School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemAusKidTalk: An Auditory-Visual Corpus of 3- to 12-Year-Old Australian Children's Speech(ISCA, 2021)Here we present AusKidTalk [1], an audio-visual (AV) corpus of Australian children’s speech collected to facilitate the development of speech based technological solutions for children. It builds upon the technology and expertise developed through the collection of an earlier corpus of Australian adult speech, AusTalk [2,3]. This multi-site initiative was established to remedy the dire shortage of children’s speech corpora in Australia and around the world that are sufficiently sized to train accurate automated speech processing tools for children. We are collecting ~600 hours of speech from children aged 3–12 years that includes single word and sentence productions as well as narrative and emotional speech. In this paper, we discuss the key requirements for AusKidTalk and how we designed the recording setup and protocol to meet them. We also discuss key findings from our feasibility study of the recording protocol, recording tools, and user interface.
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ItemYou know and like among migrants in Ireland and Australia(Wiley, 2021-12)This study investigates the use and adoption of the discourse-pragmatic markers you know and like among L2 speakers of the Expanding Circle (Poland and China) who move to Inner Circle countries (Ireland and Australia) as migrants. Adopting a quantitative analysis, findings show that rates of use of you know are commensurate between both L1 (Inner Circle) groups, despite speaking different varieties of English. No significant differences in the rates of use of you know and like are found between L1 and L2 speakers, although when broken down by nationality, Polish L1 speakers use more you know than any other group. Having an all-Chinese social network is not found to be an inhibiting factor towards the use of you know among the migrants in Australia. In Ireland, migrants with a length of residence of more than six years approach, but do not attain, L1 speaker levels of use of clause-final like in particular.
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ItemNew insights into /el/-/Æl/ merging in Australian English(ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2021-01-02)A merger exists in Australian English in which /el/ is realized as [æl] for a number of speakers, particularly in Victoria. There have also been some observations of /æl/ raising to [el], termed “transposition”. Although thought to be characteristic of older speakers, empirical evidence for transposition is scant. Here we report the discovery of substantive degrees of merging in thirteen older speakers, aged between 51 and 80, from Ocean Grove, Victoria. Auditory and acoustic methods showed bidirectional vowel movement, with speakers converging on both the /æ/ and /e/ phonemes. Increasing velarization of the lateral has been posited as a factor in the development of the merger in Victoria, and thus /l/ quality was also investigated, with null results in terms of direct factors. The lateral, however, was shown to be dark in both syllable onset and coda positions, with evidence for /l/ being clearer in this age group when compared with younger speakers. Lexical frequency and orthography were also investigated as factors, the latter showing a significant effect and suggesting a role for velarization as a contrast maintenance strategy.
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ItemNo Preview Available'Northmen, Southmen, comrades all'? The adoption of discourse like by migrants north and south of the Irish border(Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2020)The Republic of Ireland (ROI) and Northern Ireland (NI) have recently become attractive migrant destinations. Two main dialectal varieties are recognised on the island, but little is known about their adoption by new speakers. Focusing on a panlectal feature, discourse like, we conducted a quantitative sociolinguistic investigation of its adoption by seventeen young Polish and Lithuanian migrants in Armagh (NI), and thirty-six Polish and Chinese adult migrants in Dublin (ROI), with comparator samples drawn from native speakers. Findings show that like rates in both cities diverge, but that migrants mirror local frequencies. Clause-final like is restricted primarily to native speakers, but is twice as frequent in Armagh than in Dublin. English proficiency has a significant effect on the likelihood of young migrants in Armagh adopting the clause-final variant. The article's significance also stems from the original contribution it makes to our understanding of how sociolinguistic competence is acquired in 'superdiverse' settings. (Discourse like, identity, migration, Northern Irish-English, Hiberno-English, Ulster English, Southern Irish-English).
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ItemNew Speakers in the Irish Context: Heritage Language Maintenance Among Multilingual Migrants in Dublin, Ireland(Frontiers in Education, 2020-01-22)