Oral Corpus Research Articles

Computer-Assisted Online Learning of English Oral Pronunciation Based on DAE End-to-End Recurrent Neural Networks

With the development of globalization, learning a second language has received increasing attention from people. To improve English oral proficiency, a computer-aided online learning system for English oral pronunciation is studied. A denoising autoencoder is integrated into the system to create a simplified end-to-end recurrent neural network for pronunciation detection and diagnosis based on deep learning. The study first collected and preprocessed oral pronunciation data of English learners, including enhancing speech signals and reducing noise. Next, an RNN model with Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) as the core was constructed to capture time series characteristics in pronunciation. And use DAE to extract features and reduce the influence of background noise to enhance the recognition of pronunciation features. At the same time, the study utilized web crawler technology to collect a large amount of oral pronunciation data from non-native English learners, and constructed an English oral corpus containing pronunciation errors. And in order to simulate real situations, white noise and pink noise were artificially added to the corpus in the study, and they were divided into training and testing sets in a ratio of 60% to 40%. The results showed that the classification accuracy of the system in the training and testing sets under white noise environment was 78.97% and 94.01%, respectively, and the classification accuracy in the pink noise environment was 76.19% and 94.03%, respectively. The system’s error detection accuracy in vowel and consonant pronunciation detection is 88.91% and 91.68%, respectively, and the error correction accuracy in vowel and consonant pronunciation detection is 90.67% and 91.96%, respectively. In summary, the research on computer-aided online learning of English oral pronunciation based on Denoising Auto Encoders end-to-end recurrent neural networks has effectively improved learning efficiency.

Null subject pronouns in Papiá Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese)

This paper investigates variation in the subject pronoun expression (SPE) in Papiá Kristang (Malacca Creole Portuguese), a language without verb inflection. Previous accounts of Kristang (Baxter, 1988, 2012b; Hancock, 1969, 1973; Knowlton, 1964; Rêgo, 1942) present the language as predominantly displaying overt subject pronouns. However, the overall null subject pronoun rate in the oral corpus contemplated is substantial, registering a frequency of 45.7% (input pr. 0.32). As such, the paper focusses on the distribution of null subject pronouns and the constraints directing that distribution. The study considers the effects of priming, structural location, verb semantic class, and tense-mood-aspect (TMA), and addresses the effect of the individual speaker. It is found that while null subject pronoun use in Papiá Kristang resembles, with minor differences, many attributes of this mechanism in other languages, it displays one notable trait: TMA particles favor null subject pronoun use. Extralinguistic constraints on SPE within the Papiá Kristang speech community are seen to concern more the characteristics of individual speakers, and clusters of individuals, rather than predictors based on a pan-community age and gender classification.

Procedes D’adaptation Phonetique De L’emprunt : La Dynamique De Systeme Phonologique De L’arabe Jordanien En Contact Avec L’anglais Et Le Français

Objectives: This study aimed at analyzing a number of Jordanian Arabic lexical units borrowed from French and English Particularly, we attempt to answer the following questions: What are the mechanisms adopted by the target language in the process of integrating the phonic forms of borrowed units? What is the impact of these adaptation mechanisms on the dynamics of the phonological system of the target language? Methods: This study adopted the methodology of functional phonology to analyze an oral corpus made up of approximately 300 units. Results: The findings of the analysis show that language contact offers explanations for the observed phonetic variations. In essence, the consonant system of Jordanian Arabic is characterized by a rather weak correlation of voiced and voiceless consonants insofar as certain voiceless consonant phonemes do not have corresponding voiced counterparts, e.g., /k/ and /f/, which favored the integration of corresponding voiced phonemes like /g/ and /v/. The results of the study also show the emergence of new vowel sounds. Conclusions: This study found effects of phonetic adaptation strategies and their contribution to the evolution of the phonological system in the target language, revealing that borrowing in such manner introduces new phonetic variations which gradually get integrated within the system of the language in ways that would fit its phonetic rules.

Marcadores del discurso de cita directa en corpus españoles del PRESEEA: estratificación social y distribución diatópica

The aim of this paper is to carry out a study on the social behavior and diatopic distribution of direct quotation markers considering data from PRESEEA-Spain oral corpus. On the one hand, from a sociolinguistic perspective, we will focus on the relation of the use of these discursive units with criteria such as sex, age, and educational level; and, on the other hand, we will consider their productivity in the samples of each city studied. As general results, the presence of different discourse markers (pues, o sea, en plan, etc.) that introduce direct quotation has been observed, a function linked to the initial position they occupy in the utterance. Furthermore, the geolectal difference is evidenced not only in quotation markers that are of exclusive use in some urban areas of Spain, but also in the stratification patterns according to social criteria.

