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Consonantal and vocalic differences in Czech English with reduced and enhanced foreignness
Pojarová, Veronika ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Weingartová, Lenka (referee)
The objective of this thesis is to identify those features of the Czech accent in English that are the most salient in the perception of the Czech listener and that may disturb the communication process. The purpose of the introductory chapter is to familiarize the reader with the subject of the foreign accent, to provide a brief summary of the current state of research and to introduce a series of empirical studies. The research part of the thesis analyzes the individual realizations of the selected speech sounds /θ, ð, ŋ, r, w, æ, ɜː/ and ventures to draw meaningful conclusions from the results. The material analyzed consists of a total of 3568 speech sound tokens, recorded by 9 male and 19 female speakers. Each respondent produced two recordings, one in the British standard mode and another where the speaker imitated the Czech foreign accent. The 3568 tokens were individually rated and the two modes were then compared for each speaker. The results showed /r/ to be favoured by the largest number of speakers as an indicator of the Czech accent, while /θ, ð, ŋ/ often had the same rating in both modes. However, additional factors such as speaker proficiency and number of tokens from individual speech sounds must be taken into consideration before any final conclusions can be drawn from the raw data....
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Phone durations in multi-syllable words with Czech analogues in Czech English
Růžek, Jan ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Skarnitzl, Radek (referee)
This diploma thesis examines the foreign accent of Czech speakers in English. We focus on the factor of phone duration, which relates to both segmental and prosodic levels of phonetic description and is one of the correlates of prosodic prominence and speech rhythm. 84 words were selected from the texts avaible in the Prague Phonetic Corpus that have analogues in the loanword lexicon of Czech. Pronunciations of these words by native speakers (professional radio reporters) were compared with productions by Czech university students. The students were recorded prior to atteding a course in English phonetics. Based on our observations of durational patterns, we infer some plausible tendencies to be expected in Czech production of English. As durational interference from Czech into English has up to this date been a relatively unresearch domain, the present study adopts a qualitative research methodology. Keywords: Duration, Foreign Accent, Czech English, Interference 6
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Didactic Perspective on Intersonorant Voicing
Brožová, Jana ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Bojarová, Marie (referee)
This thesis aims at a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon called inter-sonorant voicing which frequently occurs in the speech of Czech learners of English. The theoretical part focuses on a general description and explanation of this problem in the context of the negative interference from learners' mother tongue. The practical part contains a complete list of words prone to inter-sonorant voicing and describes the method of selection of these words. Finally, the results of this analysis were applied in creating teaching materials. KEY WORDS inter-sonorant voicing, Czech English, integration, phonemic awareness
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Perceptual evaluation of rhythmic features in Czech English
Hanzlíková, Dagmar ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Klégr, Aleš (referee)
The aim of this thesis is to investigate the effect of changes in speech rhythm on the perception of personality traits which are detectable in speech. The theoretical part is concerned with the description of some important theories in the field of psychology of personality, then with summarizing research done in the effects of foreign-accented speech on perception, and finally with presenting the issue of speech rhythm with a focus on representative studies of speech rhythm and its effect on speech perception. In an independently designed experiment, the changes in speech rhythm were created by manipulating the durational patterns and pitch contours. Subsequently a perceptual test was prepared. Twenty subjects were asked to evaluate individual speech samples and rate to what extent they would characterize the speaker by the given personality trait. The results from the perceptual tests were analyzed from multiple points of view: the effects of the manipulations on the perception in general, and then in relation to the nationality of the speaker (native vs. non-native speaker), to the personality trait in question, and in relation to the individual speakers and items. The results showed some tendencies for example in perception of honesty in relation to durational patterns, or in perception of...
