School of Languages and Linguistics - Research Publications
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ItemStop (de)gemination in Veneto Italian: The role of durational correlates.(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association, 2022-12-16)This preliminary study investigates a long-assumed but previously untested degemination of stops in the regional variety of Italian spoken in the Veneto, in North-East Italy. The durational parameters known to be affected by gemination in Italian – i.e., consonant duration, duration of the preceding vowel and the ratio between the two – are considered. The entire Italian stop series is investigated through an acoustic-phonetic production experiment involving six speakers reading a set of carrier sentences designed to elicit different prosodic patterns. Partial degemination is observed for most speakers in terms of (a) decreased geminate-singleton consonant duration differences compared to previous studies on other Italian varieties, and (b) considerable overlap between geminate and singleton consonant-to-vowel duration ratio categories. Possible sociophonetic effects are discussed.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableDesigning an App for Pregnancy Care for a Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Community(The Association for Computing Machinery, 2017)We report a study to design and evaluate an app to support pregnancy information provided to women through an Australian health service. As part of a larger project to provide prenatal resources for culturally and linguistically diverse groups, this study focused on the design and reception of an app with the local Vietnamese community and health professionals of a particular hospital. Our study had three stages: an initial design workshop with the hospital; prototype design and development; prototype-based interviews with health professionals and focus groups with Vietnamese women. We explore how an app of this sort must be designed for a range of different use scenarios, considering its use by consumers with a multiplicity of differing viewpoints about its nature and purpose in relation to pregnancy care.
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ItemPerception of consonant length in familiar and unfamiliar languages by native speakers of Mandarin, Italian and Japanese(ISCA, 2020)This study builds on our previous research and provides additional analyses to determine if there is a relationship between the ability to process consonant length in familiar and unfamiliar languages for learners of Japanese whose native language is Italian or Mandarin. The emphasis is on L2-L3 (second-third language) phonetic influence. Japanese and Italian use consonant length contrastively, but not Mandarin. We thus asked if Mandarin learners with higher proficiency in Japanese are more or less accurate in length identification than Italian learners with first language (L1) experience of consonant length. Specifically, we focused on finding out if learners who accurately identify Japanese consonant length might also be accurate in their identification of the length category in Italian. Four groups of listeners differing in their L1 (Italian x 2 groups, Japanese, Mandarin) and experience with consonant length participated in forced-choice identification experiments. L1 Japanese and L1 Italian listeners identified the length category more accurately in their L1 than in the foreign language (FL). The ability to identify consonant length in Japanese and Italian by 18 advanced Mandarin-speaking learners of Japanese seemed unrelated. This suggests that speech processing skills acquired in one FL may not automatically transfer to another FL.
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ItemThe secondary roles of amplitude and F0 in the perception of word-initial geminates in Kelantan Malay(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Australia (ASSTA), 2019)This study examines the extent to which amplitude and F0 play secondary roles in perceptually cueing the word-initial singleton/geminate consonant contrast in Kelantan Malay (KM). Three voiceless stop word-pairs produced in isolation, i.e. utterance-initial position, were chosen for manipulation in three perception experiments involving KM native listeners. Results show that amplitude and F0 have limited perceptual functions on their own, although the combined values of the two parameters do have some effect on the perception of the consonant contrast. These results are expected for the utterance-initial voiceless stop pairs given the absence of closure duration information as a perceptual cue in this context. The findings support the view that the consonant length distinction in word-initial position, particularly for voiceless stops, can be potentially cued by a set of secondary parameters, e.g. amplitude and F0, alongside the primary acoustic parameter of closure duration.
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ItemTracking vowel categorization behaviour longitudinally: a study across three x three year increments (2012, 2015, 2018)(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc., 2019)Longitudinal data provide a unique opportunity to address questions around language change, and speaker/listener behaviour. Processing behaviour is considered subject to change over time, but it remains an open question as to over what time period incremental changes might occur. This study compares responses to a forced-choice listening test over three x three-year increments (2012, 2015, 2018), from a set of the same ten mainstream Australian English listeners. The listeners are from a small town (Warrnambool, Australia), where crucially, a distinction between /el/-/æl/ is lost for many. Here we focus on the contrasts between /ɪ e æ/ in /hVt/ and /CVL/ environments. Despite our predictions, overall results show that the increments, which span six years in total, are too small for any changes to arise. This study contributes to our understanding of longitudinal processing behaviour, showing overall consistency across 2012-2018, even in the context of a merger in-progress.
