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This paper presents data for a tightly controlled recognition and production study of English language intonation in reading by speakers of British English and second language learners of English in Hong Kong. We demonstrate a relatively high correlation between the scores for the two studies when data are separated by utterance type (statement, echo, WH-question, etc.). Our finding that this cohort of English learners performs better at production of nuclear tones than in the corresponding recognition study when both are judged by a template for British English adds support to the claim that the perception-production link, a theory that production is contingent on perception, is not borne out by the empirical study of learners of World Englishes. Data collected for the British English speakers give insight into a changing intonational phonology, while Hong Kong data indicate differences in intonational categories, a different distribution of tones, and possibly tonal innovation.

Aims and objectives: This study investigates the acquisition of Setswana speech rhythm, considered to be typically syllable-timed, by early sequential Setswana–English bilingual children aged 6–7 years old growing up in Botswana, a country with a diglossic setting, where English is the dominant high-status language in educational and public contexts. For this group of children, taught full-time in English from the age of 3 years, the L2 becomes their dominant language through exposure to English-medium education. The aim was to ascertain if the prosodic patterns of Setswana spoken by the bilingual children are similar to those of the monolingual children or if English, considered to be stress-timed, has an effect on these prosodic features. Data and analysis: The speech rhythm patterns of 10 Setswana–English bilingual children were compared with those of 10 age-matched Setswana monolingual children educated in public schools for whom English is a learner language. The study primarily examines spontaneous speech from the telling of a wordless picture storybook, and utilises rhythm metrics nPVI-V and Varco V to examine the speech rhythm of the children. Findings: The results showed that the prosodic pattern of Setswana in the bilingual group diverged from that of the non-bilingual group. Originality: This is the first such study on speech rhythm in bilingual children in Setswana. Significance: The research provides evidence in this population of effects from English bilingualism on L1 Setswana speech prosody, and challenges the assumption that speech rhythm prosody is established early in life, especially when the language is a less marked, syllable-timed language like Setswana.

The aim of the present study is to investigate the developmental profile of three aspects of prosody function, i.e. affect, focus and turn-endings in children with Williams and in those with Down’s syndrome compared to typically developing English speaking children. The tasks used were part of the computer-based battery, Profiling Elements of Prosody for Speech Communication (Peppe, McCann & Gibon, 2003). Cross-sectional developmental trajectories linking chronological and non-verbal mental age and affects and turn-ending functions of prosody were constructed. The results showed an atypical profile in both clinical populations. More interestingly, the profiles were atypical for different reasons, suggesting multiple and possibly different developmental pathways to the acquisition of prosody in these two populations., L’objectif de cette recherche est d’étudier le profil développemental de trois aspects de la fonction de prosodie : émotion, focalisation et fin de phrase chez des enfants porteurs 1˚ du syndrome de Williams et 2˚ du syndrome de Down en les comparant à des enfants de langue anglaise ayant un développement normal. Les tâches utilisées sont une partie de la batterie informatisée, Profiling Elements of Prosody for Speech Communication. Des trajectoires développementales mettant en lien l’âge chronologique, l’âge mental non verbal et les fonctions de la prosodie (émotion, focalisation et fin de phrase) ont été construites. Les résultats montrent des profils atypiques dans les deux populations cliniques. Cependant, les profils sont atypiques pour des raisons différentes, suggérant des trajectoires développementales différentes pour acquérir la prosodie dans ces deux populations.

Investigations of the link between the perception and production of prosody by language learners can inform theories of prosody perception and production, especially with regard to Second Language Acquisition (SLA), and for the implementation of prosody in Foreign Language Teaching (FLT). The perception and production of prosody in L2 speech are often analyzed separately, but the link between the two is rarely the focus of investigation [e.g. 1, 2]. In a previous study [3], we analyzed the perception of prosody in read speech by German learners of English (n=20), who performed similarly to the British English (BrE) control group (n=25) for some sentence types (e.g. statements, yes/no-questions) and worse for others (e.g. open and closed tag questions, sarcasm). The present study extends this analysis by comparing the same learners' perception and production of prosody in read speech with the same sentence types. Overall, the learners (n=20) performed better in production and were more similar to the native speakers' (n=10) performance than in the perception task. However, the learners significantly differed from the native controls in production, i.e. closed tag questions and checking questions. Interestingly, the learners also performed significantly better in yes/no and statement questions than the native speakers.

