Exploring phonetic cues to persuasive oral presentation: A study with British English speakers and English L2 learners

Persuasiveness in oral communication in English can be expressed with various vocal phonetic cues that may not be readily accessible to English second language (L2) learners whose native language may employ a different set of cues. With a goal to increase L2 learners’ perceived spoken confidence and persuasiveness, and obtain empirical evidence for phonetic adjustments that native English speakers make to influence listeners, the current study explored the use of consonant prolongation in stressed syllable onsets for emphasis by native British English speakers and English L2 learners. The native speakers’ durations of continuant consonants and voiceless stop consonant voice onset times (VOTs) in (1) neutrally-produced speech and (2) persuasively delivered motivational/shocking/emotional messages were compared to Latvian L2 English speakers’ productions. The results revealed that in persuasive speech, the British speakers’ consonantal durations, particularly those of continuants, got significantly longer relative to the vowels that followed them; for English L2 learners, the duration of consonants did not change as a factor of speech type. This is in line with our previous research with American English speakers and carries implications for L2 speech learning and teaching.

Phonetic feature size in second language acquisition: Examining VOT in voiceless and voiced stops

Featural approaches to second language phonetic acquisition posit that the development of new phonetic norms relies on sub-phonemic features, expressed through a constellation of articulatory gestures and their corresponding acoustic cues, which may be shared across multiple phonemes. Within featural approaches, largely supported by research in speech perception, debate remains as to the fundamental scope or ‘size’ of featural units. The current study examines potential featural relationships between voiceless and voiced stop consonants, as expressed through the voice onset time cue. Native English-speaking learners of Spanish received targeted training on Spanish voiceless stop consonant production through a visual feedback paradigm. Analysis focused on the change in voice onset time, for both voiceless (i.e. trained) and voiced (i.e. non-trained) phonemes, across the pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest. The results demonstrated a significant improvement (i.e. reduction) in voice onset time for voiceless stops, which were subject to the training paradigm. In contrast, there was no significant change in the non-trained voiced stop consonants. These results suggest a limited featural relationship, with independent voice onset time (VOT) cues for voiceless and voices phonemes. Possible underlying mechanisms that limit feature generalization in second language (L2) phonetic production, including gestural considerations and acoustic similarity, are discussed.

Silence-cued stop perception: Split decisions

Bastian, Eimas, & Liberman (1961) found that listeners heard a [p] when a silence of more than 50ms was inserted between the [s] and the [l] in a recording of the word slit. It has long been known that silence is an important cue in stop consonant perception. Nevertheless, it is surprising that a short interval of silence can substitute for something as acoustically and articulatorily complex as a phoneme. In the present work, we replicate and expand upon this study to further examine the phenomenon of silence-cued stop perception. We demonstrate the ‘Split Effect’ in a previously unexplored set of environments, analyze factors that contribute to the identity of silence-cued stops, and lay the groundwork for further investigation of the acoustic and non-acoustic factors that contribute to this perceptual illusion. Our study demonstrates an experimental paradigm for studying the genesis of such effects synchronically and in a controlled setting.

AN OBVERVATIONAL STUDY ON A BATAK ENGLISH LEARNER IN CONSONANT SOUND PRODUCTION

This article reports on the result of a study aiming to describe what difficulties experienced by Batak English learner in consonant sound production and the factors which cause him difficult to produce those sounds. The study was conducted to Batak English learner who is still taking pronunciation course in the first semester in the English study program at one of private universities in East Java, Indonesia. The study used a qualitative case study research design with the data collected from the analysis of students’ English consonants production and interview. The findings showed that all sounds of voiceless dental frecative consonant [θ] in initial position were pronounced into voiceless alveolar stop consonant [t] while the research participant was pronouncing the sound of voiced dental frecative consonant [ð], he mispronounced the sound into voiced alveolar stop consonant [d] in both initial and medial position. The sound of voiced alveolar affricate consonants [dʒ] was pronounced appropriately while voiceless alveolar affricate consonant was pronounced into voiceless alveolar fricative consonant [s]. The factors which cause the participant find it difficult to learn pronunciation were afraid of making mistakes, limited time to repeat it at home, and habit.

DCDC2 READ1 regulatory element: how temporal processing differences may shape language

Classic linguistic theory ascribes language change and diversity to population migrations, conquests, and geographical isolation, with the assumption that human populations have equivalent language processing abilities. We hypothesize that spectral and temporal characteristics make some consonant manners vulnerable to differences in temporal precision associated with specific population allele frequencies. To test this hypothesis, we modelled association between RU1-1 alleles of DCDC2 and manner of articulation in 51 populations spanning five continents, and adjusting for geographical proximity, and genetic and linguistic relatedness. RU1-1 alleles, acting through increased expression of DCDC2 , appear to increase auditory processing precision that enhances stop-consonant discrimination, favouring retention in some populations and loss by others. These findings enhance classical linguistic theories by adding a genetic dimension, which until recently, has not been considered to be a significant catalyst for language change.

An optimal dichotic-listening paradigm for the assessment of hemispheric dominance for speech processing

Dichotic-listening paradigms are widely accepted as non-invasive test of hemispheric dominance for language processing and represent a standard diagnostic tool for the assessment of developmental auditory and language disorders. Despite of its popularity in research and clinical settings, dichotic paradigms show comparatively low reliability, significantly threatening the validity of conclusions drawn from the results. Thus, the aim of the present work was to design and evaluate a novel, highly reliable dichotic-listening paradigm. Based on an extensive literature review, the paradigm was optimized to account for all variables which are known to systematically bias task performance. A main design principle was to minimize the relevance of higher cognitive functions on task performance in order to obtain stimulus-driven laterality estimates. To this end, the key design features of the paradigm, were the use of stop-consonant vowel (CV) syllables as stimulus material, a single stimulus pair per trial presentation mode, and a free recall (single) response instruction. Evaluating a verbal and manual response-format version of the paradigm in a sample of N = 50 healthy participants, we yielded test-retest intra-class correlation of rICC = .91 and .93 for the two response format versions. These excellent reliability estimates suggest that the optimal paradigm may offer an effective and efficient alternative to currently used paradigms both in research and diagnostic.