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ItemCross-language perception of Italian and Japanese consonant length contrasts: a comparison of native Italian listeners with and without Japanese language learning experience(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc., 2019)Both Italian and Japanese use consonant length contrastively. We investigated whether there is any difference between two groups of native Italian speakers with different Japanese experience in their perception of native Italian and non-native Japanese length contrasts. One of the groups included 14 Italian learners of Japanese and the other group included 14 Italian speakers without knowledge of Japanese. These two groups and a control group of ten native Japanese speakers identified length contrasts in Italian and Japanese. The two Italian groups did not differ in identifying native Italian contrasts, but those who were learning Japanese outperformed their fellow Italian speakers without knowledge of Japanese in identifying non-native Japanese contrasts whilst not reaching the native Japanese level. We tentatively conclude that, in cross-language perception of the consonant length contrast in Japanese, there is an additional benefit of Japanese learning for native Italian speakers even when positive transfer may be assumed.
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ItemThe Effects of Foreign Language Learning on the Perception of Japanese Consonant Length Contrasts(Australasian Speech Science and Technology Australia (ASSTA), 2018)The perception of Japanese singleton/geminate contrasts by native and non-native listeners was compared to examine if not only specific but general foreign language experience might facilitate the processing of unfamiliar sounds. Three groups of non-native listeners and a native Japanese control group participated in the AXB discrimination experiment. As expected, native Japanese listeners outperformed non-native listeners in discriminating Japanese length contrasts. While learners of Japanese did not match the native level of performance, they were more accurate than listeners with other foreign language experience, suggesting that general experience may not transfer positively to the processing of Japanese length contrasts.
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ItemSociophonetic variablity of postvocalic /t/ in Aboriginal and mainstream Australian English(ASSTA, 2018)This paper analyses post-vocalic /t/ variability in controlled speech across two groups, both L1 Aboriginal English and mainstream Australian English speakers. Data were collected in Warrnambool, a small community in western Victoria (Australia). While both Aboriginal English and mainstream Australian English speakers used canonical aspirated [tʰ] a range of other variants were observed. The Aboriginal English group used a greater number of variants overall, and tended toward “glottal” variants (full glottal stops, pre-glottalised stops, and ejective-like stops) whereas the mainstream Australian group preferred so-called “breathy” variants (affricates, fricatives); we attribute this to sociophonetic variability, potentially linked with voice quality and glottal timing. Overall, the study highlights some previously undocumented variation both within L1 Aboriginal English, and between L1 Aboriginal English and mainstream Australian English.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableTetun nudar lian jornalizmu: Mudansa gramátika liuhosi kontaktu língua [Tetun as a language of journalism: Grammatical change as a result of language contact](Swinburne University of Technology, 2018)Tetun Dili is both the primary lingua franca and along with Portuguese co-official language of East Timor. Before the independence referendum of 1999 it was little used in the formal public sphere including in the press. This has radically altered since 1999 and Tetun has had to adapt rapidly to new domains of public use including in the press and other media as well as officialdom. It has also been since that time in renewed vigorous contact with Portuguese, in addition to contact with Indonesian and English. In this study we look at aspects of grammatical change that has occurred in the press register of Tetun. We see that lexical influence is mostly from Portuguese, however a number of grammatical changes are also evidence such as the development of new passive constructions – the most common form of which is also found in Portuguese, English and Indonesian. Other changes are also identified.
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ItemProsodic effects on vowel spectra in three Australian languages(International Speech Communications Association, 2014)In this paper, the spectral properties of vowels in three Australian languages are examined with the aim of determining whether prosodic prominence and domain-edge effects on formant frequencies, formant variability and vowel space dispersion can be identified. It is shown that these vowel systems are sufficiently dispersed, with an anchoring of the system by the open central vowel. It is also shown that for Burarra but not for Gupapuyngu or Warlpiri there is some evidence of prosodically-driven hyper-articulation. Finally, the data indicate pre-boundary lengthening in all three languages, which in some cases appears to be associated with changes in vowel quality.
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