The features of functioning of the expression "another thing that"

The object of the study is a textual staple "another thing that", which was formed on the basis of the noun "thing". The subject of the study is its structural, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties. The purpose of this article is to present the results of the analysis of the specified properties of the staple and, on this basis, to show the features of its functioning in modern Russian. One of the aspects of consideration is the analysis of contextual modifications of the staple and the establishment of its main variant. Syntactically, its ability to function both in the text and in a complex sentence is analyzed. The main attention is paid to determining the type of relationship that a staple establishes between fragments of text, and identifying the dependence of the type of relationship on the semantics of the components that make up the staple. Considerable attention is paid to the pragmatic properties of the staple, its ability to convey the evaluative opinion of the speaker is considered. The material for the analysis was text fragments obtained with the help of the National Corpus of the Russian Language (NKRR). The material was collected using a continuous sampling method, as well as using the "lexico-grammatical search" option in the main newspaper and oral corpus of the NKRR. Descriptive and quantitative research methods were used in the analysis of linguistic material. The scientific novelty lies in the fact that for the first time a detailed analysis of the features of the functioning of the structure is presented in modern literary texts and media texts. As a result of the study, it was found that in the vast majority of cases, a paperclip "another thing that" functions in the text as a "text paperclip". The main variant of the bond is a structure that includes the union "what". This text staple establishes a contradictory relationship between fragments of text, which is due to the semantics of the pronominal adjective "another" that is part of it. The pragmatic component of the staple is its ability to reflect the speaker's position in terms of evaluating situations opposed in the text and indicate a change of sign from plus to minus, and vice versa.

A Narrative Analysis on Vlogs

The vlog has become an increasingly popular genre, being found most often on the YouTube platform. Starting from the premise that it has a narrative form, we randomly selected five texts that we segmented, following the discourse marks related to each sequence and we quantified the number related to each one. The next step is represented by noting the numbers in pie chart type graphs in order to see which is the predominant one. For a better visibility of the sequences, we opted for the use of different colors for each of them, colors that can also be found in the charts. Thus, starting from the theory of narrative genres (according to W. Labov and J. Waletzky) and the three-level analysis model developed by Sophie Moirand, we proposed a discursive analysis aimed at showing that vlogs fall into the category of narrative genres. We mention that this article does not pretend to present a complete analysis but it is the starting point of a larger one, with a relevant oral corpus, which will thoroughly debate the vlog category. Purpose: Analyzing vlogs from a narrative approach. Patients and methods: Sequential analysis Results: Narrative sequence is predominant Conclusion: Vlogs can be considered a narrative genre

Отрицания в речи как маркер описания эмоционально негативных стимулов

<p>The article presents the results of an empirical study of the oral corpus of texts. Based on some theoretical and empirical data, we have suggested that negations in speech can be markers of describing emotionally negative stimuli, the experiments have allowed us to test this hypothesis. The Study 1 (N=42): subjects described two pictures that are opposite in their emotional characteristics (positive and negative). The Study 2 (N=32): subjects had to tell two memories about themselves: a frightening memory and a joyful one. The recorded audios were transcribed into written form. It was made by the system of phrase allocation (or elementary discursive units). So, we’ve got corpus of oral text. The corpus was analyzed by the presence of negations in it (particles and prefixes "not", the word "no"). Statistical analysis showed that frightening memories and an emotionally negative picture are described significantly more often with the use of negative particles (p≤0.001). Describing negative stimuli, negations were used twice as often as when describing positive ones. So, it can be assumed that the description of emotionally negative stimuli actualizes the use of negative phrases in speech. Such results allow us to consider negations as an implicit discursive marker, which indicates the negative emotional nature of the subject of speech.</p>

Introducing a new protagonist in L2 Chinese narratives: Syntactic construction and information organization

Building a complex discourse is not an easy task for second language learners. This study investigates how learners that have French as their first language (L1) and Chinese as a second language (L2) convey the function of referent introduction in narratives. It aims to identify which syntactic constructions are used to highlight new information and relate it to given information at the utterance level, and how learners organize information between utterances to ensure discourse cohesion. The procedure used consists of the analysis of an oral corpus collected from five groups of participants ( N = 110): French and Chinese native speakers, and three groups of learners (low, intermediate and advanced levels). The stimulus of the elicited task is a comic strip. The results show that low learners mostly follow the canonical word order, while intermediate learners demonstrate more syntactic diversity but still differ from native speakers at the discourse level. Advanced learners almost achieved native-like proficiency and demonstrated only one difference when compared with the target pattern that lies in the lexical-semantic characteristics of the predicate used.

