DOCSLIB.ORG

Investigating the Perception and Production of the Arabic Pharyngealised Sounds by L2 Learners of Arabic

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Investigating the Perception and Production of the Arabic Pharyngealised Sounds by L2 Learners of Arabic Investigating the Perception and Production of the Arabic Pharyngealised Sounds by L2 Learners of Arabic Hajar Salman Mohammed Binasfour A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English Language and Applied Linguistics, University of Reading January 2018 Abstract Pronunciation has received relatively little attention within the field of Arabic second language teaching and learning, particularly with respect to the more prominent areas of morphology, syntax, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. In the field of phonetics and phonology, it has been argued that Arabic pharyngealised sounds are distinctive and unique to Arabic and they are considered the most difficult sounds to acquire by L2 learners of Arabic. This research included two experiments that focused on examining the ability of a group of Arabic L2 learners from different L1 backgrounds to perceive and produce the fricative sounds /z/, /θ/, /f/, /ʃ/, /ħ/, /h/, /χ/, /ɣ/, /ʕ/, /sˤ/, /ðˤ/, /s/, /ð/, and the emphatic sounds /sˤ/, /ðˤ/, /dˤ/, and /tˤ/ in contrast with non- pharyngealised variants /s/, /ð/, /d/ and /t/. The aims were to investigate which aspects of acquisition were difficult and to examine the effects of technology-based instruction and traditional-based instruction to find an appropriate pronunciation teaching method to facilitate the perception and production of fricatives and emphatics. The technology-based method used in this study was adapted from Olson (2014) and Offerman and Olson (2016) to investigate the extent to which using speech analysis technology (Praat) can help in visualising the difference between pharyngealised and non-pharyngealised sounds in order to aid production and perception learning. The traditional-based method used in this study included repetition, practicing minimal pairs, and reading aloud techniques. Data were collected from forced-choice identification tasks and recordings taken during pre- and post-test conditions. The results revealed that the some of the fricatives and all the emphatic sounds posed perception and production difficulty to some L2 learners of Arabic, which is likely to be due to the absence of these sounds from the learners’ L1s. The results also ii showed significant improvements among all participants after the traditional and technology training courses. However, no significant difference was observed between L2 learners who received the traditional-based method and those who received the technology-based method. Both methods have increased students’ awareness and understanding of the features of the sounds under investigation. The contribution of the current study is to show how Arabic fricative and emphatic sounds can be effectively taught using form-focused instruction involving different traditional and technological techniques. This research has implications for the implementation of both techniques for language teachers and researchers as it shows how both approaches can be used to enhance students’ perceptive and productive skills. iii Acknowledgement I would like to present my sincere gratitude to all of the people who helped me in various ways during this journey. I would not have been able to complete this thesis without the support of those great people over the past three years. My great appreciation is due to my supervisor Professor Jane Setter for her constant support, loving attention, valuable leadership and numberless suggestions. She has set an example I hope to match some day. Also, I was honoured to have Dr. Erhan Aslan as my second supervisor and I am very grateful for his valuable suggestions and support. I would like to extend my gratitude to Dr. Jacqueline Laws, the director of the PhD Programme in Applied Linguistics, for everything she did to support and guide me when I first joined the Applied Linguistics Department until the end of this journey. I would like to thank the friendly faculty members and students in the Arabic Linguistic Institutes at Princess Nourah University and King Saud University in Saudi Arabia for their kindly help and support during data collection, especially, Hanan Almalki and Hind Alqahtani at king Saud University and Salehah Alshahrani at Princess Nourah University. I also thank King Saud University for offering me a scholarship and giving me this precious opportunity to complete my education. Finally, my heartfelt thanks go to my mother Latifah and my father Salman for their care and prayers. Also, I would like to express the most gratitude to my other half, my beloved husband Abdulaziz Almari for always believing in me and for providing me with endless support and love. Without his loving and thoughtful company, this thesis would not have been completed. Big thanks to my three angels Mohammed, Tulin and Fahad who always alleviate my tiredness with warm hearts and bright smiles. iv Declaration I confirm that this is my own work and the use of all material from other sources has been properly and fully acknowledged. Candidate: Hajar Binasfour v Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................ ii Acknowledgement .......................................................................................................... iv Declaration ........................................................................................................................ v Table of Contents ............................................................................................................ vi List of Abbreviations .................................................................................................... xiv List of Tables .................................................................................................................. xv List of Figures .............................................................................................................. xvii INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ....................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Arabic L2 Teaching and Learning in Saudi Arabia .......................................... 3 1.3 Rationale of Study ............................................................................................. 5 1.4 Objectives of Study ........................................................................................... 7 1.5 Scope of Study .................................................................................................. 7 1.6 Outline of Thesis ............................................................................................... 8 LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................ 11 2.1 Introduction ..................................................................................................... 11 2.2 Definition of Key Terms ................................................................................. 12 2.2.1 Fricatives ..................................................................................................... 12 2.2.2 Pharyngealisation ........................................................................................ 12 2.2.3 Emphatics and Non-emphatics.................................................................... 12 2.2.4 L2 Speech Perception ................................................................................. 13 2.2.5 L2 Speech Production ................................................................................. 13 2.2.6 Features of Pronunciation ........................................................................... 14 2.2.7 Analysis of Speech ...................................................................................... 15 2.3 Pharyngealisation in Arabic ............................................................................ 16 2.3.1 Modern Standard Arabic ............................................................................. 16 2.3.1.1 The Structure of MSA ......................................................................... 17 2.3.2 The History of Research in Arabic Pharyngealisation ................................ 19 2.3.3 Arabic Pharyngealised Consonants ............................................................. 20 2.3.4 Arabic Pharyngealised Vowels ................................................................... 24 2.3.5 Articulatory and Acoustic Analysis of Arabic Pharyngealisation .............. 32 vi 2.3.6 Distinctive Features of Arabic Pharyngealisation ....................................... 34 2.3.7 The Functional Load of Emphatics ............................................................. 37 2.3.8 The Orthographic Representations of Emphatics and Non-emphatics ....... 39 2.3.9 Arabic Dialectal Variations in the Pronunciation of Emphatics ................. 40 2.4 Teaching Pronunciation .................................................................................. 42 2.4.1 Objectives in Teaching Pronunciation ........................................................ 42 2.4.2 The Importance of Teaching Pronunciation................................................ 43 2.4.3 General Approaches to Teaching Pronunciation ........................................ 44 2.4.4 Form-Focused Instruction ........................................................................... 48 2.4.5
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Dialects of Marinduque Tagalog
    PACIFIC LINGUISTICS - Se�ie� B No. 69 THE DIALECTS OF MARINDUQUE TAGALOG by Rosa Soberano Department of Linguistics Research School of Pacific Studies THE AUSTRALIAN NATIONAL UNIVERSITY Soberano, R. The dialects of Marinduque Tagalog. B-69, xii + 244 pages. Pacific Linguistics, The Australian National University, 1980. DOI:10.15144/PL-B69.cover ©1980 Pacific Linguistics and/or the author(s). Online edition licensed 2015 CC BY-SA 4.0, with permission of PL. A sealang.net/CRCL initiative. PAC IFIC LINGUISTICS is issued through the Ling ui6zic Ci�cle 06 Canbe��a and consists of four series: SERIES A - OCCASIONA L PAPERS SER IES B - MONOGRAPHS SER IES C - BOOKS SERIES V - SPECIAL PUBLICATIONS EDITOR: S.A. Wurm. ASSOCIATE EDITORS: D.C. Laycock, C.L. Voorhoeve, D.T. Tryon, T.E. Dutton. EDITORIAL ADVISERS: B. Bender, University of Hawaii J. Lynch, University of Papua New Guinea D. Bradley, University of Melbourne K.A. McElhanon, University of Texas A. Capell, University of Sydney H. McKaughan, University of Hawaii S. Elbert, University of Hawaii P. Muhlhausler, Linacre College, Oxfor d K. Franklin, Summer Institute of G.N. O'Grady, University of Victoria, B.C. Linguistics A.K. Pawley, University of Hawaii W.W. Glover, Summer Institute of K. Pike, University of Michigan; Summer Linguistics Institute of Linguistics E.C. Polom , University of Texas G. Grace, University of Hawaii e G. Sankoff, Universit de Montr al M.A.K. Halliday, University of e e Sydney W.A.L. Stokhof, National Centre for A. Healey, Summer Institute of Language Development, Jakarta; Linguistics University of Leiden L.
