30.1465, Review: Dutch; Spanish; Language Acquisition; Phonetics: Burgos (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1465. Tue Apr 02 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1465, Review: Dutch; Spanish; Language Acquisition; Phonetics: Burgos (2018)

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Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2019 22:30:01
From: Robert Squizzero [rsquizz at uw.edu]
Subject: Non-native pronunciation: Patterns of learner variation in Spanish-accented Dutch

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36463777


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-2715.html

AUTHOR: Pepi  Burgos
TITLE: Non-native pronunciation: Patterns of learner variation in Spanish-accented Dutch
SERIES TITLE: LOT Dissertation Series
PUBLISHER: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke (LOT)
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: Robert Squizzero, University of Washington

SUMMARY

“Non-native pronunciation: Patterns of learner variation in Spanish-accented
Dutch” is a doctoral dissertation that examines the production and perception
of second language (L2) Dutch used in the Netherlands by adult first language
(L1) Spanish speakers at different levels of Dutch proficiency. Chapter 1
provides background information for the dissertation, particularly on the
phonological systems of Spanish and Dutch, theory surrounding perception and
production of L2-accented speech in general, and general background regarding
Dutch spoken by L1 Spanish speakers in the Netherlands. Chapter 2 presents an
auditory analysis that identifies rates of common segmental errors in Dutch
produced by 23 adult native Spanish speakers of four different proficiency
levels, then provides hypotheses for L1 interference as a cause of these
errors. In Chapter 3, a comparative acoustic analysis of Dutch vowels produced
by L1 Dutch and L1 Spanish speakers reveals similarities and differences in
spectral quality and duration of the vowels in the speakers’ systems. Chapter
4 presents a perceptual study analyzing the accuracy of crowdsourced native
Dutch listeners in orthographically transcribing Spanish-accented Dutch words.
Chapter 5 is a follow-up perceptual study in which listeners were carefully
selected to expand on Chapter 4’s crowdsourced study and provide a baseline
against which the effectiveness of the crowdsourcing method could be
evaluated. Chapter 6 takes the classifications of Spanish-accented Dutch
vowels by human listeners obtained in Chapter 5’s study and compares them with
machine-based classifications using multinomial logistic regression. Chapter 7
provides a summary and discussion of the dissertation’s results, limitations,
and potential for societal impact.

The book begins with the statement of a problem regarding Spanish-accented
Dutch: many Spanish learners of Dutch find the pronunciation difficult and
often believe that Dutch listeners do not try enough to understand their
speech, while many Dutch listeners, conversely, believe that Spanish learners
of Dutch do not put enough effort into their pronunciation. Chapter 1 shows
that this is a problem with a past, briefly summarizing the history of two
major waves of migration from Spain into the Netherlands. Following that is a
general comparison of the Dutch and Spanish languages, including morphosyntax
in addition to phonology. The focus of this book is segmental phonology, with
a detailed overview of differences in vowels and consonants between the two
languages and a brief discussion of existing studies of Spanish learners of
other languages. Next is an examination of speech perception models used to
understand how L1 Spanish speakers acquire Dutch as a second language. Flege’s
(1995) Speech Learning Model is chosen as the primary model employed by Burgos
in understanding this acquisition process, with the occasional use of the
Second Language Linguistic Perception Model (Escudero 2005). The last points
in the introduction detail Burgos’s perspective on perceptual adaptation of
native Dutch listeners to Spanish-accented Speakers.

Chapter 2 is a study of the pronunciation of the Dutch of 23 L1 Spanish
speakers, divided into four proficiency levels from A1 (lowest) to B2 (high
intermediate) on the Common European Framework Reference (CEFR) scale. The
author compiled a corpus of running speech from the oral sections of
standardized Dutch proficiency exams for these 23 speakers. The corpus was
then transcribed and its segmental errors notated. The analysis revealed that
the primary difference in pronunciation errors is between A1 and A2 levels, as
A1 speakers had a significantly higher level of pronunciation errors than A2,
B1, and B2 speakers, which had comparable error rates between each other. The
study also identified that the most frequent and most persistent segmental
errors were of vowels, specifically vowel height, length, and rounding (of
front vowels). The identification of these errors proves to be valuable in
laying the groundwork for experiments described in later chapters. Burgos also
points out that the errors are consistent with the acquisition models
described in Chapter 1 in that the confusions seem to stem from multiple L2
vowel phonemes occurring within the acoustic space of a single L1 phoneme, for
example, /i/ and /ɪ/, which contrast in Dutch but not Spanish.