Collecting Field-Based Oral Language Data: Experiences and Reflections

This article unfolds our experiences and reflections of field-based oral corpus collection from the Nepali language in the business setting applying observation, audio-recording, interview and field notes as qualitative techniques. Understanding our own role as auto ethnographic researchers-as-authors, in this article, we draw a set of fieldwork traits: the simplicity of the fieldworker(s), context-dependence of appropriating research ethics, and understanding fieldwork as a spiral process. Based on our practical experiences, we recognize that the qualitative interview is an inefficacious technique for collecting functional linguistic data. Likewise, preserving the linguistic-cultural identity of the source language in terms of its forms, functions and sense while translating the corpus is challenging. We also recognize some fundamental traits to be followed by an oral corpus collector: relative simultaneity of data collection and analysis, the researcher’s autonomy in selecting the topic, the value of good planning in research, research as work and habits, and life and health as being more important than research. The insights derived herein are expected to be pivotal for the researchers working in a similar field.

Système numéral et neutralisation du genre numéral en soureth

Abstract This article describes the numeral system in several varieties of Soureth, one of the modern languages derived from the eastern branch of Aramaic, a Semitic language of the Northwest. Historically, it has been spoken in Iraq, Syria, Iran, and southeastern Turkey; and in the diaspora since the early 20th century. After describing the system in general, the article will study a particular phenomenon concerning the gender agreement between the numeral and the counted name. Modern Aramaic, like the classical language, Syriac, has a binary gender marking on the noun (masculine or feminine), which affects the relations of agreement. The numeral system also contains marked masculine and feminine forms that agree with the noun (Coghill 2004 & 2018, Poizat 2008). However, there is a process of gender neutralization of the numeral that occurs (Khan 2009). Indeed, numerals do not always change according to the gender of the name counted. They thus have a single form that could be called a “neutral” form. This paper presents the different uses of numerals in an oral corpus made up with Soureth speakers living in France. Some hypotheses will be proposed in order to analyze the neutralization process which does not exist in an absolute way in all varieties.

Processing of complex morphosyntactic structures in French: ERP evidence from native speakers

This event-related brain potentials (ERP) study investigated the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying the auditory processing of verbal complexity in French illustrated by the prescriptive present subjunctive mode. Using a violation paradigm, ERPs of 32 French native speakers were continuously recorded while they listened to 200 ecological French sentences selected from the INTEFRA oral corpus (2006). Participants performed an offline acceptability judgement task on each sentence, half of which contained a correct present subjunctive verbal agreement (reçoive) and the other half an incorrect present indicative one (peut). Critically, the present subjunctive mode was triggered either by verbs (Ma mère desire que j’apprenneMy mother wants me to learn) or by subordinating conjunctions (Pour qu’elle reçoiveSo that she receives). We found a delayed anterior negativity (AN) due to the length of the verbal forms and a P600 that were larger for incongruent than for congruent verbal agreement in the same time window. While the two effects were left lateralized for subordinating conjunctions, they were right lateralized for both structures with a larger effect for subordinating conjunctions than for verbs. Moreover, our data revealed that the AN/P600 pattern was larger in late position than in early ones. Taken together, these results suggest that morphosyntactic complexity conveyed by the French subjunctive involves at least two neurocognitive processes thought to support an initial morphosyntactic analysis (AN) and a syntactic revision and repair (posterior P600). These two processes may be modulated as a function of both the element (i.e., subordinating conjunction vs verb) that triggers the subjunctive mode and the moment at which this element is used while sentence processing.

An Example of Linguistic Stylization in Spanish Musical Genres: Flamenco and Latin Music in Rosalía’s Discography

Studies on stylistic change in music argue that when singers use stylistic devices in their songs, they have one purpose: to represent their image and their artistic and social identity. In this paper we focus on the singer Rosalía, a Catalan artist who sings flamenco and Latin music. These two musical genres are associated with innovative varieties of Spanish, but this singer is not a speaker of this variety (she uses the Spanish spoken in Catalonia, a conservative variety). So, we want to know whether, when she sings, she linguistically adapts to the associated phenomena of flamenco and Latin music. In order to carry out this work, we have collected two oral corpora: the first is Rosalía’s discography and the second is 40 min of interviews in Spain and America. In our analyses we have verified that, indeed, when Rosalía sings, she uses indexicalized phenomena of the genres. However, in the interviews she keeps her vernacular variety, Catalan, although we have observed signs of accommodation to American Spanish, which also reveal a significant change in the singer’s idiolect.