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Aspiration of English plosives in Czech students of English studies
Pospíšilová, Andrea ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Dušková, Libuše (referee)
Voice onset time (VOT) was shown to provide an effective basis on which to differentiate individual plosives in English. This thesis carries out an analysis of recordings of university students to determine whether specific phonetic in- struction improves pronunciation of non-native speakers of English with focus on aspiration of plosives and VOT. In the first part, a theoretical background is provided with definitions of plosives, VOT and its use and measurement. It also reviews the factors that have been shown to affect the VOT values. In addition, a brief overview of second language acquisition is given, with focus on English pronunciation. The second, empirical part describes the material and method used in the analysis and provides figures and results of statistical tests that were run. The results suggest a significant increase in VOT values as a result of one semester of Phonetics and Phonology course. Furthermore, individual plosives and positions in a word were examined sep- arately to determine whether there are any differences as suggested by the theoretical overview. Keywords: voice onset time, aspiration, Czech English, second language acquisition
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Durational variation of segments in read speech of Czech and British speakers of English
Urbanová, Darina ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Studenovský, David (referee)
The study focuses on durational variation of segments in read speech of Czech and British speakers of English. The variation in segmental duration was examined in the speech of three Czech and three British speakers with respect to individual vowel and consonant categories. Furthermore, stress and intonation phrase boundary were explored as possible factors influencing segmental duration. The theoretical part of the study focuses on two main topics. The first is foreign accent with regard to accentedness, intelligibility and comprehensibility as well as in connection to its implications and factors which might influence its degree. The second part contains theoretical background about the time domain of speech concerning segmental duration in Czech and English, the area of rhythm, the importance of durational cues in perception and a short survey of factors reported to affect segmental duration. Czech accent in English and the importance of duration in foreign language are also covered. In the empirical part of the study, Czech speakers were found to miss the appropriate proportions between individual vowel categories and realize their long vowels as slightly too short. They lacked an adequate degree of durational contrast in stressed and unstressed vowels when compared to the British speakers. With regard...
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Acoustic properties of word stress in read Czech English
Liska, Jan ; Volín, Jan (advisor) ; Skarnitzl, Radek (referee)
key words: Czech English, foreign accent, word stress, word accent, stressed syllable, duration, f0, acoustic cues. This study investigates the acoustic properties of word stress in Czech English. The notion of foreign accent is introduced and its drawbacks are presented. Further on the various influences on the perceived degree, or strength, of foreign accent are discussed. Faulty realization of word stress is identified as one of the factors that contribute to unintelligibility of non-native speech (Benrabah, 1997; Hahn, 2004; Cutler, 1984). In Chapter 2 we compare the results of studies that used speakers of a variety of languages and form a basic theory on the acquisition of acoustic cues to word stress. We are mostly interested in f0 and duration. This theory, based on the feature hypothesis (McAllister et al., 2002 in Lee, Guion & Harada, 2006), states that languages that have a similar stress system to that of English (Dutch, Arabic) use their native cues to signal word stress, while non-contrastive languages (Vietnamese, Czech) prefer cue/s that are phonologically active on segmental level in their native language. Speakers of Vietnamese, a tone language, were found to prefer f0 over duration (Nguyen, 2003), so for Czech, a language that uses phonological vowel duration, it is expected that...
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Impact of Intersonorant Voicing on the Perception of Foreing Accent in the Speech of Advanced Czech Learners of English
Dvořáková, Martina ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Matuchová, Klára (referee)
This thesis aims at exploring the impact of intersonorant voicing (/ˈbeɪzɪk/ instead of /beɪsɪk/) that frequently occurs in the speech of Czech learners of English on the degree of foreign accentedness. To evaluate this phenomenon, the method of a perception test was used. The sample phrases with and without the aforementioned mistake were evaluated by native speakers of the English language. The result of their observation, the level of foreign accentedness, was marked on a seven point scale and analysed by the author with the aim of either confirming or rejecting two original hypotheses concerning the relationship between the intersonorant voicing and foreign accentedness when featured in various positions.
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Relationship between the strength of Czech accent and the duration of vowels before obstruents
Fejlová, Dita ; Skarnitzl, Radek (advisor) ; Tichý, Ondřej (referee)
This bachelor thesis aims to inspect the presence or absence of a feature called pre- fortis shortening in English spoken by Czechs. The term denotes the shortening of a vowel preceding a voiceless obstruent. This feature is known to appear in various languages like Russian, French, Italian; indeed, Matthew Chen even suggests it is language-universal. In English the feature is very prominent and because it affects speech perception, it is even considered a primary indicator of the voicing of the following obstruent. A study included in this thesis examines the extent to which 12 female speakers of Czech English, sorted into 3 categories according to their proficiency in pronunciation, mark the distinction between words like "bet" and "bed" by vowel shortening. The study does not exploit minimal pairs like these, but vowel-obstruent sequences taken from long read passages of BBC news. The the fortis/lenis character of the final obstruent contained in these sequences is a discerning parameter which always separates the data into two groups, the vowel durations of which are then compared. Statistical analysis of the data showed that contrary to the expectations, speakers with native-like pronunciation were not the ones who displayed the most massive usage of pre-fortis shortening. Possible reasons for...
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