This work is dealing with a case of L1-L2 interference in language learning. The Germans learning French as a second language frequently produce unvoiced fricatives in word-final position instead of the expected voiced fricatives. We investigated the production of French fricatives for 16 non-native (8 beginner-and 8 advanced-learners) and 8 native speakers, and designed auditory feedback to help them realize the right voicing feature. The productions of all speakers were categorized either as voiced or unvoiced by experts. The same fricatives were also evaluated by non-experts in a perception experiment targeting VCs. We compare the ratings by experts and non-experts with the feature-based analysis. The ratio of locally unvoiced frames in the consonantal segment and also the ratio between consonantal duration and V1 duration were measured. The acoustic cues of neighboring sounds and pitch-based features play a significant role in the voicing judgment. As expected, we found that beginners face more difficulties to produce voiced fricatives than advanced learners. Also, the production becomes easier for the learners, especially for the beginners, if they practice repetition after a native speaker. We use these findings to design and develop feedback via speech analysis/synthesis technique TD-PSOLA using the learner's own voice.
In this study we examined the read speech of native and nonnative speakers with respect to pausing details of audible breathing, particularly in disfluent phases. 20 German and 20 French native speakers read the same narrative text in their native (L1) and in their non-native language (L2). Some expected results were confirmed: more frequent pauses and more frequent disfluencies in L2, as well as longer duration of pauses filled with breath noise than those without. However, the analysis also reveals that in fluent phases the vast majority of pauses contains audible inhalation-which requires a reinterpretation of the terms "unfilled" and "silent" pauses. Most disfluent phases are marked by genuinely silent pauses (i.e. without breathing noises), which are also shorter than those in fluent phases. So-called "filled pauses" are virtually not present. Surprisingly, French speakers use more but shorter pauses than the Germans as an L2 pausing strategy. The results suggest that the widely assumed concept of pauses in phonetics, prosody and fluency research should be renewed and enriched with phonetic detail that goes beyond "silent" vs. "filled" pauses in order to get a better understanding of the prosodic make-up of fluent and less fluent phases in speech.
Dans ce travail, nous étudierons la réalisation de différents types de pauses (silencieuses, respiratoires et remplies) en fonction de la compétence linguistique en français langue étrangère. 30 locuteurs (10 natifs, 10 débutants, 10 avancés) ont été enregistrés en lecture. Comme attendu, les apprenants produisent plus de pauses et les pauses respiratoires sont les plus fréquentes pour l’ensemble des locuteurs. Étonnamment, les natifs produisent des pauses vides plus longues, probablement parce qu’elles sont principalement respiratoires. Dans nos données, les pauses silencieuses sont rares et sont généralement produites par les apprenants dans les phases disfluentes, alors que les pauses avec respiration audible (et donc non silencieuses) sont fréquentes et généralement réalisées aux frontières syntaxiques.
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