Wolof Dilindeki Sözlü Tasavvuf Anlatılarının Yapısı ve İşlevi

This study explores the unstudied rich Wolof Sufi oral cultural productions and their contribution to the knowledge about Islam in Senegal. It only focuses on oral production by Sufi leaders and their followers. This consists of an oral corpus of the life stories of past and current Sufi leaders, woven by multiple (re) tellers across generations, designed in such a way that they can give Sufi adepts examples to follow and, possibly, reproduce. The storytelling varies according to the speaker’s skills and charisma, the audience’s expectations and context of the performance. The combination of all these factors makes the structure of the stories unique, especially compared to those coming from western cultures. Keywords: Narrative, Sufism in Senegal, Sufi oral Production, Islam in Senegal.

Re-Conceptualizing Affricate Variation in Caracas Spanish

This sociophonetic study examines affricate variation through a continuous lens using diachronic data from Caracas Spanish. We investigate the relationship between frication and occlusion period duration in affricate segments across two steps. First, we present a phonetic characterization of the dependent variable and its variants. Second, we examine the sociolinguistic profile of the variants in an oral corpus of Caracas Spanish. Correlation analyses between the frication period, occlusion period, and overall segment duration suggest that frication lengthening is most prominent, which may mean that affricate variation in Caracas is not necessarily a lenition process, but rather a lengthening one. Through a mixed-effects linear regression model, we determine that frication duration is significantly conditioned by social and linguistic factors in Caracas. Longer frication periods are predicted by following high vowels, corpus year, speaker sex, and in word-initial position. These results suggest that traditional affricate lenition may in some cases point to a process of lengthening and retiming that is both socially and linguistically stratified. This paper contributes to the field by providing an acoustic examination of variable affricate production as well as a diachronic sociolinguistic investigation of this phenomenon in the Spanish of Caracas, Venezuela.

Narrativas de experiência de vida sobre a guerra do Ultramar práticas discursivas de construção da memória e da representação do corpo

Starting from the analysis of an oral corpus of life narratives of Portuguese soldiers mobilized for the Overseas military campaigns during 1969 and 1974, this article aims to constitute itself as a reflective exercise on the experience of war, seen as a collectively shared construct. We seek to understand not only the place of the body in the way the military and war experience is appropriated, but also to verify the effects of the tensions and displacements of such experiences in the former combatants of the Portuguese Colonial War.

Nuevamente sobre el funcionamiento pragmático atenuante de la forma performativa del verbo creer

It is known there are some forms, the first-person singular of the present indicative of opinion or doxastic verbs ([I] consider, [I] believe, [I] think or [I] suppose...), which present a great complexity of understanding given its polysemy and polyfunctionality. This paper focuses exclusively on the explanation of its pragmatic functioning and, more specifically, on the development of its most frequent function —the attenuation—, based on the uses of the prototypical nuclear form of its set: (I) believe. In order to do that, some of the main features that help to distinguish the pragmatic readings of that verbal form are reviewed and the generic behavior displayed by its uses in discourse is investigated. For that purpose, it is carried out a qualitative analysis of oral corpus (one conversational and one parliamentary), from which functional guidelines are extracted, which help to take a further step in defining its pragmatics specifically and in clarifying the general problematic of the doxastic verbs description.

Μorphological Integration of Loan Words in Kaliardá

This article deals with lexical borrowing and the morphological integration of loan words in Kaliardá, a Greek-based antilanguage, spoken in the urban areas of Greece by socially marginalized communities of cross-dressers, transgender people, and gay men. It is shown that the accommodation of most loans follows the general rules of Modern Greek morphology, namely, the stem-based word formation and compulsory inflection. However, for a considerable part of the borrowed items, there are certain morphological deviances compared to loan formation in Greek. More particularly, there is an overuse of the feminine grammatical gender, assigned to -human nouns, contrary to a neuterization tendency displayed by the Greek language, while the masculine grammatical gender is scarcely employed, and a significant number of feminine loans end in -o and -u in the citation form. Verbal loans do not substantially differ from those in Greek, with the exception of the frequent use of verbal periphrastic formations, consisting of an auxiliary inflected verb type, avélo or vuélo (both loans themselves), and a nominal item. Sometimes, avélo is also employed as a mediator for the integration of English verbs. The data under examination are drawn from a Kaliardá dictionary. Their accuracy is checked with 10 Kaliardá speakers in 2 big Greek cities, Athens and Patras, and they are enriched by a small oral corpus of 32 words collected through interviews. The investigated data comprise items from Italian, French and English, three principal donor languages in Kaliardá, but there are also loans from other languages, mainly from Romani and Turkish, but also from Albanian, German and Spanish.

