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Fonetika a fonologie češtiny : s obecným úvodem do problematiky oboru /
Abstract
Upr. vyd, dotisk Bibliogr. s. 353-357
... However, if a typical statement melody is falling, is there any difference between the contours on QW questions and on statements? The accounts in the Czech most quoted sources suggest that there is no difference ( [9], [10], [11]), although [11] admits variants. Generally, melodies in standard statements and QW-questions are supposed to be the same. ...
... However, if a typical statement melody is falling, is there any difference between the contours on QW questions and on statements? The accounts in the Czech most quoted sources suggest that there is no difference ( [9], [10], [11]), although [11] admits variants. Generally, melodies in standard statements and QW-questions are supposed to be the same. ...
... Therefore, an experiment was prepared to test the hypothesis about the uniformity of Czech statements and QWquestions (the null hypothesis) or their differentiation in speech (the alternative hypothesis in this study). Moreover, naturally spoken utterances will be compared with synthetic sentences (see below, Section 2.3) produced by a system based on the pre-suppositions of [9], [10], [11], i.e., on the idea that melodies of statements and QW-questions can be constructed by the same procedure. ...
The relationship between the prosodic feature of speech melody (intonation) and fundamental frequency (F0) of voice is briefly introduced together with an overview of the communicative functions of the phenomenon. The core of the study builts upon a sample of 448 sentences spoken by 28 Czech speakers and the same sentences produced by the text-to-speech synthesis system of ARTIC, which is based on concatenation of variable-size units without a special prosodic module. The differences in global statistic descriptors between human and synthetic production of fundamental frequency tracks were sought together with information about cummulative slope index (CSI) and the pattern provided by k-means cluster analysis of the sample. Relatively clear differences between statements and question-word questions emerged.
... Stress always falls on the first syllable of the prosodic word in Czech (Kučera 1961, Palková 1994, Dankovičová 1999 attributes such as the length or relative sonority of the syllable nuclei; the first syllable is simply always stressed. 5 The fact that there is only one stress per prosodic word, regardless of the length of the word, indicates that each word has a single foot (as every foot must have a head syllable, realized as stress (Hayes 1995)). ...
... Affixes and prepositions are included within the PrWd, which can be seen by the fact that these morphemes are treated as a single unit with respect to stress and voicing assimilation (Trávníček 1952, Kučera 1961, Palková 1994). ...
... This morphological preservation is represented here with the constraint PRESERVECONTRAST (Łubowicz 2003). The stress pattern of Czech indicates the word still has a single foot (Palková 1994), so non-exhaustive parsing, or a violation of PARSE-σ (Prince and Smolensky 1993), is the recourse when deletion is blocked. Each of the actions not pursued -the construction of non-head feet, a different faithfulness violation, or the loss of morphological data or contrastiveness (REALIZEMORPH, PRESCONTRAST) -must outrank the ban on non-exhaustive parsing so that it can emerge as the optimal repair. ...
... It is characterized by a decrease in the melody from the syllable bearing the sentence accent to the end of the utterance. This decrease can be gradual or stepwise and the minimum difference of f 0 is 8 ST (Palková, 1994;Hruška, 2016). The second pattern is used for Yes/No questions. ...
... Delongová (2013, p. 30) writes that "it is characterised by a relatively steep rise of f 0". Thus, it is characterized by a sudden rise of the melody (7-9 ST) (Palková, 1994;Hruška, 2016). The last implies "a continuation of the utterance (used either at the end of sentences or independent sentence members)" (Delongová, 2013, p. 30). ...
An increasing number of studies has already investigated phonetic first language attrition and cross-linguistic influence in the L1 speech of late bilinguals. Nevertheless, none of these studies has yet to examine phonetic first language attrition and cross-linguistic influence in the L1 speech of late Czech-French bilinguals. This thesis aims to fill this gap. The main hypothesis predicting that phonetic cross-linguistic influence will occur in L1 speech of late Czech-French bilinguals was tested in two studies by comparing the L1 speech production in a reading aloud task and semi-spontaneous speech of late Czech-French bilinguals with that of Czech monolinguals. The first study investigated if the L1 speech of 14 late Czech-French bilinguals may be perceived as less typically Czech sounding compared to that of 11 Czech monolinguals by Czech monolingual listeners. The second study compared the acoustic properties of 17 late Czech-French bilinguals’ vowels, /r/, /ɦ/, /x/ with those of 17 Czech monoling uals. The properties of non-conclusive intonation patterns and the use of final schwa was also compared. The tested hypothesis was predominantly confirmed . The results of the perception experiment showed that the bilinguals’ semi-spontaneous speech was perceived as significantly less typically Czech sounding compared to that of the monolinguals by the Czech monolinguals listeners. The results of the acoustic analyses suggest that phonetic cross-linguistic influence occurred in several of the bilinguals’ vowels, their /r/, /ɦ/, /x/, non-conclusive intonation patterns and use of final schwa. Interestingly, a certain number of our results suggests that dissimilation and assimilation effects may coexist in the same L1 phoneme of a late bilingual.
