Prosodic transfer: A comparison study of F0 patterns in L2 English by Chinese speakers

Ding, Hongwei; Hoffmann, Rüdiger; Hirst, Daniel

doi:10.21437/speechprosody.2016-155

Cited by 13 publications

(22 citation statements)

References 13 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Pitch characteristics of L2 speech have also been studied in the literature. It is generally agreed that the pitch form of L2 differs to some degree from what is considered the native norm [6][7][8][9][10][11]. Some studies have found a compressed pitch range and less pitch variation in L2 speech [6,8], which might be attributed to less confidence in L2 production.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, the influence/transfer of L1 prosody is also apparent in L2 speech. [10] reported that in terms of both pitch range on the phoneme level and pitch change amount on the utterance level, L2 English speech by Chinese speakers displayed a larger value than L1 English. [7] reported that the pitch range of content words is larger in L2 English speech by Japanese speakers than in L1 English.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Pitch Characteristics of L2 English Speech by Chinese Speakers: A Large-scale Study

Yuan

Dong²,

Wu³

et al. 2018

Interspeech 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

AI-powered English learning apps are used by hundreds of millions of people across the globe on a daily basis. This presents a great opportunity for the study of L2 speech. On one hand, the amount of data accessible for research is very large and rapidly growing; on the other hand, new theories and understanding of L2 speech can be continually tested and revised through real-life and real-time applications. This paper presents a study of pitch characteristics of L2 English speech using a large-scale dataset from a language learning app. Our dataset contains 180,000 spoken utterances which amount to 240 hours of speech. The results show that compared to L1, L2 English has narrower pitch range and slower rate of pitch change, but more small "ripples" on the pitch contour. The percentage of F0 rise time is higher in L2, and the maximum F0 in an utterance is realized later (with respect to the onset of the word on which the maximum F0 resides). These results suggest that the influence of L1 on L2 prosody is more complex than previously demonstrated, and they shed light on L2 prosody assessment and learning.

show abstract

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pitch Characteristics of L2 English Speech by Chinese Speakers: A Large-scale Study

Yuan

Dong²,

Wu³

et al. 2018

Interspeech 2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…But these metrics were only extracted from the acoustic signal, without reference to any phonetic information. In a recent study by Ding et al (2016), a comparison was made among the fundamental frequency (F0) patterns of continuous speech in English, Mandarin Chinese and L2 English produced by Chinese speakers. Ten adult native Chinese speakers were asked to read narrative text written in both English and Chinese.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

F0 patterns of tone versus non-tone languages: The case of Vietnamese speakers of English

Nguyễn¹

2018

Second Language Research

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article reports a study that aimed to find out whether F0 patterns of L2 English produced by Vietnamese speakers are different to those of native English speakers, whether the non-native F0 patterns are transferred from Vietnamese, and to what extent English and Vietnamese F0 profiles differ. Ten native/L1 Australian English speakers, 20 Vietnamese speakers of English (10 beginners and 10 advanced speakers) and a control group of four native/L1 Vietnamese speakers were included. The F0 profiles (F0 maximum, F0 minimum, F0 range, F0 mean and F0 standard deviation at three levels: utterance, syllable and phoneme) were obtained from a set of 10 English sentences and 20 Vietnamese utterances. The results showed that F0 patterns of beginning-level L2 English are systematically different from those of native English speakers, which can be transferred from their native tone language. Nevertheless, the advanced speakers’ ability to produce native-like F0 patterns indicates the effect of language learning experience on prosodic acquisition. The data and results of this study contribute to the understanding of the process and nature of second language acquisition.

show abstract

“…Another problem is that Chinese speakers can hardly pronounce English letters as the natives do. Mandarin Chinese speakers usually pronounce English words with a certain Chinese accent [8]. When English letters are combined with Chinese characters, speakers even try to adjust the pronunciation of the letters to fit the Chinese phonological systems.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Preliminary Phonetic Investigation of Alphabetic Words in Mandarin Chinese

et al. 2017

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Chinese words written partly or fully in roman letters have gained popularity in Mandarin Chinese in the last few decades and an appendix of such Mandarin Alphabetical Words (MAWs) is included in the authoritative dictionary of Standard Mandarin. However, no transcription of MAWs has been provided because it is not clear whether we should keep the original English pronunciation or transcribe MAWs with Mandarin Pinyin system. This study aims to investigate the phonetic adaptation of several most frequent MAWs extracted from the corpus. We recruited eight students from Shanghai, 18 students from Shandong Province, and one student from the USA. All the subjects were asked to read both 24 Chinese sentences embedding the MAWs and all 26 letters of the English alphabet. The results showed that Letters A O N T were predominantly pronounced in Tone 1; H was often produced with vowel epenthesis after the final consonant; and B was usually produced in Tone 2 by Shanghai speakers and in Tone 4 by Shandong speakers. We conclude that the phonetic adaptation of MAWs is influenced by the dialects of the speakers, tones of other Chinese characters in the MAWs, as well as individual preferences.

show abstract

Prosodic transfer: A comparison study of F0 patterns in L2 English by Chinese speakers

Cited by 13 publications

References 13 publications

Pitch Characteristics of L2 English Speech by Chinese Speakers: A Large-scale Study

Pitch Characteristics of L2 English Speech by Chinese Speakers: A Large-scale Study

F0 patterns of tone versus non-tone languages: The case of Vietnamese speakers of English

A Preliminary Phonetic Investigation of Alphabetic Words in Mandarin Chinese

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About