The relationship between the production of word stress and musical abilities in Polish learners of English

Authors

  • Anna Gralińska-Brawata University of Łódź
  • Paulina Rybińska

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/rela-2017-0015

Keywords:

English word stress, musical abilities, phonetic training

Abstract

The pilot study presented in this paper is exploratory in nature and aims first to investigate if there exists a relationship between the production of word stress and learners’ musical abilities, and then, to explore the effects of this relationship on teachability of word stress to Polish advanced students of English. The results of the analysis on the auditory recordings were compared with the information provided by the informants in a questionnaire and a performance music test. The obtained data were analysed using descriptive statistics. The results show that the students tend to overgeneralise word stress rules in English rather than transfer the penultimate syllable rule from Polish. In addition, there seems to be a relationship between word stress production and musical ability for the majority of the participants.

References

Archibald, John. 1993. Language Learnability and L2 Phonology: The Acquisition of Metrical Parameters. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Google Scholar

Balčytytė-Kurtinienė, Giedrė. 2015. Musical Aptitude and Language: Activating Phonetic Skills Through Music. Paper presented at 8th Conference on ICT in Language Learning.
Google Scholar

Celce-Murcia, Marianne, Brinton, Donna M., and Goodwin, Janet M. 2010. Teaching Pronunciation: A Reference for Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Clark, John, Yallop, Collin, and Fletcher, Janet. 2007. An Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology. 3rd edn. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Cruttenden, Alan. 1997. Gimson’s Pronunciation of English. 5th edn. London-Sydney-Auckland: Arnold International Students’ Edition.
Google Scholar

Crystal, David. 2008. A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics. 6th edn. Oxford: Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Dłuska, Maria. 1974. Prozodia Języka Polskiego. Warszawa: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.
Google Scholar

Dukiewicz, Leokadia., Sawicka, Irena. 1995. Fonetyka i Fonologia. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Instytutu Języka Polskiego PAN.
Google Scholar

Fonseca-Mora, Carmen M., Toscano-Fuentes, Carmen and Kathleen Wermke. 2011. Melodies that help: The Relation Between Language Aptitude and Musical Intelligence. Anglistik International Journal of English Studies 22(1): 101-118.
Google Scholar

Giegerich, Heinz J. 1992. English Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Hausen, Maija. et al. 2013. Music and Speech Prosody: A Common Rhythm. Frontiers in Psychology 4: 566.
Google Scholar

Jassem, Wiktor. 1962. Akcent Języka Polskiego. Wrocław: Ossolineum.
Google Scholar

Magne, Cyrille, Schön, Daniele and Mireille Besson. 2006. Musician Children Detect Pitch Violations in Both Music and Language Better than Nonmusician Children: Behavioural and Electrophysio-logical Approaches. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 18(2): 199-211.
Google Scholar

Malarski, Kamil, Jekiel, Mateusz. 2016. The Acquisition of Nonrhoticity in Musical and Nonmusical Advanced Polish Students of English. Paper presented on Dec 2nd 2016 at 10th International Conference on Native and Non-native Accents of English ACCENTS 2016.
Google Scholar

Milovanov, Riia. et al. 2010. Foreign Language Pronunciation Skills and Musical Aptitude: A Study of Finnish Adults with Higher Education. Learning and Individual Differences 20(1), 56–60. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2009.11.003
Google Scholar

Pastuszek-Lipińska, Barbara. 2008. Musicians Outperform Nonmusicians in Speech Imitation. Lecture Notes in Computer Science 4969: 56-73.
Google Scholar

Połać, Agnieszka. 2014. Investigating the Relationship Between Linguistic Aptitude and Musical Faculty. Unpublished M.A. thesis. Łódź: Uniwersytet Łódzki.
Google Scholar

Roach, Peter. 2002. Studying rhythm and timing in English speech: Scientific curiosity, or a classroom necessity? In Ewa Waniek-Klimczak and Patrick J. Melia (eds.) Accents and Speech in Teaching English Phonetics and Phonology, vol. 5, 199-206. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang (Łódź Studies in Language).
Google Scholar

Roach, Peter. 2009. English Phonetics and Phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Google Scholar

Sobkowiak, Włodzimierz. 2004. English Phonetics for Poles. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Poznańskie.
Google Scholar

Waniek-Klimczak, Ewa. 2015. Factors affecting word stress recognition by advanced Polish learners of English. In Waniek-Klimczak, Ewa and Mirosław Pawlak (eds.) Teaching and Researching the Pronunciation of English, 189-204. Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag.
Google Scholar

Waniek-Klimczak, Ewa. 2009. Sources of Difficulty in the Acquisition of English Rhythm by Polish Learners: A Developmental Perspective. In Wysocka, Maria (ed.) On Language Structure, Acquisition and Teaching. Studies in Honour of Janusz Arabski on the Occasion of his 70thBirthday, 359-169. Katowice: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Śląskiego.
Google Scholar

Waniek-Klimczak, Ewa. 2002. How to Predict the Unpredictable: English Word Stress from Polish Perspective. In Waniek-Klimczak, Ewa and Patrick J. Melia (eds.) Accents and Speech in Teaching English Phonetics and Phonology, 221-242. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.
Google Scholar

Weinsberg, Adam. 1983. Językoznawstwo Ogólne. Warszawa: PWN.
Google Scholar

Zybert, Jerzy and Stępień, Sabina. 2009. Musical Intelligence and Foreign Language Learning. Research in Language (7). 99-111.
Google Scholar

Downloads

Published

2017-09-30

How to Cite

Gralińska-Brawata, A., & Rybińska, P. (2017). The relationship between the production of word stress and musical abilities in Polish learners of English. Research in Language, 15(3), 265–283. https://doi.org/10.1515/rela-2017-0015

Issue

Section

Articles