scholarly journals An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis of the Acquisition of English Sentence Stress Based on Acoustic Data

Complexity ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Wen Ji ◽  
Yun Liu
Keyword(s):  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Empirical Method ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
English Sentence ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
New Information ◽  
Specific Analysis ◽  
Sentence Stress

The present study adopts both empirical and theoretical methods for the analysis of the acquisition of English sentence stress based on Optimality Theory, aiming to overcome mispronunciation of English sentence stress. Optimality Theory has a dramatic impact on most areas in linguistics besides phonology. The acoustic software Praat is chosen to collect and label data as the basis of the empirical method. Then, through analyzing the four major principles of distribution of sentence stress (content words stressed principle, rightmost words stressed principle, leftmost words stressed principle, and new information priority principle) and based on the analysis of Optimality Theory, the software Praat, and SPSS, the researcher can present the following findings: firstly, the constraint hierarchical ranking of nonnative speakers is DEP-IO >> NEW-IP >> ALIGN-IP-LEFT >> ALIGN-IP-RIGHT. Secondly, the native speakers also undergo the demotion of constraint hierarchical ranking: NEW-IP >> DEP-IO >> ALIGN-IP-RIGHT >> ALIGN-IP-LEFT. Thirdly, the constraint in each demotion of constraint hierarchical ranking during different stages is as follows: NEW-IP constraint moves from the undominated position to the dominated position in the hierarchy; ALIGN-IP-RIGHT and ALIGN-IP-LEFT constraints move from the dominated position to the lower position in the hierarchy. Through the specific analysis, the researcher draws a conclusion that the varied reasons affect the nonnative speakers to master the distribution of sentence stress due to their incorrect position in the demotion of constraint hierarchical ranking.

scholarly journals Exceptional Arabic Diminutive Forms of Nouns with [aa]: An Optimality-Theoretic Analysis

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Albatool Mohammed Abalkheel
Keyword(s):  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Theoretic Analysis ◽  
Syllable Weight ◽  
Morphological Processes ◽  
Arabic Dialects

Most diminutive forms in Arabic adhere in their derivation to certain simple phonological and morphological processes without any complications. However, there are exceptions to be found, including diminutive forms of nouns with [aa] in which the segment [w] surfaces. Using Optimality Theory (OT) as a framework and using syllable weight as a base of analysis, this study aims to provide an accurate explanation of such phenomena. This work will show that the root of words with [w] is not simply biconsonantal with an emphatic segment (i.e., [w]) inserted to fill the empty onset. Instead, the root is triconsonantal in which [w] is an essential segment. It also reveals that syllable-weight constraint is inviolable in Arabic dialects.

Perception of Speech Acts Categories in Donald Trump’s Tweets by Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-82
Author(s):  
Davood Souri ◽  
Ali Merç
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
English Teachers ◽  
Large Majority ◽  
Contextual Variables ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Nonnative Speakers Of English

Twitter plays an important role in today’s world. Its role among politicians and those who are interested in politics is more obvious. Due to its importance and special characteristics such as character limits, it has drawn the attention of many researchers including linguists and ELT researchers. This study aimed to compare the perceptions of native and nonnative speakers in identifying speech acts in Donald Trump’s tweets. The subjects of this study were nine English native speakers and twenty nonnative English teachers who were Turkish citizens. Thirty- seven tweets of Donald Trump over the course of a week were selected and the participants were asked to identify the speech acts of the tweets based on the speech acts taxonomy by Searle (1976). The analysis of the data revealed that both native and nonnative speakers of English identified the speech acts of the large majority of the tweets very differently. These differences were partly due to lack of enough political as well as background knowledge and partly due to lack of contextual variables.