    [Show full text]
  • University of California Santa Cruz Minimal Reduplication
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SANTA CRUZ MINIMAL REDUPLICATION A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in LINGUISTICS by Jesse Saba Kirchner June 2010 The Dissertation of Jesse Saba Kirchner is approved: Professor Armin Mester, Chair Professor Jaye Padgett Professor Junko Ito Tyrus Miller Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies Copyright © by Jesse Saba Kirchner 2010 Some rights reserved: see Appendix E. Contents Abstract vi Dedication viii Acknowledgments ix 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Structureofthethesis ...... ....... ....... ....... ........ 2 1.2 Overviewofthetheory...... ....... ....... ....... .. ....... 2 1.2.1 GoalsofMR ..................................... 3 1.2.2 Assumptionsandpredictions. ....... 7 1.3 MorphologicalReduplication . .......... 10 1.3.1 Fixedsize..................................... ... 11 1.3.2 Phonologicalopacity. ...... 17 1.3.3 Prominentmaterialpreferentiallycopied . ............ 22 1.3.4 Localityofreduplication. ........ 24 1.3.5 Iconicity ..................................... ... 24 1.4 Syntacticreduplication. .......... 26 2 Morphological reduplication 30 2.1 Casestudy:Kwak’wala ...... ....... ....... ....... .. ....... 31 2.2 Data............................................ ... 33 2.2.1 Phonology ..................................... .. 33 2.2.2 Morphophonology ............................... ... 40 2.2.3 -mut’ .......................................... 40 2.3 Analysis........................................ ..... 48 2.3.1 Lengtheningandreduplication.
    [Show full text]
  • Tagbanwa Grammar.Vp Tuesday, December 08, 2009 2:45:26 PM Color Profile: Generic CMYK Printer Profile Composite Default Screen
    Color profile: Generic CMYK printer profile Composite Default screen Linguistic Society of the Philippines Special Monograph Issue, Number 48 The Philippine Journal of Linguistics (PJL) is the official publication of the Linguistic Society of the Philippines. It publishes studies in descriptive, comparative, historical, and areal linguistics. Although its primary interest is in linguistic theory, it also publishes papers on the application of theory to language teaching, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, anthropological principles, etc. Such papers should, however, be chiefly concerned with the principles which underlie specific techniques rather than with the mechanical aspects of such techniques. Articles are published in English, although papers written in Filipino, an official language of the Philippines, will occasionally appear. Since the Linguistic Society of the Philippines is composed of members whose paramount interests are the Philippine languages, papers on these and related languages are given priority in publication. This does not mean, however, that the journal will limit its scope to the Austronesian language family. Studies on any aspect of language structure are welcome. The Special Monograph Series publishes longer studies in the same areas of interest as the PJL, or collections of articles on a single theme. Manuscripts for publication, exchange journals, and books for review or listing should be sent to the Editor, Ma. Lourdes S. Bautista, De La Salle University, 2401 Taft Avenue, Manila, Philippines. Manuscripts from the United States and Europe should be sent to Dr. Lawrence A. Reid, Pacific and Asia Linguistics Institute, University of Hawaii, 1890 East-West Road, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, U.S.A. Editorial Board Editor: Ma. Lourdes S.
    [Show full text]
  • Contrastive Analysis: a Comparison of English and Tagalog Phonetics & Phonology
    SAMPLE: Contrastive Analysis: A Comparison of English and Tagalog Phonetics & Phonology Contrastive Analysis: A Comparison of the English and Tagalog Phonetics & Phonology Trisha Alcisto University of Massachusetts Boston CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS: A COMPARISON OF THE ENGLISH AND TAGALOG SOUND SYSTEMS 2 Introduction to a Contrastive Analysis This essay will explore and describe some similarities and differences between the sound systems of Tagalog, commonly referred to as Filipino, and English. For the purposes of this paper, I have obtained a linguistic description of the Tagalog language, provided by Paul Schachter (2008) in a chapter from Comrie’s The World’s Major Languages, as well as information collected from interviews with two native speakers of Tagalog. Both interviewees live in Manila, Philippines and are advanced users of English as an L2. From here forward, I will refer to them as Perry and Cha respectively. Perry is a male employed by an outsourcing company as an “English accent coach” for Filipino employees who speak on the phone with native English speakers daily. This demonstrates that he is considered to have explicit knowledge of English pronunciation as compared to that of Tagalog. Cha, like Perry and the rest of the Filipinos of their generation, was educated in English from primary school and forward, but does not believe that she has any explicit knowledge of English nor Tagalog. Her profession does also require, however, the daily use of both languages with colleagues and clients. A Comparison of Two Languages English and Tagalog belong to different language families: English from the West- Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family (Meyer, 2009) and Tagalog from the Western-Malayo-Polynesian branch of the Austronesian language family tree (Schachter, 2008).
