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I denne studien undersøker vi hvordan brukere av norsk som andrespråk med russisk og arabisk som morsmål uttaler norsk kort og lang vokal. Vi målte varigheten av kort og lang /i/, /y/, /Ãâ°/ og /u/ og etterfølgende henholdsvis lang og kort konsonant i setningskontekst. Resultatene blir sammenliknet med tilsvarende målinger hos norske morsmålsbrukere. ââ¬âââ¬âââ¬âNorsk kan regnes som et nivokalsystem, russisk som et femvokalsystem og arabisk som et trevokalsystem. Kort eller lang vokal i trykksterk stavelse gir betydningsforskjell i norsk (legge â lege). Mens arabisk også har en vokalkvantitetsopposisjon, er det ikke tilfelle i russisk. På dette grunnlag forventet vi at de arabisktalende (irakiske) informantene ville mestre det norske skillet mellom kort og lang vokal bedre enn russerne. Hypotesen ble bekreftet, men varigheten av irakernes segmenter er likevel forskjellig fra de norske. Både deres lange vokaler og lange konsonanter er betydelig lengre. /V/-/K/-dyadene for lang versus kort vokal hos russerne overlapper hverandre i relativt stor grad når det gjelder varighet. Generelt viser resultatene at gjennomsnittsverdier ikke gir tilstrekkelig informasjon, men at tolkningen må ta hensyn til kategorier som ord, vokalkategori som kort eller lang, og etterfølgende konsonant. Lisensieret under en Creative Commons Navngivelse-DelPåSammeVilkår 4.0 Internasjonal lisens.

Breathing is fundamental for living and speech, and it has been a subject of linguistic research for years. Recently, there has been a renewed interest in tackling the question of possible communicative functions of breathing (e.g. Rochet-Capellan & Fuchs, 2014; Aare, Włodarczak & Heldner, 2014; Włodarczak & Heldner, 2015; Włodarczak, Heldner, & Edlund, 2015). The present study set out to determine acoustic markedness and communicative functions of pauses accompanied and non-accompanied by breathing. We hypothesised that an articulatory reset occurring in breathing pauses and an articulatory freeze in non-breathing pauses differentiates between the two types. A production experiment was conducted and some evidence in favour of such a phenomenon was found. Namely, in case of non-breathing pauses, we observed more coarticulation evidenced by a more frequent omission of plosive releases. Our findings thus give some evidence in favour of the communicative function of breathing.

This study looked at the perception and production of the English unvoiced and voiced alveolar stops, alveolar fricatives, postalveolar fricatives and affricates. The voiced sounds in each of these pairs are nonnative to Norwegian speakers, except for the alveolar stops which are both present in the Norwegian sound system. Both a perception test and a production task were performed. Two groups of native Norwegian speakers participated. Group 1 consisted of people who had not spent more than a maximum of 6 weeks in an English-speaking country, and group 2 consisted of people who had lived in an English-speaking country for a period of time (4-10 months). A control group, consisting of native speakers of English also conducted the same experiments. The perception task had an AXB design, where the listeners task was to identify which of the two words in a minimal pair word X was equal to; e.g. looking at the contrast /s/ and /z/ by using the minimal pair and and playing as word X. Different Englishnative speakers had produced the stimuli which consisted of 18 different minimal pairs, which contrasted in the target sounds. In the production task, the stimuli were presented both orthographically and by audio one by one, and participants were instructed to read the word out loud after hearing the stimulus. The recordings from the production task were then judged by two native speakers on a 5-point scale, where the sound in question was rated from 1-wrong sound to 5- native-like. The raters were blind to the hypothesis. The study hypothesized that the frequency of minimal pairs containing the contrasting sounds would influence the results of the L2 groups in both the perception experiment and the production experiment. It was also hypothesized that time spent in English-speaking country would have an effect in both experiments. Contrary to the expectations, no effect was found on the influence of time spent in English-speaking country in either the perception or production results. The results showed an effect of the frequency of minimal pairs containing the contrasting sounds in the perception experiment, but not the production experiment.