Pronunciation Norms Research Articles

ON THE DEVELOPMENT AND CURRENT STATE OF THE PRONUNCIATION NORM IN FRENCH LANGUAGE

This article is devoted to the development and current state of the French pronunciation norm. Learning a foreign language pronunciation in its standard variant is a difficult task not only due to the need to master new articulatory gestures, but also to understand what is normative in pronunciation. For the French language, which has more than 90 million native speakers, the issue is particularly acute. Since the establishment of French as a state language, the choice of pronunciation standard was based on the pronunciation of certain social groups (royal nobility, educated classes, radio presenters) and geographical boundaries (Paris, Ile-de-France region, major cities of France). The codification of the French pronunciation norm has evolved from strictly prescriptive to reflecting the maximum possible variants. The recent decades researches reveal a lack of uniformity in the pronunciation of native speakers, even within a homogeneous group. The modern pronunciation norm indicates the absence of a single rigid pattern and its wide regional variability.

The native speaker ideal in FL pronunciation teaching practice

Abstract Language teaching practice is known to come with more or less implicit views on what ‘good pronunciation’ sounds like. However, over the past decades, frameworks such as the communicative approach to language learning and the wish for social inclusion have led to a gradual shift in normative thinking, with intelligibility becoming increasingly valued over the acquisition of a native-like accent, especially at lower levels of proficiency. This contribution traces the evolution of pronunciation norms, ideologies and teaching practices for French and English. We zoom in on the past 150 years, a period in which the relative importance of English and French in international communication was gradually reversed and foreign language learning became a school subject, readily accessible to all pupils. We will supplement our historical overview by an exploratory investigation of current foreign MA foreign language teacher trainees’ experiences and attitudes. While a near-native accent is still seen as a sign of academic success for language students, this new generation of language professionals is very much aware of the fact that pupils who start learning languages in secondary school should first and foremost be sensitized to the target language pronunciation in a safe environment, with feasible and communicatively-relevant norms.

Peculiarities and Rules of Artistic Translation

To translate a work of art, it is necessary to know the vocabulary richness of the language, the synonyms and homonyms, professional terms, dialect-specific, outdated and vulgar words, caresses and diminutives, evils, Proverbs, matals and phrases, as well as the musicality, tonality, versatility, pronunciation norms of the language, exaggeration and diminutives, humorous forms. The scientific description of the artistic translation is such that it is important to give the word not by word, but by meaning, the image by image, the humor-by humor. In this article, opinions and reflections are made on the peculiarities and rules of the artistic translation.

Реализация мягкости русских согласных в устной речи русскоязычных билингвов в Германии

The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence or absence of an i-shaped transition (i-glide) between a consonant and a vowel in 300 syllables. The object of study is the interference speech of Russian-speaking bilinguals in Germany. The subject of the research is Russian soft consonants. Methods for studying material — instrumental analysis of the material using the Praat computer program (version 6.0.26). As a result of the study, 300 syllables with soft consonants in various positions in the word were analyzed. Material of study is phonetically representative text. As a result of the study, the absence of the i-shaped transition (i-glide) in the speech of children was found 83 times (27%) in the speech of parents 32 times (10%). In children, the problem arose in the area of sonants, affricates in different positions. Parents made mistakes when implementing sonants at the beginning, middle and end of a word, as well as labial and anterolingual consonants in the middle of a word and some affricates. The above-described group of people (parents) represents native Russian speakers, for whom Russian is a native language from their birth. Obviously, the constant presence in the German-speaking environment influences oral speech, however, as we can clearly see, the pronunciation norm did not suffer much from the influence of a “foreign” language

ОСОБЕНОСТИ НА УСТНАТА ФОРМА НА БЪЛГАРСКИЯ КНИЖОВЕН ЕЗИК, РЕЛЕВАНТНИ ЗА КОДИФИКАЦИЯТА НА ПРАВОГОВОРНИТЕ НОРМИ

The article examines some characteristic features of standard spoken Bulgarian in comparison with other oral formations that are used in non-regulated spheres of communication – colloquial speech, in particular. A description of the different representations of spoken Bulgarian is offered, along with a definition of the scope of the concept of ‘pronunciation norms’. The differences between pronunciation and spelling norms are discussed with a view to the codification of the rules of spoken Bulgarian. The author summarises the conditions, factors and challenges with respect to the codification of standard spoken Bulgarian, revealing the peculiarities of the oral and written forms of the language and the relationship between them and the way these characteristics relate to language codification.

