scholarly journals Building connected discourse in non-native speech

Pragmatics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 591-614 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yo-An Lee
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Linguistic Features ◽  
Speaking Proficiency ◽  
Connected Discourse ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Professional Fields

The demand for proficient non-native speakers (NNSs) of English has increased across professional fields in recent years. While speaking skills involve a complex array of factors and constraints, previous studies resorted to unexamined perceptions or intuitive impressions drawn from surface linguistic features. Particularly missing is close analytic descriptions of non-native discourse that is produced in spontaneous contexts. The present study investigates the process by which NNSs of English produce connected discourse as it unfolds in real-time. The ability to produce connected discourse is considered a hallmark of advanced speaking proficiency and this study therefore focuses on tracing the sequential organization of multiple utterances that NNSs produce in spontaneous speech. Following the principles of conversation analysis (CA), the present paper analyzes three sets of excerpts demonstrating the contingent choices that NNSs make in building connected discourse. The findings offer empirical resources for non-native professionals to identify the practicality and generality of connected discourse in real-time speech contexts.

He who Hesitates: Hesitation Phenomena as Quality Control in Speech Production, Obstacles in Non-Native Speech Perception

2000 ◽  
Vol 182 (3) ◽  
pp. 72-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marnie Reed
Keyword(s):  
Quality Control ◽  
Speech Production ◽  
Speech Processing ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Classification Framework ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Control Devices ◽  
Content Processing ◽  
Hesitation Phenomena

This study was designed to determine the nature and occurrence of hesitation phenomena in spontaneous speech of native and non-native speakers, and to determine whether and to what extent the hesitation phenomena normal in spontaneous speech pose perception problems for non-native speakers. A quantitative analysis reveals that hesitation phenomena are ubiquitous in both native and non-native speech production. A qualitative analysis based on a content-processing classification framework reveals the function of hesitations. Hesitations act as overt traces of prospective and retrospective speech-processing tasks which function to forestall errors, and to permit detection and repair of errors once they are committed. Hesitations are quality control devices; native and non-native speakers are highly successful utilizing them to forestall errors. However, hesitation phenomena clearly pose perception problems for non-native speakers who show little evidence of recognizing them as such. Like native speakers, non-native speakers produce hesitation phenomena. Unlike native speakers, who edit and filter out the hesitations they hear, non-native speakers attempt to assign meaning to speakers' faulty output or to parenthetical remarks. Hesitations are unpredictable in their frequency or occurrence; failure to provide training in these oral discourse features of connected speech may result in non-native speakers whose speech production vastly outstrips their perception.

Escaping the Trap: Losing the Northern Cities Shift in Real Time

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 373-398
Author(s):  
Anja Thiel ◽  
Aaron J. Dinkin
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Young People ◽  
Older People ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Time Change ◽  
Negative Evaluation ◽  
Small City ◽  
Northern Cities Shift ◽  
Northern Cities

AbstractWe examine the loss of the Northern Cities Shift raising of trap in Ogdensburg, a small city in rural northern New York. Although data from 2008 showed robust trap-raising among young people in Ogdensburg, in data collected in 2016 no speakers clear the 700-Hz threshold for NCS participation in F1 of trap—a seemingly very rapid real-time change. We find apparent-time change in style-shifting: although older people raise trap more in wordlist reading than in spontaneous speech, younger people do the opposite. We infer that increasing negative evaluation of the feature led Ogdensburg speakers to collectively abandon raising trap between 2008 and 2016. This indicates a role for communal change in the transition of a dialect feature from an indicator to a marker.

scholarly journals Functional MRI of Native and Non-native Speech Sound Production in Sequential German-English Bilinguals

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miriam Treutler ◽  
Peter Sörös
Keyword(s):  
Language Production ◽  
Sound Production ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Inferior Frontal Gyrus ◽  
Speech Sound ◽  
Non Invasive ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Primary Sensorimotor Cortex ◽  
Native Speech ◽  
Bilingualism And Multilingualism

Bilingualism and multilingualism are highly prevalent. Non-invasive brain imaging has been used to study the neural correlates of native and non-native speech and language production, mainly on the lexical and syntactic level. Here, we acquired continuous fast event-related FMRI during visually cued overt production of exclusively German and English vowels and syllables. We analyzed data from 13 university students, native speakers of German and sequential English bilinguals. The production of non-native English sounds was associated with increased activity of the left primary sensorimotor cortex, bilateral cerebellar hemispheres (lobule VI), left inferior frontal gyrus, and left anterior insula compared to native German sounds. The contrast German > English sounds was not statistically significant. Our results emphasize that the production of non-native speech requires additional neural resources already on a basic phonological level in sequential bilinguals.

scholarly journals The acoustic characteristics of non-native American English vowels

Linguistica ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-72
Author(s):  
Biljana Čubrović
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native American ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
American English ◽  
The United States ◽  
Vowel Quality ◽  
Acoustic Characteristics ◽  
Language Background ◽  
English Vowels ◽  
Native Speech

This study aims at discussing the phonetic property of vowel quality in English, as exercised by both native speakers of General American English (AE) and non-native speakers of General American English of Serbian language background, all residents of the United States. Ten Serbian male speakers and four native male speakers of AE are recorded in separate experiments and their speech analyzed acoustically for any significant phonetic differences, looking into a set of monosyllabic English words representing nine vowels of AE. The general aim of the experiments is to evaluate the phonetic characteristics of AE vowels, with particular attention to F1 and F2 values, investigate which vowels differ most in the two groups of participants, and provide some explanations for these variations. A single most important observation that is the result of this vowel study is an evident merger of three pairs of vowels in the non-native speech: /i ɪ/, /u ʊ/, and /ɛ æ/.