English as an international language

2008 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 28.1-28.16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Clyne ◽  
Farzad Sharifian
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Communication ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Rapid Evolution ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Position Paper ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
International Language ◽  
The World ◽  
English Speaking ◽  
Key Dimensions

In recent years, there has been a rapid evolution in the demographics of English speaking communities and individuals around the world, with an unprecedented growth in the number of users and learners of English. In the majority of cases, these learners and users are those who would traditionally have been classified as “non-native” speakers. This trend towards non-native speakers far outweighing native speakers in number is projected to pick up speed. The evolving nature of English in this context of its globalisation has called for a reassessment of a number of key dimensions in applied linguistic studies of English. Scholarly debates have surfaced about various political issues including the validity of the old distinction between “native” and “nonnative” speakers, what form English should – or is likely to – take as a language of international/intercultural communication (or lingua franca), and which groups are empowered and which ones disadvantaged by the accelerating prominence of English. Collectively, the essays in this issue of the journal engage with these issues in order to take the debate up to the next level. This article is a position paper which offers to open up the forum and to expand on some of some of these fundamental questions.

Complex Structures in the Child-Directed Speech of Native and Nonnative Speakers

2018 ◽  
pp. 127-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aslı Altan ◽  
Erika Hoff
Keyword(s):  
Language Learning ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Native English Speakers ◽  
English Speakers ◽  
Complex Structures ◽  
Child Interaction ◽  
Mother Child Interaction ◽  
Bilingual Communities

Children in bilingual communities are frequently exposed to speech from nonnative speakers, but little research has described how that input might differ from the input of native speakers. There is evidence that input from nonnative speakers might be less useful to language learning children, but little research has asked why. This chapter analyzes the frequency of complex structures in the child-directed speech of 30 native English speakers and 36 nonnative speakers who were late learners of English, all speaking English to their two-and-a-half-year-old children. All instances of nine categories of complex structures were coded in transcripts of mother-child interaction. The frequency of all but one category was greater in the speech of native speakers. These findings suggest that input provided by native speakers provides more frequent models of complex structures than nonnative input.

scholarly journals Agreement attraction in native and nonnative speakers of German

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (3) ◽  
pp. 619-647 ◽  
Author(s):  
SOL LAGO ◽  
CLAUDIA FELSER
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Learners ◽  
Second Language Learners ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Verb Agreement ◽  
Russian Speakers ◽  
Second Language Speakers ◽  
Linear Distance ◽  
The Subject

ABSTRACTSecond language speakers often struggle to apply grammatical constraints such as subject–verb agreement. One hypothesis for this difficulty is that it results from problems suppressing syntactically unlicensed constituents in working memory. We investigated which properties of these constituents make them more likely to elicit errors: their grammatical distance to the subject head or their linear distance to the verb. We used double modifier constructions (e.g., the smell of the stables of the farmers), where the errors of native speakers are modulated by the linguistic relationships between the nouns in the subject phrase: second plural nouns, which are syntactically and semantically closer to the subject head, elicit more errors than third plural nouns, which are linearly closer to the verb (2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry). In order to dissociate between grammatical and linear distance, we compared embedded and coordinated modifiers, which were linearly identical but differed in grammatical distance. Using an attraction paradigm, we showed that German native speakers and proficient Russian speakers of German exhibited similar attraction rates and that their errors displayed a 2nd-3rd-noun asymmetry, which was more pronounced in embedded than in coordinated constructions. We suggest that both native and second language learners prioritize linguistic structure over linear distance in their agreement computations.

