The acoustics of English vowels in the speech of Dutch learners before and after pronunciation training
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Dick Smakman
Abstract
Amongst all second-language skills, pronunciation seems to be in a league of its own. It is difficult to teach and acquire as it is a highly intuitive and physiological skill. This research describes the successes of pronunciation training, specifically related to Dutch learners of English. Acoustic measurements were done on selected vowels. The F1 and F2 values – showing degree of vowel openness and front/back-ness, respectively – before and after training showed that an individual learner’s progress in the production of one vowel does not necessarily imply equal success in another. Types of learners could be distinguished; while most learners improved, others stagnated or regressed. The results suggest that Dutch learners should focus more on vowel openness than on front/back-ness.
Abstract
Amongst all second-language skills, pronunciation seems to be in a league of its own. It is difficult to teach and acquire as it is a highly intuitive and physiological skill. This research describes the successes of pronunciation training, specifically related to Dutch learners of English. Acoustic measurements were done on selected vowels. The F1 and F2 values – showing degree of vowel openness and front/back-ness, respectively – before and after training showed that an individual learner’s progress in the production of one vowel does not necessarily imply equal success in another. Types of learners could be distinguished; while most learners improved, others stagnated or regressed. The results suggest that Dutch learners should focus more on vowel openness than on front/back-ness.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword xi
- Tone and stress in North-West Indo-Aryan 1
- Whose voice is that? Challenges in forensic phonetics 14
- Pitch accent placement in Dutch as a second language 28
- The problems of adverbs in Zulu 42
- Meaningful grammar is binary, local, anti-symmetric, recursive and incomplete 60
- How prosody is both mandatory and optional 71
- No Stress Typology 83
- The effect of pause insertion on the intelligibility of Danish among Swedes 96
- Intonation, bias and Greek NPIs 109
- Information status and L2 prosody 120
- Does boundary tone production in whispered speech depend on its bearer? Exploring a case of tonal crowding in whisper 131
- The primacy of the weak in Carib prosody 144
- The effects of age and level of education on the ability of adult native speakers of Dutch to segment speech into words 152
- Doing grammatical semantics as if it were phonetics 165
- Phonetic aspects of polar questions in Sienese 174
- Etymological sub-lexicons constrain the graphematic solution space 189
- Do speakers try to distract attention from their speech errors? The prosody of self-repairs 203
- Field notes from a phonetician on Tundra Yukaghir orthography 218
- Cross-regional differences in the perception of fricative devoicing 230
- Evidence for three-level vowel length in Ageer Dinka 246
- Phonetic accounts of timed responses in syllable monitoring experiments 261
- The independent effects of prosodic structure and information status on tonal coarticulation 275
- The acoustics of English vowels in the speech of Dutch learners before and after pronunciation training 288
- The use of Chinese dialects 302
- Durational effects of phrasal stress 311
- The Laryngeal Class in RcvP and Voice phenomena in Dutch 323
- Affricates in English as a natural class 350
- Index 359
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword xi
- Tone and stress in North-West Indo-Aryan 1
- Whose voice is that? Challenges in forensic phonetics 14
- Pitch accent placement in Dutch as a second language 28
- The problems of adverbs in Zulu 42
- Meaningful grammar is binary, local, anti-symmetric, recursive and incomplete 60
- How prosody is both mandatory and optional 71
- No Stress Typology 83
- The effect of pause insertion on the intelligibility of Danish among Swedes 96
- Intonation, bias and Greek NPIs 109
- Information status and L2 prosody 120
- Does boundary tone production in whispered speech depend on its bearer? Exploring a case of tonal crowding in whisper 131
- The primacy of the weak in Carib prosody 144
- The effects of age and level of education on the ability of adult native speakers of Dutch to segment speech into words 152
- Doing grammatical semantics as if it were phonetics 165
- Phonetic aspects of polar questions in Sienese 174
- Etymological sub-lexicons constrain the graphematic solution space 189
- Do speakers try to distract attention from their speech errors? The prosody of self-repairs 203
- Field notes from a phonetician on Tundra Yukaghir orthography 218
- Cross-regional differences in the perception of fricative devoicing 230
- Evidence for three-level vowel length in Ageer Dinka 246
- Phonetic accounts of timed responses in syllable monitoring experiments 261
- The independent effects of prosodic structure and information status on tonal coarticulation 275
- The acoustics of English vowels in the speech of Dutch learners before and after pronunciation training 288
- The use of Chinese dialects 302
- Durational effects of phrasal stress 311
- The Laryngeal Class in RcvP and Voice phenomena in Dutch 323
- Affricates in English as a natural class 350
- Index 359