ЗА КОДИФИКАЦИЯТА НА НЯКОИ ПРАВОГОВОРНИ НОРМИ В ПЪРВАТА ОФИЦИАЛНА КОДИФИКАЦИЯ НА БЪЛГАРСКИЯ КНИЖОВЕН ЕЗИК И В ПРАВОПИСНИТЕ РЕЧНИЦИ И РЪКОВОДСТВА ОТ НАЧАЛОТО НА ХХ ВЕК

The article deals with the codification of some aspects of the pronunciation norms of standard Bulgarian in the first official codification of the Bulgarian language, as well as in spelling dictionaries and handbooks published in the early 20th century. The analysis is centred on the rules governing the pronunciation of the Old Bulgarian yat vowel, vowel reduction and the pronunciation of the participles and the verb endings for the 1st person singular and the 3rd person plural. The author offers conclusions on the state of the codification of pronunciation norms at the beginning of the 20th century.

Les Normes de prononciation du français: une étude perceptive panfrancophone. Par Marc Chalier

Uniquely among the global languages, French is assumed to have a monocentric pronunciation norm, based on the usage of Paris. In the opening chapter of this volume, Marc Chalier challenges this perception and asks whether endogenous norms have emerged outside France. After setting out the normative background in Chapter 2 and presenting his methodology in Chapter 3, the author addresses this question by comparing Paris with two peripheral francophone zones (French-speaking Switzerland and Quebec) from three perspectives, examined in Chapters 4 to 6. The first of these (‘Représentations et attitudes’) reports questionnaire responses, from a representative non-specialist panel in each geographical area, to questions relating to perceptions of ‘correct’ French pronunciation. For Parisian informants, the norm is viewed in centre–periphery terms within France, with Paris, then Tours, and finally a general ‘Nord de la France’ seen as a model. Away from Paris, Canadian respondents showed greater acceptance of an endocentric norm than their Swiss counterparts. All three panels identified broadcast news presenters as representatives of the spoken norm, and it is to these that the author turns in Chapter 5 (‘Productions’). Twenty radio or television journalists in each site were asked to read aloud the stimulus text from the Phonologie du français contemporain project and a separate word list, their production then being subjected to phonetic analysis with respect to a number of locally variable vowel oppositions. Results from Paris presented rather a mixed picture. Here, traditional normative oppositions such as /a/–/α/, or /ε/–/e/ in open syllables were found to be better maintained in word-list style than in the reading passage, and in some cases appeared to be lexically conditioned, with /ε/–/e/ for example being more consistently realized for the pair épais–épée than for étaient–été. While the Swiss informants showed some adherence to local norms, there was considerable internal variability and evidence of a more general shift towards an exocentric français de référence. Much stronger support for an overt endocentric norm was evident in Quebec, where no fewer than eight of the nine identified local phonological features were found to be regularly produced by Radio Canada news reporters. In Chapter 6 (‘Perceptions’), non-specialist panels were asked to evaluate these recordings, focusing on the ‘correctness’ or otherwise of these same local features, and their suitability for news broadcasting or teaching of French to non-natives. For Paris, something of a disjunction emerged between representation of the norm and actual production: informants — particularly those with high levels of education — positively evaluated maintenance of traditional prescriptive oppositions which were not, in fact, consistently realized. Of the two peripheral francophone communities, Quebec again proved far more ready to embrace the local norm as ‘correct’. The author concludes that French is subject to a ‘tendance bicentrique’ (p. 445), favouring separate European and Canadian pronunciation norms. This volume is an impressive piece of research, and is written with admirable clarity. My one reservation is that its presentation mirrors rather too closely the doctoral thesis on which it is based. A more economical structure might have reduced the length of the volume by about a third, and lent sharper focus to its interesting and important findings.

Variation of Pronunciation Norm and Meaning in Light of Semantic-Cognitive Analysis: german Idiom <i>das A und O</i>

A unique example for the German language of the divergent development of the pronunciation norm and frame semantics in the phraseological unit das A und O and variants das Alpha und Omega / das Alpha und O / A und O. The interpretation of the pronunciation norm from the theoretical works of L. A. Verbitskaya is used. Observations on the development of semantic frames are presented on the basis of semantic-cognitive analysis and sociophonetic analysis of the pronunciation norm of a grapheme phraseological unit. The loss of religious connotation during the transition of the phrase into profane discourse in the course of discursive secularization is noted. The influence of the written norm on the oral norm is established as the reason for the emergence of the variance of the phraseological unit in diachrony. The emergence of variance of a grapheme formula in the direction of reduction of its components is studied. Mechanisms for modeling the meaning of idiom variants by means of four cognitive operations are disclosed. The study of formula norm dynamics is confirmed by examples of codification in nine German dictionaries. The relevance of the study is due to the application of corpus analysis to 14743 contextual uses of the formula das A und O in texts from the digital corpus of the German language DWDS. It is concluded that the pronunciation norm in its dynamics regulates the functioning of this phraseological unit in literary German.

