Šárka Šimáčková
Biographic Data
| ID | 146299 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Šárka Šimáčková |
| GIVEN NAMES | Šárka |
| FAMILY NAME | Šimáčková |
| SIGNATURE | ŠIMÁČKOVÁ Š |
| AFFILIATIONS | Palacký University Olomouc |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9462-4169 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 9 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 9 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Overcoming stress deafness
Listeners whose first language has fixed stress often struggle to perceive word stress in a second language (L2), a phenomenon known as “stress deafness.” This study investigates how L2 proficiency and musical perception skills jointly influence Czech learners’ perception of English lexical stress. Fifty-four Czech adults, representing a wide range of English proficiency (measured by LexTALE) and musical perception skills (measured by PROMS-S), c…
Tuning in to the prosody of a novel language is easier without orthography
Mastering prosody is a different task for adults learning a second language and infants acquiring their first. While prosody crucially aids the process of L1 acquisition, for adult L2 learners it is often considerably challenging. Is it because of an age-related decline in the language-learning ability or because of unfavorable learning conditions? We investigated whether adults can auditorily sensitize to the prosody of a novel language, and whe…
Online guided pronunciation practice helps adult EFL learners improve L2 prosody
This study tests the efficacy of a pronunciation course in developing advanced EFL learners’ expressive reading during a semester of online instruction. The course, designed for future English-language professionals, emphasises primacy of perception before production, the importance of noticing phonetic detail, expert and peer feedback, and context-situated tasks. The magnitude of pitch movements and reading tempo were assessed before and after t…
The McGurk effect in the time of pandemic
Phonetic drift reveals interconnected phonological representations in simultaneous bilinguals
Purpose: The interconnectedness of phonological categories between the two languages of early bilinguals has previously been explored using single-probe speech production and perception data. Our goal was to tap into bilingual phonological representations in another way, namely via monitoring instances of phonetic drift due to changes in language exposure. Design: We report a case study of two teenage English–Czech simultaneous bilinguals who liv…
The development of infants’ sensitivity to native versus non‐native rhythm
Speech rhythm is considered one of the first windows into the native language, and the taxonomy of rhythm classes is commonly used to explain early language discrimination. Relying on formal rhythm classification is problematic for two reasons. First, it is not known to which extent infants’ sensitivity to language variation is attributable to rhythm alone, and second, it is not known how infants discriminate languages not classified in any of th…
Distributional Learning of Speech Sounds
Distributional learning is typically understood as (unattended) tracking of stimulus probabilities. Distributional training with speech yields mixed results and the influencing factors have not yet been fully investigated. This study explored whether prior linguistic experience could have an effect on distributional learning outcomes. Czech and Greek adults, whose native languages contain and lack abstract length categories, respectively, were ex…
Patterns of Short-Term Phonetic Interference in Bilingual Speech
Previous research indicates that alternating between a bilingual's languages during speech production can lead to short-term increases in cross-language phonetic interaction. However, discrepancies exist between the reported L1-L2 effects in terms of direction and magnitude, and sometimes the effects are not found at all. The present study focused on L1 interference in L2, examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) of English voiceless stops produced by L1…
Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia
As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, and the UK, claim Czech heritage (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 2009). However, it is not known how many of them are nati…
Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia
As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, and the UK, claim Czech heritage (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 2009). However, it is not known how many of them are nati…
Distributional Learning of Speech Sounds
Distributional learning is typically understood as (unattended) tracking of stimulus probabilities. Distributional training with speech yields mixed results and the influencing factors have not yet been fully investigated. This study explored whether prior linguistic experience could have an effect on distributional learning outcomes. Czech and Greek adults, whose native languages contain and lack abstract length categories, respectively, were ex…
Patterns of Short-Term Phonetic Interference in Bilingual Speech
Previous research indicates that alternating between a bilingual's languages during speech production can lead to short-term increases in cross-language phonetic interaction. However, discrepancies exist between the reported L1-L2 effects in terms of direction and magnitude, and sometimes the effects are not found at all. The present study focused on L1 interference in L2, examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) of English voiceless stops produced by L1…
Czech spoken in Bohemia and Moravia
As a western Slavic language of the Indo-European family, Czech is closest to Slovak and Polish. It is spoken as a native language by nearly 10 million people in the Czech Republic (Czech Statistical Office n.d.). About two million people living abroad, mostly in the USA, Canada, Austria, Germany, Slovakia, and the UK, claim Czech heritage (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic 2009). However, it is not known how many of them are nati…
Patterns of Short-Term Phonetic Interference in Bilingual Speech
Previous research indicates that alternating between a bilingual's languages during speech production can lead to short-term increases in cross-language phonetic interaction. However, discrepancies exist between the reported L1-L2 effects in terms of direction and magnitude, and sometimes the effects are not found at all. The present study focused on L1 interference in L2, examining Voice Onset Time (VOT) of English voiceless stops produced by L1…
The McGurk effect in the time of pandemic
Phonetic drift reveals interconnected phonological representations in simultaneous bilinguals
Purpose: The interconnectedness of phonological categories between the two languages of early bilinguals has previously been explored using single-probe speech production and perception data. Our goal was to tap into bilingual phonological representations in another way, namely via monitoring instances of phonetic drift due to changes in language exposure. Design: We report a case study of two teenage English–Czech simultaneous bilinguals who liv…
The development of infants’ sensitivity to native versus non‐native rhythm
Speech rhythm is considered one of the first windows into the native language, and the taxonomy of rhythm classes is commonly used to explain early language discrimination. Relying on formal rhythm classification is problematic for two reasons. First, it is not known to which extent infants’ sensitivity to language variation is attributable to rhythm alone, and second, it is not known how infants discriminate languages not classified in any of th…
Distributional Learning of Speech Sounds
Distributional learning is typically understood as (unattended) tracking of stimulus probabilities. Distributional training with speech yields mixed results and the influencing factors have not yet been fully investigated. This study explored whether prior linguistic experience could have an effect on distributional learning outcomes. Czech and Greek adults, whose native languages contain and lack abstract length categories, respectively, were ex…
Online guided pronunciation practice helps adult EFL learners improve L2 prosody
This study tests the efficacy of a pronunciation course in developing advanced EFL learners’ expressive reading during a semester of online instruction. The course, designed for future English-language professionals, emphasises primacy of perception before production, the importance of noticing phonetic detail, expert and peer feedback, and context-situated tasks. The magnitude of pitch movements and reading tempo were assessed before and after t…
Tuning in to the prosody of a novel language is easier without orthography
Mastering prosody is a different task for adults learning a second language and infants acquiring their first. While prosody crucially aids the process of L1 acquisition, for adult L2 learners it is often considerably challenging. Is it because of an age-related decline in the language-learning ability or because of unfavorable learning conditions? We investigated whether adults can auditorily sensitize to the prosody of a novel language, and whe…
Overcoming stress deafness
Listeners whose first language has fixed stress often struggle to perceive word stress in a second language (L2), a phenomenon known as “stress deafness.” This study investigates how L2 proficiency and musical perception skills jointly influence Czech learners’ perception of English lexical stress. Fifty-four Czech adults, representing a wide range of English proficiency (measured by LexTALE) and musical perception skills (measured by PROMS-S), c…
Phonetics and Phonology Research (7 works) · Psychology (7 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Cognitive psychology (4 works) · Czech (4 works) · Language Development and Disorders (4 works) · Perception (4 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Developmental psychology (2 works) · Language proficiency (2 works)