This paper aims at using a model-based duration-difference approach to analyze L2 learners’ duration-aspect accent, and, segmental duration characteristics. We use the durational differences deviated from native-English speech duration as an objective measure to evaluate the learner’s timing characteristics. The use of model-based approach provides flexible evaluation without the need to collec...

Japanese shows an asymmetry in the treatment of word-final [n] in loanwords from English and French: while it is adapted as a moraic nasal consonant in loanwords from English, it is adapted with a following epenthetic vowel in loanwords from French. We provide experimental evidence that this asymmetry is due to phonetic differences in the realisation of word-final [n] in English and French, and...

Like conversation and other modes of communication, writing is a rich medium for gender performance. In fact, writing functions to construct the disciplines as well as the gender of its practitioners. Despite the significance of author gender, as one constitutive dimension of any writing, it has been relatively under-researched. One way, by means of which author gender is practiced, and reveale...

This paper reports on the participation of the NLP GROUP at UNED in the DiSCo’2011 compositionality evaluation task. The aim of the task is to predict compositionality judgements assigned by human raters to candidate phrases, in English and German, from three common grammatical relations: adjectivenoun, subject-verb and subject-object. Our participation is restricted to adjectivenoun relations ...

Four cross-modal priming experiments and two forced-choice identification experiments investigated the use of suprasegmental cues to stress in the recognition of spoken English words, by native (English-speaking) and non-native (Dutch) listeners. Previous results had indicated that suprasegmental information was exploited in lexical access by Dutch but not by English listeners For both listener...

Experiments investigating phonetic convergence in conversation often focus on interlocutors with similar phonetic inventories. Extending these experiments to those with dissimilar inventories requires understanding the capacity of speakers to imitate native and non-native phones. In the present study, we tested native Spanish and native English speakers to determine whether imitation of non-nat...

Native speakers of Mandarin Chinese have difficulty producing native-like English stress contrasts. Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional, involving manipulation of fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity and vowel quality. Errors in any or all of these correlates could interfere with perception of the stress contrast, but it is unknown which correlates are most probl...

This study investigates how similarly present and absent English phonemes behind noise are perceived by native and non-native speakers. Participants were English native speakers and Japanese native speakers who spoke English as a second language. They listened to English words and non-words in which a phoneme was covered by noise (added; phoneme + noise) or replaced by noise (replaced; noise on...

It is well known that vowel duration may differ across languages. In foreign language learning these differences may lead to incorrectly produced durations in the target language, since the speaker will be inhibited by his mother tongue. In this paper two experirnents are reported. The fust describes a production test, airned at obtaining a systernatic description of durations of comparable vow...

The pressure to produce work in English and to publish internationally has increased over recent years. However, a large number of non-native writers may be excluded from the web of global scholarship due to defective rhetorical organizations and discourse structures of their works. This study aimed to investigate frequency and distribution of transition markers (TMs) in introduction sections o...