The pedagogic landscape in Higher Education has certainly witnessed change in recent years and involving students as partners in aspects of degree-programme development is part of that change. Darling-Hammond (2009) described how educational systems internationally are changing priorities to enable students to "cope with complexity, use new technologies, and work cooperatively to frame and solve novel problems" (p. 45). Zhao (2011) asserts that it is vital to engage students as partners in change, giving them an active hand in programme design, to enable students to develop into creative individuals who leave education with much more than just an academic qualification; it is an "authentic way to develop professional skills" (Giles et al., 2004, p. 681) as well as an opportunity to develop a positive and autonomous approach to lifelong learning. The case study which follows involved students' working cooperatively with each other and with staff in a school of English language and literature. Together, we redesigned a new module aimed at: developing students’ understanding of the demands of university-level study and writing; supporting them in their transition from sixth form to higher education.

Artificial grammar learning is an empirical paradigm that investigates basic pattern and structural processing in different populations. It can inform how higher cognitive functions, such as language use, take place. Our study used artificial grammar learning to assess how children with Williams syndrome (WS; n = 16) extract patterns in structured sequences of synthetic speech, how they compare to typically developing (TD) children (n = 60), and how prosodic cues affect learning. The TD group was divided into a group whose nonverbal abilities were within the range of the WS group, and a group whose chronological age was within the range of the WS group. TD children relied mainly on rule-based generalization when making judgments about sequence acceptability, whereas children with WS relied on familiarity with specific stimulus combinations. The TD participants whose nonverbal abilities were similar to the WS group showed less evidence of relying on grammaticality than TD participants whose chronological age was similar to the WS group. In absence of prosodic cues, the children with WS did not demonstrate evidence of learning. Results suggest that, in WS children, the transition to rule-based processing in language does not keep pace with TD children and may be an indication of differences in neurocognitive mechanisms.

English speech rhythm is closely associated with the patterns of lexical stress and prominence in a stream of speech. Older varieties of English (OVEs), such as British and American English, which usually operate as the model in English language teaching, are often described as ‘stress-timed’, meaning the time between stressed syllables is more or less equal, in comparison with ‘syllable-timed’ languages (e.g., French or Cantonese), for which the time between successive syllable onsets is more or less equal. The usefulness of this distinction, however, has been disputed; e.g., Cauldwell (2002) talks about ‘functional irrythmicality’ in English speech. \ud \ud Cutler (1984) explains that native speakers of English focus on stressed syllables when listening to a stream of speech as part of the decoding process; i.e., for native speakers, lexical stress and the rhythm of the incoming signal play an important part in perception. Couper-Kuhlen and colleagues (e.g., Auer, Couper-Kuhlen, & Müller, 1999) have shown that speech rhythm plays an important part in the coordination of turn-taking in conversation. Anderson-Hsieh and Venkatagiri (1994) argue that speakers’ intelligibility will be affected if they do not sufficiently weaken English unstressed syllables. Such research indicates that the differences in the lexical stress and/or speech rhythm patterns of learners of English, or speakers of New Varieties of English (NVEs) which are not ‘stress-timed’, could create difficulties in comprehension and cooperative interaction for native speakers of OVEs and also, plausibly, for other speakers of English if they are using similar strategies. However, whether the majority of speakers of English in the world have a speaker of an OVE as their target interlocutor is coming increasingly under question.\ud \ud This chapter gives an overview of English lexical stress, prominence and speech rhythm in OVEs, including theoretical approaches to their description, and includes suggestions for pedagogical approaches for the English language classroom.

The subtle juncture cues in older varieties of English such as Received Pronunciation can be difficult for speakers of new English varieties to perceive. This study looks at the perception of word juncture characteristics in three varieties of English (British, Hong Kong and Singapore) among British, Hong Kong and Singaporean listeners in order to widen our understanding of English juncture characteristics in general. We find that, even though reaction time data indicates that listeners perform quickest in the variety they are most familiar with, not only are juncture differences in British English difficult for Hong Kong and Singaporean listeners to perceive, they are also the most difficult for British listeners. Juncture characteristics in Hong Kong English are the easiest to distinguish among the three varieties.