... The analysis of information structure is based on the theory of Functional Sentence Perspective as developed by Firbas (1972Firbas ( , 1989Firbas ( , and 1992 and Svoboda (1981 and; it also incorporates some alternative theories, especially those developed by Kuno (1972 and1975), Hajičovµ and Sgall (Hajičovµ et al. 1998;Sgall 2000;Sgall et al. 1986), and Chafe (1994Chafe ( , 1996. The study of intonation draws on the principles of the 'contour analysis' of English intonation as presented by Crystal (1969), O'Connor and Arnold (1973), and Cruttenden (1986); and the accounts of Czech intonation as presented by Palkovµ (1994), Daneš (1957), and Krčmovµ (1995). ...
... Firbas 1980, 130;Cruttenden 1986, 49 -50). The analyses of Czech intonation presented by Palkovµ (1994), Daneš (1957), and Krčmovµ (1995) differ from the contour analysis especially by a stronger focus on the study of rhythmicality and in the description of the internal structure of a tone unit. The definition of the basic unit of speech referred to as utterance unit, however, resembles the definition of the tone unit within the framework of contour analysis; the definition of the most prominent stress within the utterance unit, referred to as sentence stress or intonation centre corresponds to the definition of the nucleus. ...
... In other words, do Czech listeners adjust their short/long vowel distinctions on the basis of coda voicing? A similar shift of the perceptual short/long boundary has been observed e.g. in open as opposed to closed syllables (see [8]). We conducted two experiments to answer the present question. ...
... It is worth noting that the shift of the perceptual short/long vowel boundary caused by the voicing difference of the coda that we found is similar to the adjustments listeners make in differing speaking rates or in open vs. closed syllables (see [8]). The effect that we observed thus fits into a larger picture of quantity perception in interplay with the perception of other phonological entities. ...
It is possible that in Czech a vowel is consistently longer before a tautosyllabic voiced as opposed to voiceless obstruent. The main purpose of this study was to determine if this hypothesized variation interacts with the perception of vowel quantity. Two experiments were conducted that examined the effect of a voiceless vs. devoiced coda context and of a voiceless vs. voiced coda context on perceptual short/long vowel categorization. It was found that quantitatively ambiguous vowels were more likely to be perceived as short before a voiced coda than before a voiceless coda. It is concluded that vowel duration is indeed affected by coda voicing in Czech and that listeners are sensitive to this variation because they adjust the perception of vowel quantity accordingly.
... Human speech perception is partly based on intonation (changes of pitch), which is an aspect of prosody. Thanks to this we can distinguish whether a person is making a statement or a question [1]. Prosodic information also enables us to recognize the emotions of a speaker. ...
... a(x) = 1 e 0.001 2x (8) Now let us consider a situation when it is possible to have a jump in the pitch of speech in the place of the border of neighbouring prosodic units [1] (with unvoiced segments between them, so that the first voiced segment of the new prosodic unit is the next voiced segment for the last prosodic unit in terms of the Viterbi algorithm). The previous probability function will not allow the change to be immediately applied to the pitch track, and needs some time to "adopt" the new pitch level. ...
This paper presents a pitch-detection algorithm (PDA) for application to signals containing continuous speech. The core of the method is based on merged normalized forward-backward correlation (MNFBC) working in the time domain with the ability to make basic voicing decisions. In addition, the Viterbi traceback procedure is used for post-processing the MNFBC output considering the three best fundamental frequency (F0) candidates in each step. This should make the final pitch contour smoother, and should also prevent octave errors. In transition probabilities computation between F0 candidates, two major improvements were made over existing post-processing methods. Firstly, we compare pitch distance in musical cent units. Secondly, temporal forgetting is applied in order to avoid penalizing pitch jumps after prosodic pauses of one speaker or changes in pitch connected with turn-taking in dialogs. Results computed on a pitch-reference database definitely show the benefit of the first improvement, but they have not yet proved any benefits of temporal modification. We assume this only happened due to the nature of the reference corpus, which had a small amount of suprasegmental content.
... Example (2c) represents a special category, as the words are preceded by non-syllabic prepositions that form one phonetic syllable with the first syllable of the word itself. It is the only context in which the usage of glottalization is mandatory in standard Czech pronunciation (Hála, 1967;Palková, 1994 (2) Examples of glottalization in Czech The contexts (2a) and (2b) provide a choice in standard Czech between a pronunciation with or without glottalization. The likelihood of glottalization is affected strongly by the need for speech clarity, as the presence of glottalization cues the word-or morpheme-initial parses of the stream of speech. ...
The paper focuses on the ability of Czech speakers to explicitly imitate native English realizations of the phoneme /t/ as [ʔ] (t-glottaling). In Czech, glottalization occurs as a boundary signal of wordinitial vocalic onsets. We hypothesize that this allows for a better imitative performance in the intervocalic context as compared to non-prevocalic contexts. However, an alternative hypothesis based on language-external facts (frequency in the learners’ English input) predicts the opposite pattern. Our experiment involves 30 participants in a shadowing task. In addition to words with /t/, words with /k/ are examined to establish if speakers can generalize to a phonologically similar category to which they have not been exposed. Speakers adapted their pronunciation after exposure to t-glottaling to some degree. Our hypothesis was confirmed for the shadowing task, while the alternative language-external hypothesis was confirmed for the post-test task, suggesting a different pattern of performance in terms of imitation versus learning.
... From this we can surmise that the Czech ř consists of two to four periods. Other sources give a concrete number of ř periods: Romportl (1967): 3 -4 periods; Petr et al. (1986): 4 -6 periods; Palková (1994): 2 -6 periods. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) show a spectrogram of the Czech ř with two periods, but they point out that some speakers produce just the fricative, without the trill component. ...
