English Speech Sounds Research Articles

Training adult learners of English to hear the sounds of English

Adult students of foreign languages frequently claim that native speakers of that language speak too rapidly. This is likely a result of the students’ failure to achieve automaticity in recognition of speech sounds necessary for effortless speech perception. Research on the time course of auditory perceptual learning for both speech and non-speech sounds provides strong evidence that adults can, with appropriate training, achieve perceptual skills approximating those of native speakers, although they only rarely do so. Among the few adults who do achieve near-native conversational skills in an L2, many have had intensive recognition practice and training. The Speech Perception Assessment and Training System for students of English as a Second Language (SPATS-ESL) of CDT, Inc. provides such training. SPATS-ESL trains the identification of the 109 most common English syllable constituents (onsets, nuclei, and codas) and the recognition of meaningful sentences spoken by a variety of native speakers. Based on experience with over 200 ESL learners it has been found that near-native performance in the recognition of discrete English speech sounds and meaningful sentences spoken by many talkers is acquired by most ESL students after 15-30 hours of individualized computer-based training. (Watson and Miller are stockholders in CDT, Inc.)

Cantonese English as a Second Language Learners’ Perceived Relations Between “Similar” L1 and L2 Speech Sounds: A Test of the Speech Learning Model

This article reports on the results of a research study that investigated Cantonese English as a second language (ESL) learners’ perception of English speech sounds, their perceived relations between “similar” English and Cantonese sounds, as well as the applicability of the claims of the Speech Learning Model (SLM) to second language (L2) learning by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. Forty university English majors participated in a perception study that required them to identify English minimal pairs, to classify a target English sound as a Cantonese sound and to rate the degree of similarity of a certain English sound to a “similar” Cantonese sound. It is found that Cantonese ESL learners’ perception of L2 speech sounds is intimately related to their perceived similarity between certain first language (L1) and L2 contrasts. The research provides empirical support for the SLM, affirming the adverse effects of similarity on L2 learning. It also calls for the inclusion of perception training in an L2 phonology program. Further research is needed to include learners from different linguistic backgrounds and at different English proficiency levels.

The Perception of English Speech Sounds by Cantonese ESL Learners in Hong Kong

This article reports on the results of a research study which investigated the perception of English speech sounds by Hong Kong Cantonese English as a second language speakers. A total of 40 university English majors participated in one categorial discrimination task and two second language (L2) minimal pair identification tasks, which aimed at discerning the participants' perception of different English speech sounds. The results show that certain English speech sounds trigger more perception problems than others, but perception problems do not necessarily correspond to documented production difficulties. It is argued that learners' preconception of word pronunciations may be a contributing factor for their perception problems. The position of a sonorant consonant may also play a role in perception, but positional effects do not seem to be as significant in the perception of obstruents as in that of sonorant consonants. It is suggested that remedial teaching on both perception and production should go hand in hand to enhance learners' L2 phonology acquisition.

Age and Gender Effect in Phonetic Perception and Production

The aim of this study was primarily to find the relationship between age and the perception and production of English speech sounds by Persian speakers. The researcher also tried to find out the relationship between gender and the discrimination and production of English speech sounds. Sixty subjects took part in this study. They were divided in two groups of thirty children and adults, including fifteen males and fifteen females each. Both groups participated in tests of discrimination and production of English sounds. Two ANOVAs were administered, the results of which supported the idea that children and adults have equal aptitude for perception and production of the English sounds, which implies that there is still room for an innate faculty to continue its work in adulthood. Moreover, gender was not found to be an influential factor regarding perception and production of English sounds. The performance of both groups was significantly superior in production rather than discrimination. This result shows that perception of sounds does not necessarily precede their production.

Advanced Cantonese ESL learners' production of English speech sounds: Problems and strategies

Abstract This article discusses the production of English speech sounds by advanced Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong. A total of forty university students participated in the study, which included three speech production tasks investigating participants' production of target English speech sounds in isolated words, minimal pairs and passages. The results of the study give confirmatory empirical evidence supporting previous literature on the pronunciation difficulties encountered by Hong Kong Cantonese ESL learners as well as the strategies they often use to overcome their pronunciation difficulties. It is suggested that speech training be included as an integral part of ESL curriculums for students of all levels, but for advanced learners of English, such programmes should be research-driven and prioritized.

Prosodic perception and production of English- and Chinese-native speakers.

