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Foreign accent strength in Czech of Chinese speakers in the perception of listeners with various language backgrounds
Pan, Yang ; Veroňková, Jitka (advisor) ; Paillereau, Nikola (referee)
(in English) Listeners' perception of non-native speech has been a popular research topic in academia for many years. The topic of this paper is a comparison of the rating of non- native speech (specifically, native Chinese speakers) by listeners with different native languages, namely native Czech speakers and Chinese learners of Czech language as a foreign language. In particular, the influence of listener, speaker, and speech material factors on the rating of non-native speech was investigated. 25 Chinese listeners and 25 Czech listeners participated in the perception test. Their task was to rate the degree of comprehensibility and accentedness on the presented recordings of seven native speakers of Chinese who spoke Czech. The results of the experiment showed that the speech of the Chinese speakers was more comprehensible to Chinese listeners than to Czech listeners. At the same time, Chinese listeners perceived the foreign accent as weaker compared to Czech listeners. The matching of the speaker's and listener's native language background played a role. There was a weak correlation between the dimensions investigated, i.e. comprehensibility and accentedness. This study provides new insights for research on the pronunciation of Czech language as a foreign language of Chinese speakers.
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In-class pronunciation of Czech teachers of English and their cognition about pronunciation
Čtvrtečková, Lenka ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Veroňková, Jitka (referee)
The thesis deals with teacher cognition in the pronunciation teaching of Czech secondary school English teachers, presents their actual pronunciation based on authentic recordings of classroom lessons and searches for intersections between the two domains in the context of current research on pronunciation teaching and Czech English. The theoretical part of the thesis introduces the topic of pronunciation teaching and defines its goals in accordance with current research that prioritizes intelligibility, introduces the concept of teacher cognition, and summarizes what is yet known about the sound properties of Czech English. The practical part includes the assessment of teacher cognition data collected from Czech teachers from secondary schools through questionnaires and the material in the form of authentic recordings from lessons at schools. The recordings are subsequently analysed auditorily in terms of selected segmental and suprasegmental pronunciation phenomena; this part also includes a search for any intersections of these two areas. A total of 11 respondents participated in the study, however, only 10 recordings were suitable for analysis. The data show that pronunciation teaching is important for teachers and one of their goals is the intelligibility of students for others. However, few believe in...
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Specific phonetic features of Czech in Vietnamese speakers
Nguyen, Phuong Hoa ; Veroňková, Jitka (advisor) ; Saicová Římalová, Lucie (referee)
Present diploma thesis deals with pronunciation specifics in Czech of adult speakers whose mother tongue is Vietnamese. It is based on the assumption of the influence of Vietnamese as a mother tongue on the pronunciation of Czech as a second/foreign language. In the theoretical part there is a description of the phonetic aspect of both languages, especially with regard to their differences. On the basis of the given comparison and derivation of differences on the phonetic level, the author determines the expected pronunciation deviations, i.e. potential interference features in Czech. The practical part of the work is the analysis of audio recordings of Czech by adult Vietnamese speakers (4 people), which will be taken for the purposes of the thesis. The recording consists of a short interview and a read text. Part of the experiment will be the creation of a perception test from speech samples of Vietnamese speakers, which will be assessed by native Czech speakers in terms of intelligibility and the level of effort expended to understand the speech.
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State-of-the-art phonetics and its implementation into foreign-language teaching methods at elementary schools
Slížková, Petra ; Chládková, Kateřina (advisor) ; Veroňková, Jitka (referee)
The purpose of this thesis is to find innovative ways of teaching foreign languages in Czech elementary schools. The thesis aims to discover new concepts for teaching, which derive from the principals of CLIL - Content and Language Integrated Training, reflects scholarly findings derived from studies relating to language acquisition and also takes into consideration the needs and specifics of the Czech educational system. The thesis presents a proposal of a new teaching method: Prime Language Acquisition - PrimeLA. Key words: language acquisition, L1 acquisition, L2 acquisition, L3 acquisition, foreign language teaching, CLIL, elementary education
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Vowel length in Czech two-syllable words in L1-German speakers
Chabrová, Anna ; Veroňková, Jitka (advisor) ; Skarnitzl, Radek (referee)
(in English): When learning a second language, besides other things, it's important to acquire its correct pronunciation. In this thesis, I decided to merge my two fields of study, German language and literature and phonetics, and analyse the pronunciation of native German speakers learning Czech as their second language. I decided to focus on the vocal quantity in Czech two-syllable words. Within my experiment, I used recordings of 8 native German speakers reading a Czech text. From these recordings, I extracted the two-syllable words and out of those I created a perception test for native Czech listeners. The listeners' task was to choose the word they heard based on given options and also to mark how difficult it was to decide between the options. Additionally, I carried out an acoustic analysis of vowel duration and extracted the formant values of vowels. The perception test and acoustic analysis confirmed the assumption that native German speakers have problems with quantity in Czech two-syllable words and allowed a clearer understanding of which errors are the most common ones and what is the relationship between the results of objective measurements and perception.