    [Show full text]
  • Development of the Tagalog Version of the Western Aphasia Battery-Revised
    University of Central Florida STARS Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 2012 Development Of The Tagalog Version Of The Western Aphasia Battery-revised Carmina Ozaeta University of Central Florida Part of the Communication Sciences and Disorders Commons Find similar works at: https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd University of Central Florida Libraries http://library.ucf.edu This Masters Thesis (Open Access) is brought to you for free and open access by STARS. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019 by an authorized administrator of STARS. For more information, please contact [email protected]. STARS Citation Ozaeta, Carmina, "Development Of The Tagalog Version Of The Western Aphasia Battery-revised" (2012). Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2004-2019. 2230. https://stars.library.ucf.edu/etd/2230 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TAGALOG VERSION OF THE WESTERN APHASIA BATTERY-REVISED by CARMINA OZAETA B.S. University of Central Florida, 2010 A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders in the College of Health and Public Affairs at the University of Central Florida Orlando, Florida Summer Term 2012 i © 2012 Carmina Ozaeta ii ABSTRACT There has been limited research done in the Philippines in the area of aphasia, a frequent concomitant symptom of strokes and presents as impairment in any area of the input and output of language. Diagnosis is generally conducted by clinicians based on sites of lesion of speakers with aphasia and clinical observations of language symptoms and unpublished translation of the WAB.
    [Show full text]
  • Against Gradience John J. Mccarthy Date of This Version: April 1, 2002
    Against Gradience John J. McCarthy Date of this version: April 1, 2002 Because thou art lukewarm, neither hot nor cold, I will vomit thee out of my mouth. Revelation 3:16 Abstract In Optimality Theory, a constraint can assign multiple violation-marks in two ways. Any constraint can assign several marks if there are several violating structures in the form under evaluation. Furthermore, some constraints are claimed to be gradient: they can assign multiple marks even when there is just a single instance of the non- conforming structure. In this paper, I argue that gradience is not a property of OT constraints. I examine the full range of gradient constraints that have been proposed and show that none is necessary, some are insufficient, and some are actually harmful. The archetypic gradient constraint is ALIGN, and I point out various inadequacies of gradient ALIGN, arguing instead for a quantized, categorical alternative. 1. Introduction In Optimality Theory (Prince and Smolensky 1993), a constraint can assign multiple violation-marks to a candidate. This happens in two situations. First, there can be several places where the constraint is violated in a single candidate, as when ONSET assigns two marks to the candidate a.pa.i. Second, some constraints are evaluated gradiently, measuring the extent of a candidate’s deviance from some norm. The best-known gradient constraints come from the alignment family (McCarthy and Prince 1993a); for instance, the constraint ALIGN(Ft, Wd, R) assigns three violation-marks to [(pá.ta).ka.ti.ma], one mark for each syllable that separates the right foot-edge “)“ from the right word-edge “]“.
