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Stress shift in Czech English
Farana, Michal ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Matuchová, Klára (referee)
The purpose of the bachelor thesis is to explore how Czech speakers of English are able to predict and apply stress shift in their speech. The theoretical part gives a brief description of the English stress system and focuses primarily on a detailed exploration of the stress shift phenomenon and its function in relation to the rhythmic structure of English. The practical part aims at examining the ability of Czech speakers to produce stress shift in selected contexts. The respondents were recorded reading a text with items that typically undergo stress shift. The data obtained from these recordings were perceptually analysed and subsequently used to either prove or disprove the hypotheses formulated at the beginning of the research. Key Words lexical stress, sentence stress, rhythm, stress shift, Czech English
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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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Pre-fortis shortening in Czech English
Hrychová, Helena ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Pípalová, Renata (referee)
This bachelor thesis examines the role of a phenomenon called pre-fortis shortening in Czech English. This term is used by phoneticians to represent the shortening of vowels before fortis consonants. It is not characteristic only of English, Matthew Chen even suggested that it could be a language-universal phenomenon. In English it is a very significant feature since English vowel duration was proven by various experiments to serve as a cue to the perception of the voicing characteristic of the following consonant. This thesis advances our understanding of pre-fortis shortening in Czech English where vowel duration was hypothesized to correlate with the speaker's proficiency in English. As a result, this work aims to examine the extent to which 20 Czech students divided into two categories depending on their English level (A2, C1) exploit this phenomenon and whether their proficiency has an impact on vowel durations before fortis and lenis consonants. They were recorded while reading 40 English sentences and their vowel durations were compared to those obtained from two native English speakers.
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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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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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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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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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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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Pre-fortis shortening in Czech English
Hrychová, Helena ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Pípalová, Renata (referee)
This bachelor thesis examines the role of a phenomenon called pre-fortis shortening in Czech English. This term is used by phoneticians to represent the shortening of vowels before fortis consonants. It is not characteristic only of English, Matthew Chen even suggested that it could be a language-universal phenomenon. In English it is a very significant feature since English vowel duration was proven by various experiments to serve as a cue to the perception of the voicing characteristic of the following consonant. This thesis advances our understanding of pre-fortis shortening in Czech English where vowel duration was hypothesized to correlate with the speaker's proficiency in English. As a result, this work aims to examine the extent to which 20 Czech students divided into two categories depending on their English level (A2, C1) exploit this phenomenon and whether their proficiency has an impact on vowel durations before fortis and lenis consonants. They were recorded while reading 40 English sentences and their vowel durations were compared to those obtained from two native English speakers.
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Stress shift in Czech English
Farana, Michal ; Červinková Poesová, Kristýna (advisor) ; Matuchová, Klára (referee)
The purpose of the bachelor thesis is to explore how Czech speakers of English are able to predict and apply stress shift in their speech. The theoretical part gives a brief description of the English stress system and focuses primarily on a detailed exploration of the stress shift phenomenon and its function in relation to the rhythmic structure of English. The practical part aims at examining the ability of Czech speakers to produce stress shift in selected contexts. The respondents were recorded reading a text with items that typically undergo stress shift. The data obtained from these recordings were perceptually analysed and subsequently used to either prove or disprove the hypotheses formulated at the beginning of the research. Key Words lexical stress, sentence stress, rhythm, stress shift, Czech English
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