Variation in Voice Onset Time for Korean Stops

2006 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Silva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Voice Onset Time ◽  
Onset Time ◽  
The United States ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
Diachronic Change ◽  
Phonemic Level ◽  
The Voice

Abstract. Acoustic data elicited from 34 native speakers of Korean living in the United States pro-vide evidence for diachronic change in the voice onset time (VOT) of phrase-initial aspirated and lax stop phonemes. While older speakers produce aspirated and lax stops with clearly differentiated average VOT values, many younger speakers appear to have neutralized this difference, producing VOTs for aspirated stops that are substantially shorter than those of older speakers, and comparable to those for corresponding lax stops. The data further indicate that, within each age group, older speakers manifest sex-based differences in VOT while younger speakers do not. Despite this appar-ent shift in VOT values, the acoustic evidence suggests that all speakers in this study, regardless of age, continue to mark underlying differences between aspirated and lax stops in terms of stop closure and the fundamental frequency of the following vowel. It is concluded that the data point to a recent phonetic shift in the language, whereby VOT no longer serves as the primary cue to differentiate between lax and aspirated stops. There is not, however, evidence of any reorganization of the lan-guage as the phonemic level: the language's underlying lax ~ aspirated ~ tense contrasts endure.

Quantified Optimality and the Phonological Parsing of Korean Sov Sentences

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 25-54
Author(s):  
David J. Silva
Keyword(s):  
Optimality Theory ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Native Speaker ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Complete Agreement ◽  
Rating Data ◽  
Variable Nature ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Phonological Phrase

Abstract. In an attempt to understand the variable nature of phonological phrasing in Korean, this study analyzes intuitional judgments of 53 native speakers of Korean who evaluated possible phonological phrasings of simple Subject-Object-Verb sentences: [S]-[OV], [SO]-[V], [SOV], and [S]-[O]-[V]. Analysis of the quantified rating data reveals a strong preference for a subject-predicate phrasing ([S]-[OV]) and a distinct dispreference for the phrasing in which the subject and object were grouped into a single phonological constituent ([SO]-[V]). These preferences are then analyzed in the context of a constraint-based theoretical framework; by extending the Optimality Theory (OT) notion of "ranking" to include not only constraints but also candidates, we corroborate the existence of preference patterns in native-speaker intuitions regarding the phrasing of [SOV]. These patterns are explained by referencing three putatively universal constraints that govern the phonological phrase formation: one that aligns phonological phrases with syntactic phrases, a second that requires phonological phrases to be binary branching, and a third that limits the weight of phonological phrases to five syllables. Although the quantitative data and the proposed OT account are not in complete agreement, the account put forward should encourage further research into a more comprehensive integration of variation studies and OT.

From a perceptual point of view, is there prosodic continuity between languages in contact?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 543-572
Author(s):  
Ana Ma. Fernández Planas ◽  
Paolo Roseano ◽  
Wendy Elvira-García ◽  
Josefina Carrera Sabaté ◽  
Domingo Román Montes de Oca
Keyword(s):  
Native Speakers ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Acoustic Data ◽  
Languages In Contact

Abstract This paper contains the results of a set of perception tests that aimed at measuring perceived prosodic distances between different Romance languages (Italian, Friulian, Sardinian, Catalan, and Spanish). Data were collected within the framework of the AMPER project. The results were obtained by means of discrimination and identification tasks where the judges were 31 native speakers of Catalan form Barcelona and the stimuli were broad focus statements and yes-no questions in the above-mentioned languages. The perceived distances are then compared with the results of a dialectometric analysis of acoustic data. This comparison shows that the perceived distances are related to acoustic differences.

Effect of Visual Cuing on Synthetic Speech Intelligibility: A Comparison of Native and Nonnative Speakers of English

1997 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 695-698 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary E. Reynolds ◽  
Donald Fucci ◽  
Z. S. Bond
Keyword(s):  
Background Noise ◽  
Speech Intelligibility ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Nonnative Speakers ◽  
Synthetic Speech ◽  
Signal To Noise ◽  
Noise Condition ◽  
Nonnative Speakers Of English

This study compared the effect of visual cuing on the intelligibility of DECtalk for native and nonnative speakers of English in both ideal listening conditions and in the presence of background noise at a signal to noise (S/N) ratio of + 10dB. Visual cuing improved DECtalk's intelligibility for normative speakers more than for native speakers, especially in the background noise condition. Implications of these findings and the need for further research are discussed.

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