Our previous studies have shown that English-native adult speakers demonstrated categorical perception in tonal identification of speech and nonspeech sounds as typically as Chinese-native adult speakers. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether prosodic perception of English speech sounds was different between English- and Chinese-native listeners. F0 contour was manipulated from falling to rising patterns for the target word embedded in a short sentence. Listener’s task was to identify the prosody of each sentence, either question or statement. Preliminary results suggested that both groups of listeners showed typical categorical perception, while the two groups had significant difference in categorical boundary. The difference in categorical boundary for prosodic perception between the two groups of listeners was similar to our previous findings in tonal perception, likely due to the difference in the listener’s language background. English sentences with statement and question will be recorded for the two groups of listeners. The relationship between prosodic perception and perception will be discussed. [Work supported by The University of Texas at Austin, Undergraduate Research Fellowship.]

An investigation into Cantonese ESL learners' acquisition of English initial consonant clusters

This article discusses the acquisition of English initial consonant clusters by Cantonese ESL learners in Hong Kong with an aim to examine the explanatory power of the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH) (Eckman, Language Learning 27: 315–330, 1977) and the Interlanguage Structural Conformity Hypothesis (ISCH) (Eckman, Moravcsik & Wirth, Language Learning 39: 173–205, 1989) and to gain insights into the interlanguage phonology of the learners. Both hypotheses make predictions about second language learning on the basis of implicational universals, but the former is also premised on the differences between the native and target languages. The study investigated Cantonese ESL learners' acquisition of English obstruent + nasal onsets and obstruent + liquid onsets as well as their acquisition of two-member onsets and three-member onsets. A total of twelve learners participated in the study. They were asked to perform four different speech tasks including the reading of a word list, the description of a series of pictures using isolated words, the reading of three passages, and a conversational interview. The participants' speech was recorded using a high-quality mini-disk recorder and transcribed by two raters. The results of the study show that the implicational relationships which hold between the different categories of onset clusters also hold for the interlanguages of the participants, and the predictions of the MDH and the ISCH are also borne out. Where no universal markedness relationships exist among different onset clusters, the inherent difficulty of a segment resulting from the phonotactic constraints of a learner's mother tongue remains the most important factor contributing to the overall level of difficulty of an onset cluster. It is also argued that, in the interlanguages of the participants, there exists a phonological rule which neutralizes liquids in clusters. Further research is needed to investigate the abilities of Cantonese ESL learners to perceive English speech sounds and the possible effects that their perceptual abilities may have on their production abilities.

Computerized assessment and training of the perception of American English (AE) speech sounds by adult learners of English

Fourteen volunteer students, with first languages other than English and enrolled in English pronunciation classes, used a specialized software program, the "Speech Perception Assessment and Training System (SPATS)." The software was made available in a language laboratory for seven weeks. Students used the program between 3 and 19 hours, the mean being 13 hours. The goal of SPATS is to train the perception of English words as they are produced in naturally spoken, fluent sentences. The average student correctly identified 1723 words in 313 different sentences as spoken by 10 different talkers and also attempted to identify a total of 7530 presentations of syllable onsets, nuclei, or codas as spoken by 8 different talkers in several phonetic contexts. These syllable constituents were presented in quiet, the sentences in moderate amounts of 12‐talker babble. All showed significant progress in perception of AE speech sounds, a few approaching the levels of native speakers. By extrapolation, with 20 to 30 hours of program use nearly all might approach the perceptual performance of native speakers. Those that returned post‐training questionnaires viewed the program favorably and recommended its use in regular classes. Speech samples were collected. Accent ratings and spectrographic analyses will be presented.

Individual differences in grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus): effects of training

Grey parrots (Psittacus erithacus) have been shown to exhibit many complex cognitive and communicative abilities in a laboratory setting. The parrots’ successes likely rely on two factors: An underlying neurological architecture that supports complex information processing, and training that enables them to express their capacities in ways measurable by human researchers. Individual differences likely can affect both factors, in terms of biology for the former and in response to the quality of the latter, but the quality of the latter can be experimentally controlled. Although training my parrots to communicate in English speech generally enables me to demonstrate their advanced cognitive capacities, occasionally such training has interfered with success on tasks requiring a specific type of complex information processing. For two cohorts of parrots, one with and one without extensive communicative training, I describe here the results for two different tasks. In one task—the ability to segment English speech sounds and demonstrate phonological awareness—communication training, as expected, enhanced success [IM Pepperberg (2007) Lang Sci 29:1–13]. In the other task—retrieval of an item suspended from a long string to demonstrate means–ends understanding—communication training unexpectedly inhibited success [IM Pepperberg (2004) Anim Cogn 7:263–266]. Individual differences can therefore be expressed in ways that are not necessarily predictable and that encourage further experimentation.

