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- Volume 3, Issue, 2017
International Journal of Learner Corpus Research - Volume 3, Issue 2, 2017
Volume 3, Issue 2, 2017
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Fluently disfluent?
Author(s): Malte Belz, Simon Sauer, Anke Lüdeling and Christine Mooshammerpp.: 118–148 (31)More LessIn this article, we explore the disfluencies of advanced learners and native speakers of German in spontaneous speech. We focus on the frequency, form, and place of silent and filled pauses as well as self-repairs. Frequency significantly differs for silent pauses only. As to form, the distribution for both filled pauses and repair types significantly differs between the groups, while the proportion of within-repair hesitations (‘interregna’) is similar. For the neighbouring tokens of filled pauses, learners adhere to the pattern of their native language English, which is significantly different from the pattern we find for native German. Our results indicate that for some aspects of disfluencies, it seems that learners can adapt to a native-like pattern, while others are imported from the L1. Still others are significantly different from both the target and the native pattern. We present different possible explanations for all these cases.
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Phonetic analysis of filled pauses based on a Hungarian-English learner corpus
Author(s): Mária Gósy, Dorottya Gyarmathy and András Bekepp.: 149–174 (26)More LessFilled pauses may reveal speech planning or execution problems to a greater extent in L2 spontaneous speech than in L1. The purpose of this study was to analyze the forms and position of all filled pauses, and the durations and the formants of vocalic filled pauses in English (L2) and in Hungarian (L1) spontaneous speech produced by 30 young learners with various L2 proficiency levels using data from our HunEng-D learner corpus. The findings showed that the forms of filled pauses were similar in both languages, irrespective of level of language proficiency. Results confirmed significantly longer vocalic filled pauses in basic and intermediate learners in their L2 relative to their more advanced peers. Formant values (as acoustic reflections of vowel quality) indicated very similar articulatory configurations for all vocalic filled pauses, irrespective of language and language proficiency.
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A bi-directional task-based corpus of learners’ conversational speech
Author(s): M. Luisa Garcia Lecumberri, Martin Cooke, Mirjam Wester, Martin Cooke and Mirjam Westerpp.: 175–195 (21)More LessThis paper describes a corpus of task-based conversational speech produced by English and Spanish native talkers speaking English and Spanish as both a first and a second language. For cross-language comparability, speech material was elicited using a picture-based task common to each native language group. The bi-directionality of the corpus, stemming from the use of the same speakers and the same language pairing, makes it possible to separate native language factors from the influence of speaking in a first or second language. The potential for studying first language influences and non-native speech using the corpus is illustrated by means of a series of explorations of acoustic, segmental, suprasegmental, and conversational phenomena. These analyses demonstrate the breadth of factors that are amenable to investigation in a conversational corpus and reveal different types of interactions between the first language, the second language, and non-nativeness.
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Phonological development in different learning contexts
Author(s): Ulrike Gutpp.: 196–222 (27)More LessThis paper examines the effect of learning context on the improvement of some L2 phonological parameters. Based on the Learning Prosody corpus (LeaP), it investigates the speech of 29 learners with various L1s who were recorded before and after either (i) a six to nine-month stay abroad, (ii) a six-month training course in the target language phonology or (iii) a stay abroad that included instruction in the L2 phonology. Quantitative corpus analyses were carried out on the learners’ vowel reduction, intonation and on their oral fluency. Results showed gains for all learner groups in pitch range, vowel reduction and fluency, but only one significant gain for the training course participants (group 2) as compared to the stay abroad groups. Qualitative corpus analyses revealed the pronounced variation across individual learners and suggest an intricate interplay between speaking styles and learning contexts.
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Towards a perceptually assessed corpus of non-native French
Author(s): Sylvain Detey and Isabelle Racinepp.: 223–249 (27)More LessIn this article, we describe the main methodological steps taken in the InterPhonologie du Français Contemporain (IPFC) research project to build an international corpus of spoken French as a Foreign Language for research and educational purposes. We offer a brief illustration of our approach with a four-session longitudinal study of 12 beginner Japanese learners of French over two years, especially /b/ and /v/ consonants produced in two tasks (repetition and reading of an identical wordlist). Our results illustrate how our perception-based first-screening coding approach provides us with rich information about the developmental profile of the learners, taking into account the task (repetition vs reading), the position in the word (initial, medial, final), the perceptual phonetic characteristics, and ultimately the left and right phonological context of the structure under scrutiny. This work is the first step in an iterative approach to further test experimentally subsets of the non-target-like productions from an acoustic-perceptual point of view.
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Comparing visualization techniques for learning second language prosody
Author(s): Oliver Niebuhr, Maria Alm, Nathalie Schümchen and Kerstin Fischerpp.: 250–277 (28)More LessWe tested the usability of prosody visualization techniques for second language (L2) learners. Eighteen Danish learners realized target sentences in German based on different visualization techniques. The sentence realizations were annotated by means of the phonological Kiel Intonation Model and then analyzed in terms of (a) prosodic-pattern consistency and (b) correctness of the prosodic patterns. In addition, the participants rated the usability of the visualization techniques. The results from the phonological analysis converged with the usability ratings in showing that iconic techniques, in particular the stylized “hat pattern” visualization, performed better than symbolic techniques, and that marking prosodic information beyond intonation can be more confusing than instructive. In discussing our findings, we also provide a description of the new Danish-German learner corpus we created: DANGER. It is freely available for interested researchers upon request.
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The Trinity Lancaster Corpus
Author(s): Dana Gablasova, Vaclav Brezina and Tony McEnery
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