DOCUMENT RESUME ED 192 584 FL 011 744 AUTHOR Lehtonen, Jaakko, Ed.; Sajavaara, Kari, Ed. TITLE Papers in Contrastive Phonetics, Jyvaskyla Cross-Language Studies, No. 7. INSTITUTION Jyvaskyla Univ. (Finland). Dept. of English. TEEM NO ISBN-951-678-255-B PUB DATE 79 NOTE 228p. AVAILABLE FECM Department of English, University yvaskyla, 40100 Jyvaskyla 10, Finland EDFS PRICE MF01/PC10 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTOF Auditory Perception: *Consonants: *Contrastive Linguistics: Cistinctive Features (Language): English (Second Language) :Finnish: Interference (Language) *Phonetics: Pronunciation: Second Language Learning: Stress (Phonology): *Vowels IDENTIFIERS Reduction (Phonology): *Voicing ABSTRACT Four papers report on phonetic differences between Finnish and English, with pedagogical implicationsfor teaching English as a second language. "The English/ptk/-/bdg/ Distinction: Data and Discussion" by Kari Suomi isa survey of recent work on the phonetic parameters of the fortis/lenis distinction.The distinction "voiced-voiceless" is preferred to "fortis-lenis."In "The Voiceless-Voiced Opposition of English Consonants: Difficultiesof Pronunciation and Perception in Communication between Nativeand Finnish Speakers," Risto Hanninen analyzes the learningdifficulties encountered by Finns in isolated words, in words included inword lists, and in words embedded in meaningfulsentences. Learning difficulties vary greatly according to context.In voiced-voiceless identification tests, Finnish students failed to identifymost of the tested oppositions. In "Vowel Reduction in the Englishof Finnish Learners" by Hannele Heikkinen, the quality of the final reduced vowel in English, when used by Finnish speakers,was found to be influenced by lip rounding reflective of Finnish "oe." Finally,in "The Discrimination and Identification of EnglishVowels, Consonants, Junctures and Sentence Stress by Finnish Comprehensive School Pupils," Reijo Lamminmaki deals with problems oflanguage testing as related to identification problems, and questions the usefulnessof existing tests in interlanguage research. (JB) ********************* ********* ******* ********************** reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best thatcan be made * from the original document. * ********************************* **************************** Jyvaskyla Cross-Language Studies No 7 US DEPARTMEN 'OF HEALTH- PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS EDUCATION&VVELFARE MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY NATIONALINSTITUTEOF EDUCATION THIS DOCUMENT HAS BEEN REPRO- KLSitArCka-altiv-A,_ DUCED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED FROM THE PERSON OR ORGANIZATION OR IOIN- ATiNG IT POINTS OF %dig* DR OPINIONS STATED DO NOT NECESSARILY REPRE- SENTOFFIC.ALNATIONALINSTITUTEOF EDUCATION POSITION OR POLICY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER PAPERS IN COON RAST1vE PHONETICS edited by Jaakko Lehtonen and Kari Sajavaara JyvaskylaCross-Language Studies Department of English,University ofJyvaskyl'a edited by Karl Sajavaara and JaakkoLehtonen ++1. Assistant to the editors Hannele Heikkinen Jyvaskyld 1979 ISBN 951-67B-255-8 ISSN 0357-654x PREFACE The Finnish-English Contrastive Projectwas started at the University of JyvaskyU in the spring of 1974. The project has been carried out in two parts: the Department of Phonetics and General Linguistics isrespon- sible for the work on oronunciation problems, and the Department of English is concerned with other aspects of the research. Several reports have omen published previously on phonetically orientatedtopics (eg. Moisio and Valenta 1976; Suomi 1976; Lehtonen and Koponen 1977; Sajavaara and Lehtonen 1978a; Lehtonen 1978) and the results have also been applied to language teaching purposes in a textbook of spoken English (Lehtonen, Sajavaara and May 1977). The methodology and problems of contrastive phonetics have been discussed by eg. Lehtonen (1977; 1979). In co- operation with the Error Analysis Project at Abo Akademi, the Contrastive Project has also carried out some tests; the results have been summarized in Palmberg (1979). In addition, the problems concerning the influence of English language and culture on present-day Finnish have been studied in co-operation with the Anglicism Project at the University of4yvaskyla (see eg. Sajavaara et al- 1978). In traditional contrastive analysis an analysis of the similarities and differences of two sound systems it was supposed that the difficult- ies of foreign language students could be described and predicted. The 'strong hypothesis' of contrastive analysis has been much criticized(see eg. Sajavaara 1977). It obviously failed to recognize the importance of actual problems in learning situations which is exactly the kind of knowledge that the FL teacher needs in his classroom practice.Moreover, the focus was on foreign language production: the role of the listener, which is equally important, was grossly underestimated. The listener's impressions of speech derive from internalized categories of rules and structures usually called phonology.Thus, he does not hear the actual physical utterance but a chain of segments corresponding to the expec- tations about the utterance. This is typical of human perceptual mechan- isms in general: we observe structures of whose existence1.