The study is concerned with the quantitative analysis of the Czech ř from the point of view of the number of periods (vibrations). Although the consonant ř in Czech is usually defined as a trilled sound, the research results of this paper show that the most typical and therefore representative allophone of ř is an alveolar fricative with zero or one period. The study is based on a sample of 1,142 tokens collected from a corpus of 18 speakers in three separate speech genres-newsreading, narrating, and dialogue. The differences between the individual genres, which have been investigated by means of the chi-square test, are highly significant. It has also been determined that the trilled character of the Czech ř is caused mainly by emotionality and/or by the emphatic realization of the utterance.
... Nazálu [ ] sa nám v našom korpuse hovorených textov slovenčiny zatiaľ nepodarilo nájsť, ale z dostupných spektrografických záznamov vieme určiť, že ide o nešumovú hlásku (Kráľ -Sabol, 1989, s. 239 (Dvončová -Jenča -Kráľ, 1969, s. 57;Dvončová, 1980, s. 111;Kráľ, 1988, s. 50;Kráľ -Sabol, 1989, s. 259;Sabol, 1989, s. 72 -73;Kráľ, 2005, s. 40). Tvrdenie, že niektoré z uvedených hlások možno charakterizovať ako šumové (najmä [j], [ ] a [l]) nachádzame aj v českej literatúre (Hála, 1960(Hála, , 1962(Hála, , 1975Pačesová, 1970;Skaličková, 1982;Romportl, 1985;Krčmová, 1992;Palková, 1994). V zahraničnej literatúre sa spomínané konsonanty väčšinou charakterizujú ako nešumové (nefrikatívne) a takto ich definuje aj Príručka Medzinárodnej fonetickej asociácie (Handbook of the IPA, 1999). ...
The paper discusses some weak sides and pitfalls of many auditory classifications of
consonants in phonetic literature. Owing to the application of different perspectives and the mixing of the levels of phonetic analysis, these classifications are often inconsistent,
contradictory, and sometimes incomplete. The aim of this paper is to give a concise overview of some auditory classifications, identify their drawbacks, and suggest possible solutions to some of the problems.
... The acquisition of a vowel system is one of the key aspects of learning a second language (L2). Czech vowel system consists of five pairs of short and long monophthongs and three diphthongs [8,12,13]. Since the vowel length is phonologically distinctive, its improper interchange in L2 speakers' production may lead to a misunderstanding (e.g.., /kru:ci: farma:r fi i/ vs /kruci: farma:r fi i/ (meaning turkey farmers vs cruel farmers). ...
Recent studies measured significant differences in formant values in the production of short and long high vowel pairs in the Czech language. Perceptional impacts of such findings were confirmed employing listening tests proving that a perceived vowel length is influenced by formant values related to a tongue position. Non-native speakers of Czech may experience difficulties in communication when they interchange the vowel length in words, which may lead to a completely different meaning of the message. This paper analyses perception of two-syllable words with manipulated duration and formant frequencies of high vowels i/i: or u/u: in the first syllable using automatic speech recognition (ASR) system. Such a procedure makes it possible to set a fine resolution in the range of examined factors. Our study confirms the formant values have a substantial impact on the perception of high vowels’ length by ASR, comparable to mean values obtained from listening tests performed on a group of human participants.
... Hála continued in articulatory research, following with a book presenting X-ray drawings of the tongue and other organs during the articulation of Czech sounds (Polland & Hála, 1926). This work was especially important because the data were the foundation on which many of Hála's later popularizing and teaching publications are based (Hála, 1941(Hála, , 1942(Hála, , 1960, as well as other publications on Czech phonetics (Romportl, 1985;Palková, 1994). Interestingly, the research took place at the Faculty of Arts, since the X-ray machine was owned privately by Hála's collaborator, Dr Polland, who operated the machine. ...
The current issue of Phonetica Pragensia is published at the occasion of the Institute of Phonetics celebrating the 100th anniversary of its official foundation. The aim of this paper is to provide background to the contributions that follow, namely a historical perspective to the tradition of long-term experimental research set up in Prague by the early phonetic pioneers and continued until today. Drawing primarily on archival materials, the article brings a more detailed account of the constitutive years in comparison to the reviews published so far. It reveals the complexity that is involved in the process of establishing and sustaining a new (phonetics) institute, which might be informative to wider audiences as well.
... Příkladem zacházení s rytmem a přízvuky v permutačním verši je tvorba E. Juliše z konce 60. let, která se ovšem prototypu úplné arytmie vymyká. Podle M. Červenky lze v této tvorbě vy-13 Intonací jazykověda rozumí kombinaci síly a výšky hlasu, která signalizuje hranice řečových celků (Palková 1994: 33, Palková 1994Dohalská, Schulzová 1991: 173). 14 Adj. ...
... K analýze přízvukování iniciálových zkratek významně přispívají podrobně rozpracované poznatky o přízvukování jednoslabičných slov v zásadních fonetických příručkách (Palková, 1994, s. 280nn, Zeman, 2008 , s. 132nn). V nich je na konkrétních příkladech ukázáno, že jednoslabičná slova si přízvuk mohou zachovat, ale také se mohou stát součástí přízvukového taktu spolu se slovem předcházejícím či následujícím , tedy přízvuk ztratit. ...
