Sonderforschungsbereich “Mehrsprachigkeit” …liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/applied_linguistics/Hamburg_07/L2...Sonderforschungsbereich “Mehrsprachigkeit” Universität Hamburg 26

Joaquim LlisterriGrup de Fonètica, Departament de Filologia Espanyola

Sonderforschungsbereich “Mehrsprachigkeit”Universität Hamburg

26 July 2007

The perception of lexical stress in L1and L2: methods and results

Joaquim LlisterriGrup de Fonètica, Departament de FilologiaEspanyola, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

[email protected]

http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim



26 July 2007

http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/

applied_linguistics/Hamburg_07/

Hamburg_07.html


The perception of lexical stress in L1 andL2: methods and results

Iolanda Alfano, RenataSavy

Dipartimento di StudiLinguistici e Letterari,Università degli studi diSalerno

Joaquim Llisterri, María J.Machuca, Carme de laMota, Montserrat Riera,Antonio Ríos

Grup de Fonètica,Departament de FilologiaEspanyola, UniversitatAutònoma de Barcelona



Speech perception in a second language

The phonetic correlates of lexical stress

The perception of lexical stress in L1:Spanish and Italian


Final remarks

mailto:[email protected]

http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim

http://liceu.uab.cat/



Speech perception in a second languageThe phonetic correlates of lexical stressThe perception of lexical stress in L1:Spanish and ItalianThe perception of lexical stress in L2:Spanish and ItalianFinal remarks



• Several models have attempted to explainspeech perception and production in asecond language


SLM, Speech Learning Model

FLEGE, J.E. (1995) "Second-language speech learning:Theory, findings and problems", in STRANGE, W.(Ed.) Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience:

Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Cross-

Language Speech Research. Timonium, MD: YorkPress Inc. pp. 233-272.

FLEGE, J.E.- SCHIRRU, C.- MacKAY, I.R.A. (2003)"Interaction between the native and second languagephonetic subsystems", Speech Communication 40, 4:467-491.



• Interlingual identification

• L2 sounds are erroneously assimilatedto L1 sounds

• Phonetic similarity

• Transfer from L1

• Similarities in spelling



• Category formation and equivalenceclassification



“foreign accent [...] may instead result from thedevelopment of the L1 phonetic system, whichmakes it increasingly unlikely that similarsounds in an L2 will evade being equated withsounds in L1”

FLEGE, J.E. (1991) "Perception and Production: The Relevance ofPhonetic Input to L2 Phonological Learning”, in Hueber, T.-

Ferguson, C. (Eds.) Crosscurrents in Second Language Acquisition

and Linguistic Theories. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. p. 285



• PAM, Perceptual Assimilation ModelBEST, C.T. (1995) "A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception", in STRANGE, W. (Ed.)Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience:

Theoretical and Methodological Issues in Cross-

Language Speech Research. Timonium, MD: YorkPress Inc. pp. 171-206.



• NLM, Native Language Magnet ModelIVERSON, P.- KUHL, P.K.- AKAHANE-YAMADA,R.- DIESCH, E.- TOHKURA, Y.- KETTERMAN, A.-SIEBERT, C. (2003) "A perceptual interferenceaccount of acquisition difficulties for non-nativephonemes", Cognition 87: B47-B57.http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ratree/lin6932_4514/readinglist/Iverson%2003.pdf

http://www.clas.ufl.edu/users/ratree/li



• SLM, PAM, NLM… seem to be based onthe notion of “category”

• Categorization in L1 inhibits theformation of new categories in L2

• Difficulties in perception

“Phonological deafness”



“Les phonèmes et les autres représentations phonologiquesélémentaires de notre langue maternelle (...) se trouvent si étroitementliés avec notre activité perceptive que, même en percevant des mots(ou phrases) d'une langue avec un système phonologique toutdifférent, nous sommes enclins à décomposer ces mots en desreprésentations phonologiques propres à notre langue maternelle. Enentendant un mot inconnu étranger (...) nous tâchons d'y retrouverun complexe de nos représentations phonologiques, de le décomposeren des phonèmes propres à notre langue maternelle, et même enconformité avec nos lois de groupement des phonèmes”

POLIVANOV, E. (1931) “La perception des sons d'une langue étrangère” Travaux duCercle Linguistique de Prague 4; in Le Cercle de Prague (Change, 3) Paris, 1969. pp.

111-14.



“El sistema fonológico de una lengua es comparable a unacriba a través de la cual pasa todo lo que se dice (…) Laspersonas se apropian del sistema de su lengua materna ycuando oyen hablar otra lengua empleaninvoluntariamente para el análisis de lo que oyen la“criba” fonológica que les es habitual, es decir, la de sulengua materna. Pero como esta “criba” no se adapta a lalengua extranjera, surgen numerosos errores eincomprensiones.”

