aspect of L2 proficiency and is often seen as mediating an individual's identity in the host culture (Piske et al., 2001). This study focuses on the pronunciation patterns of ten adult Polish immigrants living in Welshpool, Wales, and attempts to examine the potential relationship between a chosen acculturation strategy (adaptation or preservation) and the use of rhoticity in English. Rhoticity, a salient feature of British English pronunciation that varies in use and quality depending on the region (Wells, 1982), has been previously studied in relation to the use of rhoticity by Polish speakers (Jaworski, 2010; Jaworski & Gillian, 2011; Stolarski, 2013, 2015; Zając, 2016; Rojczyk & Zając, 2017; Matysiak, 2020), with a notable emphasis on the use of taps in intervocalic and post-vocalic positions. The present study found some inconsistencies in the use of rhoticity in English.
The major aim of this paper is to establish possible correlations between continuous sentiment scores and four basic acoustic characteristics of voice. In order to achieve this objective, the text of ...“A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens was tokenized at the sentence level. Next, each of the resulting text units was assessed in terms of sentiment polarity and aligned with the corresponding fragment in an audiobook. The results indicate weak but statistically significant correlations between sentiment scores and three acoustic features: the mean F0, the standard deviation of F0 and the mean intensity. These findings may be useful in selecting optimal acoustic features for model training in multimodal sentiment analysis. Also, they are essential from a linguistic point of view and could be applied in studies on such language phenomena as irony.
The study investigates the dynamics of speech rhythm in early sequential bilingual children who have access to Italian-English immersion programs. The research focused on the Italian and English ...semi-spontaneous narrative productions of 9 students, aged between 6;7 and 10;11 and distributed across three different classes (Year 1, Year 3, Year 5). Their speech was recorded and subject to an interval-based analysis via computation of %V/ΔC, PVI and Varco metrics. The retrieved metrics underwent within-group and between-group one-way ANOVAs in order to identify valuable cross-linguistic variations among children of the same age and statistically significant differences between different age groups (Y1, Y3, Y5). The results appear to support a stress-centered interpretation of speech rhythm: according to this view, all languages could be arranged on a stress-timed continuum in which “syllable-timing” is marked by sparser occurrences of (regular) prominence due to the relative absence of vocalic elision and consonantal complexity. Indeed, the comparative analysis drawn between the normalized vocalic indexes of Y1, Y3 and Y5 students revealed a statistically relevant increase in vocalic variation phenomena both in Italian and in English. Moreover, Y1 and Y3 consonantal scores were comparatively higher in the Italian sample: it will be discussed how unpredictable stress-timed patterns can arise as a function of proficiency, speech-rate and age-related disfluencies.
Aim: The verbal fluency test is one of the best known and useful neuropsychological tools based on the language functions diagnosis. The study was aimed at analysis and evaluation of adaptation and ...use of this test in the world, with a special emphasis on the situation in Poland. Material and methods: The research material was completed due to a survey of electronic databases. Some of the studies were singled out manually. Among other, the following key words were used: verbal fluency, adaptation of verbal fluency test, FAS, COWAT (Controlled Oral Word Association Test). Finally, included into the basic analysis were 33 research articles from 23 countries. Additionally, the detailed evaluation included 18 Polish tests, using the verbal fluency test. Results: The greatest group among the analysed studies was that of standardization studies. Far less frequently included is complete linguistic adaptation. A high freedom is observed within selection of the phonetic variant letters, even among researchers from one country. Conclusions: Basically, the use of the verbal fluency test in Poland does not diverge from international tendencies. There is a considerable diversity as regards the way of adaptation of the tool for the demand of a given population and within it. Because of too few comparative data within the applied phonetic variants of the test, we cannot explicitly indicate a predominance of original version of the tool or simultaneously applied lists of letters.
The subject of this article is the specificity of acquired apraxia of speech and the inclusion and exclusion criteria for diagnosing this type of disorder. The article draws attention to the ...distinction between apraxia of speech and aphasia or dysarthria with which it very often coexists. It describes the process of diagnosing it, which should include the assessment of the consistency of an utterance, its accuracy and fluency, and therefore the degree of adequacy of repeated statements, differentiation of errors (phonetic, phonological) that accompany it, and speech fluency. The article also discusses the tools for studying apraxia of speech currently existing worldwide, including hierarchical word lists and scales for its assessment.
Phonetic Inflexibility in Autistic Adults Kissine, Mikhail; Geelhand, Philippine; Philippart De Foy, Marie ...
Autism research,
June 2021, Letnik:
14, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
This study examined whether the atypical speech style that is frequently reported in autistic adults is underpinned by an inflexible production of phonetic targets. In a first task, 20 male autistic ...adults and 20 neuro‐typicals had to read and produce native vowels. To assess the extent to which phonetic inflexibility is due to an overall fine‐grained control of phonetic behavior or to a lack of flexibility in the realization of one's phonological repertoire, the second task asked participants to reproduce artificial vowel‐like sounds. Results confirmed the presence of a greater articulatory stability in the production of native vowels in autistic adults. When instructed to imitate artificial vowel‐like sounds, the autistic group did not better approximate the targets' acoustic properties relative to neuro‐typicals but their performance at reproducing artificial vowels was less variable and influenced to a greater extent by the articulatory properties of their own vocalic space. These findings suggest that the greater articulatory stability observed in autistic adults arises from a lack of flexibility in the production of their own native vowels. The two phonetic tasks are devoid of any pragmatic constraint, which indicates that phonetic inflexibility in autism is partly independent of register selection.
Lay Summary
Autistic and neuro‐typical adults took part in two tasks: one in which they produced vowels from French, their native tongue, and the other where they imitated unfamiliar vowels. Autistic adults displayed significantly less variation in their production of different French vowels. In imitating unfamiliar vowels, they were more influenced by the way they pronounce French vowels. These results suggest that the atypical speech style, frequently attested in autistic individuals, could stem from an unusually stable pronunciation of speech sounds.
Acceptability judgments are a primary source of evidence in formal linguistic research. Within the generative linguistic tradition, these judgments are attributed to evaluation of novel forms based ...on implicit knowledge of rules or constraints governing well-formedness. In the domain of phonological acceptability judgments, other factors including ease of articulation and similarity to known forms have been hypothesized to influence evaluation. We used data-driven neural techniques to identify the relative contributions of these factors. Granger causality analysis of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-constrained magnetoencephalography (MEG) and electroencephalography (EEG) data revealed patterns of interaction between brain regions that support explicit judgments of the phonological acceptability of spoken nonwords. Comparisons of data obtained with nonwords that varied in terms of onset consonant cluster attestation and acceptability revealed different cortical regions and effective connectivity patterns associated with phonological acceptability judgments. Attested forms produced stronger influences of brain regions implicated in lexical representation and sensorimotor simulation on acoustic-phonetic regions, whereas unattested forms produced stronger influence of phonological control mechanisms on acoustic-phonetic processing. Unacceptable forms produced widespread patterns of interaction consistent with attempted search or repair. Together, these results suggest that speakers' phonological acceptability judgments reflect lexical and sensorimotor factors.
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