Creating an Oral Educational Corpus of the Russian Language for Non-Native Speakers: the Initial Results and Prospect

The article presents initial results of the project on design of the oral educational corpus containing a transcribed and annotated collection of spontaneous/unprepared speech recordings of students learning Russian as a foreign language. This article includes a literature review on design of oral corpora; a discussion on how to choose stimuli for production of spontaneous oral speech by non-native speakers; a description of the transcription experience, the classification and the summary of non-standard phonetic and communicative phenomena; the quality examination of a number of deviances which properties are impossible to investigate in the written speech. The article explores the following prosodic features typical for the oral speech of a foreign student: pauses, hesitations (voiced pauses), physiological pauses, phonetic inaccuracies, and self-corrections. The quantitative examination of the four trial speech pieces revealed the fact that the recordings do not demonstrate any differences in terms of the number of physiological pauses. However, there are significant fluctuations in the number of phonetic inaccuracies, voiced pauses and self-corrections. Comparing the above mentioned observations we identified several profiles, which reflect communicative performance of the speaker: a) the profile with a significant number of pauses indicating planning of the statement, but with a few corrections and phonetic inaccuracies; in this case the foreigner’s speech is slow but grammatically and phonetically more accurate and cohesive; b) the profile with a significant number of pauses, phonetic inaccuracies and self-corrections: the speaker has difficulties with statement planning and pronunciation; с) the profile with a few pauses and hesitations, but with a significant number of phonetic inaccuracies: the speech is quite fast, while the pronunciation is rather poor.

Construction of a Multimodal Corpus of College Students’ Spoken English Based on Semantic Concepts

With the rapid development of multimedia technology, multimodal corpus came into being, which also opened up a new idea for oral English grammar teaching. In view of the problems existing in the current traditional English grammar textbooks, this paper applies the concepts of “corpus driven” and “multimodality” to grammar textbooks and tries to describe language use in a more authentic, reliable, and up-to-date form. In view of the problems existing in the current traditional English grammar teaching materials, this paper applies the semantic concept to the grammar teaching materials and tries to describe the language use in a more authentic, reliable, and up-to-date form. Based on the semantic concept, this paper studies the construction of college students’ oral English multimodal corpus. After the experiment, the results of the language fluency, accuracy, and complexity of the subjects in the experimental group and the control group are tested. The differences between the two groups were analyzed by one-way ANOVA as follows: in terms of language fluency, F 1 , 62 = 0.835 , P > 0.04 , which showed that there was no significant difference between the two groups after the experiment. In terms of accuracy, F 1 , 62 = 10.693 , P < 0.04 . There was significant difference between the two groups after the experiment. In this study, by analyzing and counting the distribution of conjunctions in students’ oral discourse, the types of conjunctions, their frequency of use, and the types of errors in use, we hope to understand the level and limitations of students’ use of conjunctions in oral discourse, so that students can better apply semantic conceptual cohesion and speak a coherent discourse, First of all, we should help students establish the awareness of textual cohesion and coherence.

Hypercorrection as a Symptom of Language Change: Majorcan Catalan Standard Pronunciation

The mutual influence between dialects and standard language in terms of upward or downward convergence, the creation of a diaglossic repertoire, and a typology of relations dialects/standard is of utmost importance for the analysis of language evolution. Majorcan Catalan is an eastern Catalan dialect, traditionally considered as archaic. Data from television programs show a tendency to adapt pronunciation to a standard mainly based on central Catalan dialects, even disregarding concessions granted by the prescriptive grammar. This article is focused on the causes of this centripetal movement and on the function either accelerating or decelerating of (para)prescriptive works in the process. Data from an annotated oral corpus (Corpus Oral de la Llengua Catalana) are used. The results are consistent with a centripetal movement in the construction of the standard Catalan as used in formal registers in the Balearic Islands. A proposal is made for the interpretation of the relevant data as evidence of an evolution from a gliding access to standard to a shifting access.