Speech GAU: A Single Head Attention for Mandarin Speech Recognition for Air Traffic Control

The rise of end-to-end (E2E) speech recognition technology in recent years has overturned the design pattern of cascading multiple subtasks in classical speech recognition and achieved direct mapping of speech input signals to text labels. In this study, a new E2E framework, ResNet–GAU–CTC, is proposed to implement Mandarin speech recognition for air traffic control (ATC). A deep residual network (ResNet) utilizes the translation invariance and local correlation of a convolutional neural network (CNN) to extract the time-frequency domain information of speech signals. A gated attention unit (GAU) utilizes a gated single-head attention mechanism to better capture the long-range dependencies of sequences, thus attaining a larger receptive field and contextual information, as well as a faster training convergence rate. The connectionist temporal classification (CTC) criterion eliminates the need for forced frame-level alignments. To address the problems of scarce data resources and unique pronunciation norms and contexts in the ATC field, transfer learning and data augmentation techniques were applied to enhance the robustness of the network and improve the generalization ability of the model. The character error rate (CER) of our model was 11.1% on the expanded Aishell corpus, and it decreased to 8.0% on the ATC corpus.

The psycho-pedagogical conditions for the formation of students’ professional and communicative competence in the course of teaching speech-oriented disciplines (from the author’s teaching experience)

The article asserts the necessity to create psychological and pedagogical conditions aimed at forming professional and communicative competence of university students in the process of teaching speech-oriented disciplines. Such conditions include understanding the professional ideal as a personal, inner motivation for learning; the use of the communicative-cognitive approach; the focus on the step-by-step personality formation of a communicative personality. To identify the above-mentioned conditions, the author employed the following research methods and techniques: structured observation of students’ speech, group and individual interviews with learners, psychosemantic approach, self-characterisation and self-presentation methods, socio-pedagogical investigation. The best practices aimed at a gradual formation of a communicative personality and learners’ professional ideal are described through the analysis of studying speech genres, the orthographic and pronunciation (orthoepic) norms of the Russian language.

Integrating literature lessons with the subject of mother tongue teaching

In order to differentiate literary-speech competencies in literature lessons, the article develops the features of oral speech characterized by orthographic norms, other than biblical (written) speech, based on the norms of pronunciation and spelling of language phenomena studied in the native language. Thus, in literature classes, the relevant knowledge, skills, and competencies for the formation of types of speech activities at the level of competencies can be acquired on the basis of knowledge of the different aspects of these competencies. Competences related to the types of speaking activities require to pay attention to the method of speech as the most important of the specific features of oral and written speech, to this end, to integrate the subject of literature with the mother tongue from the educational content. “Interdisciplinary connections of the Russian language and literature are carried out at all lessons of speech development in the following directions: 1) the formation and consolidation of knowledge and skills of students in functional stylistics, necessary for the correct organization of speech activity in various genres of oral and written statements; 2) teaching common for these subjects types of oral and written speech activities.

Integrating literature lessons with the subject of mother tongue teaching

In order to differentiate literary-speech competencies in literature lessons, the article develops the features of oral speech characterized by orthographic norms, other than biblical (written) speech, based on the norms of pronunciation and spelling of language phenomena studied in the native language.

Preschool Children’s Speech Pedagogical Sound Culture Correction

Objective: The article aims to reveal the features of correction of the sound culture of the preschool-age children's speech, the effectiveness of which has been tested experimentally.
 Background: The sound culture of speech is a multicomponent formation, which covers the phonetic correctness of speech; general language skills and orthoepic correctness of speech. Pedagogical correction of the sound culture of speech is focused on the correct the errors caused by a violation of the sound articulation, sound pronunciation, orthoepic norms of pronunciation, voice strength, etc.
 Method: In the study, the author's method of pedagogical correction of the sound culture of children’s speech was used. Also, it was used comparative analysis and method of successive analysis of adjustment variants of the speech sound culture.
 Results: An individual model of pedagogical correction of the sound culture of the child's speech was developed. Training to deepen knowledge, improvement of abilities, and skills of teachers were held. The exercises in sound pronunciation and intonational speech expressiveness were developed.
 Conclusion: Positive dynamics of developmental levels of the sound culture of children’s speech, which has been confirmed by the results of quantitative and qualitative analysis, confirms the effectiveness of the experimental methods of pedagogical correction of the sound culture of speech.