TROUBETZKOY, N.S. (1939) “Grundzüge der Phonologie”, Travaux du CercleLinguistique de Prague. Trad. Cast. de D. García Giordano en colaboración con L.J.

Prieto: Principios de Fonología. Madrid: Cincel, 1973 [II: Falsa apreciación de losfonemas de una lengua extranjera]



“[…] listeners use a processing apparatus specifically tuned to theirmaternal language. Consequently, they have a lot of difficulty indealing with sound structures that are alien to the language theyheard as infants. They display what we call phonological ‘deafnesses’;that is, they have troubles discriminating phonological contrasts thatare not used in their native language. Moreover, the phonological‘deafnesses’ are robust, in that - analogously to patterns of foreignaccent in production - they are resistant to learning a secondlanguage, and even to specific training. We hypothesize thatphonological ‘deafnesses’ originate in the acquisition during the firstfew years of life.”

DUPOUX, E. - PEPERKAMP, S. (2002) "Fossil markers of language development: phonologicaldeafnesses in adult speech processing", in LAKS, B.- DURAND, J. (Eds.) Phonetics, Phonology, and

Cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 168-190.http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/papers/Dupoux_Peperkamp_2002_Fossil_

markers_phonological_deafness.In_Royaumont_OUP.pdf

http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/papers/Dupoux_Peperkamp_2002_Fossil_






• Stress can be conceived as a prominenceor salience

• Three physical parameters in the soundwave

• Time

• Frequency

• Intensity/Energy



• Prominence is achieved by changes orcontrasts in the values of the physicalparameters

• Time: length

• Frequency (F0): pitch

• Intensity/energy: loudness

• Frequency (formants): quality




• There is not always a perfect correlationbetween stress and an increase in thevalues of the physical parameters

• Stress shift or peak displacement insentences

• The F0 peak is displaced to the right ofthe lexically stressed syllable



GARRIDO, J. M.- LLISTERRI, J.- de la MOTA, C.- RÍOS, A. (1993) "Prosodic differences inreading style: Isolated vs. Contextualized Sentences", in Eurospeech'93. 3rd European Conference

on Speech Communication and Technology. Berlin, 21-23 September 1993. Vol. 1, pp. 573-576.http://liceu.uab.es/~joaquim/publicacions/Berlin_93/berlin_93.html

• Readparagraphs

• 5 speakers

• 100sentences



• Which are the modifications in the valuesof the physical parameters which areneeded to perceive a syllable in a word asstressed?

• Experimental procedure based onanalysis, manipulation and resynthesisusing Praat PSOLA algorithm

http://liceu.uab.es/~joaquim/publicacions/Berlin_93/berlin_93.html



• Analysis of a corpus

• Fundamental frequency (F0)

n u 'm e R o




• Intensity

n u 'm e R o




• Duration

• Mean vowel duration

Average values for each vowel in 10repetitions of each word studied



• Creation of basic stimuli for a perceptualtest

• Replacement of the actual values foundin the a token of the word in the corpusby the averaged values over 10repetitions by the same speaker

• Manipulation with Praat




n u 'm e

o

n u 'm e

Ro

R

Actual values

Averaged values



• Duration

n u 'm e o

n u 'm e o

Actual values

Averaged values



• Intensity

l i 'm i t e

Actual values

Averaged values



• Creation of stimuli with changes in the valuesof the parameters

• The values for each vowel of aproparoxytone word are replaced by thevalues for each vowel of a paroxytone word

• The values for each vowel of a paroxytoneword are replaced by the values of eachvowel of an oxytone word



• For each stimulus the following changesare made

• Only F0, only duration or only intensity

• F0 and duration, F0 and intensity orduration and intensity

• F0, duration and intensitysimultaneously



• Fundamental frequency (F0)“número” with values taken from “numero”“numero” with values taken from “numeró”

• Duration“número” with values taken from “numero”“numero” with values taken from “numeró”

• Intensity“número” with values taken from “numero”“numero” with values taken from “numeró”



“válido” with original F0 values

“válido” with F0 values from “valido”

b a l i o

b a l i o



“valido” with original F0 values

“valido” with F0 values from “validó”

b a l i o

b a l i o



• Fundamental frequency (F0) andintensity“número” with values taken from “numero”

“numero” with values taken from “numeró”

• Fundamental frequency (F0) andduration“número” with values taken from “numero”

“numero” with values taken from “numeró”



• Duration and intensity“número” with values taken from “numero”“numero” with values taken from “numeró”

• Fundamental frequency (F0), durationand intensity“número” with values taken from “numero”“numero” with values taken from “numeró”