Chapter 3 acoustically examines the production of the fifteen vowels of Dutch
by 28 native Spanish speakers as compared to 20 native speakers of standard
Dutch. Dutch’s fifteen vowels are classified into subsets: three diphthongs
/ɛi œy ɔu/, three long mid monophthongs /eː øː oː/, and nine (other)
monophthongs /i y u ɪ ʏ ɔ ɛ ɑ aː/. This contrasts with Spanish, which has only
five monophthongs /i u o e a/ and no phonemic diphthongs. Each participant
read 29 monosyllabic Dutch words ending in /t/ or /s/, and their recordings
were acoustically analyzed. A particularly clear and interesting result of the
comparison can be seen in the normalized vowel plots (in first formant (F1) x
second formant (F2) space) of the nine Dutch monophthongs presented on p. 94,
which contrast the Dutch monophthong spaces of native Dutch and native Spanish
speakers. The plots show that the tense-lax vowel pairs /aː/-/ɑ/, /i/-/ɪ/ and
/y/-/ʏ/, entirely separate in F1 x F2 for L1 Dutch speakers, have very high
rates of spectral overlap for the L1 Spanish L2 Dutch speakers, and /y/-/ʏ/
are realized as central rather than front vowels. Pillai’s trace measures
confirm the low rates of separation for these vowel pairs produced by the L2
Dutch speakers. This study also shows that the L2 Dutch speakers realize the
differences between these vowel pairs by producing each tense vowel with a
longer duration than its lax counterpart. Like the L2 speakers, L1 Dutch
speakers do pronounce the tense vowels /i/ and /a:/ with a longer duration
than /ɑ/ and /ɪ/, but the discrepancy is not as great as the L2 speakers, and
the L1 Dutch speakers actually produce /y/ with a shorter duration than /ʏ/. 

Chapter 4 is a perceptual study investigating whether or not Spanish-accented
L2 Dutch words differ enough from the expectations of a non-expert native
listener to impact intelligibility. Nearly 200 native Dutch-speaking
participants completed a web survey, which had a game component and could be
shared on Facebook. The listeners heard the 29 monosyllables from the 28
speakers recorded for the experiment in Chapter 3 and transcribed them using
Dutch orthography. Participants could choose how many words to transcribe,
i.e. when to quit the game, with a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 833 words.
The study’s results indicate that the Dutch monophthongs closest acoustically
to the Spanish monophthongs, /i u ɔ ɛ aː/, were recognized correctly at the
highest rates. The predicted confusions (based on the acoustic study in
Chapter 3) largely occurred as anticipated, with /ɪ/ frequently confused for
/i/, and /ɑ/ frequently confused as /aː/. The central quality of /y/ and /ʏ/
also appears to have interfered with listeners, as they were both frequently
misheard as /u/.

A similar perceptual study was conducted and reported on in Chapter 5. This
experiment used the same set of stimuli as the experiment in Chapter 4, but
with the addition of two sets of the 29 monosyllables recorded by two native
Dutch speakers as “anchor points.” The other major difference from the
previous experiment was that participants were recruited via snowball sampling
instead of crowdsourcing. Differences in rates of vowel identification between
the studies were minimal, which implies that crowdsourcing may very well be a
reliable method for subject recruitment in speech perception studies. A point
of interest as pertains to the results of this study is that the tokens
produced by L1 Dutch speakers were not correctly identified any more often
than those produced by L2 Dutch speakers. Burgos attributes this result to the
idea that the raters shifted their perceptual boundaries towards the L2
productions, which make up 93% of all stimuli.