The aim of this study was to compare the prosodic profiles of English- and Spanish-speaking children with Williams syndrome (WS), examining cross-linguistic differences. Two groups of children with WS, English and Spanish, of similar chronological and nonverbal mental age, were compared on performance in expressive and receptive prosodic tasks from the Profiling Elements of Prosody in Speech–Communication Battery in its English or Spanish version. Differences between the English and Spanish WS groups were found regarding the understanding of affect through prosodic means, using prosody to make words more prominent, and imitating different prosodic patterns. Such differences between the two WS groups on function prosody tasks mirrored the cross-linguistic differences already reported in typically developing children.

This study investigates the intonation of Chinese and Arabic learners of English using the computerized test battery Profiling Elements of Prosody for Speech and Communication (PEPS-C). The aims were to ascertain which aspects of intonation are difficult for these learners, and to determine whether PEPS-C can be used to assess the intonation of adult learners. Although some results were significantly different from native-speaker data, raw scores showed that the learner groups performed well in most tasks, which may indicate that the learners' level is too high for the PEPS-C to be useful. However, the PEPS-C did reveal that Arabic learners performed significantly worse at contrastive stress placement, and Chinese learners performed significantly worse assessing likes and dislikes.

We welcome the lead article (Peppe, 2009) which raises important issues with regard to the definition of the term prosody, the characterization of prosodic impairments and issues of prosody intervention. We take this opportunity to focus on the issue of prosodic impairment in two developmental conditions: a population with speech and language impairment including those with SLI, and individuals with Williams syndrome. We review the literature on prosody in these two populations and we discuss the issue of what may be considered a prosodic impairment as opposed to a delay in the acquisition of prosodic abilities in these two conditions.

This study investigates consonant clusters and phonotactics in the English spoken by Hong Kong Cantonese speakers. A computer dataset of Hong Kong English speech data amounting to 4,404 syllables was used. Syllables were categorised according to structure, and then compared to 1,847 syllables from an existing corpus of British English speakers. It was found that Hong Kong English speakers produced fewer syllable types than speakers in the British English data, and fewer consonant clusters overall. Consonant clusters in syllable-initial and syllable-final position were attested, but they were less complex than those found in the British English data. Further analysis of the content of Hong Kong English two-consonant syllable onsets and codas revealed that there were differences from Cantonese, which is the speakers' L1. Patterns observed could be seen as a subset of what is possible in British English, or alternatively as evidence of endonormative development in the variety.

This paper presents the findings of a study on the intonational features in ten proficient Malay Speakers of English (MSEs), focusing on a distinct rising tone (the Cooperative Rise, CR). Using Brazil’s (1985) Discourse Intonation as a framework for analysis, the CR discourse function differs from the rise and fall-rise of Standard Southern British English (SSBE) as described in Brazil (1985). The CR is a referring tone used to provide extra emphasis on important information and create a more cooperative and supportive tone. The form and function of the CR are examined in relation to Standard Southern British English (SSBE, 1985) and other varieties of World Englishes. The results indicate that duration and pitch range of the CR are significantly different from the standard rise.

This article is organised in five main sections. It begins by outlining the scope of pronunciation teaching and the role of pronunciation in our personal and social lives. The second section surveys the background to pronunciation teaching from its origins in the early twentieth century to the present day, and includes a discussion of pronunciation models and of the role of the first language (L1) in the acquisition of second language (L2) pronunciation. Then a third section explores recent research into a range of aspects involved in the process: the effects of L1 and L2 similarities and differences; the role of intelligibility, accent attitudes, identity and motivation; the part played by listening; and the place of pronunciation within discourse. This section concludes with a discussion of a number of controversies that have arisen from recent pronunciation research and of research into the potential for using computer-based technology in pronunciation teaching. The fourth section explores a range of socio-political issues that affect pronunciation teaching when the L2 is learnt as an international rather than a foreign language, and the fifth section moves on to consider the implications of all this for teaching.

