Wyniki wyszukiwania - Biblioteka Nauki

1

Initial Glottalization and Final Devoicing in Polish English

100%

Schwartz G.

Research in Language

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2012

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tom 10

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nr 2

159-171

EN

This paper presents an acoustic study of the speech of Polish leaners of English. The experiment was concerned with English sequences of the type George often, in which a word-final voiced obstruent was followed by a word-initial vowel. Acoustic measurements indicated the degree to which learners transferred Polish-style glottalization on word-initial vowels into their L2 speech. Temporal parameters associated with the production of final voiced obstruents in English were also measured. The results suggest that initial glottalization may be a contributing factor to final devoicing errors. Adopting English-style ‘liaison’ in which the final obstruent is syllabified as an onset to the initial vowel is argued to be a useful goal for English pronunciation syllabi. The implications of the experiment for phonological theory are also discussed. A hierarchical view of syllabic structures proposed in the Onset Prominence environment allows for the non-arbitrary representation of word boundaries in both Polish and English.

2

Initial glottalization and final devoicing in polish English

100%

Schwartz G.

Research in Language

|

2012

|

tom 10

|

nr 2

159-171

EN

This paper presents an acoustic study of the speech of Polish leaners of English. The experiment was concerned with English sequences of the type George often, in which a word-final voiced obstruent was followed by a word-initial vowel. Acoustic measurements indicated the degree to which learners transferred Polish-style glottalization on word-initial vowels into their L2 speech. Temporal parameters associated with the production of final voiced obstruents in English were also measured. The results suggest that initial glottalization may be a contributing factor to final devoicing errors. Adopting English-style ‘liaison’ in which the final obstruent is syllabified as an onset to the initial vowel is argued to be a useful goal for English pronunciation syllabi. The implications of the experiment for phonological theory are also discussed. A hierarchical view of syllabic structures proposed in the Onset Prominence environment allows for the non-arbitrary representation of word boundaries in both Polish and English.

3

Vowel hiatus at Polish word boundaries – Phonetic realization and phonological implications

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Schwartz G.

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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2013

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tom 49

557-585

EN

This paper presents an acoustic phonetic study of Polish V#V sequences designed to shed light on the phonological representation of glottal marking. Independent phonological evidence from Polish suggests that initial vowels contain an "empty onset" that may be realized as glottal marking. The results of the experiment suggest that glottal marking in Polish is quite robust, and may be realized by increases in spectral balance. In the Onset Prominence environment, the "empty onset" is derived from phonetic principles, realized as specification for the Vocalic Onset layer of structure. VO parameter settings capture important ambiguities in speech perception and allow for a unified analysis of glottal marking, distributional restrictions on Polish vowels, and ambiguities underlying palatalization processes.

4

Who needs a nucleus? Tashlhiyt Berber syllabification within the onset prominence representational environment

100%

Schwartz G.

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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2015

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tom 51

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nr 2

247-290

EN

This paper presents an analysis of Tashlhiyt Berber syllabification in the Onset Promi-nence (OP) representational framework. With a structural perspective on manner of articulation, OP captures the apparent role of sonority in TB syllabification. It is shown, however, that this does not entail the assignment of "peak" status to the most sonorous available segments in a given string. Sonority based "peak" assignment cannot account for the ambiguous behavior exhibited by syllables in with the "peak" is less sonorous than its "onset", and makes infelicitous predictions with regard to the behavior of "onsetless" syllables. By contrast, the OP environment provides mechanisms in which such ambiguities fall out from more general principles of constituent formation.

5

Phonology in the Speech Signal - Unifying cue and Prosodic Licensing

100%

Schwartz G.

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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2010

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tom 46

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nr 4

499-518

EN

This paper is offered in commemoration of Prof. Edmund Gussmann, who passed away sadly and unexpectedly just a few short weeks before the 41st Poznań Linguistic Meeting, where the paper was presented. The PLM session, Competing Explanations in Phonology, was the type of gathering at which Prof. Gussmann would thrive, advancing his strong theoretical position that phonetics is irrelevant for phonological theory (Gussmann 2004). Prof. Gussmann argued for this view in an animated and sometimes provocative manner, but he always did so with charm and good nature. My own views on the role of speech in phonology differ sharply from Prof. Gussmann's. I am nevertheless quite grateful for his perspective, which has indeed changed the way I think of speech. Under the influence of Government Phonology, I have adopted a phonological view of the acoustic signal, which seeks to challenge phoneticians with new hypotheses about the way speech interacts with grammar. This paper explicates this perspective, and applies it to a recent case, cue vs. prosodic licensing, in which "phonetic" and "phonological" explanations seemed to be at an impasse. Thanks in part to Prof. Gussmann's strong theoretical position, I have developed a new theory of constituency that offers a vehicle with which we may reconcile competing views on the underpinnings of phonological licensing.

