phonological features
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2022 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Tilak Ratnanather ◽  
Lydia C. Wang ◽  
Seung-Ho Bae ◽  
Erin R. O'Neill ◽  
Elad Sagi ◽  
...  

Objective: Speech tests assess the ability of people with hearing loss to comprehend speech with a hearing aid or cochlear implant. The tests are usually at the word or sentence level. However, few tests analyze errors at the phoneme level. So, there is a need for an automated program to visualize in real time the accuracy of phonemes in these tests.Method: The program reads in stimulus-response pairs and obtains their phonemic representations from an open-source digital pronouncing dictionary. The stimulus phonemes are aligned with the response phonemes via a modification of the Levenshtein Minimum Edit Distance algorithm. Alignment is achieved via dynamic programming with modified costs based on phonological features for insertion, deletions and substitutions. The accuracy for each phoneme is based on the F1-score. Accuracy is visualized with respect to place and manner (consonants) or height (vowels). Confusion matrices for the phonemes are used in an information transfer analysis of ten phonological features. A histogram of the information transfer for the features over a frequency-like range is presented as a phonemegram.Results: The program was applied to two datasets. One consisted of test data at the sentence and word levels. Stimulus-response sentence pairs from six volunteers with different degrees of hearing loss and modes of amplification were analyzed. Four volunteers listened to sentences from a mobile auditory training app while two listened to sentences from a clinical speech test. Stimulus-response word pairs from three lists were also analyzed. The other dataset consisted of published stimulus-response pairs from experiments of 31 participants with cochlear implants listening to 400 Basic English Lexicon sentences via different talkers at four different SNR levels. In all cases, visualization was obtained in real time. Analysis of 12,400 actual and random pairs showed that the program was robust to the nature of the pairs.Conclusion: It is possible to automate the alignment of phonemes extracted from stimulus-response pairs from speech tests in real time. The alignment then makes it possible to visualize the accuracy of responses via phonological features in two ways. Such visualization of phoneme alignment and accuracy could aid clinicians and scientists.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abdullah Nijr Al-Otaibi

The field of L2 phonology did not receive much research compared to the other linguistic domains. To add to the field and expand the current literature, the present paper’s goal was to examine the impact of syllable structure differences between Arabic and English in uttering L2 English consonant clusters. The following research question was aimed to be answered: Do the differences between two languages’ syllable structure cause production difficulties in the consonant cluster to Saudi Arabian learners of English? The subjects of this investigation were L2 English learners from Saudi with intermediate proficiency levels in English. Applying the descriptive correlational type of research model, the results showed that learners’ production is mainly influenced by their native language-specific phonological features. The learners’ production of targeted L2 consonant clusters seemed to mirror their underlying phonological system, and syllables structures were modified to match their native Arabic phonological system as a result of language transfer. These findings should be taken into account by L2 speech educators as such speech difficulty is anticipated.


Author(s):  
Miina Norvik ◽  
Uldis Balodis ◽  
Valts Ernštreits ◽  
Gunta Kļava ◽  
Helle Metslang ◽  
...  

This article offers a comparative analysis of several morphosyntactic and phonological features in the South Estonian language islands: Leivu, Lutsi, and Kraasna. The objective is to give an overview of the distribution of selected features, their (in)stability over time, and discuss their form and use in a broader areal context. To achieve this goal, comparative information was also included from the closest cognate varieties (Estonian and the South Estonian varieties, Courland Livonian and Salaca Livonian) and the main contact varieties (Latgalian, Latvian, and Russian). The data analysed in this study originated from various sources: text collections, dictionaries, and language corpora. The results reveal a multitude of linguistic patterns and distribution patterns, which means that the studied varieties are similar to / different from one another in various ways and points to multifaceted contact situations and outcomes in this area. Kokkuvõte. Miina Norvik, Uldis Balodis, Valts Ernštreits, Gunta Kļava, Helle Metslang, Karl Pajusalu, Eva Saar: Lõunaeesti keelesaared Kesk-Balti mõjuväljas. Artikkel esitab lõunaeesti keelesaarte – Leivu, Lutsi ja Kraasna – mitme morfosüntaktilise ja fonoloogilise joone võrdleva analüüsi. Uurimuse eesmärgiks on anda ülevaade valitud joonte levikust ja püsivusest ajas ning arutleda nende vormide ja kasutuse üle laiemas areaalses kontekstis. Selleks võetakse arvesse lähimate sugulaskeelte (eesti ja lõunaeesti, Kuramaa ja Salatsi liivi) ja -murrete ning tähtsamate kontaktkeelte (latgali, läti, vene) esinemusi. Analüüsitakse erinevatest allikatest, mh tekstikogudest, sõna- raamatutest ja keelekorpustest pärit ainest. Uurimistulemused toovad esile mitmesuguseid vormiseoseid ja muutuste levikuviise, osutades uuritud keelte ja murrete omavaheliste kontaktide mitmelaadsusele ning sellest tingitud erinevatele keelesüsteemi arengutele.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 551-559
Author(s):  
Abdullah N. Alotaibi

