PHONETICS, PHONOLOGY, AND THE TEACHING OF PRONUNCIATION -- A NEW CD-ROM FOR ESL LEARNERS, AND ITS RATIONALE
Helen Fraser
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Abstract As phoneticians, it is relatively easy for us to describe in articulatory or acoustic terms the aspects of a learner’s speech which are different from those of a native speaker. It is also becoming more feasible to automate judgement of a learner's utterances in comparison with those of a native speaker, providing instant feedback to the speaker via a computer screen. Questions remain however. Which of the many differences between a native and non-native pronunciation to bring to the attention of the learner? Even more importantly, how can those differences be presented to learners so that they can actually make use of the information to change their pronunciation appropriately? For example, though it is obvious that instructing a learner to ‘raise the second formant higher when you are 80% through the second vowel’ will be of little use, it is far less obvious what metalinguistic descriptions are useful to learners. In this paper, I put forward some principles developed through both theoretical and practical investigation to help ensure effective metalinguistic communication between teachers and learners of pronunciation. I demonstrate a CD-ROM based on these principles which I have recently produced to test experimentally a range of methods of helping ESL learners with pronunciation.
AN EXPERIMENTAL MULTI-SPEAKER STUDY ON FARSI PHONEME DURATION RULES USING AUTOMATIC ALIGNMENT
D. Gharavian, H. Sheikhzadeh, and S. M. Ahadi
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Abstract In this paper we present the results of an experimental study on phoneme duration rules of the Farsi (Persian) language. A multi-speaker speech corpus is used and an automatic alignment algorithm based on CD-HMMs rs employed. The results are utilized to examine a few duration rules stated in the literature. After completion of thus research, the results could be employed in the frameworks of speech synthesis and speech recognition.
LINGUISTIC-TONETIC DIFFERENCES IN TARGET-TONE REALISATION: STANDARD VS. KAGOSHIMA JAPANESE
Shunichi Ishihara
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Abstract Normalized FO data from tour Kagoshima Japanese speakers are used to investigate the relationship between the distance of two target tones and their F0 realisations in utterances of HL(n) sequences. The F0 minima of the HL(n) sequence is shown to vary as a function of the distance of the two target tones. Furthermore, the apparent existence is demonstrated of i) a default contour shape on the basis of which F0 is realised according to the distance of two target tones, and ii) a base—line beyond which FO does not fall. Implications of the results for Pierrehumbert and Beckman’s target-tone model are discussed, and the existence of two linguistically-tonetically different types in terms of target-tone realisation is hypothesised.
HONG KONG CANTONESE CITATION TONE ACOUSTICS: A LINGUISTIC TONETIC STUDY
Phil Rose
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Abstract Mean fundamental frequency and duration data for the six citation tones of Hong Kong Cantonese on unstopped syllables are presented for five male and five female young native speakers. The linguistic-tonetic properties of the tones are specified from mean and standard deviation normalised FO and duration data. The effectiveness of the normalisation is shown to be much better than for some other Chinese dialects, and it is hypothesised that this is a function of the minimal nature of some of the Cantonese tonal contrasts.