Phonetic studies of Hawaiian speakers and learners

夏威夷语使用者和学习者的语音研究

• 批准号: 2314493
• 负责人: Lisa Davidson
• 金额: $ 32.86万
• 依托单位: New York University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-09-01 至 2026-08-31
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314493&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Phonetic; studies; Hawaiian; speakers; learners

The revitalization of Modern Hawaiian since the 1970s-80s has led to a thriving community of Hawaiian speakers today, with a robust system of pre-K-12 Hawaiian-medium education, as well as university and teacher training programs in the Hawaiian language. Despite the critical mass of speakers and availability of historical language and speech materials, phonetic research on Hawaiian is underrepresented. This project examines the sound system of the speech of three groups of speakers: (1) the growing community of Modern Hawaiian speakers in Hilo, (2) adult students who are intermediate-level learners of Modern Hawaiian in Hilo, and (3) pre-revitalization Hawaiian elders interviewed in the 1970s-80s on the radio program Ka Leo Hawai'i (KLH). To establish the phonetic properties of the language being acquired by children and adult learners, the team first examines the acoustic properties of proficient adult speakers of Hawaiian. They then turn to assessing adult language learners, with an aim toward identifying sounds which may be more challenging for this group. This project contributes to the phonetic documentation of the Hawaiian language, including work with language teachers and other community members to create pedagogical materials. The project also contributes to ongoing work in the development of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for Hawaiian. The advancement of ASR helps to alleviate the shortage of Hawaiian transcribers, who play a critical role in US educational, government, and entertainment contexts.The current research focuses on the realization and acquisition of Hawaiian sounds including oral and glottal stops in multiple prosodic positions, the vowel length distinction in Hawaiian, and the [w~v] variants of /v/. Since previous research on oral and glottal stops examining the KLH interviews indicated that their realization affected by prosodic considerations, the elicitation materials in this study manipulate where the stops occur with respect to (lexical) word position, prosodic word position, and syllabic stress. Studying the role of prosodic and word-internal metrical structure in conditioning the phonetic realization of Hawaiian sounds contributes to a growing literature regarding how multiple levels of phonological structure interface with phonetic implementation. These studies also allow for an examination of whether second language learners are sensitive to these fine-grained phonetic properties. In addition to the production studies, a perception study investigates what voice quality information is used in perceiving word-initial glottal stops. A final component of this research is a continued study of the speech of the KLH speakers from their recorded interviews, focusing on the implementation of the vowel length distinction in Hawaiian, and on what factors condition variation in the pronunciation of [w~v] variants of /v/. The outcome of these studies contributes to the design of instructional materials and videos regarding the acquisition of sounds that may present a challenge for adult learners of Hawaiian.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.

自1970年代至80年代以来，现代夏威夷人的振兴导致了当今夏威夷演讲者的蓬勃发展社区，该社区具有强大的K-12夏威夷夏威夷人教育系统，以及夏威夷语的大学和教师培训计划。尽管有大量的演讲者和历史语言和语音材料的可用性，但对夏威夷人的语音研究的代表性不足。 This project examines the sound system of the speech of three groups of speakers: (1) the growing community of Modern Hawaiian speakers in Hilo, (2) adult students who are intermediate-level learners of Modern Hawaiian in Hilo, and (3) pre-revitalization Hawaiian elders interviewed in the 1970s-80s on the radio program Ka Leo Hawai'i (KLH).为了确定儿童和成人学习者获得的语言的语音特性，该团队首先研究了熟练的夏威夷成人演讲者的声学特性。然后，他们求助于评估成人语言学习者，以识别声音，这些声音对该群体可能更具挑战性。该项目有助于夏威夷语的语音文档，包括与语言老师和其他社区成员合作创建教学材料。该项目还为夏威夷人的自动语音识别（ASR）开发的持续工作做出了贡献。 ASR的进步有助于减轻夏威夷转录者的短缺，他们在美国的教育，政府和娱乐环境中发挥了关键作用。当前的研究重点是对夏威夷声音的实现和获取，包括口头和glottal在多个韵律位置，夏威夷人和夏威夷人的vowel长度区别，以及[由于先前对口腔和声门的研究停止检查KLH访谈表明它们受韵律考虑影响的实现，因此本研究中的启发材料操纵了（词汇）单词位置，韵律单词位置和音节压力的停止。研究韵律和单词内部度量结构在调理夏威夷声音的语音实现中的作用，这有助于越来越多的文献，关于多个级别的语音结构如何与语音实施方式如何进行。这些研究还可以检查第二语言学习者是否对这些细粒度的语音特性敏感。除了生产研究外，一项感知研究还研究了在感知单词初始气门停止中使用哪些语音质量信息。这项研究的最终组成部分是对KLH说话者在记录的访谈中的言语的持续研究，重点是夏威夷人的元音长度区别的实施，以及[W〜V]变体的发音变化的因素变化。这些研究的结果有助于设计有关获取声音的教学材料和视频的设计，这些声音可能会给夏威夷人的成人学习者带来挑战。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并被认为是值得通过基金会的知识分子来评估的支持，并具有更广泛的影响。