The article first reviews works on stress placement in initialisms in Czech. It then proceeds to analyze 50 examples of pronunciation of the initialism ODS (Občanská demokratická strana) as represented in the DIALOG corpus; 45 examples of the pronunciation of various initialisms obtained from Czech Television field research in, for instance ÖMV (Österreichische Mineralölverwaltung) and ČTK (Česká tisková kancelář); and 3000 examples of the pronunciation of initialisms from the Database of loanword pronunciation variants, e.g. EU (Evropská unie) and DVD (Digital versatile disc). The analysis focusing primarily on the distribution of stress showed that speakers typically used two stresses — one on the first and one on the last syllable, or only one stress on the first syllable. The latter usage generally prevailed.
... This may be taken as interference from the first language (L1) since unreleasing is not typically discussed in textbooks of Czech phonology (e.g. Palková, 1997). However, in a relatively recent acoustic study of spontaneous Czech (Šimek, 2010), about a third of first stops were in fact unreleased. ...
... This may be taken as interference from the first language (L1) since unreleasing is not typically discussed in textbooks of Czech phonology (e.g. Palková, 1997). However, in a relatively recent acoustic study of spontaneous Czech (Šimek, 2010), about a third of first stops were in fact unreleased. ...
Tour of the unruliness of the Jungle of spontaneous speech
... This may be taken as interference from the first language (L1) since unreleasing is not typically discussed in textbooks of Czech phonology (e.g. Palková, 1997). However, in a relatively recent acoustic study of spontaneous Czech (Šimek, 2010), about a third of first stops were in fact unreleased. ...
Children are born with the ability to learn speech and language, but they gain the skills of language by listening to, processing, and practicing the words of the language, or languages, around them.
All infants learn language in the same sequence. Although the timing may vary for different languages, the developmental sequence is the same. From the moment of birth, the neonate uses cries and facial expressions to express his needs. He can distinguish his mother’s voice from other voices and can discriminate among many different speech sounds (Berger, 2000).
How do theorists explain language development? Three major theories have informed our understanding of how language develops:
B. F. Skinner (1957) initiated the behaviorist theory of language development;
B. F. Skinner (1992) proposed that language is acquired through operant conditioning;
Noam Chomsky (1957) understood that even very young children take charge of learning language.
Some recent theoretical approaches interpret the same task a bit differently:
First, termed cooperative (Chapman, R.2000), is based on the fact that language is not acquired without socialization. Language cannot be acquired without a social context;
Second, (Berger, 2000; Berk, 2002), notes that infants and toddlers have an innate capability to learn language facilitated by adult caregivers;
Third, Vygotsky (1984), proposes that language is learned in a social context. Language is centered in the sociocultural history of a population. The child as a member of the group learns the language to communicate in his community.
We share D. Swingley’s opinion that speech and language development, like other development, follows fairly predictable stages. Children learn speech and language through their contact with others. Babies’ "coos" and "goos" will become babbling and sounds, followed by their first words and, as understanding increases, gradually lengthening sentences and conversations. Children should be able to talk by 2 and be understood by 3.(Swingley, D 2006)
The presented paper deals with the comparative analysis of formation of speech sounds in children from the earliest age of their throaty vowel sounds called "coos" up to the period when these sounds gradually disappear forever from their speech (by the age of 2-4 years).
The corpora for the research implies two languages (English and Georgian) with different lexis and structural frame and is completely based upon the experimental data observed in the process of study.
The comparative description of speech development in the groups under analysis has shown the following:
1) In both cases (English and Georgian), consonant sounds are generally acquired in front-to-back pattern so that, sounds made at the front of the mouth develop and can be used by the child before the sounds, that are made at the back of the mouth;
2) As in all walks of life, there are exceptions to every rule and this is no less true of the way in which children acquire speech sounds;
3) Between 1,6 - 2,6 years English speaking child may not consistently use any fricative sounds;
4) In Georgian infants of the same age, difficulties may be observed while producing some post-alveolar, velar and uvular sounds as well as plosives and fricatives;
5) Majority of English and Georgian children, by the age of five, undoubtedly consolidate the use of all the consonant sounds and it is not unusual that they may be fully capable of saying all the speech sounds an adult would use;
6) So-called ‘whirlies’(‘w’,’r’,’l’,‘y’) often continue to cause confusion for children. Even up to 6,5 years of age a child may have difficulty signaling differences between these sounds, e.g.
English: red is said as wed, lolly is said as yoyiy
Georgian: ratom ? ≠ latom ? ( Ratom ? ≠ Latom? ) (Why?)
In summary, the results strongly indicate that children are not only responsive to speech sounds and able to make fine discrimination but they also perceive speech sounds along the voicing continuum in a manner approximating, categorical perception, the manner in which adults perceive the same sounds.
References:
1. How Infant’s Speech Develops, (2012) (in Georgian) www.kvirispalitra.ge
2. Speaking Ability and Possible Problems at Early Age, 2012(in Georgian)
ganatlebageo.wordpress.com
3. Swingley,D(2006)The Roots of the Early Vocabulary in Infants’ Learning From Speech.
Association of Psychological Science , Volume 17
4.Berk, L. (2002). Infants, children, and adolescents (4th ed.). Boston
5.Berger K. (2000) Characteristics of Language development, www.education.com
6.Chapman, R.(2000)Children’s language learning: An interactionist perspective. Journal of
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 41, 33–54.
