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Phonetics in the teaching of German as a foreign language
Holá, Klára ; Berglová, Eva (advisor) ; Machač, Pavel (referee)
This thesis explains the role of phonetics in the teaching of German as a foreign language. The beginning examines the present state - here I try to target in particular the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages and its parts that have to do with phonetics. Next, I explain certain terms with which I work with in most of the thesis. The next chapter concentrates on the role that phonetics play in the teaching of foreign languages. In the practical part of this work I deal with the differences of Czech and German pronunciation. The changes I discovered by comparing both languages became the fundamentals of the phonetic analysis of twenty recordings that obtained a total of 1480 analyzed documents, from which I determined that Czech students have the hardest time pronouncing the following German sounds , , , and . The task of the next analysis was to determine how the pronunciations of these problematic sounds are processed in the following text books: Delfin, Planet and Tangram. The best text book was Tangram, then Delfin and the worst was Planet. Unfortunately, none of the text books emphasize pronunciation and exercising it to a sufficient degree.
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Parametric synthesis and perceptual verification of Czech trills
Koppová, Martina ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Machač, Pavel (referee)
There is a parametric description of American English sounds suitable for parametric synthesis using high-level parametres in the HLSyn system, upon which the Stevens and Bickley system was created as the type of synthesis based on Denis Klatt's formant synthesis and combining the aspects of formant and articulatory synthesis. The aim of this work was to create a parametric description of Czech vibrants, i. e. /r/ and /ř/, synthesize these sounds and examine whether they are considered natural or not in a perception test. The perception test has shown that it is possible to synthesize the simple vibrant /r/ without any problems; the synthesis was based on modification of sounded alveolar explosive parametres and the modification was perceived as natural. However, the fricative vibrant /ř/ proved to be too complicated to be synthesized and even though we tried to follow its development according to real data it was still perceived as unnatural.
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Comparison of some spectral and temporal characteristics of German fricatives [x] and [ç] and Czech fricative [x] and their reflection in perception
Sedláčková, Petra ; Machač, Pavel (advisor) ; Skarnitzl, Radek (referee)
The aim of this diploma thesis is to analyze some of the acoustic characteristics of German fricatives [x] and [ ] and Czech fricative [x]. These sounds will be described and compared partly on the basis of spectral qualities of their noise, expressed by the so-called spectral moments (see chap. 3), and partly on the basis of their temporal characteristics. We assume to find a co-articulatory influence of the preceding vowel on the spectral characteristics of a fricative. We further assume that potential differences in values of the spectral moments, which can be, to a certain extent, considered an acoustic correlation of the place of articulation, can demonstrate a slightly different place of articulation of Czech and German velar fricatives. Using a perception test, we will attempt to explore a possible relation of German "Ich-laut" in the speech of German students of Czech to spectral mean values. The spectral moment measurements along with the perception test results may be found useful in teaching German as a second language for improving one's pronunciation. In practise, it can lead to an improvement in accepting a foreign speaker as an efficient user of the language.
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Electropalatographic study of voicing assimilation in Czech alveolar plosives
Vaněčková, Kateřina ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Machač, Pavel (referee)
The phonological contrast of voicing is based on several phonetic differences which are yet to be satisfactorily explained. The most obvious of them is the presence of vocal cords vibration which has so far been considered crucial in Czech. For capturing the differences in other dimensions, the concept of the strength of articulation, or fortis/lenis contrast have been established. There are some rare cases in languages when the couple of phonemes with the voicing contrast differs also in another feature that cannot be explained by the fortis/lenis dimension correlates. This is the case of Czech alveolar plosives which have been described to differ in their place of articulation: the linguopalatal contact is more anterior for [t] that for [d]. The main aim of this study is to ascertain whether this contrast can indicate the original phoneme in the contexts where the voicing contrast is neutralized due to assimilation. Nevertheless, our electropalatographic data from 7 speakers of Czech show that not only the phonemes do not seem to influence the anteriority of the voicing realisation, but also the very asymmetry of linguopalatal contact in the voicing realisations tends to be neutralised in the segmental context used in our study, that is in coda position in the word-final syllable followed by the...
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The dynamic character of phonetic reductions at the sentence level in spontaneous spoken English
Dalešická, Lucie ; Machač, Pavel (advisor) ; Králová Zíková, Magdalena (referee)
(in English): This bachelor's thesis is concerned with the topic of phonetic reductions in spontaneous speech and its relationship with the recognition of speech units. Research was conducted on the English language using a method previously used as part of a research done on the Czech language. The aim of this research is to tackle questions pertaining to the topics of the existence of a) a unified pattern in the distribution of phonetic reductions in English sentences, b) a possible correlation between a calculated phonetic reduction rate of words and their recognizability, and c) the impact of the so-called 'chunking' on recognizability. The results of this thesis hint at a presence of a pattern in the distribution of phonetic reductions in English, a strong inverse relationship between the rate of phonetic reduction and recognizability, and a notable impact of chunking on perception. This thesis also mentions the influence of regional varieties of English on comprehensibility across those varieties.
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Final schwa in Dutch
Kratochvíl, Tomáš ; Machač, Pavel (advisor) ; Elšík, Viktor (referee)
This thesis deals with final schwa in Dutch in final segments -e and -en, which are in most of contemporary Dutch dialects homophonous because of the elision of the final nasal. The first part of the research was designed as a study of the pronunciation of native Dutch speakers. The subject of this part of research was an analysis of recordings of the text designed specifically for the purposes of the analysing of the final schwa focusing on the homophony of final -e and -en. This part used a pair of sentences which containing potentially homophonous substantives which differed in their grammatical number. The second part of this research consisted of the perception test using short recordings of semantically ambiguous sentences in order to find out how native speakers of Dutch differentiate grammatical number in cases where singular and plural forms of words in sentences are homophonous. Although I didn't find any convincing evidence of the influence of elision of nasal on the preceding schwa, the results of the perception test show that the perception of homophonous words differing in their grammatical number is based mainly on the semantics of the word in question and its context. Keywords: Dutch - phonology - phonetics - homophony - schwa
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Final schwa in Dutch
Kratochvíl, Tomáš ; Machač, Pavel (advisor) ; Elšík, Viktor (referee)
This thesis deals with final schwa in Dutch, especially in ending segments -e and -en, which are today in most of Dutch dialects homophonous because of the elision of final nasal. The first part of the research was designed as a study of the pronunciation of native Dutch speakers. The subject of this part of research was an analysis of recordings of text designed specially for the purpose of the analysis of final schwa with focus on the homophony of final -e and -en. This part used sentences which differed only in the grammatical number a substantive; in some cases verbs were also used. The second part of this research consisted of the perception test with short recordings of semantically ambiguous sentences, with purpose of finding out how native speakers of Dutch differentiate grammatical number in cases where singular and plural forms of words in sentences are homophonous. Keywords: Dutch - phonology - phonetics - homophony - schwa
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The Czech fricative trill /ř/ and its realization by non-native speakers of Czech
Zábojová, Lenka ; Machač, Pavel (advisor) ; Štěpánová, Veronika (referee)
The thesis in its theoretical part discusses the rhotics, including the Czech trills, and especially focuses on articulatory, perceptual and acoustic properties of the fricative trill [ř]. Attention is also paid to possible corrections of disorders of pronunciation. In the experimental part the research of the realization of the trill [ř] by non-native speakers of Czech is described. This research mainly deals with differences in articulation, which are produced by the non-native speakers of Czech (specifically the native speakers of German, Polish, Russian and Vietnamese language). Key words: rhotics, trills, devoicing, trilling, foreigner accent, language level.
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