SpanishLLISTERRI, J.- MACHUCA, M.J.- de la MOTA, C.- RIERA, M.- RÍOS, A. (2003)"The Perception of Lexical Stress in Spanish", in Proceedings of the 15thInternational Congress of Phonetic Sciences. Barcelona, 3-9 August 2003. pp. 2023-2026.http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/publicacions/Llisterri_Machuca_Mota_Riera_Rios_03_Perception_Stress_Spanish.pdf

LLISTERRI, J.- MACHUCA, M. J.- de la MOTA, C.- RIERA, M.- RÍOS, A. (2005)"La percepción del acento léxico en español", in Filología y lingüística. Estudiosofrecidos a Antonio Quilis. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas- Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia - Universidad de Valladolid. Vol.1. pp. 271-297.http://liceu.uab.es/~joaquim/publicacions/Llisterri_Machuca_Mota_Riera_Rios_05_Percepcion_Acento_Espanol.pdf

http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/publicacions/Llisterri_Machuc

http://liceu.uab.es/~joaquim/publicacions/Llisterri_Machuca


The perception of lexical stress in L1:Spanish

• 30 Spanish speaking subjects (aged 18-45)

• Tests carried out in a languagelaboratory with individual earphones

• Previous training with stimuli notincluded in the test



• Task 1: Identification of the stressed syllable inan isolated word

• 336 words

• 168 meaningful words and 168 nonsensewords

• 40 stimuli for each condition

• 56 control stimuli

• 10.088 answers



• Task 2: Comparison of paired words (same-different)

• 280 pairs

• 140 with meaningful words and 140nonsense words

• 36 pairs for each condition

• 28 control pairs

• 8.400 answers



• Task 1

• Modification of a single parameter

• Modification of two parameters incombination

• Simultaneous modification of the threeparameters






• Cases in which the only F0 contour, only theintensity contour or only duration values havebeen replaced trying to displace the perceptionof the prominence to the right

the syllable originally bearing the lexicalstress is identified as the stressed one bylisteners



• When the values of the F0 contour are changedtogether with the values of the other twoparameters –duration or intensity–

listeners identify the syllable aligned with theF0 peak as stressed

• If F0 is not taken into account in thecombination

the syllable with original lexical stress is theone perceived as stressed by the listeners



• The F0 contour alone is not sufficient toinduce the identification of the syllablealigned with the F0 peak as stressed if theother two parameters are not modified

• F0 is an essential acoustic cue incombination with duration, intensity orboth duration and intensity


The perception of lexical stress in L1:Italian

ItalianALFANO, I. (2005) La percezione dell'accento lessicale: un esperimentosull'italiano a confronto con lo spagnolo. Tesi di laurea in LinguisticaGenerale. Facoltà di Lingue e Letterature Straniere. Università degliStudi di Salerno.ALFANO, I. (2005) "La percezione dell'accento lessicale: un testsull'italiano a confronto con lo spagnolo", in SAVY, R.- CROCCO, C.(Ed.) AISV 2005. 2o Convegno Nazionale "Analisi prosodica: teorie,modelli e sistemi di annotazione". Associazione Italiana di Scienze dellaVoce, Salerno, 30 Novembre - 2 Dicembre 2005.http://www.parlaritaliano.it/aisv2005/papers/Percezione_Apprendimento/Alfano.pdf



• Manipulation of two parameters


• Duration

• Pairs of accentual contrasts were alsoused due to lack of triplets (“legami -legami”)

http://www.parlaritaliano.it/aisv2005/papers/Percezi



• 27 Italian speaking subjects (aged 20-30)

• Tests carried out with individualearphones and laptop

• Specific software for presentation ofstimuli and data collection

• Previous training with stimuli notincluded in the test




• 123 words

• meaningful words and nonsense words

• 26 stimuli for each condition

• 45 control stimuli

• 3.321 answers




• 291 pairs

• with meaningful words and nonsense words

• control pairs

• 7.857 answers



• Task 1

• Modification of a single parameter

• Modification of two parameters incombination






• Modifications only in fundamentalfrequency (F0)

do not seem to induce changes in theidentification of the lexically stressedsyllable

• Modifications only in durationpartially affect the identification of thelexically stressed syllable