    [Show full text]
  • Tagalog /U/ Lowering: an Instrumental Study of Spontaneous Speech
    Tagalog /u/ lowering: An instrumental study of spontaneous speech First Qualifying Paper, May 2012 CUNY Graduate Center Faculty Advisors: Dianne Bradley; Kathleen Currie Hall The standard characterization of Tagalog /u/ lowering as a phonological process triggered in the final syllable of a prosodic word fails to capture the entire picture of the domain in which lowering applies: problems arise, specifically, for cases in which optionality is apparently at issue. Kaufman (2007) argues for a prosodic structure for Tagalog hosts and clitics that utilizes recursion. Such a structure may provide the details needed to capture the variability observed in /u/-lowering. The current instrumental study, examining realizations of native Tagalog forms in spontaneous speech, tested predictions that follow from Kaufman’s hypothesized structure. The data provided evidence for the lowering process, but show that /u/ does not lower all the way to the mid vowel, contrary to the description in the literature. More crucially, the findings to some extent support the idea that previously unexplained variability has an account that depends on a two-way distinction among prosodic domains (although they are also not entirely incompatible with a three-way distinction, as per Kaufman's analysis). The prosodic categories under investigation in the current study are the minimal prosodic word, the maximal prosodic word, and the phonological phrase. 1 Introduction Tagalog is commonly known to have a phonological process of /u/ lowering in native forms. Traditional accounts (Schachter & Otanes, 1972; Ramos, 1990; Zuraw, 2006) suggest that this lowering occurs when /u/ is in the final syllable of a prosodic word or phrase.
    [Show full text]
  • Vowel Change of English Words by Filipino Speakers in “Everglow” Short Movie from Cof Studios Youtube Channel
    PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI VOWEL CHANGE OF ENGLISH WORDS BY FILIPINO SPEAKERS IN “EVERGLOW” SHORT MOVIE FROM COF STUDIOS YOUTUBE CHANNEL AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters By INGIELLY MELIENIA Student Number: 174214169 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA YOGYAKARTA 2021 PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI VOWEL CHANGE OF ENGLISH WORDS BY FILIPINO SPEAKERS IN “EVERGLOW” SHORT MOVIE FROM COF STUDIOS YOUTUBE CHANNEL AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS Submitted as a Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters By INGIELLY MELIENIA Student Number: 174214169 DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS UNIVERSITAS SANATA DHARMA YOGYAKARTA 2021 ii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI MOTTO PAGE “The things which came to you by My teaching and preaching, and which you saw in Me, these things do, and the God of peace will be with you.” (Philippians 4 : 9) vii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI DEDICATION PAGE FOR MY LOVELY PARENTS, MY BROTHER, AND MY HOPES IN THE FUTURE viii PLAGIAT MERUPAKAN TINDAKAN TIDAK TERPUJI ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This undergraduate thesis is addressed to some people whose support and presence mean a lot to me. First, I would like to thank God for His blessing to me since the first day I started in college into I finished writing my thesis. His blessings have turned me into who I am today. Second, I would like to express my gratitude to my thesis advisor Arina Isti’anah, S.Pd., M.Hum., for her support and persistence in giving me the best advice into the very end of my thesis.
    [Show full text]
  • A Multilingual Allophone Database
    Proceedings of the 12th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2020), pages 5329–5336 Marseille, 11–16 May 2020 c European Language Resources Association (ELRA), licensed under CC-BY-NC AlloVera: A Multilingual Allophone Database David R. Mortensen∗, Xinjian Li∗, Patrick Littell†, Alexis Michaud‡, Shruti Rijhwani∗, Antonios Anastasopoulos∗, Alan W. Black∗, Florian Metze∗, Graham Neubig∗ ∗Carnegie Mellon University; †National Research Council of Canada; ‡CNRS-LACITO ∗5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA; †1200 Montreal Rd, Ottawa ON K1A0R6, Canada; ‡7 rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France ∗{dmortens, xinjianl, srijhwan, aanastas, awb, fmetze, neubig}@cs.cmu.edu; †[email protected]; ‡[email protected] Abstract We introduce a new resource, AlloVera, which provides mappings from 218 allophones to phonemes for 14 languages. Phonemes are contrastive phonological units, and allophones are their various concrete realizations, which are predictable from phonological context. While phonemic representations are language specific, phonetic representations (stated in terms of (allo)phones) are much closer toauni- versal (language-independent) transcription. AlloVera allows the training of speech recognition models that output phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), regardless of the input language. We show that a “universal” allophone model, Allosaurus, built with AlloVera, outperforms “universal” phonemic models and language-specific models on a speech-transcription task. We explore
    [Show full text]
  • Jason Lobel's Dissertation