6

Listener Oriented Representations in Natural Phonology

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Schwartz G.

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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2009

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tom 45

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nr 1

149-168

EN

While Natural Phonology has long contended that phonemes are specified for their phonetic properties, followers of the theory have concentrated primarily on phonological processes, instead of delving into the details of pronounceable representations. In the area of representation, NP has thus failed to pursue its claim that systematic articulatory and perceptual phenomena below the level of segmental contrast must be treated phonologically. By building an explicit model of representation in NP, we may help the theory to meet one of its primary challenges: "to confirm the hypothesis that speech processing is categorical, or phonological, down to the level of the actual phonetic (pronounceable) representation" (Donegan 2002: 79). Prominence Phonology (Schwartz, in press) is an NP-inspired model that seeks to take Donegan's call to action to heart, introducing new and phonetically explicit representations based upon scalar yet monovalent elemental primes. This paper introduces these representations with the goal of refining our view of the signal so as to develop a phonological view of speech.

7

Glides and initial vowels within the onset prominence representational environment

100%

Schwartz G.

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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2012

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tom 48

661-685

EN

This paper discusses the notion of "onsets" within the Onset Prominence representational environment (OP; e.g. Schwartz 2010, 2013), with empirical focus on the representation of glides and initial vowels. Both glides and initial vowels have been shown to exhibit ambiguous behavior across languages, which has been problematic for representational theories based on a linear string of segments. The OP environment is based on a hierarchy of phonetic events, incorporating structural ambiguities that may serve as parameter settings for the dual behavior of both glides and initial vowels. This approach eliminates the need for an ONSET constraint, and offers an explicit reference point by which the concept of markedness in prosodic structure may be defined.

8

Dynamic targets in the acquisition of L2 English vowels

51%

Schwartz G. , Aperliński G. , Kaźmierski K. , Weckwerth J.

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nr 2

181-202

EN

This paper presents acoustic data on the dynamic properties of the FLEECE and TRAP vowels in the speech of two groups of Polish users of English. Results reveal that the more proficient group users, made up of teachers and professors with professional-level proficiency in English, produce more dramatic patterns of formant movement, reminiscent of native productions, than first year students. It is argued that vowel inherent spectra change (VISC) is an inherent aspect of English phonology, originated in interactions between vowels and neighboring consonants, and later generalized to the vowel system as a whole. By contrast, Polish is a language with a minimal role of VISC. Consequently, successful acquisition of L2 English vowels involves not only the mastery of vowels in F1-F2 space, but also formant trajectories over time.

9

Spectral dynamics in L1 and L2 vowel perception

51%

Schwartz G. , Aperliński G. , Jekiel M. , Malarski K.

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nr 1

61-77

EN

This paper presents a study of L1 and L2 vowel perception by Polish learners of English. Employing the Silent Center paradigm (e.g. Strange et al. 1983), by which listeners are presented with different portions of a vowel, a force choice identification task was carried out. Due to differences in the vowel systems of the two languages, it was hypothesized that stimulus type should have minimal effects for L1 Polish vowel perception since Polish vowels are relatively stable in quality. In L2 English, depending on proficiency level, listeners were expected to adopt a more dynamic approach to vowel identification and show higher accuracy rates on the SC tokens. That is, listeners were expected to attend more to dynamic formant cues, or vowel inherent spectral change (VISC; see e.g. Morrison and Assmann 2013) in vowel perception. Results for identification accuracy for the most part were consistent with these hypotheses. Implications of VISC for the notion of cross-language phonetic similarity, crucial to models of L2 speech acquisition, are also discussed.

10

Perception of Allophonic Cues to English Word Boundaries by Polish Learners: Approximant Devoicing in English

51%

Rojczyk A. , Schwartz G. , Balas A.

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nr 1

15-29

EN

The study investigates the perception of devoicing of English /w, r, j, l/ after /p, t, k/ as a word-boundary cue by Polish listeners. Polish does not devoice sonorants following voiceless stops in word-initial positions. As a result, Polish learners are not made sensitive to sonorant devoicing as a segmentation cue. Higher-proficiency and lower-proficiency Polish learners of English participated in the task in which they recognised phrases such as buy train vs. bite rain or pie plot vs. pipe lot. The analysis of accuracy scores revealed that successful segmentation was only above chance level, indicating that sonorant voicing/devoicing cue was largely unattended to in identifying the boundary location. Moreover, higher proficiency did not lead to more successful segmentation. The analysis of reaction times showed an unclear pattern in which higher-proficiency listeners segmented the test phrases faster but not more accurately than lower-proficiency listeners. Finally, #CS sequences were recognised more accurately than C#S sequences, which was taken to suggest that the listeners may have had some limited knowledge that devoiced sonorants appear only in word-initial positions, but they treated voiced sonorants as equal candidates for word-final and word-initial positions.