Enregisterment eines /r/-Allophons?

In the study presented in this paper the use of a specific linguistic non-standard feature of German by 100 speakers representing three generations was analysed. The speakers originate from 25 different locations within the Middle Franconian dialect formation covering the middle-western parts of Germany. The feature analysed is the realisation of the Standard German phoneme /r/ as a voiceless velar or uvular fricative [x, χ] when following a short vowel and preceding a coronal obstruent. The comparison of how frequently the speakers use [χ] in different communicative contexts results in the observation of three types of speakers (i. e., [χ] users): The first type are dialect speakers mostly of the older generation (60 years and above) who use the variant in a traditional manner, namely when aiming at producing their best way to pronounce Standard German. According to these speakers [χ] forms part of the Standard German pronunciation norm. The second type is mainly represented by middle aged speakers (45–55 years) who use the feature in nearly all communicative contexts except when they have a dialect competency and are asked to produce their “strongest dialect”. Finally, the third type of speakers are mainly young people (17–23 years) who do not have any dialect competence. These speakers only use [χ] when they are asked to produce their “strongest dialect” and/or when they are talking to friends. On the basis of these results it is argued that, between these types of speakers and the generations they represent, a re-evaluation of the feature has taken place that may be classified as enregisterment, because speakers of the third type seem to use [χ] indexically in order to signal familiarity with their interlocutors on a interpersonal-social level.

VOCABULARY OF FOREIGN ORIGIN: PROBLEMS OF NORM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT OF UKRAINIAN LITERARY LANGUAGE

The article presents a multifaceted analysis of the dynamics of spelling and pronunciation of words of foreign origin in the Ukrainian literary language. The research expanded the range of knowledge about the phases of formation of the Ukrainian orthography, in particular, the part devoted to the orthography of foreign tokens and made it possible to explain the changes in the rules of spelling and pronunciation in diachrony. Linguistic and extralinguistic factors that influenced linguistic evolution are identified and the processes of normalization of borrowed vocabulary taking into account the historical context are highlighted. The views of Ukrainian linguists on the norms of spelling and pronunciation of words of foreign origin are generalized. It was stated that although there are few foreign words (approximately 10 percent), compared to other Ukrainian lexical collections, foreign words have provoked and are causing many discussions among linguists about their mastery of the Ukrainian literary language. After all, the legalization of the language norm, its written reflection and its organization in Ukraine is very difficult, which causes heterogeneity of spelling and pronunciation of words of foreign origin. Transformations in borrowed tokens over a long historical period are traced. A chronological description of all editions of the Ukrainian orthography is made and the most typical changes and establishments in the spelling and pronunciation of foreign words are systematized. It is proved that the lack of clearly formulated and formed rules for spelling borrowed words has led to variable spelling and pronunciation. After all, the phonetic system of the Ukrainian language can not fully reflect the peculiarities of the sound system of a foreign language, which indicates a complex process of stabilization of pronunciation and spelling norms of words of foreign origin in the Ukrainian literary language.

The effects of lecturers’ non-native accent strength in English on intelligibility and attitudinal evaluations by native and non-native English students

The rapid spread of English medium instruction (EMI) across the globe has led to a growing number of non-native lecturers teaching in English to student populations that are increasingly international. The aim of the present study was to investigate to what extent lecturers with slight or moderate Dutch accents or native British English accents are evaluated differently in terms of intelligibility, comprehensibility and attitudinal impressions by non-native and native English-speaking listeners. In an experiment, 189 Dutch listeners, 175 international non-native listeners and 158 native English listeners evaluated fragments recorded by moderately accented Dutch, slightly accented Dutch and native English speakers. Findings showed that the moderately non-native accented lecturers were evaluated more negatively than lecturers with slight or native accents by both Dutch and international non-native listeners, but not by native English listeners. This suggests that non-native listeners evaluate the accents of non-native lecturers according to native speaker pronunciation norms.