    PHILIPPINE AND NORTH BORNEAN LANGUAGES: ISSUES IN DESCRIPTION, SUBGROUPING, AND RECONSTRUCTION A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE DIVISION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF HAWAI‘I AT MĀNOA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN LINGUISTICS MAY 2013 BY JASON WILLIAM LOBEL Dissertation Committee: Robert A. Blust, Chairperson Michael L. Forman Kenneth L. Rehg R. David Zorc Ruth Elynia S. Mabanglo © Copyright 2013 by Jason William Lobel IMPORTANT NOTE: Permission is granted to the native speakers of the languages represented herein to reproduce this dissertation, or any part thereof, for the purpose of protecting, promoting, developing, or preserving their native languages, cultures, and tribal integrity, as long as proper credit is given to the author of this work. No librarian or other holder of a copy of this dissertation in any country shall have the right to require any additional proof of permission from this author in order to photocopy or print this dissertation, or any part thereof, for any native speaker of any language represented herein. ii We certify that we have read this dissertation and that, in our opinion, it is satisfactory in scope and quality as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics. ____________________________________ Chairperson ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ ____________________________________ iii iv ABSTRACT The Philippines, northern Sulawesi, and northern Borneo are home to two or three hundred languages that can be described as Philippine-type. In spite of nearly five hundred years of language documentation in the Philippines, and at least a century of work in Borneo and Sulawesi, the majority of these languages remain grossly underdocumented, and an alarming number of languages remain almost completely undocumented.
    [Show full text]
  • A Taxonomic Phonological Analysis Op Tagalog And
    A TAXONOMIC PHONOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OP TAGALOG AND PAMPANGO by Pablo Evangelista Natividad M.A., Centro Escolar University, 19^8 A Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Classics Division of Linguistics We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard The University of British Columbia April, 1967 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely avail able for reference and study. I further agree that permission-for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department or by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of CLASSICS The University of British Columbia Vancouver 8, Canada Date April 28, 1967 ABSTRACT This study is a discussion of the phonology of Tagalog and Pampango, two of the major Philippine lan• guages. The contrastive analytical description deals both with the segmental and the suprasegmental phonemes. They are analyzed as to their form, structure, and dis• tribution. Tagalog and Pampango phonemes are described using conventional taxonomic phonemes and allophones. The extent of the differences between the two languages with regard to phonology is discussed to point out the problems and the places where they will occur for Pampango learners of Tagalog. The chief difficulty for the Pampango learning Tagalog segmental phonemes is that he may confuse /'/ and /h/.
    [Show full text]
  • Allovera: a Multilingual Allophone Database
    AlloVera: A Multilingual Allophone Database David R. Mortensen∗, Xinjian Li∗, Patrick Littell†, Alexis Michaud‡, Shruti Rijhwani∗, Antonios Anastasopoulos∗, Alan W. Black∗, Florian Metze∗, Graham Neubig∗ ∗Carnegie Mellon University; †National Research Council of Canada; ‡CNRS-LACITO ∗5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh PA 15213, USA; †1200 Montreal Rd, Ottawa ON K1A0R6, Canada; ‡7 rue Guy Môquet, 94800 Villejuif, France ∗{dmortens, xinjianl, srijhwan, aanastas, awb, fmetze, neubig}@cs.cmu.edu; †[email protected]; ‡[email protected] Abstract We introduce a new resource, AlloVera, which provides mappings from 218 allophones to phonemes for 14 languages. Phonemes are contrastive phonological units, and allophones are their various concrete realizations, which are predictable from phonological context. While phonemic representations are language specific, phonetic representations (stated in terms of (allo)phones) are much closer toauni- versal (language-independent) transcription. AlloVera allows the training of speech recognition models that output phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), regardless of the input language. We show that a “universal” allophone model, Allosaurus, built with AlloVera, outperforms “universal” phonemic models and language-specific models on a speech-transcription task. We explore the implications of this technology (and related technologies) for the documentation of endangered and minority languages. We further explore other applications for which AlloVera will be suitable as it grows, including phonological typology. 1. Introduction to-phone recognition, including approximate search and Speech can be represented at various levels of abstraction speech synthesis (in human language technologies) and (Clark et al., 2007; Ladefoged and Johnson, 2014). It can phonetic/phonological typology (in linguistics). The use- be recorded as an acoustic signal or an articulatory score.
    [Show full text]