Review of Fuchs, Robert. 2016. Speech rhythm in varieties of English: Evidence from educated Indian English and British English. Singapore: Springer Science+Business Media Singapore. 226 pages. ISBN: 978-3-662-47818-9.Fuchs (2016) is the monograph version of Robert Fuchs's PhD thesis (University of Munster, Germany, 2013). It details research carried out on the production and perception of speech rhythm in Indian English (IndE) and British English (BrE) among students at two Universities in Hyderabad, India, at the start of this decade, the development of "a multidimensional model of rhythm" (Fuchs, 2016: 4), and of an approach to speech rhythm perception research which modifies existing practice. From the outset, and just by reading the Preface to the volume (Fuchs, 2016: v-vii), one gets a sense of the enthusiasm Fuchs has for India, the people, the variety, and the research he has undertaken. This is a promising opening to what is basically a write-up of a research study, boding well for the rest of the book, and leading on to the introductory chapter in which the scene is set.The book is organised into eight chapters, as follows:a) Chapter 1 is a general introduction, outlining the available research at the time the study was undertaken and justifying the book's focus on speech rhythm in IndE, i.e., the lack of work on prosodic features of the variety. It also serves to situate the study firmly in a World Englishes paradigm, referring to Kachru's (1985) terminology of Inner, Outer and Expanding Circles, and Schneider's Dynamic Model of Postcolonial Englishes (2003, 2007).b) Chapter 2 starts by giving a historical and social description of English in India, including an account of the different varieties of IndE and of the Dravidian and Aindo-Aryan languages spoken. It further elaborates on IndE with respect to Kachru and Schneider's models, before going on to give a comparison of the phonologies of BrE and IndE based on existing descriptions.c) Chapter 3's focus is on speech rhythm itself and how it can be measured, with a review of speech rhythm metrics, and suggestions on how these might be improved.d) Chapter 4 reviews existing research on speech rhythm in varieties of English with a view to evaluating whether Outer Circle varieties tend to be more syllable-timed than Inner Circle ones. There is a criticism that most research does not look at a variety of speaking styles; this is one area Fuchs attempts to address in his research by looking at read speech (a passage) and an interview task.e) Chapter 5 is a classic methodology section, giving an account of the data used in the study (material and tasks; recording procedure; profile of speakers) and the methods used to annotate and analyse it.f) Chapter 6 presents the results of Fuchs's production study, with sections on vocalic and consonantal durations, syllable durations, sonority, voicing, fundamental frequency, intensity, loudness, speech rate, and word initial glottal stop insertion before vowels. It is here where he introduces his multidimensional model of speech rhythm.g) Chapter 7 looks at the perception of IndE and BrE speech rhythm, detailing first pilot studies and then main studies on accent discrimination and 'Cocktail Party Effect', and introducing a "partially new technique" (Fuchs, 2016: 5) for the measurement of speech rhythm perception events.h) Chapter 8 is a general conclusion, summarising the results, describing the phonology of current IndE, speculating about its future development, and highlighting the importance of the research for work on varieties of English. There is a section on the implications of the research presented here for future work on IndE.i) Finally, there is an appendix and index. References are included at the end of each chapter and not as a list in the end-matter of the book.Using Kachru's (1985) circles paradigm, India is described as "a fairly typical Outer Circle country" (Fuchs, 2016: 12), with IndE at Schneider's (2003, 2007) fourth phase, exonormative stabilization. …

This paper describes and analyses the phenomenon of consonant cluster simplification in the English of two native Cantonese speakers in Hong Kong. We show that this process is systematic in that it targets the alveolar plosives and removes them when they are members of a coda consonant cluster in spite of the fact that the details of the simplification may vary from subject to subject. We compare this process to a seemingly similar cluster simplification in native varieties of English and show that they differ in two key respects. Our study provides evidence of a systematic morphophonemic alternation in the English of L1 Cantonese speakers, confirming the observation in a number of sociolinguistic studies that this process is a linguistic feature of the English of L1 Cantonese speakers.

A study of emotional speech has resulted in a collection of some five hours of recorded material. The analysis of this material has required computer-based annotation incorporating prosodic and paralinguistic transcription as well as the coding of various psychological variables. A version of the prosodic and paralinguistic transcription devised by Crystal & Quirk was developed for use within thexwavesTMenvironment. This paper describes this transcription system and its application.

