Doctoral Dissertation Research: Effects of phonological contrast on phonetic variation

博士论文研究：语音对比对语音变异的影响

• 批准号: 1823869
• 负责人: John Kingston
• 金额: $ 0.38万
• 依托单位: University of Massachusetts Amherst
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2018
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2018-08-01 至 2020-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1823869&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Effects; phonological

Every time someone speaks, they produce complex sound waves. Understanding the acoustic details of these sound waves can help improve voice recognition technologies and provide insight on language differences which can potentially aid in language learning. A large body of work in linguistics and related disciplines has shown that speakers do not always pronounce sounds in the same way. For example, the sound "p" in English will be pronounced differently in different contexts (beginning of a word vs. end of word) and at different times simply because talkers are humans. People do not usually hear these differences, but they are present in the acoustics and can be measured. Variation in speech is natural and happens in every language. However, less is known about exactly how much variation occurs in different languages. This research seeks to address this gap by investigating whether speakers of some languages have more variable pronunciation than speakers of other languages and what might explain the difference.One frequently assumed hypothesis says that speakers of languages with more sounds will show less variation (be more precise) when they pronounce those sounds. The researchers will gather data from different languages to test and revise this hypothesis. They will also develop concrete methods for measuring acoustic variability in language which can then be applied to future work. The experiments compare stop sounds in Hindi ("b", "bh", "p" and "ph") and English ("b" and "p"), and sibilant sounds in Polish ("s", "ś", and "sz") and French ("s" and "sh"). Both experiments examine multiple acoustic cues to the contrasts in each language. The second portion of the project will use the conclusions from these experiments to investigate whether speakers imitate the variability of other speakers that they hear. It is well documented that speakers change their pronunciation based on speech they have recently heard, but it is not known whether speakers will change the amount of variability in their speech based on what they have heard. To address this question, the researchers will carry out an imitation study where speakers listen to speech before being prompted to speak to see if the variability in their speech changes after listening. The results of these studies will increase understanding of variability in pronunciation across different languages and contexts.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

每当有人讲话时，它们都会产生复杂的声波。了解这些声波的声学细节可以帮助改善语音识别技术，并提供有关语言差异的洞察力，这些差异有可能有助于语言学习。语言学和相关学科的大量作品表明，扬声器并不总是以相同的方式发音。例如，英语中的声音“ p”在不同的上下文（单词的开头与单词的结尾的开头）和不同时间的发音将有所不同，仅仅是因为说话者是人类。人们通常不会听到这些差异，但是它们存在于声学中，可以衡量。语音的变化是自然的，并且在每种语言中都发生。但是，关于不同语言中发生多少变化的确切差异知之甚少。这项研究旨在通过调查某些语言的说话者是否比其他语言的说话者更可变发音，以及可以解释差异的内容来解决这一差距。一种经常假设的假设表明，当他们发音这些声音时，具有更多声音的语言的说话者会显示出更少的变化（更精确）。研究人员将收集来自不同语言的数据，以检验和修改这一假设。他们还将开发用于测量语言声学变异性的具体方法，然后将其应用于未来的工作。实验比较了印地语（“ B”，“ BH”，“ P”和“ PH”）和英语（“ B”和“ P”）中的停止声音，以及polish（“ S”，“”，“＆＃347;”，以及“ SZ”））和法语（“ S”和“ S”）中的sibinant声音。两个实验都检查了每种语言中对比的多个声明线索。该项目的第二部分将使用这些实验的结论来调查说话者是否模仿他们听到的其他说话者的变异性。有充分的文献证明，说话者根据最近听到的语音改变发音，但尚不知道说话者是否会根据听到的声音改变语音中的可变性。为了解决这个问题，研究人员将进行一项模仿研究，在该研究中，说话者在提示讲话之前先聆听语音，以查看聆听后语音的可变性是否变化。这些研究的结果将提高对不同语言和环境的发音变异性的理解。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响评估标准，被认为值得通过评估来获得支持。