Speech Rhythm in L1, L2 and
Learner Varieties of English
Workshop at
BICLCE2017 (7th 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
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323–326.
Gut, Ulrike. 2005. Nigerian English prosody. English World-Wide 26(2): 153–177.
Gut, Ulrike. 2009. Non-native speech. A
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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
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of the Acoustical Society of America 127(3): 1559–1569.
--
Robert Fuchs | Department of English Language and Literature |
Hong Kong Baptist University | 224 Waterloo Road, Kowloon Tong,
Hong Kong SAR | https://hkbu.academia.edu/RobertFuchs
| https://sites.google.com/site/rflinguistics/
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