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Speech Rhythm in L1, L2 and Learner Varieties of English

Workshop at BICLCE2017 (7^th Biennial International Conference on the
Linguistics of Contemporary English) in Vigo, 28-30 September 2017

*Convenor*: Robert Fuchs (Hong Kong Baptist University)

Speech rhythm has long been recognised as an important supra-segmental
category of speech, yet its measurement, relevance and the theoretical
soundness of the concept continue to be hotly debated. The arguably most
widely supported approach considers speech rhythm to consist of a
continuum ranging from (1) a syllable-timed pole, with relatively small
differences in prominence between syllables, to (2) a stress-timed pole,
with relatively large differences in prominence between syllables. Most
L1 varieties of English are widely regarded to be more stress-timed than
most L2 and learner varieties, and this is supported by a considerable
amount of empirical evidence (e.g. Deterding 1994, 2001, Fuchs 2016, Gut
2005, Gut and Milde 2002, Low 1998).

Yet, upon closer inspection, many of the concepts underlying this
research appear to be contested. For one, L1 varieties of English are
themselves heterogeneous in their rhythm. There is, for example,
regional variation, with some dialects spoken in the British Isles being
more syllable-timed than others (Ferragne 2008, Ferragne and Pellegrino
2004, White and Matty 2007a, 2007b, White et al. 2007). Similarly, in L2
varieties, sociolinguistic differences such as that between acrolect and
basilect might go hand in hand with a difference in speech rhythm. As
for learner Englishes, while there is good evidence of the transfer of
rhythmic characteristics from L1 to L2 (e.g. Dellwo et al. 2009, Gut
2009, Jang 2008, Sarmah et al. 2009), more research is needed to show
that this has consequences in terms of foreign accent and accent
recognition. More generally, research on speech rhythm would benefit
from studies showing that quantitative measures of speech rhythm
(so-called rhythm metrics) are perceptually relevant and psychologically
‘real’ in the sense that what is measured is reflected in a certain kind
of percept. Finally, the very nature and reliability of these rhythm
metrics has been discussed extensively, but arguably inconclusively, in
the past years, with some researchers attempting to identify those
duration-based metrics that are most reliable (White and Mattys 2007a,
White et al.2007, Wiget et al. 2010), others concluding that none of
them are reliable (Arvaniti 2009, 2012, Arvaniti et al. 2008), and yet
others suggesting metrics that focus on acoustic correlates of
prominence other than duration, such as intensity (Fuchs 2016, He 2012,
Low 1998), loudness (Fuchs 2014a), f0 (Cumming 2010, 2011, Fuchs 2014b)
and sonority (Galves et al. 2012).

In order to address these issues, this workshop aims to bring together
researchers working on one or more of the following aspects:

· Applications of rhythm metrics that measure speech rhythm based
on acoustic correlates of prominence other than duration

· Comparative tests of the validity and reliability of existing
rhythm metrics

· Perceptual relevance and psychological reality of speech rhythm

· Relevance of speech rhythm in Second Language
Acquisition/learner Englishes, e.g. its contribution to foreign accent
as well as pedagogical approaches

· Differences in speech rhythm between varieties previously
thought to be in the same "rhythm class"

· Sociolinguistic relevance of speech rhythm in indexing e.g.
lectal differences or ethnic subvarieties within the same national
variety of English

Apart from addressing one or more of the issues above, papers need be
concerned with (a variety of) English or a language contact situation
involving English (in keeping with the scope of the conference).

The workshop will consist of full papers and work in progress reports,
which will be allotted 20 minutes for presentation (plus 10 minutes for
discussion). The *deadline for submission of abstracts* (ca. 500 words,
excluding title, references and keywords) is *15 December 2016*.
Notification of acceptance will be sent out by the end of January 2017.
Abstracts should be sent to [log in to unmask] .

*References*

Arvaniti, Amalia. 2009. Rhythm, timing and the timing of rhythm.
/Phonetica /66(1/2): 46–63.

Arvaniti, Amalia. 2012. The usefulness of metrics in the quantification
of speech rhythm. /Journal of Phonetics /40: 351–373.

Arvaniti, Amalia, Tristie Ross, and Naja Ferjan. 2008. On the
reliability of rhythm metrics. /Journal of the Acoustical Society of
America /124(4): 2495.Dellwo, Volker, Francisco Gutiérrez Diez, and
Nuria Gavalda. 2009. The development of measurable speech rhythm in
Spanish speakers of English. In /Actas de XI Simposio Internacional de
Comunicacion Social/, Santiago de Cuba, 594–597.