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Cognitive impact of glottalization in a spontaneous political debate
Šedivá, Michaela ; Šturm, Pavel (advisor) ; Veroňková, Jitka (referee)
Glottal stop and its perceptual equivalents (also known as glottalization phenomena) are known for fulfilling many linguistic functions in the languages of the world. In this thesis we focus on the function of word boundary signalling, which has been described is many different languages and which is referred to as "ráz" in the Czech linguistic tradition. The first section of this thesis is devoted to the detailed description of this phenomenon as well as to aspects of its production not only but also in the Czech language. The main part of this thesis is dedicated to investigating the cognitive effect of its presence in native Czech listeners' perception of spontaneous speech. To fulfil this aim, we carried out an experiment, based on a word-monitoring paradigm. Natural and manipulated sentences selected from a spontaneous political debate were used as stimuli. The low level of control of the source material makes our design relatively innovative in comparison with similar existing studies. Fifty listeners were instructed to press a button as soon as they heard a particular target word which was presented to them visually in advance and which was preceded by text including either glottalization or linking. The results of our experiment partially support proposed hypothesis, that the presence of...
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Personal characteristics of speech rhythm in Russian newsreading
Čížková, Irena ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Veroňková, Jitka (referee)
Personal characteristics of speech rhythm in Russian newsreading Bc. Irena Čížková Abstract An issue of individual rhythmic characteristics of particular 5 native speakers of the Russian language, newsreaders from the BBC, is described in this thesis. A research of the given 5 speech recordings was conducted based on the academic concepts created by Ramus, Mehler and Nespor, and by Low and Grabe and also by Dellwo, so through a speech rhythm research based on rhythm correlates that are related to vocalic and intervocalic intervals. The recordings were processed in an analyting program called Praat and the extracted results were then evaluated in a statistical processor called STATISTICA. These materials were used for further analysis. The recordings were analysed based on several parameters: %V (proportion of vocalic intervals in one breath group), ∆C and ∆V (standard deviation of the vocalic and consonantal interval duration), PVI-V, PVI-C (Pairwise Variability Index of the vocalic and consonantal interval duration), Varco V and Varco C (variation coefficient of the vocalic and consonantal interval duration) and the difference between duration of stressed and unstressed vowels. Three parameters that were the most successful from the speakers' ability to differentiate point of view were selected through an...
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Pronunciation of two distinct "i" Vowels in the East Lach dialect
Blažková, Jana ; Palková, Zdena (advisor) ; Veroňková, Jitka (referee)
The vowel inventory of standard Czech includes five short vowels /a/, /e/, /i/, /o/, /u/ and five long vowels /a:/, /e:/, /i:/, /o:/, /u:/. Nevertheless, the dialectological literature indicates two distinct /i/ vowels, /i/ and /y/, in all the groups of the Lach dialects. The contrast of these two phonemes has a historical origin and has already disappeared in most of Czech and Moravian dialects. The objective of the diploma thesis "Pronunciation of Two Distinct /i/ vowels in the East Lach Dialect" is to witness the present state of the production and perception of two /i/ vowels in the East Lach dialect. Former dialectological texts still indicate the opposition as conserved, though considering the general recession of Czech dialects, the diploma thesis aims to verify if the East Lach dialect still distinguishes the /i/ and /y/ vowel and if this should prove to be the case, to determine the acoustic features that assure its perception. The research was based on minimal pairs and syllables, where the /i/ vowels were preceded by different consonants. The minimal pairs and syllables were inserted in text which was read by the speakers and recorded. Within the framework of the diploma thesis, 30 senior speakers of the East Lach dialect were recorded. Afterwards, six speakers were chosen to feature in two...
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Differences in the basic pitch relevant to the perceptual distinction of melodemes in English
Veroňková, Jitka ; Palková, Zdenka (advisor) ; Krčmová, Marie (referee) ; Janota, Přemysl (referee)
As in the case of many other languages, the intonation fulfils certain linguistic functions in Czech. It distinguishes conclusive vs. non-conclusive clauses, declarative vs. interrogative clauses and neutral vs. marked usage clauses. In the case of declarative and interrogative clauses, the intonation is the single distinguishing feature. Structures of the basic patterns to express these linguistic functions were standardized and in general accepted, but not enough is known about their particular realizations. In general, these structure types are realized in the final stress unit of the utterance. It has been confirmed that the intonation courses of some functionally diverse contours are similar and there exist overlaps among them. The perceptual differences between contours can be caused only by the size of F0 excursions. Our research focuses on finding minimal distinctions in F0 excursions which are sufficient to distinguish phonologically different types of sentences. Some structure types can be fully realized on the at least three-syllable stress units, that is why these were chosen to be analysed. The research is based both on synthetic speech and natural one. Two sets of synthetic contours, first containg three-syllable stress units and the second the four-syllable ones, that cover the structure...
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Pronounciation and perceptual acceptability of the sound r in Czech speeches by foreign speakers whose L1 is German
Novotná, Gabriela ; Veroňková, Jitka (advisor) ; Martínek, František (referee)
The topic of this diploma thesis belongs to the field of language acquisition and language learning. It aims to explore Czech as a second and foreign language of speakers whose mother tongue is German, namely concerning the pronunciation of the r-sound and its perceptual acceptability for Czech native speakers. The theoretical part summarizes the area of pronunciation learning and acquisition in a second and foreign language and outlines various pronunciation difficulties German speakers tend to have in Czech. It deals with the rhotics in general and subsequently focuses on the r- sound, both in Czech and in German, as well as in mutual comparison. In the last chapter, the combinatorial qualities of the r-sound which are used as a basis for the practical part are discussed. The practical part describes the conducted research. Five recordings of German students were collected. The students were staying in Prague for one semester with the Erasmus programme exchange and were learning Czech for the first time. For the recordings a written text was constructed which the students read individually. The text emphasized words including the r-sound. From the recordings, various key words were cut off and a perceptual test was compiled and given to Czech native speakers to evaluate the pronunciation of the...
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