The field of L2 phonology did not receive much research compared to the other linguistic domains. To add to the field and expand the current literature, the present paper’s goal was to examine the impact of syllable structure differences between Arabic and English in uttering L2 English consonant clusters. The following research question was aimed to be answered: Do the differences between two languages’ syllable structure cause production difficulties in the consonant cluster to Saudi Arabian learners of English? The subjects of this investigation were L2 English learners from Saudi with intermediate proficiency levels in English. Applying the descriptive correlational type of research model, the results showed that learners’ production is mainly influenced by their native language-specific phonological features. The learners’ production of targeted L2 consonant clusters seemed to mirror their underlying phonological system, and syllables structures were modified to match their native Arabic phonological system as a result of language transfer. These findings should be taken into account by L2 speech educators as such speech difficulty is anticipated.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014272372110589
Author(s):  
Antje Stoehr ◽  
Titia Benders ◽  
Janet G. van Hell ◽  
Paula Fikkert

Dutch and German employ voicing contrasts, but Dutch lacks the ‘voiced’ dorsal plosive /ɡ/. We exploited this accidental phonological gap, measuring the presence of prevoicing and voice onset time durations during speech production to determine (1) whether preliterate bilingual Dutch–German and monolingual Dutch-speaking children aged 3;6–6;0 years generalized voicing to /ɡ/ in Dutch; and (2) whether there was evidence for featural cross-linguistic influence from Dutch to German in bilingual children, testing monolingual German-speaking children as controls. Bilingual and monolingual children’s production of /ɡ/ provided partial evidence for feature generalization: in Dutch, both bilingual and monolingual children either recombined Dutch voicing and place features to produce /ɡ/, suggesting feature generalization, or resorted to producing familiar /k/, suggesting segment-level adaptation within their Dutch phonological system. In German, bilingual children’s production of /ɡ/ was influenced by Dutch although the Dutch phoneme inventory lacks /ɡ/. This suggests that not only segments but also voicing features can exert cross-linguistic influence. Taken together, phonological features appear to play a crucial role in aspects of bilingual and monolingual children’s speech production.


Author(s):  
Meghan Kerry Moran

Abstract Motivated by a proposed administrative practice that would have discriminated against non-native English speaking (NNES) teachers, this study described an extensive phonological analysis on speech samples from ten certified Arizona teachers to investigate linguistic features that differentiate native English speaking (NES) teachers from NNES teachers. In addition, educational stakeholders (n = 141) impressionistically evaluated the speech samples for comprehensibility, accentedness, and perceived teaching suitability. Phonological features were used to predict listeners’ ratings on these three constructs. Multiple phonological features were found to predict comprehensibility, accentedness, and perceived teaching suitability, but each construct was predicted by a unique set of features. Lastly, stakeholders’ evaluations of NES and NNES teachers were analyzed. Despite individual variability in many of the features of NNES and NES teachers’ speech, educational stakeholders rated NNES teachers as more accented, less comprehensible, and less suited to teach.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sol Lago ◽  
Shayne Sloggett ◽  
Zoe Schlueter ◽  
Wing Yee Chow ◽  
Alexander Williams ◽  
...  

Previous studies have shown that speakers of languages such as German, Spanish, and French reactivate the syntactic gender of the antecedent of a pronoun to license gender agreement. As syntactic gender is assumed to be stored in the lexicon, this has motivated the claim that pronouns in these languages reactivate the lexical entry of their antecedent noun. In contrast, in languages without syntactic gender such as English, lexical retrieval might be unnecessary. We used eye-tracking while reading to examine whether antecedent retrieval involves rapid semantic and phonological reactivation. We compared German and English. In German, we found early sensitivity to the semantic but not to the phonological features of the pronoun’s antecedent. In English, readers did not immediately show either semantic or phonological effects specific to coreference. We propose that early semantic facilitation arises due to syntactic gender reactivation, and that antecedent retrieval varies cross-linguistically depending on the type of information relevant to the grammar of each language.


2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-171
Author(s):  
Min Wang

Abstract This study examines the ability to identify different Chinese dialects through the English language and evaluates how often respondents pay attention to phonological features and rate of speech to explain their categorizations. The research includes 100 Chinese undergraduate students and 100 young people without advanced degrees aged 20 to 25. Discrete independent data samples collected during the interview of participants are analyzed with the help of such statistical methods as Student's t-test, Mann-Whitney U-test, and Wilcoxon's test. The obtained results indirectly show the ability of respondents to identify native and non-native English speakers around the world, as well as determine their nationality. The outcomes of the paper explicate who, in general, categorize Chinese dialects better and which dialects are the most recognizable. Research data reveal a high degree of stereotypization of various dialects, especially the Beijing and U dialects. Moreover, based on the data obtained, it can be concluded that speaking rate significantly affects the perception and classification of a speaker from a particular province of China.


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