Chapter 6 is a comparison of auditory vowel classification by native Dutch
listeners with machine-based statistical classification based on the vowels’
acoustic properties using a multinomial logistic regression model. The same
recordings of Dutch monosyllables analyzed in Chapter 3 are under
investigation in Chapter 6; these were recorded by 20 native Dutch speakers
and 28 Spanish L1 Dutch L2 speakers, ranging from CEFR A1 to B2 in
proficiency. The machine classification was done multiple times using
different sets of data: all 48 speakers’ data at once (‘Total’), native and
non-native data separately (‘Group’), and each L2 Dutch speaker’s data alone
(‘Individual’). The ‘Group’ classification was conducted in order to further
explore Chapter 5’s idea that perceptual boundaries of native vowel categories
can shift when non-native data is included, and the ‘Individual’
classification was done so that proficiency level and other individual learner
variation could be captured. All of these conditions were categorized twice
each, once based on the vowels’ F1 and F2 values, and once based on F1, F2,
and duration. The results confirm that vowel height, length, rounding, and
diphthongization impacted machine classification, and that confusions of L2
Dutch tended to occur for vowel contrasts not present in Spanish. Human and
machine classification rates were comparable for the five Dutch vowels /i u ɔ
ɛ aː/ that most closely resemble the five Spanish monophthongs /i u o e a/ but
differed for the remaining ten Dutch vowels. Burgos’s explanation for this is
that human listeners are likely attending to elements in the acoustic signal
other than F1, F2, and duration, and also that human listeners have a chance
to shift their perceptual boundaries as they listen to more stimuli, whereas
machine classification takes in all of the data at once. The latter point is
supported by the ‘Individual’ condition, in which classification rates more
closely matched the intended production; the variation within a speaker’s
vowel system can be attended to one speaker at a time, and classification
boundaries can shift accordingly. Lastly, the analysis of individual speakers
in this study shows that acquisition of more nativelike phonology does not
necessarily proceed at the same rate of an increase in higher language
proficiency, since the more proficient speakers in this study did not
necessarily have higher rates of intelligibility than less proficient
speakers.

The final chapter summarizes the work and discusses its findings. Burgos
outlines future research that should be undertaken based on this book’s
findings, particularly on evaluative judgments of L2 Dutch speakers and their
corresponding social consequences. Burgos also concludes that the information
learned from these studies can be used to inform L2 Dutch pronunciation
pedagogy, help in developing Computer-Assisted Pronunciation Training, and
raise awareness among Spanish learners of Dutch. 

EVALUATION

On the whole, Burgos’s work is a well-designed examination of the topic under
investigation, and each chapter builds on the previous in a logical and
consistent way. Chapters 2 through 6 would also be perfectly comprehensible as
independent works. This book investigates internet crowdsourcing of subjects
and machine classification of vowels, modern methods that are likely to be of
interest to speech perception researchers. Burgos’s contrastive analysis is
overall sound with regard to both the production and perception studies.

This work is somewhat challenging to understand for readers unfamiliar with
Dutch. A more consistent use of the IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet)
instead of Dutch orthography in referencing particular vowels, both in prose
and in charts, would have made this work more accessible. While it makes some
sense to use Dutch orthography when referring to transcriptions actually typed
by listeners, those of us less familiar with Dutch must flip back and forth to
interpret the confusions made by listeners in the perceptual studies. Also
unclear is the possibility of frequency effects – the reasoning based on
acoustics is sound, but could the listeners have confused certain vowels for
each other simply because they are more frequent in Dutch? This certainly
seems to be the case based on the frequency tables in Chapter 2 but is not
accounted for in the perceptual studies.

All in all, this work adds value to the existing body of literature on L2
speech production and perception, and its relevance is clear to applied and
theoretical linguists working on second language studies of any language. The
potential benefits brought by this research, mentioned in the conclusion, are
sure to be relevant to teachers of Dutch as a second language. Burgos also
appropriately identifies the need for future work on Spanish-accented Dutch
that takes into account social biases of L1 Dutch listeners. This call is
particularly welcome in the context of some of the statements made throughout
the work, such as one advanced (CEFR B2) learner’s comment that “she was fired
because customers could not understand her Dutch” (p. 187). 

REFERENCES

Escudero, P. (2005). Linguistic perception and second language acquisition:
Explaining the attainment of optimal phonological categorization. Doctoral
dissertation. Utrecht, the Netherlands: Utrecht University. 

Flege, J. E. (1995). Second-language speech learning: Theory, findings, and
problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience:
Issues in Cross-language Research (pp. 233-277). Timonium, MD: York Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Rob Squizzero is a doctoral student in linguistics at the University of
Washington. His main research interests include articulatory and acoustic
phonetics, sociolinguistics, and second language speakers. He also holds an
M.A. in TESOL from the University of Washington and spent several years
teaching English language to adults at the university level.





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