11

Stop Release in Polish English - Implications for Prosodic Constituency

51%

Schwartz G. , Balas A. , Rojczyk A.

Research in Language

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2014

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tom 12

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nr 2

131-144

EN

Although there is little consensus on the relevance of non-contrastive allophonic processes in L2 speech acquisition, EFL pronunciation textbooks cover the suppression of stop release in coda position. The tendency for held stops in English is in stark opposition to a number of other languages, including Polish, in which plosive release is obligatory. This paper presents phonetic data on the acquisition of English unreleased stops by Polish learners. Results show that in addition to showing a tendency for the target language pattern of unreleased plosives, advanced learners may acquire more native-like VC formant transitions. From the functional perspective, languages with unreleased stops may be expected to have robust formant patterns on the final portion of the preceding vowel, which allow listeners to identify the final consonant when it lacks an audible release burst (see e.g. Wright 2004). From the perspective of syllabic positions, it may be said that ‘coda’ stops are obligatorily released in Polish, yet may be unreleased in English. Thus, the traditional term ‘coda’ is insufficient to describe the prosodic properties of post-vocalic stops in Polish and English. These differences may be captured in the Onset Prominence framework (Schwartz 2013). In languages with unreleased stops, the mechanism of submersion places post-vocalic stops at the bottom of the representational hierarchy where they may be subject to weakening. Submersion produces larger prosodic constituents and thus has phonological consequences beyond 'coda' behavior.

12

Stop Release in Polish English - Implications for Prosodic Constituency

51%

Schwartz G. , Balas A. , Rojczyk A.

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nr 2

131-144

EN

Although there is little consensus on the relevance of non-contrastive allophonic processes in L2 speech acquisition, EFL pronunciation textbooks cover the suppression of stop release in coda position. The tendency for held stops in English is in stark opposition to a number of other languages, including Polish, in which plosive release is obligatory. This paper presents phonetic data on the acquisition of English unreleased stops by Polish learners. Results show that in addition to showing a tendency for the target language pattern of unreleased plosives, advanced learners may acquire more native-like VC formant transitions. From the functional perspective, languages with unreleased stops may be expected to have robust formant patterns on the final portion of the preceding vowel, which allow listeners to identify the final consonant when it lacks an audible release burst (see e.g. Wright 2004). From the perspective of syllabic positions, it may be said that ‘coda’ stops are obligatorily released in Polish, yet may be unreleased in English. Thus, the traditional term ‘coda’ is insufficient to describe the prosodic properties of post-vocalic stops in Polish and English. These differences may be captured in the Onset Prominence framework (Schwartz 2013). In languages with unreleased stops, the mechanism of submersion places post-vocalic stops at the bottom of the representational hierarchy where they may be subject to weakening. Submersion produces larger prosodic constituents and thus has phonological consequences beyond ‘coda’ behavior.

13

Phonological Factors Affecting L1 Phonetic Realization of Proficient Polish Users of English

51%

Schwartz G. , Balas A. , Rojczyk A.

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tom 13

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nr 2

180-197

EN

Acoustic phonetic studies examine the L1 of Polish speakers with professional level proficiency in English. The studies include two tasks, a production task carried out entirely in Polish and a phonetic code-switching task in which speakers insert target Polish words or phrases into an English carrier. Additionally, two phonetic parameters are studied: the oft-investigated VOT, as well as glottalization vs. sandhi linking of wordinitial vowels. In monolingual Polish mode, L2 interference was observed for the VOT parameter, but not for sandhi linking. It is suggested that this discrepancy may be related to the differing phonological status of the two phonetic parameters. In the code-switching tasks, VOTs were on the whole more English-like than in monolingual mode, but this appeared to be a matter of individual performance. An increase in the rate of sandhi linking in the code-switches, except for the case of one speaker, appeared to be a function of accelerated production of L1 target items.

14

Monitoring English Sandhi Linking – A Study of Polish Listeners’ L2 Perception

51%

Schwartz G. , Rojczyk A. , Balas A.

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tom 13

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nr 1

61-76

EN

This paper presents a set of word monitoring experiments with Polish learners of English. Listeners heard short recordings of native English speech, and were instructed to respond when they recognized an English target word that had been presented on a computer screen. Owing to phonological considerations, we compared reaction times to two types of vowel-initial words, which had been produced either with glottalization, or had been joined via sandhi linking processes to the preceding word. Results showed that the effects of the glottalization as a boundary cue were less robust than expected. Implications of these findings for models of L2 speech are discussed. It is suggested that the prevalence of glottalization in L1 production makes listeners less sensitive to its effects as a boundary cue in L2.