Specifics of the Identification of Deviation from the Pronunciation Norm as a Result of the Interference of the Russian Language by Native Speakers of the German Language

Specifics of the Identification of Deviation from the Pronunciation Norm as a Result of the Interference of the Russian Language by Native Speakers of the German Language

Уcне мовлення української та русинської діаспори: консонантна орфоепія

The article contains the synchronous analysis of the spoken language and in particular the pronunciation of the Ukrainian youth in America, Canada, Europe, the Transnistrian Moldavian Republic (most of whom are Rusins). The sociological survey has demonstrated the percentage of those who own the consontant orthoepy standard in a wide local and social representation abroad, determined the most common pronunciation problems and orthoepic deviations in the system of consonantism, identified their reasons, and proved the historical organicity of modern orthoepic norm. The research of the spoken language of the Ukrainian diaspora focuses on the sociophonetic aspects at the level of its sound presentations. The author aims at determining the level of mastery of the consonant orthoepy of the Ukrainian literary language by young people, representing different local and social spheres: orthoepy of voiced consonants at the end of the word and in front of the voiceless consonants; voiceless consonants before voiced ones; prefixes роз-, без-, об-, prefixes-prepositions з-, від-, між- before voiceless consonants, except for hushing sounds; [в] as [ў]; [д̑з], [д̑ж]. According to the generalized results of the survey, the pronunciation of voiced sounds at the end of the word, the voiceless sounds before the voiced ones, [г], prefixes роз-, без-, об-, з-, affricates [д̑з], [д̑ж] are defined as strong based on the percentage abroad. The norms of the pronunciation of the prefixes об-, між- are considered weak in the speech of the respondents; the greatest difficulties arise when pronouncing the sonorous з- in the word зцідити – 35 % possession of the norm (Transnistrian Moldavian Republic – 15 %, Europe – 43 %, America –30 %, Canada – 50 %). However, the pronunciation norms of the prefixes роз-, без-, з-, affricates [д̑з], [д̑ж] in foreign countries are strong, while the pronunciation norms of the prefixes об-, від-, між- are unstable. The norms of the pronunciation of phonemes in the middle of the word, [в] as [у᷃] are also weak. Typical deviations are related to the influence of Russian orthoepy or spelling. Differences in the percentage of the norm possession depend on the usage of the word and the complexity of sound changes, since in the process of assimilation, the sound changes not only its acoustic but also articulatory characteristics – the place or method of formation. Thus, nowadays, the mistakes in the pronunciation of voiced consonants are due to lack of theoretical knowledge, influence of dialectal speech and the Russian language, since these orthoepic norms were fixed in writing and theoretically substantiated in the grammars of the early 20th century, as it can be seen in manuscripts. The pronunciation rules that are consistently reflected in the manuscripts are strong and followed by the informants.

Ortoepija u programima za mlađe razrede osnovne škole

We point out the importance of working on the correct articulation of sounds and analyze the representation of orthoepy in the curricular contents for the subject Serbian Language in the lower grades of primary school. The results of the content analysis show that the importance of a continuous work on the correct articulation of sounds has not been recognized in the new curricula. The work on the pronunciation of sounds is included only in the curriculum for the first grade. A comparative analysis of the old (2004, 2005, 2006) and new curricula (2017, 2018, 2019) has shown that the reform rejected all the contents that continuously extended the work on the pronunciation of sounds until the fourth grade. The state of the pronunciation norm in practice, confirmed by the research results, indicates numerous problems of atypical articulation that is not organic in nature. Therefore, the pedagogical implications are that the changes of and/or additions to the content of orthoepy related to the pronunciation of sounds should be included in the mother tongue curricula for the lower grades of primary school and made operational through outcomes as the functional knowledge of the pronunciation norm. These are the contents that were represented in the curricula before the reform, and they refer to the pronunciation of affricates (č, ć, dž, đ) and fricatives (h) in the third and fourth grades. This would enable continuity in the work of the practitioners which is necessary to correct the mistakes in the pronunciation of sounds that are not organic in nature and to strengthen the correct articulation.

ПУБЛИЧНЫЕ ВЫСКАЗЫВАНИЯ В АСПЕКТЕ ЭЛИТАРНОГО ТИПА РУССКОЙ РЕЧЕВОЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

The article is devoted to the study of the elite type of Russian speech culture, the analysis of public statements of modern time in the aspect of pronunciation norms as well as individual stylistics of some rhetors.