Proparoxytones with paroxytone values

• Modification only in F0: 3,7% identifiedas paroxytones

• Modification only in duration: 61,7%identified as paroxytones

• Combined modification of duration andF0: 90,8% identified as paroxytones



Spanish and Italian

• Same acoustic correlates

• Different role in each language

• F0 needed in combination with anotherparameter in Spanish

• Duration needed in combination withanother parameter in Italian



• Spanish and Italian

• Free stress languages

• Paroxytones are the most frequent categoryamong polysyllabic words

• CV is the most frequent syllabic pattern

• Tendency to isosyllabicity

• Tendency to find F0 peak displacement






• “Stress deafness” has been shown for French(stress-fixed language) speakers listening toSpanish (stress-free language) wordsMORA, E. - COURTOIS, F. - CAVÉ, C. (1997) "Étude comparative de laperception par des sujets francophones et hispanophones de l'accent lexical enespagnol", Revue PArole 1: 75-85.PEPERKAMP, S. - DUPOUX, E. - SEBASTIÁN-GALLÉS, N. (1999) "Perceptionof stress by French, Spanish and bilingual subjects", in Eurospeech'99. 6thEuropean Conference on Speech Communication and Technology. September 5-9,1999, Budapest, Hungary. Vol. 6, pp. 2683-2686.http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/papers/Peperkamp_DS-G_1999_Perception_stress_french_spanish_bilinguals.In_Eurospeech.pdf



• Spanish subjects listening to ItalianstimuliALFANO, I. - LLISTERRI, J. - SAVY, R. (2007) "The perceptionof Italian and Spanish lexical stress: A first cross-linguistic study",in Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic

Sciences. Saarbrücken, 6-10 August 2007.http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/publicacions/Alfano_Llisterri_Savy_07_Perception_Stress_Spanish_Italian.pdf



• Italian meaningful and nonsense wordswhich are not similar to Spanish onestaken from Alfano (2005)

• Manipulation of F0 and duration

• Test administered individually at UABthrough earphones and with special datapresentation and collection software



• 30 Spanish speaking subjects (aged 19-22)• Group a: had been studying Italian for 5 to 9

months• Group b: had never studied Italian, but knew

some Italian: travels to Italy, relationships withItalians, listening to Italian music…

• Group c: had never studied Italian and hadnever had any kind of contact with thelanguage

http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/papers/Peperkamp_DS-G_1999_Perception_stress_french_spanish_bilinguals.In_Euros



http://liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/publicacions/Alfa




• 55 words


• 129 pairs

• Total: 5.520 answers



Manipulation of F0

• Proparoxytone with paroxytone values

Identified as paroxytone in percentagesreaching the 10% of the cases

• Paroxytone with oxytone values

Perceived as oxytone in percentagesranging from 30 to 43,3% of the cases



Manipulation of duration

• Proparoxytones with paroxytone values

Identified as paroxytone in percentagesreaching the 50% of the cases

• Paroxytones with oxytone values

Perceived as oxytone in percentagesranging from 40 to 66,7% of the cases


Modifications in durationSpanish vs. Italian stimuli with Spanishspeaking subjects



• Spanish subjects seem to exhibit atendency to have a more similarbehaviour to Italian subjects listening toItalian words than Spanish subjectsexposed to Spanish items



• Proparoxytone words with paroxytone values

Subjects do not perceive the manipulation of F0

They seem quite sensitive to the manipulation ofduration

• Paroxytone words with oxytone values

The role of F0 seems to be less clear

Serious difficulties appear in the case of changes induration



Factors to be considered in more detail• Acoustic analysis of duration and the effect on

stimuli with oxytone values• Prepausal (final) stressed vowels

• 42,3% longer than word internal ones inSpanish

• 7,8% shorter than word internal ones inItalian



Factors to be considered in more detail• Difficulties in the identification of words

as oxytone in L1• Duration might be more relevant for

paroxytone words than for oxytoneones

• Dependencies between perceptual cuesand stress patterns



Factors to be considered in more detail

• Role of lexical knowledge

• Differences between groups a, b and cseem to be more marked in nonsensewords than in meaningful words

• Different reliance on acoustic cues oron lexical knowledge



• Italian subjects listening to SpanishstimuliNext step in the project…

• Reaction time measurementsIn preparation, in collaboration with OlgaSoler, Departament de Psicologia Bàsica,Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona





Final remarks

• A methodology allowing the study of the role ofacoustic correlates in the perception of lexicalstress has been developed

• Natural stimuli (vs. fully synthesized)

• Consideration of the prosodic pattern of thewhole word

• Only applied to words in isolation so far


Final remarks

• Different roles of the same acousticparameters has been established for twoclosely related languages

• F0 needed in combination with anotherparameter in Spanish

• Duration needed in combination withanother parameter in Italian


Final remarks

• The performance of non-native subjectsappears to be influenced• by their native language• by the acoustic features of the signal

• Attested lack of coherence in the stressjudgements which can be related toconflicting cues






27 July 2007



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Vielen Dank!



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Sonderforschungsbereich “Mehrsprachigkeit” …liceu.uab.cat/~joaquim/applied_linguistics/Hamburg_07/L2...Sonderforschungsbereich “Mehrsprachigkeit” Universität Hamburg 26