The University of South Florida audiovisual phoneme database, v 1.0

An audiovisual database of English speech sounds has been developed for teaching purposes. This database contains a variety of Standard English speech sounds produced in clear speech in isolated words. Phonemes are produced in word initial, word medial, and word final position, unless not allowed by English phonotactics. There is one example of each word spoken by a male talker of Standard American English from the Midwest. The database consists of individual word files that contain simultaneous audio recording, video of the lips, flexible endoscopic image of the pharynx and larynx, and ultrasound video of the tongue in the mid-saggital plane. The files in the database are uncompressed video avi format and are suitable for examination in the Wavesurfer freeware program (Sjolander and Beskow, KTH Stockholm). This database is intended as a multimedia reference for students in phonetics or speech science. Its coverage is relatively complete, though there are some gaps due to technical difficulties with the recording procedure. A demonstration of selected recordings from the database and suggestions for their use will be presented. Plans for further development of the database will also be discussed. [Work supported by a USF Innovative Teaching Grant.]

The Tongue, That Punchinello: A Commentary on Nabokov's Pnin

Tragically lonely, farcically talking, poor and pure Timofei Pnin is a protagonist of more than one tragicomedy. Upon the main stage where he lives and acts, there is a second little stage where a more refined tragicomedy occurs, presenting the hidden, sublime, and ridiculous essence of the play on the main stage. The little stage is inventively placed upon Pnin himself—quite in the manner of the Russian popular street show Petrushka, whose puppetmaster carried a little stage right on his head: "The organs concerned in the production of English speech sounds are the larynx, the velum, the lips, the tongue (that punchinello in the troupe)...." The Petrushka character used to present himself as a phony foreigner. Pnin's linguistic situation is not a simple mirror but a distorting mirror, a veritable parody of Nabokov's own plight. The difference between the elementary and sophisticated levels of the problem reveals Pnin, the novel, as an estranged Nabokov's identification with the predicament of a culture in emigration, a grotesque representation of the author's own concern, an ironic empathy and a lyrical farce.

An audiovisual database of English speech sounds

A preliminary audiovisual database of English speech sounds has been developed for teaching purposes. This database contains all Standard English speech sounds produced in isolated words in word initial, word medial, and word final position, unless not allowed by English phonotactics. There is one example of each word spoken by a male and a female talker. The database consists of an audio recording, video of the face from a 45 deg angle off of center, and ultrasound video of the tongue in the mid-saggital plane. The files contained in the database are suitable for examination by the Wavesurfer freeware program in audio or video modes [Sjolander and Beskow, KTH Stockholm]. This database is intended as a multimedia reference for students in phonetics or speech science. A demonstration and plans for further development will be presented.

Effect of background noise on perception of English speech for Japanese listeners

Objectives: To avoid the accidents induced by confusions of non-native speech perception in the presence of noise at work, this study examined the effect of background noise on the discrimination of English speech for Japanese listeners. Methods: Normal hearing Japanese subjects, who have English learning experience to the level of college graduates, were tested with the CID W-22 word list in quiet settings and in the presence of white, low-frequency weighted (pink noise), or aircraft noise. Results: The discrimination scores were reduced as S/N ratio decreased, and more adversely affected by background white noise than pink or aircraft noise. The individual variability of English word discrimination scores for Japanese listeners was much larger as the S/N ratio decreased. The typical confusions among phoneme were /m/, /n/, and /s/. Conclusions: The results of this study suggested that ineffective use of speech cues and difference in composition of English phonemes from Japanese could be responsible for degraded speech discrimination of non-native speech in noise. Moreover, it was expected that Japanese workers with age related hearing loss at higher frequencies might have great difficulty in perceiving English speech sounds in the presence of noise.

Visual classification of speech sounds

A visual classification of English speech sounds is presented. Different criteria are used for vowels and for consonants. Vowels are characterized by the position of the lips and jaw opening. Accordingly, four groups differing in lip position (spread, half-spread, neutral, round) and four differing in jaw opening (closed, half-closed, half open and open) can be distinguished. Diphthongs are described as vowel glides. In the classification of consonants, visible articulatory organs are considered. This makes possible discrimination of seven basic groups: bilabial-spread, bilabial-protruded, labio-dental, interdental, lingual-dentalized, lingual-non-dentalized, and empty. Within each group long consonants (corresponding to fricatives and liquids) and short consonants (stops and affricates) are distinguished. At the same time, the voiced consonants are classified as weak, and the voiceless ones as strong.