-m have discovered and which we choose to observe.For a speaker-hearer, language is an earphone through which he can hear only language, not speech. Thus, many of the acoustic cues which actually carry the information necessary 4 for speech perception are subconscious '(eg., formant: patterns of vowels. consonantal loci and transitions, temporal patterns, of utterance, etc.). Although a speaker can pay conscious attention to certain postures and movements of his speech, organs, both the way in which they actually operate during speech and the resulting acoustic message are beyond the scope of conscious observation. All this has important consequences: the contrastive analyst and the foreign language teacher must realize that the. way in which they 'hear' a certain pattern may be totally different to the way in which the student perceives the same thing.. The problems of the foreign language student can be under -:nly if we knave how he 'feels', what he attempts to hear, what he ac- -eers, what the structures are that ;')e actually perceives, and how 2iffer from the target, ie. the way the native speaker's perception works in similar situations. Therefore, the focus of studies should not be on 'pronunciation' only but on a complex of problems which extend far beyond thearea of what is traditionally called pronunciation teaching. This ccmol.ex includes the differences in the learner's Ll and L2 communication chains as a whole, as well as the problems and confusions arising from the fact that the learner unconsciously resorts to Li phenomena not only when producing L2 but also when trying to understand L2. The majority of the contrastive phonetic studies carried out within the Project were, however, limited to specific phonetic phenomena: the fortis/lenis distinction, vowel reduction, word and sentence stress, consonant clusters, word boundaries, fluency, pauses, the acceptability of the Finnish variety of pronunciation, the reliabYity of the marking of pronunciation errors etc. (for closer discussion, see eg. Sajavaara and Lehtonen 1978b)- The present volume is a final report on the strictly phonetic part of the project. Some of the topics included in the origtnal research programme cannot be reported here, either because they have been delayed or the methods applied have proved to he inadequate and the results are therefore unreliable. That is why studies on such important topics as word and sentence stress or rhythm and intonation are not found in this volume. In addition, some of the later studies have a wider scope: they deal with various aspects of discourse and not with specific pronunciation problems. The reports of these studies, which also include non-verbal communication analysis, are not included here, since a separate issue ,sated to discourse dnalysis will be bublishedin this series. Two of the present papers are concerned withthe fortis/lenis stinction. The paper by Suomi is a version ofa paper read at the h Meeting of Finnish Phoneticians at Jyvaskyld in 1978. It is a survey of the recent worx on the phonetic parameters of the fortis/ lenis distinction and a discussion of the theoreticalproblems involved In his discussion of the problems of labelling thedistinction the euthor prefers the terms "voiced-voiceless" to 'fortis-lenis",which were recommended for pedanogical purposes by eq. Lehtonen (1971',and Gimson (1960. In a related study, Hanninen has analysed the learning difficulties encountered by Finns in three differentcontextual environments: in isolated words, in words included in wordlists and in words embedded in meaningful sentences. The duratioral pattern of words embedded in meaningful sentences appeared to be clearly differentfrom the other environment. Acoustical data on the fricatives and affricates also turned out to be different from that of the plosives. The learning difficulties of Finns vary a great deal according to thecontext. In identification tests, Finnish students failedto identify most of the tested oppositions. English listeners had considerable difficulty in identifying the opposition as produced by Finnishspeakers. Reduction of the final vowel in English VCV-structures isdiscussed by Heikkinen. As regards the learning problems of Finnish students, shediscovered that the duration used by Finns was either influencedby the mother