Purpose The authors investigated expressive and receptive intonation abilities in children with Williams syndrome (WS) and the relation of these abilities to other linguistic abilities. Method Fourteen children with WS, 14 typically developing children matched to the WS group for receptive language (LA), and 15 typically developing children matched to the WS group for chronological age (CA) were compared on a range of receptive and expressive intonation tasks from the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems–Child version (PEPS-C) battery. Results The WS group performed similarly to the LA group on all intonation tasks apart from the long-item imitation task, on which the WS group scored significantly lower than the LA group. When compared with the CA group, the WS group was significantly poorer on all aspects of intonation. Whereas there were a number of significant correlations between the intonation and language measures in the control groups, in the WS group, there was only 1 significant correlation between a PEPS-C task and one of the language measures. Conclusion As a result of this study, the authors concluded that children with WS have expressive and receptive intonation abilities as expected for their level of language comprehension and that intonation and other linguistic abilities in WS are not strongly related.

The aim of the current study was to investigate expressive affect in children with Williams syndrome (WS) in comparison to typically developing children in an experimental task and in spontaneous speech. Fourteen children with WS, 14 typically developing children matched to the WS group for receptive language (LA) and 15 typically developing children matched to the WS groups for chronological age (CA) were recruited. Affect was investigated using an experimental Output Affect task from the Profiling Elements of Prosodic Systems-Child version (PEPS-C) battery, and by measuring pitch range and vowel durations from a spontaneous speech task. The children were also rated for level of emotional involvement by phonetically naive listeners. The WS group performed similarly to the LA and CA groups on the Output Affect task. With regard to vowel durations, the WS group was no different from the LA group; however both the WS and the LA groups were found to use significantly longer vowels than the CA group. The WS group differed significantly from both control groups on their range of pitch range and was perceived as being significantly more emotionally involved than the two control groups.

This special issue is a selection of papers presented at the workshop entitled “Prosody in typical and atypical populations” held at the University of Reading in September 2012. Although there seem...

Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS) are genetic disorders resulting from different types of genetic errors. While both disorders lead to phonological and speech motor deficits, particularly little is known about vowel production in DS and WS. Recent work suggests that impaired vowel articulation in DS likely contributes to the poor intelligibility of DS speech. Developmental delays in temporal vowel structure and pitch control have been found in children with WS when compared to their chronological matches. Here, we analyze spontaneous speech samples produced by British children with DS and WI and compare them with typically developing children from the same geographic area in Southern England. We focus on the acquisition of fine-grained phonetic details, asking if children with DS and WS are able to synchronize the phonetic and indexical domains while coping with articulatory challenges related to their respective syndromes. Phonetic details pertaining to the spectral (vowel-inherent spectral change) and indexical (regional dialect) vowel features are examined and vowel spaces are derived from formant values sampled at multiple temporal locations. Variations in density patterns across the vowel space are also considered to define the nature of the acoustic overlap in vowels related to each syndrome.

International audience; In this chapter, we introduce the reader to the concepts of pitch and fundamental frequency from a functional, physiological and physical perspective. Several issues, including the modelling of intonation, pitch detection and measurement and acoustic scales, described below, are addressed to inform the reader about best practice for teaching and learning.Pitch, corresponding to the subjective impression of whether individual speech sounds are perceived as relatively high or low, as on a musical scale, is an important characteristic of spoken language, contributing in some languages to the lexical identity of words (tone and accent) and in all languages to the perception of the intonation pattern of utterances. Pitch corresponds to the physiological parameter of the frequency of vibration of the vocal folds (aka vocal cords) which can be measured in cycles per second (cps), or the equivalent acoustic parameter of fundamental frequency (f0), measured in hertz (Hz).Estimating and measuring fundamental frequency and modelling pitch is not an easy task. In this chapter, we first present some automatic models of pitch that have been developed both for speech synthesis and for the empirical study of intonation patterns. We then address issues related to the detection and measurement of fundamental frequency, including tracking/detection errors and explain how many of these errors can in fact be avoided by an appropriate choice of pitch ceiling and floor settings. We finally discuss the use of acoustic scales (e.g. linear, logarithmic, psychoacoustic) in the literature for the measurement of pitch. Based on evidence from recent findings in neuronatomy, neurophysiology, behavioural studies and speech production, we suggest that a new scale, the Octave-Median (OMe) scale, appears to be more natural for the study of speech prosody.