7.Berko-Gleason, J. (1997)The development of language. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.
8. Skinner, B. F.(1992) Verbal behavior,www.amazom.com
9. Vygotsky, L (1984) "Thought and Language", MIT Press.
10. Chomsky, Noam (1957), Syntactic Structures, The Hague/Paris: Mouton
... Au niveau rythmique, le tchèque est traditionnellement rangé dans la catégorie des langues isosyllabiques (Palková, 1994). Cependant, l'isochronie accentuelle se manifeste en tchèque bien plus fortement qu'en français (Duběda, 2002(Duběda, et 2004, et elle peut même atteindre, selon certains critères, le niveau réservé aux langues dites isochroniques (Duběda, 2004). ...
La présente étude porte sur l'acquisition de certains faits d'hypoarticulation du français par des apprenants tchèques. Dans une première partie nous examinons la variabilité des formes sonores en relation avec le degré de formalité de la situation de communication. Dans une seconde partie nous présentons et comparons certains des faits d'hypoarticulation les plus significatifs du français et du tchèque. Dans une troisième partie nous analysons les résultats obtenus pour une étude perceptive et acoustique de la réalisation du e dit muet, de la liaison et de la nasalisation des consonnes par des locuteurs tchèques en situation formelle et informelle. Ils montrent que l'intégration des faits d'assimilation et de réduction ne se fait pas uniformément et qu'il il y a une assez grande variabilité interpersonnelle. L'implication de ces résultats pour l'enseignement du français langue étrangère est discutée dans la dernière partie. Abstract The present study deals with the acquisition of certain French hypoarticulation facts by Czech learners. First, we examine the variability of sounded forms in relation with the formality degree of the situation of communication. Secondly, we present and compare some relevant hypoarticulation facts of French and Czech. Thirdly, we analyse the results obtained in a perceptual and acoustical study of the so-called mute e, liaison and consonant nasalisation by Czech speakers in both formal and informal situations. They show that the integration of assimilation and reduction facts is not uniform and there is a great between-speaker variability. Finally, we discuss the implication of these results in the teaching of French as a foreign language. Les faits de réduction et d'assimilation dans l'enseignement du français : pour une « phonétique situationnelle »
... All the analyses presented in this study are based on the fact that: a) we only distinguish word stress, b) there is only one stress in a word/stress group (thus, we disregard the category of secondary stress; note that this category is not taken into account either by the modern Czech verse theory or by a phonetic description of Czech − cf. Palková 1994), c) all polysyllabic words are stressed, d) monosyllabic words are i) stressed if they are lexical words, and ii) unstressed if they are grammatical words (this also includes the unstressed auxiliary verb být). nad, pod, před, do, za, u, po, přes, ve, se, ze, ku, ke, od, ob, při, zpod, bez, dle, o, pro. ...
Keywords: generative metrics, vowel length, Czech 19 th-century verse, computational prosody Słowa kluczowe: metryka generatywna, iloczas, XIX-wieczny wiersz czeski, prozodia komputerowa 0. The present study is based on a conception (held in Czech verse theory by Miroslav C ˇ ervenka) according to which various degrees of non-metricality, or more precisely, various types of violation of the metrical norm are distinguished, and the context (the preceding and subsequent positions in a verse) of these violations are analyzed. We concur with the approach that views verse, in which the stress of a polysyllabic word in a weak position is preceded by a sentence boundary, e.g. Mácha's:
... However, in contrast to the fundamental frequency, these two processes cannot be understood as an application of a single constant on the speechsounds in question, since each speechsound has its intrinsic duration and intensity. Acoustic studies claim e. g. that the duration of vowels increases with their openness (i, u < e, o < a), that unvoiced sounds tend to be longer than the voiced ones, and that fricatives mostly have longer duration than plosives (Palková, 1994). As far as intrinsic intensity is concerned, we can establish a rough descending scale as follows: open vowels > closed vowels > sonorants > nasals > fricatives > plosives. ...
... From this we can surmise that Czech ř consists of two to four contacts. On the other hand, there are quantitative descriptions of ř in the phonetic literature giving a specific number of contacts: Romportl (1967): 3-4 contacts; Petr et al. (1986): 4-6 contacts; Palková (1994): 2-6 contacts. Ladefoged and Maddieson (1996) show a spectrogram of Czech ř with two contacts, but they point out that some speakers produce just the fricative, without the trill component. ...
This research examines the distributional characteristics of Czech ř in terms of the number of contacts (periods). The traditional claim that this consonant is produced with two or more contacts is challenged by the empirical evidence of ř realized in connected speech (newsreading style). The results of the study show that the most common variant of the (ř) variable is a one-contact alveolar sound, with the multiple-contact realization of ř being extremely rare. The role of eight linguistic variables is assessed in order to find out which factors are most likely to influence the number of contacts of Czech ř. Some questions are discussed concerning its current definition as a trill. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.
