Proceedings Fonetik 2009 - Institutionen för lingvistik

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Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityVisual discrimination between Swedish and Finnishamong L2-learners of SwedishNiklas Öhrström, Frida Bulukin Wilén, Anna Eklöf and Joakim GustafssonDepartment of Linguistics, Stockholm University.AbstractA series of speech reading experiments werecarried out to examine the ability to discriminatebetween Swedish and Finnish among L2learners of Swedish and Spanish as their mothertongue. This group was compared with nativespeakers of Swedish and a group with noknowledge in Swedish or Finnish. The resultsshowed tendencies, that familiarity with Swedishincreased the discrimination ability betweenSwedish and Finnish.IntroductionAudition is the main modality for speech decoding.Nevertheless, visual information aboutthe speech gestures while listening providescomplementary visual cues to speech perception.This use of visual information plays a significantrole, especially during noisy conditions(Sumby and Pollack, 1954; Erber, 1969). However,McGurk and MacDonald (1976) showedthat the visual signal is incorporated in auditoryspeech percept, even at favorable S/N ratios.They used dubbed tapes with a face pronouncingthe syllables [gaga] and [baba]. When listenerssaw the face articulating [gaga], whilethe audio track was changed for [baba], the majorityreported having heard [dada]. LaterTraunmüller and Öhrström (2007) demonstratedthat this phenomenon also holds for vowels,where the auditory percept is influenced bystrong visual cues such as lip rounding. Thesefindings are clear evidence that speech perceptionin face-to-face-communication is a bimodalrather than uni-modal process.In case of no available acoustic speech signal,the listener must fully rely on visual speechcues, i.e. speech reading. Visual informationalone is in most cases not sufficient for speechprocessing, since many speech sounds fall intothe same visually discriminable category. Homorganicspeech sounds are difficult to distinguish,while labial features, such as degree oflip rounding or lip closure are easily distinguishable(Amcoff, 1970). It has been shownthat performance in speech reading variesgreatly across perceivers (Kricos, 1996). Generally,females perform better than males(Johnson et al., 1988).The importance of the visual signal inspeech perception has recently been stressed intwo articles. Soto-Faraco et al. (2007) carriedout a study where subjects were presented silentclips of a bilingual speaker uttering sentencesin either Spanish or Catalan. Followingthe first clip, another one was presented. Thesubjects’ task was to decide whether the languagehad been switched or not from the oneclip to the other. Their subjects were eitherpeople with Spanish or Catalan as their firstlanguage. The other group consisted of peoplefrom Italy and England with no knowledge inSpanish or Catalan. In the first group bilingualsperformed best. However, people with eitherSpanish or Catalan as their mother tongue performedbetter than chance level. The secondgroup did not perform better than chance level,ruling out the possibility that the performanceof the first group was due to paralinguistic orextralinguistic signals. Their performance wasbased on linguistic knowledge in one of thepresented languages. Later, Weikum et al.(2007) carried out a similar study, where thespeaker was switching between English andFrench. In this study, the subjects were 4-, 6-and 8-month-old infants, acquiring English.According to their results, the 4-, and 6-montholdsperformed well, while the 8-month-oldsperformed worse. One interpretation is that the4- and 6-month-olds discriminate on the basisof psycho-optic differences, while the 8-montholdsare about to lose this ability as a result ofacquiring the visually discriminable categoriesof English. These are important findings, sinceit highlights the visual categories as part of thelinguistic competence. The two studies are notfully comparable, since they deal with differentlanguages, which do not necessarily differ inthe same way. It cannot be excluded thatFrench and English are so dissimilar visually,that it might be possible to discriminate betweenthem on the basis of psycho-optic differencesonly. It does however suggest that wemight relearn to discriminate the L1 from anunknown language.150
Proceedings, FONETIK 2009, Dept. of Linguistics, Stockholm UniversityThis study deals with L2 learning. Can welearn an L2 to the extent, that it could be visuallydiscriminable from an unknown language?Can we establish new visual language-specificcategories as adults? To answer these questionsthe visual discriminability between Finnish andSwedish among (i) people with Swedish astheir L1, (ii) people with Swedish as their L2(immigrants from Latin-America) and (iii)people with no knowledge in either Swedish orFinnish (Spanish citizens). The Swedish andFinnish speech sound inventories differ inmany ways: The two languages both use frontand back rounded vowels. Finnish lacks the differencebetween in- and out-rounded vowels(Volotinen, 2008). This feature is easy to perceivevisually, since in-rounding involves hiddenteeth (behind the lips), while out-rounding doesnot. The Finnish vowel system recruits onlythree degrees of openness, while Swedishmakes use of four degrees. The temporal aspectsmay be difficult to perceive visually(Wada et al. 2003). Swedish is often referred toas being a stress timed language (Engstrand,2004): The distances between stressed syllablesare kept more or less constant. In addition,Swedish make use of long and short vowels instressed syllables. The following consonantlength is complementary striving to keepstressed syllables at constant length. Finnish isoften referred as a quantity language and vowelsas well as consonants can be long or shortregardless of stressing. Unlike Swedish, a longvowel can be followed by a long consonant.Swedish is abundant in quite complex consonantclusters. Finnish is more restrained fromthat point of view.MethodSpeech materialThe study is almost a replica of that of Soto-Faraco et al. (2007). One bilingual, Finno-Swedish, male was chosen as speaker. HisSwedish pronunciation was judged to be on L1-level, by the authors. His Finnish pronunciationwas judged (by two finnish students) to be almoston L1-level. The speaker was videotapedwhile pronouncing the four swedish sentences:(i) Fisken är huvudföda för trädlevande djur,(ii) Vid denna sorts trottoarer brukar det varapölfritt, (iii) Denna är ej upplåten för motorfordonutan är normalt enbart avsedd för rullstolar,(iv) En motorväg är en sån väg som bestårav två körbanor med i normalfallet två körfält,and four finnish sentences: (i) Teiden luokitteluperusteetvaihtelevat maittain, (ii) Jänistensukupuolet ovat samannäköisiä, (iii) Yleensätiet ovat myös numeroitu, ja usein tieluokkavoidaan päätellä numerosta, (iv) Kalojen tukiranganhuomattavin osa muodostuu selkärangastaja kallosta.SubjectsThree groups were examined. Group 1 consistedof 22 (12 female and 10 male) L2-speakers of Swedish, aged 23-63 years (Mean=37.5 years). They were all Spanish speakingimmigrants from Latin-America. Group 2 consistedof 12 (6 male and 6 female) L1 speakersof Swedish, aged 18-53 years (Mean=38.8years). Group 3 consisted of 10 (4 female and 6male) L1 speakers of Spanish, aged 24-47 years(Mean=37.7 years). They were all residents ofSan Sebastian (Spain), with Spanish as their L1and no knowledge in Swedish or Finnish.ProcedureEach group was presented 16 sentence pairs inquasi-randomized order. The subjects’ task wasto judge whether or not the following sentencewas in the same language as the first. In group1, information about their education in Swedishwas asked for (i.e. number of semesters at theSchool of SFI, Swedish for immigrants) and theage when arriving in Sweden. In group 1, thesubjects were asked to estimate their use ofSwedish as compared with their use of Spanishon a four-degree-scale.ResultsGroup 1 (L2 speaker of Swedish)Group 1 achieved a result of, on average, 10.59correct answer of 16 possible (sd = 2.17). Aone-sample t-test revealed that their performancewas significantly over chance level(p
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