Unstressed Vowels in German Learner English: An Instrumental Study

Lukas Soenning

doi:10.2478/rela-2014-0001

Authors

Lukas Soenning University of Bamberg

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.2478/rela-2014-0001

Keywords:

vowel reduction, acoustic analysis, SLA, L1 German, L2 English

Abstract

This study investigates the production of vowels in unstressed syllables by advanced German learners of English in comparison with native speakers of Standard Southern British English. Two acoustic properties were measured: duration and formant structure. The results indicate that duration of unstressed vowels is similar in the two groups, though there is some variation depending on the phonetic context. In terms of formant structure, learners produce slightly higher F1 and considerably lower F2, the difference in F2 being statistically significant for each learner. Formant values varied as a function of context and orthographic representation of the vowel.

References

Abercrombie, D. 1967. Elements of general phonetics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Google Scholar

Aoyama, K. and S. Guion. 2007. Prosody in second language acquisition: Acoustic analyses of duration and F0 range. In M. Munro and O. Bohn (eds) Language experience in second language speech learning. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 281-297.
Google Scholar

Barry, W. 2007. Rhythm as an L2 problem: How prosodic is it? In J. Trouvain and U. Gut (eds) Non-native prosody: phonetic description and teaching practice. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 97- 120.
Google Scholar

Broselow, E. and Y. Kang. 2013. Phonology and speech. In J. Herschensohnand M. Young-Scholten (eds) The Cambridge handbook of SLA. Cambridge: CUP. 529-553.
Google Scholar

Crystal, D. 2008. A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Malden: Blackwell.
Google Scholar

Dauer, R. 1983. Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalysed. Journal of Phonetics 11: 51-62.
Google Scholar

Delattre, P. 1981. An acoustic and articulatory study of vowel reduction in four languages. In P. Delattre (ed) Studies in comparative phonetics. Heidelberg: Julius Groos. 63-93.
Google Scholar

Dellwo, V. and P. Wagner. 2003. Relations between language rhythm and speech rate. Proceedings of the 15th ICPhS, Barcelona, Spain. 471-474.
Google Scholar

Di Paolo, M., Yaeger-Dror, M. and A. Beckford Wassink. 2011. Analyzing vowels. In M. Di Paolo and M. Yaeger-Dror (eds) Sociophonetics. A student’s guide. New York: Routledge. 87-106.
Google Scholar

Dretzke, B. 2006. Ausspracheschulung im Fremd-sprachenunterricht. In U. Jung (ed) Praktische Handreichung für Fremdsprachenlehrer. Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 132-140.
Google Scholar

Flege, J. and O. Bohn. 1989. An instrumental study of vowel reduction and stress placement in Spanish-accented English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 11: 35-62.
Google Scholar

Fox, J. 2013. Package ‘car’. R-package version 2.0-17. http://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/car/car.pdf
Google Scholar

Ghazali, S. and N. Bouchhioua. 2003. The learning of English prosodic structures by speakers of Tunisian Arabic: word stress and weak forms. Proceedings of the 15th ICPhS, Barcelona, Spain. 961-964.
Google Scholar

Gibbon, D. and U. Gut. 2001. Measuring speech rhythm. Proceedings of Eurospeech, Aalborg, Denmark. 91-94.
Google Scholar

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

Gut, U. 2003. Non-native speech rhythm in German. Proceedings of the 15th ICPhS, Barcelona, Spain. 2437-2440.
Google Scholar

Gut, U. 2006. Unstressed vowels in non-native German, Speech Prosody 2006. Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Speech Prosody, eds. R. Hoffmann and H. Mixdorff. Dresden, Germany.
Google Scholar

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

Kaltenbacher, E. 1998. Zum Sprachrhythmus des Deutschen und seinem Erwerb. In H. Wegener (ed) Eine zweite Sprache lernen. Tübingen: Narr. 21-38.
Google Scholar

Kendall, T. and E.R. Thomas. 2013. Package ‘vowels’. R-package version 1.2. http://ncslaap.lib.ncsu.edu/tools/norm/
Google Scholar

Kohler, J. 1995. Einführung in die Phonetik des Deutschen. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag.
Google Scholar

Lee, B., Guion, S.B. and T. Harada. 2006. Acoustic analysis of the production of unstressed English vowels by early and late Korean and Japanese bilinguals. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 28(3): 487-513.
Google Scholar

Low, E.-L. and E. Grabe. 1995. Prosodic patterns in Singapore English. Proceedings of the 13th ICPhS. 636-639.
Google Scholar

Major, R. 2001. Foreign accent: The ontogeny and phylogeny of second language phonology. Mahwah: Erlbaum.
Google Scholar

Major, R. 2008. Transfer in second language phonology: A review. In J. Hansen Edwards and M. Zampini (eds) Phonology and second language acquisition. Amsterdam: Benjamins. 63-94.
Google Scholar

Ordin, M., Polyanskaya, L. and C. Ulbrich. 2011. Acquisition of timing patterns in second language. Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2011, 1129-1132.
Google Scholar

Parkes, G. 2001. The Mistakes Clinic for German-speaking Learners of English. Southampton: Englang.
Google Scholar

Pascoe, G. 1996. Pronunciation Analysis and Teaching. In W. Barry and A. Addison (eds) Phonus 2. Saarbrücken: Institut für Phonetik. 109-122.
Google Scholar

Peterson, G.E. and H.E. Barney. 1952. Control methods used in a study of vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 24: 175-184.
Google Scholar

Pike, K.L. 1945. The intonation of American English. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press.
Google Scholar

Porzuczek, A. 2010. The weak forms of TO in the pronunciation of Polish learners of English. In E. Waniek-Klimczak (ed) Issues in Accents of English 2: Variability and norm, ed.. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 309-322.
Google Scholar

Ramus, F., Nespor, M. and J. Mehler. 1999. Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition 73: 265-292.
Google Scholar

Roach, P. 1982. On the distinction between ‘stress-timed’ and ‘syllable-timed’ languages. In D. Crystal (ed) Linguistic controversies. Essays in linguistic theory and practice. London: Arnold. 73-79.
Google Scholar

Traunmüller, H. 1997. Auditory scales of frequency representation. http://www.ling.su.se/staff/hartmut/bark
Google Scholar

Wesener, T. 1999. The phonetics of function words in German spontaneous speech. In K. Kohler (ed) Phrase-level phonetics and phonology. Kiel: Universität Kiel. 327-377.
Google Scholar

Wilcox, R. 2012. Modern statistics for the social and behavioral sciences. Boca Raton: CRC Press.
Google Scholar