Phonetic research has developed both impressionistic and more objective means of describing the basic units of intonation. The quantification involved in the approaches based on acoustic measurements provides more detail and it is a necessary prerequisite for the comparability and replicability of the results of different studies. In addition to having these characteristics, a proper description of intonation should be comprehensible and meaningful. This article presents a method for describing melodic contours using Legendre polynomials, which yields a few coefficients that capture the basic properties of the analysed contour (e.g. level or slope). This approach thus connects objectivity and quantitative precision with common linguistic concepts. The article also proposes the use of Legendre polynomials for the description of traditionally recognized Czech melodemes through the analysis of schemes reported in the literature. Further research on real material could verify the validity of these categories and the usefulness of the method itself.
The present study focuses on two problems connected with speech tempo. First, earlier research has been prevalently concerned with central tendencies while variation was mostly perceived as an auxiliary result. We believe, however, that information about data dispersion is essential for proper modelling and experiment design in the field of temporal structure of speech. Therefore, the present study provides reference values for some of the tempo metrics of variation that pertain to (a) between-genre differences, (b) within-genre differences, (c) inter-speaker differences, and (d) intra-speaker differences. Second, we tested the claim that faster tempi lead to fewer prosodic breaks in spoken texts. This claim had been supported by studies where a respondent was asked to produce the same text at various rates. We, on the other hand, pose a question of the number of prosodic breaks in speakers who are fast or slow inherently. The material used in the study represents two genres: poetry reciting and news reading, and we obtained recordings from 24 speakers in each genre. Apart from providing the quantifications, the outcomes suggest, for example, that the predisposition of individual speakers to produce fast or slow tempi differs between the two genres. The fastest speakers in news reading were not necessarily the fastest in poetry reciting. This result points at specific behaviour in different situations and invites caution concerning the idea of hard-wired speaking stereotypes in individuals. Also, the correlation between speakers’ rates and the number of phrases they produced was significant only in news reading, not in poetry reciting. This result was corroborated by greater variation in prosodic boundary placement in news reading. In addition, the results offer an insight into the relationship between articulation rate and speech rate, together with the comparison of measurements in syllables per second and phones per second. The latter can be of interest since Czech (the language of the material) belongs to languages with a complex syllabic structure.
Cílem studie je pokusit se nalézt zvukové jevy, které mohou ovlivnit hodnocení míry cizineckého přízvuku u polských mluvčích v češtině. Materiál tvoří vzorky pěti mluvčích mužů s mateřštinou polštinou, z nichž byl sestaven percepční test. Míru cizineckého přízvuku hodnotily dvě skupiny rodilých posluchačů češtiny (z Čech a Ostravska). Na základě výsledků testu a poslechové a akustické analýzy byly určeny jevy, které mohly mít (s různou mírou jistoty) na hodnocení cizineckého přízvuku vliv a které se naopak v hodnocení neodrazily. K cizineckému přízvuku přispívají jak jevy souvislé řeči, tak výslovnost segmentů či jejich kombinatorika.
The objective of the study is to contribute to our understanding of the acquisition of second language intonation by comparing L2 Italian and L2 Spanish as produced by L1 Czech learners. Framed within the L2 Intonation Learning theory, the study sheds light on which tonal events tend to be successfully learnt and why. The study examines different types of non-neutral statements (narrow focus, statements of the obvious, what-exclamatives), obtained by means of a Discourse Completion Task. The findings show that the two groups diverge significantly in producing the nuclear pitch accents L+H* (L2 Spanish) and (L+)H*+L (L2 Italian), which is indicative of a target-like realization in each language. However, the learners struggle with the acquisition of the target boundary tones HL% and L!H% in L2 Spanish and prenuclear pitch accents in both Romance varieties. It is speculated that this is due not only to difficulties in acquiring semantic or systemic dimensions, but also to perceptual salience and frequency effects. In addition, the study explores individual differences and reveals no significant effects of the time spent in an L2-speaking country, the age of learning and the amount of active use of a foreign language on accuracy in L2 production.
This paper is based on a study of first language attrition in Czechs living in France, which reveals that Czech expatriates in France use prominent rises in non-conclusive intonation patterns in their native language. We manipulated the speech of six expatriates by reducing the fundamental frequency (f0) range of non-conclusive rises in a phrase, and the speech of six Czech control speakers by expanding the f0 range to mimic the French-like prominent rises. The manipulations served, alongside filler items, as the basis for a perception test in which 37 native Czech listeners assessed how much the speakers' pronunciation manifested marks of a long-term stay in France. The results confirmed our hypothesis that expanding the control speakers' f0 range would increase the perceived effect of French. However, reducing the f0 range in the expatriate group did not yield lower French-effect ratings, most likely due to the presence of other pronunciation features in their speech.
The paper deals with the acquisition of Slovak word order in written texts of students of Slovak as a foreign language. Its attention is focused on identifying the correct and incorrect placement of enclitic components, and their erroneous usage is analysed with respect to different investigated variables (types of enclitic components, types of syntactic construction, distance from lexical/syntactic anchor, and realization in pre- or post-verbal position). The paper also pays attention to the error rate regarding individual proficiency levels of students, and error distribution in two language groups, Slavic and Non-Slavic learners, is compared.
The paper offers a critical review of the hierarchy of the main phonetic and phonological units. Its aim is to determine the ontological status of the phonic units of language by analysing the speech continuum from the physical and cognitive perspectives. Two important points are emphasized. First, it is unjustified to claim that the lowest units of phonetic analysis-phones-have zero degree of abstraction, because they are the result of cognitive categorization. Secondly, phonemes and allophones are not abstracted from the speech continuum by means of the same process as phones. The difference between them is not one of degree, but one of type. Some aspects of the categorization of phonic units from the point of view of language evolution and language acquisition are also considered.