Cumming, Ruth E. 2010. The language-specific integration of pitch and
duration. PhD thesis. University of Cambridge.

Cumming, Ruth E. 2011. Perceptually informed quantification of speech
rhythm in pairwise variability indices. /Phonetica /68(4): 256–277.

Deterding, David. 1994. The rhythm of Singapore English. In /Proceedings
of the fifth Australian international conference on speech science and
technology/, ed. Roberto Togneri, 316–321. Perth: Uniprint.

Deterding, David. 2001. The measurement of rhythm: A comparison of
Singapore and British English. /Journal of Phonetics /29: 217–230.

Ferragne, Emmanuel. 2008. Etude Phonétique des Dialectes Modernes de
l’Anglais des Iles Britanniques: Vers l’Identification Automatique du
Dialecte. PhD thesis. Université Lumière Lyon 2.

Ferragne, Emmanuel, and François Pellegrino. 2004. A comparative account
of the suprasegmental and rhythmic features of British English dialects.
/Actes de Modelisations pour l’Identification des Langues/, Paris, 121–126.

Fuchs, Robert. 2014a. Integrating variability in loudness and duration
in a multidimensional model of speech rhythm: Evidence from Indian
English and British English. In /Proceedings of speech prosody 7/,
Dublin, ed. Nick Campbell, Dafydd Gibbon, and Daniel Hirst, 290–294.

Fuchs, Robert. 2014b. Towards a perceptual model of speech rhythm:
Integrating the influence of f0 on perceived duration. In /Proceedings
of interspeech 2014/, ed. Haizhou Li, Helen Meng, Bin Ma, Eng Siong
Chng, and Lei Xie, Singapore, 1949–1953.

Fuchs, Robert. 2016. Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English: Evidence
from Educated Indian English and British English. Singapore: Springer.

Galves, Antonio, Jesus Garcia, Denise Duarte, and Charlotte Galves.
2002. Sonority as a basis for rhythmic class discrimination. In
/Proceedings of speech prosody 2002/, Aix-en-Provence, 323–326.

Gut, Ulrike. 2005. Nigerian English prosody. /English World-Wide /26(2):
153–177.

Gut, Ulrike. 2009. /Non-native speech. A corpus-based analysis of
phonological and phonetic properties of L2 English and German/.
Frankfurt: Peter Lang.

Gut, Ulrike, and Jan-Torsten Milde. 2002. The prosody of Nigerian
English. In /Proceedings of the speech prosody 2002 conference/, ed. Bel
Bell and Isabelle Marlien, 367–370. Aix-en-Provence: Laboratoire Parole
et Langage.

He, Lei. 2012. Syllabic intensity variations as quantification of speech
rhythm: Evidence from both L1 and L2. In /Proceedings of the 6th
international conference on speech prosody/, Shanghai, 22–26 May 2012,
ed. Qiuwu Ma, Hongwei Ding, and Daniel Hirst, 466–469. Shanghai: Tongji
University Press.

Jang, Tae-Yeoub. 2008. Speech rhythm metrics for automatic scoring of
English speech by Korean EFL learners. /Malsori Speech Sounds /66: 41–59.

Low, Ee Ling. 1998. Prosodic Prominence in Singapore English. PhD
thesis. University of Cambridge.

Sarmah, Priyankoo, Divya Verma Gogoi, and Caroline Wiltshire. 2009. Thai
English. Rhythm and vowels. /English World-Wide /30(2): 196–217.

White, Laurence, and Sven L. Mattys. 2007a. Calibrating rhythm: First
language and second language studies. /Journal of Phonetics /35(4): 501–522.

White, Laurence, and Sven L. Mattys. 2007b. Rhythmic typology and
variation in first and second languages. /Segmental and Prosodic Issues
in Romance Phonology /282: 237–257.

White, Laurence, Sven L. Mattys, Lucy Series, and Suzi Gage. 2007.
Rhythm metrics predict rhythmic discrimination. In /Proceedings of the
16th international congress of phonetic sciences/, Saarbrücken, 1009–1012.

Wiget, Klaus, Laurence White, Barbara Schuppler, Izabelle Grenon, Oleysa
Rauch, and Sven L. Mattys. 2010. How stable are acoustic metrics of
contrastive speech rhythm? /Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
/127(3): 1559–1569.

Hot off the press: Speech Rhythm in Varieties of English. Evidence from
Educated Indian English and British English
<https://www.springer.com/us/book/9783662478172> (Springer)

Are you a non-native speaker of English? Please help us by taking this
short survey on when and how you use the English language:
https://lamapoll.de/englishusageofnonnativespeakers-1/

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