A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-L2 RHYTHM DEVELOPMENT

Teixeira, Leonardo Antonio Silva

doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2023.e94742

Leonardo Antonio Silva Teixeira ^**E-mail: leoteixeira.professor@gmail.com

Universidade Federal do Ceará, Fortaleza, CE, Brasil

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4905-4259

*E-mail: leoteixeira.professor@gmail.com

Figures (6)
Tables (5)

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Figure 1
Distribution of languages over the (%V, ∆C) plane. Error bars represent 1 standard error.

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Figure 2
Partial waveform, broadband spectrogram, and four tiers, respectively, segmented and labeled as: 1) phonetic syllables (VV); 2) vowels and/or consonants (V/C); 3) sentences (S); 4) chunks (CH) produced by an L2er.

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Figure 3
Present study data (dark blue) amid all the data reviewed and obtained by Arvaniti (2012)Arvaniti, A. (2012). The usefulness of metrics in the quantification of speech rhythm. Journal of Phonetics, 40 (3), 351–373. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.02.003.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2012.02.0... (light blue) for ΔC - %V (3a), VarcoC-VarcoV () and rPVI-C-n-PVI-V (3c), in which Eng = English, Ger = German, Gre = Greek, Spa = Spanish, UI = Italian, Kor = Korean.

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Figure 4
Boxplots of the means of %C (4a), ΔS (4b), rPVI-V (4c), rPVI-VC (4d), rPVI-S (4e), nPVI-C (4f), nPVI-VC (4g), RR-C (4h), RR-VC (4i), VI-V (j), VI-C (4k), VI-VC (4l), VI-S (4m) and YARD-VC (4n) for Eng-L1, English- L2(1), Eng-L2(4) and BP. The blue dots and lines represent the means and standard errors respectively.

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Figure 5
Boxplots of the means σf0 () and Δ1- f0 () for Eng-L1, English- L2(1), Eng-L2(4) and BP. The blue dots and lines represent the means and standard errors respectively.

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Figure 6
Boxplots of the means spectral emphasis () and speech rate () for Eng-L1, English- L2(1), Eng-L2(4) and BP. The blue dots and lines represent the means and standard errors respectively.

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Table 1
Rhythm metrics

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Table 2
Acoustic Parameters

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Table 3
Absolute means for the statistically significant metrics and standard deviation (between parentheses) for BP, Eng-L1, Eng-L2 (1), Eng-L2(1) and Eng-L2(4)

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Table 4
Coefficients, confidence intervals (95%) and p-Values for the two linear mixed-effect regression models adjusted for ΔC and %V. models: deltaC ~ Lang + (1|Chunk) + (1|Speaker) and percV ~ Lang + (1|Chunk) + (1 / Speaker)

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Table 5
Means of f₀ peak, f₀ min, and scope of f₀ in semitons for BP, Eng-L1, Eng-L2 (1) and Eng-L2 (4) per speaker.

Metrics	Application	Definition
Percentual (%)	V, C	Proportion of the total duration of the reference segment in the utterance.
Standard-deviation (∆)	V,C, VC, VV	Standard deviation of the segment duration divided by the mean, multiplied by 100.
Variation coefficient (Varco)	V,C, VC, VV	Mean of the differences between successive segments.
Raw pairwise variability index (r- PVI)	V,C, VC, VV	Mean of the differences between successive segments divided by their sum, multiplied by 100.
Normalized pairwise variability index (n-PVI)	V,C, VC, VV	Mean of pairwise quotients of adjacent segment durations, where the duration of the shorter is divided by the duration of the longer one and multiplied by 100.
Rhythm ratio (RR)	V,C, VC, VV	Mean of pairwise quotients of adjacent segment durations, where the duration of the shorter is divided by the duration of the longer one and multiplied by 100.
Variability index (VI)	V,C, VC, VV	Mean of the differences between successive segments where the duration of each segment is normalized through division by the mean of all segments’ durations.
Yet another rhythm determination (z-score duration) (YARD)	V,C, VC, VV	Mean of the differences between successive segments where the durations are normalized by z-transformation.

Acoustic Parameters	Application	Definition
f₀ median	S, CH	It provides insights into the regularity and timing patterns of vocalizations. A high f₀ median is typically an indicator of stress-timed rhythm.
f₀peak	S, CH	The highest f₀value in the f₀contour. The presence and location of f₀peaks can also indicate variations in rhythm, including pauses, phrase boundaries, and other prosodic features.
f₀ minimum	S, CH	The lowest f₀value in the f₀contour. It contributes to the division of speech into distinct syllabic units, influencing syllable timing and pacing.
Scope of f₀	S, CH	A larger scope of f₀ (f₀peak - f₀minimum) indicates a greater difference between the highest and lowest pitches, while a smaller pitch range suggests a more limited range of pitch variation.
f₀ standard deviation	S, CH	A higher f₀ standard deviation suggests greater pitch variability within the speech segment.
f₀ skewness	S, CH	The measure of asymmetry in the distribution of f₀ values within a segment of speech. Left skewness suggests a concentration of lower-pitched f₀values in the segment, while right skewness suggests the prevalence of higher-pitched ones.
Mean of f₀ first derivative (μΔ1- f₀)	S, CH	The mean rate of change in pitch for that segment, μΔ1-f₀ quantifies how quickly the pitch is rising or falling over time. A higher μΔ1-F0 indicates a faster rate of pitch change and a more dynamic rhythm.
Standard deviation of f₀ first derivative (σΔ1- f₀)	S, CH	It quantifies the variability or dispersion of the rate of change of f_0.A higher σΔ1- f₀ indicates that the pitch changes within the segment are more diverse and less uniform.
Skewness of f₀ first derivative (skΔ1- f₀)	S, CH	It quantifies whether the rate of change of pitch is skewed to one side (left or right) relative to the mean rate of change.
Speech rate (SR)	VV, S, CH	It indicates the average number of syllables a speaker produces in one second of speech.
f₀rate (f₀-R)	S, CH	It quantifies how quickly or slowly the pitch of a speaker's voice is changing.
Spectral emphasis	S, CH	It measures the energy or amplitude of specific frequency ranges within the speech signal. It is associated with phrasal stress marking.
Mean of normalized syllable- peak duration (μdur- Sil)	VV, S, CH	It provides information about the timing patterns within speech, specifically related to the duration of syllable peaks.
Mean duration of pauses (μdur-#)	S, CH	It reflects how speakers pace their speech and the organization of temporal intervals between speech segments.