scholarly journals On the Moraic Weight Representation of Geminates in Taguinian Algerian Arabic

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 83
Author(s):  
Meymouna Bourzeg ◽  
Radwan S. Mahadin
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Weight Bearing ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Minimality Condition ◽  
Tape Recording ◽  
Minimal Size ◽  
Note Taking ◽  
Systematic Analysis ◽  
Spoken Arabic

This study sheds light on the moraic representation of geminates in Taguinian Spoken Arabic (TSA), a dialect of Algerian Arabic. The examined data were primarily provided by the first researcher who is a native speaker of the variety under scrutiny. To increase data reliability, the spontaneous speech of five Taguinian native speakers was analyzed by means of note taking and tape recording. The researchers support geminates’ moraicity in TSA by proffering three pieces of evidence, namely bimoraic word minimality condition, word stress, and long vowel shortening before geminates. A systematic analysis of the data via the use of optimality framework comes out with the following findings. First, the presence of CVG words demonstrates that geminates, in this variety, are underlyingly weight bearing since the minimal size of prosodic words is bimoraic. Second, the mechanism by which stress is attracted to CVG syllables proves that CVG syllables are heavy syllables wherein its second mora is carried by the geminate consonant. Third, the non-cooccurrence of long vowels and geminate consonants within the same syllable is another proof for the moraicity of geminates as trimoraic syllables are banned in TSA.

L2 Grammar and L2 Processing in the Acquisition of Spanish Prepositional Relative Clauses

2014 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 577-596 ◽  
Author(s):  
SILVIA PERPIÑÁN
Keyword(s):  
Real Time ◽  
Relative Clauses ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Universal Grammar ◽  
Judgment Task ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Time Data ◽  
Arabic Speakers ◽  
Grammaticality Judgment ◽  
The One

This paper investigates the acquisition of prepositional relative clauses in L2 Spanish by English and Arabic speakers to understand the role of previous linguistic knowledge and Universal Grammar on the one hand, and the relationship between grammatical knowledge and its use in real-time, on the other. An oral production task and an on-line self-paced grammaticality judgment task were analyzed. Results indicated that the acquisition of oblique relative clauses is a problematic area for L2 learners. Divergent results compared to native speakers in production and grammatical intuitions were found; however, L2 reading time data showed the same real-time effects that native speakers had, suggesting that the problems with this construction are not necessarily linked to processing deficits. These results are interpreted as evidence for the ability to apply universal processing principles in a second language, and the relative independence of the processing domain and the production system.

Identifying Mild Cognitive Impairment and mild Alzheimer’s disease based on spontaneous speech using ASR and linguistic features

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 ◽  
pp. 181-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gábor Gosztolya ◽  
Veronika Vincze ◽  
László Tóth ◽  
Magdolna Pákáski ◽  
János Kálmán ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Alzheimer’S Disease ◽  
Alzheimer's Disease ◽  
Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Mild Cognitive Impairment ◽  
Spontaneous Speech ◽  
Linguistic Features

The Business of Pragmatics. The Case of Discourse Markers in The Speech of Students of Business English and English Linguistics

2011 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 10-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lieven Buysse
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Language Learning ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Foreign Language Learning ◽  
Discourse Markers ◽  
Business English ◽  
Foreign Language Learners ◽  
Native Speech

Abstract This paper investigates how foreign language learners use discourse markers (such as so, well, you know, I mean) in English speech. These small words that do not contribute much, if anything at all, to the propositional content of a message but modify it in subtle ways, are often considered among the last elements acquired in a foreign language. This contribution reports on close scrutiny of a corpus of English-spoken interviews with Belgian native speakers of Dutch, half of whom are undergraduates majoring in Commercial Sciences and half of whom are majoring in English Linguistics, and sets it off against a comparable native speaker corpus. The investigation shows that the language learners exhibit a clear preference for “operative discourse markers” and neglect or avoid “involvement discourse markers”. It is argued that in learner speech the former take on functions typically fulfilled by the latter to a greater extent than in native speech, and that in some cases the learners revert to a code-switching strategy to cater for their pragmatic needs, bringing markers from Dutch into their English speech. Finally, questions are raised as to the place of such pragmatic devices in foreign language learning.

L1-L2 speaker interaction in a study abroad setting

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-294 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abigail McMeekin
Keyword(s):  
Study Abroad ◽  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Eye Gaze ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Host Family ◽  
Linguistic Resources ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Construct Meaning

Abstract Analyzing approximately nine hours of video-recorded naturally-occurring conversations over eight weeks of study abroad between three L2 speakers of Japanese and their L1 speaker host family members, the present study uses conversation analysis to explore how the participants manage intersubjectivity using communication strategies in word searches. Specifically the study explores the following: (a) how participants deploy, manipulate, and respond to communication strategies as interactional resources used to co-construct meaning and progressively disambiguate the referent sought; (b) how strategies are used within the sequential organization of word searches to guide the trajectory of the search on a turn-by-turn basis; (c) how linguistic and non-linguistic resources such as intonation and eye gaze are used in conjunction with strategies to organize participant structure and relevant action in the unfolding talk; and (d) how a microanalytic, interactional approach can redefine our understanding of how strategic mechanisms are used and labeled in interaction.

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