The paper is concerned with the definition, manifestation, interrelatedness, and transcription of plosion, affrication, and aspiration. Its main goal is to analyze the qualitative characteristics of stop consonants of four different languages with respect to plosion, affrication and aspiration. An attempt is made at (re)defining and systematizing the three events and assessing their relevance from a (socio)linguistic point of view. It is concluded that there are communicatively important differences between different linguistic varieties in the way plosion, affrication, and aspiration are used. These differences cannot be ignored in the phonetic and phonological description of languages, because they are endowed with (socio)linguistic meaning.
The paper is concerned with the approaches currently used in the description and analysis of speech continuum and speech variation. The main goal of the paper is to offer a brief overview of parametric, segmental, and gestural approaches used in phonetics and phonology, and, at the same time, to show how these three approaches are interrelated and interdependent.
This paper provides a comprehensive account of spectral and duration-al characteristics of Czech monophthongal vowels. It improves on the existing literature (that almost exclusively focused on read speech) in that it examines vowels in spontaneous speech recorded from 10 men and 10 women, who were recruited from the general population not restricted to students or media reporters (which were the populations used in previous studies). The present material thus represents a relatively natural-istic data set. The acoustical analyses of vowel spectral properties are not limited to only the first and the second formant (F1 and F2) but include also higher formants. Duration normalized for word length as well as long/short duration ratios are compared across all vowel qualities. In line with previous acoustic data on Czech high front vowels, the present results confirm that the phonologically short /ɪ/ is realized with a higher F1 than the phonologically long /iː/. The results further demonstrate that the mid front /ɛ/ and /ɛː/ are realized with a relatively high F1 and are numerically even closer to the low /a/ and /aː/ than to the other mid vowel quality, the back /o/ and /oː/. A novel finding is that short back vowels /o/ and /u/ have a higher F2 than their long counterparts: this slight fronting is likely attributable to the spontaneous style of speech as well as to the mostly coronal context in which the vowels were embedded. In contrary to recent literature that reported extremely low long/short ratios in high vowels our findings show that duration marks the phonological length distinctions consistently across all five vowel pairs: long vowels are on average 1.76 times longer than short vowels. The study concludes with a discussion of the implications that the vowel acoustic properties may have on the way the Czech vocalic system is transcribed.
Monografija Draga Unuka je temeljna fonetično-fono-loška raziskava sodobne slovenščine. V prispevku je predstavljena, ocenjena in umeščena v okvir postgenerativnih fonoloških teorij in eksperimentalno fonetičnih obravnav na Slovenskem v zadnjih dveh desetletjih.
Cultivated speech with correct pronunciation and adequate prosody is important from a social, communicative and also didactic point of view. It can be regarded a “universal quality” of one’s self-presentation. Even though the Czech curriculum sets the development of phonetic aspects as one of the important elements of L1 teaching, various sources show that the educational reality in school differs. Based on a sample of 148 teachers of all educational levels from across the Czech Republic, the study analyses the teachers’ stated beliefs and pedagogical content knowledge of teaching phonetic aspects of Czech, and attempts to give at least an assumption of the actual classroom practices of teaching phonetic aspects in Czech classes and through that the extent of the mismatch between the intended and implemented curriculum. The results show that phonetic aspects are not treated with as much attention as they ought to and that teachers’ beliefs about the actual process of teaching and learning phonetic aspects seem to influence the implemented curriculum more than the intended curriculum and other formal requirements given by the government do.
One challenge for the second language (L2) learner of English is to master a novel phonetic implementation of the voicing contrast, whereas another challenge is to learn how consonant sequences behave in connected speech. Learners of English coming from three different language backgrounds were tested; their native varieties were Bohemian Czech, Moravian Czech, and Slovak. The Moravian variety of Czech is more similar in voicing assimilation to the Slovak language than to the Bohemian variety of Czech. Percentage of phonetic voicing was measured in the L2 (i.e. English) word-final obstruents preceding three classes of sounds: voiceless and voiced obstruents, and sonorants. Bohemian and Moravian speakers exhibited different strategies in pre-sonorant contexts, following their native (variety-specific) assimilation rules.
The crucial part of almost all current TTS systems is a grapheme-to-phoneme (G2P) conversion, i.e. the transcription of any input grapheme sequence into the correct sequence of phonemes in the given language. Unfortunately, the preparation of transcription rules and pronunciation dictionaries is not an easy process for new languages in TTS systems. For that reason, in the presented paper, we focus on the creation of an automatic G2P model, based on neural networks (NN). But, contrary to the majority of related works in G2P field, using only separate words as an input, we consider a whole phrase the input of our proposed NN model. That approach should, in our opinion, lead to more precise phonetic transcription output because the pronunciation of a word can depend on the surrounding words. The results of the trained G2P model are presented on the Czech language where the cross-word-boundary phenomena occur quite often, and they are compared to the rule-based approach.