Metric	BP	Eng-L1	Eng-L2(1)	Eng-L2(4)
%V	48.56 (3.16)	38.88 (4.96)	36.24 (5.36)	46.48 (8.02)
%C	51.44 (3,16)	61.12 (4.96)	63.76 (5.36)	68.416 (14.55)
∆V	40.08 (10.81)	41.16 (11.82)	51.81 (12.79)	105.192 (32.6)
∆C	46.48 (8.02)	68.41 (14.55)	105.192 (32.6)	84.088 (36.51)
∆S	133.4 (45.27)	198.53 (77.44)	217.46 (97.65)	184.75 (56.72)
VarcoV	49.04 (8.49)	54.80 (12.52)	58.80 (11.30)	56.32 (14.81)
VarcoC	49.84 (7,00)	59 (11.89)	66.80 (13.69)	59.72 (22.02)
rPVI-V	65.1 (11.71)	70.74 (14.84)	96.98 (19.27)	81.21 (15.75)
rPVI-C	48.22 (8.91)	86.16 (20.23)	116.84 (46.64)	88.7 (21.69)
rPVI-VC	64.73 (18.72)	83.58 (11.12)	114.4 (38.18)	89.1 (14.53)
rPVI-S	102.85 (40.24)	130.66 (33.59)	176.27 (90.03)	137.96 (44.62)
nPVI-C	53.96 (7.21)	68.56 (11.72)	72.36 (12.14)	64.84 (11.46)
nPVI-VC	59.76 (7.69)	68.96 (11.09)	72.6 (9.40)	65.08 (8.12)
RR-C	61.17 (4.36)	53.13 (6.29)	50.97 (6.59)	54.59 (6.42)
RR-VC	58.07 (4.35)	52.8 (5.65)	50.91 (4.97)	54.55 (4.59)
VI-V	0.818 (0.166)	0.981 (0.322)	1.128 (0.302)	0.894 (0.188)
VI-C	0.830 (0.037)	0.924 (0.049)	0.929 (0.052)	0.934 (0.059)
VI-VC	0.684 (0.101)	0.834 (0.157)	0.859 (0.120)	0.746 (0.116)
VI-S	0.516 (0.120)	0.606 (0.136)	0.615 (0.160)	0.538 (0.126)
YARD-VC	0.717 (0.150)	0.695 (0.133)	0.869 (0.113)	0.848 (0.123)

	ΔC			%V
Predictors	Estimates	CI	p	Estimates	CI	p
(Intercept)	46.48	36.17 – 56.79	<0.001	48.78	46.02 – 51.55	<0.001
Lang [Eng-L1]	21.94	7.35 – 36.52	0.004	-9.66	-12.97 – -6.35	<0.001
Lang [Eng-L2 (1)]	58.71	44.13 – 73.30	<0.001	-11.92	-14.23 – -9.61	<0.001
Lang [Eng-L2 (4)]	37.61	23.02 – 52.19	<0.001	-9.28	-11.47 – -7.09	<0.001

Language	participant	f₀peak	f₀min	f₀range
	A	92.49	79.33	13.16
	F	90.63	75.52	15.11
PB	K	92.67	78.64	14.02
	L	86.22	77.69	8.52
	N	97.16	79.97	17.18
	Car	98.12	78.56	19.55
	Rho	98	77.19	20.8
Eng-L1	Ros	87.34	79.06	8.27
	Roz	98.54	78.77	19.76
	Van	98.33	80.82	17.5
	A	91.12	78.84	12.28
	F	92.88	77.19	15.68
Eng-L2 (1)	K	94.8	79.29	15.5
	L	91.72	78.34	13.37
	N	98.06	82.47	15.59
	A	91.76	78.95	12.81
	F	90.95	75.86	15.09
Eng-L2 (4)	K	92.39	77.96	14.43
	L	92.1	77	15.1
	N	98.3	79.24	19.06

[1] *E-mail: leoteixeira.professor@gmail.com

Brasil

Brasil

A MULTIDIMENSIONAL ANALYSIS OF ENGLISH-L2 RHYTHM DEVELOPMENT

Abstract