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This article presents preliminary results indicating that speakers have a different pitch range when they speak a foreign language compared to the pitch variation that occurs when they speak their native language. To this end, a learner corpus with French and German speakers was analyzed. Results suggest that speakers indeed produce a smaller pitch range in the respective L2. This is true for both groups of native speakers. A possible explanation for this finding is that speakers are less confident in their productions, therefore, they concentrate more on segments and words and subsequently refrain from realizing pitch range more native-like. For language teaching, the results suggest that learners should be trained extensively on the more pronounced use of pitch in the foreign language.
The Perceptual Effect of L1 Prosody Transplantation on L2 Speech: The Case of French Accented German
(2016)
Research has shown that language learners are not only challenged by segmental differences between their native language (L1) and the second language (L2). They also have problems with the correct production of suprasegmental structures, like phone/syllable duration and the realization of pitch. These difficulties often lead to a perceptible foreign accent. This study investigates the influence of prosody transplantation on foreign accent ratings. Syllable duration and pitch contour were transferred from utterances of a male and female German native speaker to utterances of ten French native speakers speaking German. Acoustic measurements show that French learners spoke with a significantly lower speaking rate. As expected, results of a perception experiment judging the accentedness of 1) German native utterances, 2) unmanipulated and 3) manipulated utterances of French learners of German suggest that the transplantation of the prosodic features syllable duration and pitch leads to a decrease in accentedness rating. These findings confirm results found in similar studies investigating prosody transplantation with different L1 and L2 and provide a beneficial technique for (computer-assisted) pronunciation training.
Designing a Bilingual Speech Corpus for French and German Language Learners: a Two-Step Process
(2014)
We present the design of a corpus of native and non-native speech for the language pair French-German, with a special emphasis on phonetic and prosodic aspects. To our knowledge there is no suitable corpus, in terms of size and coverage, currently available for the target language pair. To select the target L1-L2 interference phenomena we prepare a small preliminary corpus (corpus1), which is analyzed for coverage and cross-checked jointly by French and German experts. Based on this analysis, target phenomena on the phonetic and phonological level are selected on the basis of the expected degree of deviation from the native performance and the frequency of occurrence. 14 speakers performed both L2 (either French or German) and L1 material (either German or French). This allowed us to test, recordings duration, recordings material, the performance of our automatic aligner software. Then, we built corpus2 taking into account what we learned about corpus1. The aims are the same but we adapted speech material to avoid too long recording sessions. 100 speakers will be recorded. The corpus (corpus1 and corpus2) will be prepared as a searchable database, available for the scientific community after completion of the project.