In this part of the paper, the distribution of clause positions of the reflexive pronoun sě is analyzed statistically. Specifically, the impact of both stylistic factors and the length of the element in the initial position are investigated. The authors also discuss the possible influence of the word order of the Latin pretext (the Vulgate) on the Old Czech translation. 1. Annotation of the examples It is clear from Part I of this paper that in order to describe the word order positions of (en)clitics, it is necessary to use a classification which combines two perspectives:
This bachelor thesis concerns with acoustic analysis of vowels of native speakers of standard Czech language. The subject was to analyze and characterize Czech vowels and diphtongs in complex and in detail in terms of acoustic quality and acoustic quantity. Theoretical part of the thesis focuses on general characteristic of vowels, Czech vowel system and methods of phonetic segmentation and normalization of formant values. Practical part of the thesis presents aims of the measurements, sources of recordings, methods used for phonetic segmentation, recording and formant normalization. Acoustic analysis inspects ten speakers who were chosen from two Czech corpora of spoken language. Phonetic measurements were taken and all values of formants were normalized. In the practical part of the thesis, phonetic software Praat was used. Recorded values of formant analysis were compared with traditional and new reference values of Czech vowel formants and results of vowel quantity analysis were compared with reference values of vowel quantity. Results of diphtong analysis were also compared vith result of monophtong analysis.
There are now a vast number of cross-linguistic studies that investigate how perceptual performance with non-native speech categories is constrained by the listener's native language. However, considering the acquisition of the Chinese language phonological system, studies examining the transfer from less frequent languages are rather rare. The aim of this paper is to fill the gap regarding Czech native speakers. Through examining errors in dictation tests, it introduces some difficulties experienced by beginner level Chinese students and thus provides insight on the perception of Chinese language segmental and suprasegmental features by Czech learners. The findings imply that while errors in initials and finals show a high influence of the native language, errors in disyllabic tonal combinations seem to follow the basic language-independent patterns that have been observed in previous studies.
The sentence intonation is very important for differentiation of sentence types (declarative sentences, questions, etc.), especially in languages without fixed word order. Thus, it is very important to deal with that also in text-to-speech systems. This paper concerns the problem of wh-question, where its intonation differs from the intonation of another basic question type – yes/no question. We discuss the possibility to use wh-questions (recorded during the speech corpus preparation) in speech synthesis. The inclusion and appropriate usage of these recordings is tested in a real text-to-speech system and evaluated by listening tests. Furthermore, we focus on the problem of the perception of wh-question by listeners, with the aim to reveal whether listeners really prefer phonologically correct (falling) intonation in this type of questions.
This study focuses on voicing assimilation across word boundaries in the speech of second language (L2) users. We compare native speakers of British English to speakers of two West Slavic languages, Czech and Slovak, which, despite their many similarities, differ with respect to voicing assimilation rules. Word-final voicing was analysed in 30 speakers, using the static value of voicing percentage and the voicing profile method. The results of linear mixed-effects modelling suggest an effect of first language (L1) transfer in all L2 English speaker groups, with the tendency to assimilate being correlated with the strength of foreign accent. Importantly, the two language groups differed in assimilation strategies before sonorant consonants, as a clear effect of L1-based phonetic influence.
This article provides an overview of the existing work in linguistics on whispering and presents the results of new research on whispering in everyday communication. There are three types of linguistic studies on whispering: a) the identification and implementation of communicative aims that involve whispering; b) whispering viewed through the lens of phonetics, including notes on speech impediments; and c) whispering in transcripts of spoken language. In the research on whispering in everyday communication, data was gathered using the method of systematic self-observation. The research subjects provided a total of 56 recordings of communicative situations/events where whispering was involved. The data were organized based on the communicative aim pursued in the given communicative event/situation: non-disturbance, secrecy (including whispering during games), expressions of intimate relationships, and attention-seeking. Examples of accommodation, i.e. communicative situations involving whispering appropriate to a given environment (e.g. a church), and examples connected with speech impediments were treated separately. The results showed that a single communicative situation/event can involve several communicative aims at once (most frequently simultaneous efforts to not disturb others and to be secretive).
This paper presents a set of word monitoring experiments with Polish learners of English. Listeners heard short recordings of native English speech, and were instructed to respond when they recognized an English target word that had been presented on a computer screen. Owing to phonological considerations, we compared reaction times to two types of vowel-initial words, which had been produced either with glottalization, or had been joined via sandhi linking processes to the preceding word. Results showed that the effects of the glottalization as a boundary cue were less robust than expected. Implications of these findings for models of L2 speech are discussed. It is suggested that the prevalence of glottalization in L1 production makes listeners less sensitive to its effects as a boundary cue in L2.
The present volume is meant to give the reader an impression of the range of questions and topics that are currently subject of international research in the discovery of complexity, the organization of complexity, and the modelling of complexity. These are the main sections of our volume. Each section includes four carefully selected chapters. They deal with facets of speech production, speech acoustics, and/or speech perception or recognition, place them in an integrated phonetic-phonological perspective, and relate them in more or less explicit ways to aspects of speech technology. Therefore, we hope that this volume can help speech scientists with traditional training in phonetics and phonology to keep up with the latest developments in speech technology. In the opposite direction, speech researchers starting from a technological perspective will hopefully get inspired by reading about the questions, phenomena, and communicative functions that are currently addressed in phonetics and phonology. Either way, the future of speech research lies in international, interdisciplinary collaborations, and our volume is meant to reflect and facilitate such collaborations.
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