This study investigates the non-native production of rhotics by Mandarin speakers learning Persian as L3 and it compares the results with that of native speakers. In the light of the findings, one of the predictions made by the Speech Learning Model was tested. According to this model, speech acquisition happens at a position-sensitive allophonic level. A series of informal /casual interviews w...

Non-natiue and natiue American English speakers produced tokens of three-syllable words such as confession and four-syllable words such as confirmation, in isolation and in sentences. The acoustic-phonetic correlates of stress amplitude, fundamental frequency, and duration were measured for the first two syllables of each word. Both groups of speakers were highly uariable. Non-natiue speakers d...

In this paper, we conduct experiments using F0 contour features to assess the nativeness of responses provided by speakers from India and China to a Sentence Repeat task in an assessment of English speaking proficiency for non-native speakers. The results show that the coefficients from polynomial models of the pitch contours help distinguish between native and non-native speakers, especially a...

Labelling speech sounds, i.e. classifying them into particular linguistic categories , can be influenced by several linguistic and extralinguistic factors, such as the emotional and physical condition of the speaker, the level of expertise and concentration of the labeller, and the quality and loudness of the recordings and labelling speech of children, non-native speakers or computers is more ...

In this paper, we report on a two-part experiment aiming to assess and compare the performance of two types of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems on two different computational platforms when used to augment dictation workflows. The experiment was performed with a sample of speakers of three major languages and with different linguistic profiles: non-native English speakers; non-native ...

conversations contain spontaneous use of routine formulas which lets speaker sinteract with each other to express opinions. gambits, as one of these formulas, act as an opening remark and help speakers to maintain the smooth flow of an everyday conversation. the lack of mastery of using gambits in maintaining the conversation leads to breakdowns in speaking. this paper aimedat comparingthe use ...

This paper presents a preliminary investigation of the differences in pitch range in English spoken as L1 and L2. In this study, the productions of 5 English sentences read by 18 native (American) English speakers and 18 non-native (Italian) English speakers are compared. The hypothesis being tested is that Italian speakers of English have a narrower pitch range and less pitch variation that na...

This experiment assessed the effect of variation in speech rate on comprehension and persuasiveness of a message presented in text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis to native and non-native listeners. Eighty non-native speakers of English and 80 native speakers of Australian English were randomly assigned to listen to eight banking product descriptions under one of four conditions: normal rate (155 wor...