A Seventeenth-Century Polyglot Grammar

Summary Jean Sterpin was a Frenchman who flourished in Copenhagen in the mid-nth century. His claim to recognition rests on his polyglot grammar, Institu-tiones Glotticæ (c. l668). Sterpin was acquainted with the language philosophy of Comenius, whose Janua Linguarum (1631) had set the pattern of the polyglot genre, with the work of Nathanael Duёz (fl. 1640–78), the polyglot lexicographer-grammarian, and with Erik Eriksen Pontoppidan’s Grammatica Danica (1668). The way in which Sterpin tackles the problem of teaching the grammar of three languages (French, English and Danish) and proficiency in four (incl. Latin) is superior to the schemes employed by Beyer (1661), Howell (1662), Smith (1674), and Colsoni (1688). His method of presentation is a skilful combination of typographic variation, Vertical alternation’, and the use of parallel texts. More important still, his description of the three languages involved is effected by interlanguage comparisons. The article touches on the parts of speech, case and gender distinctions, word-order, etc, but the strong and weak points of Sterpin’s contrastive-polyglot approach are best studied in his survey of English speech-sounds. Sterpin is sparing in his use of illustrative examples, the parallels he draws are not free from ambiguity, and his sound descriptions suffer from an imperfect understanding of the organs of speech. On the other hand, he shows practical skill in tongues, and his transliterations and ‘names’ of the letters of the four alphabets are no less ingenious than the contrastive layout as a whole. Especially helpful is a table of ‘diphthongues’ and ‘triphthongues’ on the basis of which it has been possible to assign the English long vowels their relative position in the vowel tract. In addition, there are comments on vowels in weak position and on consonants.

The Rhythm of English Verse

THE CONCEPT OF A FOOT, as used in scanning English verse, was borrowed many years ago from the prosodists of Greece and Rome; and as Omond (1907) has remarked, it was borrowed without enquiry into the actualities of English speech-sounds. These actualities have subsequently demanded attention: they have led to progressive revisions of the concept, with the result that it is now more suited to English than it used to be. But the concept continues to be perplexing. It still shows signs of not being at home in our language. Those who seek a more instructive prosody, accordingly, can proceed in one of two ways. They can revise the concept of a foot more thoroughly; or they can reject it, replacing it by one or more concepts of another sort. In the present paper I shall deal with the second of these alternatives. I shall outline an analysis of verse-rhythms that rejects the foot, together with the more specific concepts (of iambs, trochees, etc.) that are used in classifying feet. In that way, and with the help of neighboring concepts, I shall attempt to show that English prosody can be at once simplified and strengthened. My views will often be mine only by adoption. I am much indebted to the work of G. R. Stewart (1930) and C. E. Andrews (1918), and to the work of the musically-minded prosodists whose progenitor was Joshua Steele (1775).

Russian and English Speech Sounds

No AccessJournal of Speech and Hearing DisordersArticle1 Dec 1949Russian and English Speech Sounds C. M. Wise C. M. Wise Google Scholar More articles by this author https://doi.org/10.1044/jshd.1404.322 SectionsAboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationTrack Citations ShareFacebookTwitterLinked In Additional Resources FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited by Richard Luchsinger and Gottfried E. Arnold (1970) Physiologie der Sprachlaute Handbuch der Stimm- und Sprachheilkunde10.1007/978-3-7091-7130-1_11 Gottfried E. Arnold (1959) Die Sprache und ihre Störungen Lehrbuch der Stimm- und Sprachheilkunde10.1007/978-3-7091-3462-7_2 Review of Educational Research22:2 (102-115)1 Apr 1952Chapter V: SpeechFranklin H. Knower Central States Speech Journal3:1 (27-31)1 Nov 1951Speech for international studentsRobert L. Mulder Volume 14Issue 4December 1949Pages: 322-334 Get Permissions Add to your Mendeley library History Published in issue: Dec 1, 1949 Metrics Topicsasha-topicsasha-article-typesCopyright & PermissionsCopyright © 1949 American Speech-Language-Hearing AssociationPDF downloadLoading ...

The affective value of English speech sounds

The affective value of English speech sounds

Frequency of Occurrence of Speech Sounds in Written English

There has been much qualitative research by fonetists and acoustic engineers dealing with the speech sounds of English, but until lately very little quantitative analysis, which is equally important in determining the relative importance of the various speech elements—words, syllables, and sounds—as measured by their relative frequency of occurrence. The author's recent study entitled “Relative Frequency of English Speech Sounds” (Harv. Univ. Press) gives a classified quantitative analysis of the commoner words and syllables and all the sounds of 100,000 words of representative written English. The word count data show that 10 words—the of and to a in that it is I—make up over 25% of all writing; that 100 words, including of course these 10, make up over 50%; and justify the conclusion that the 1,000 commonest words of English will make up about 75% of all ordinary non-technical writing. The data on syllables and sounds, impossible to summarize briefly, are of far more important practical significance to the acoustic engineer than the word count data, and, unlike the latter, are at present the only authentic and comprehensive data in that field.