Enhancing Language Learners' Comprehensibility through Automated Analysis of Pause Positions and Syllable Prominence

Bibliographic Data

ID5900508
AuthorsSylvain Coulange (0000-0002-9728-1181, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, corresponding author), Tsuneo Kato (0000-0001-7955-9787, Doshisha University), Solange Rossato (0000-0002-4698-774X, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Monica Masperi (Laboratoire de Linguistique et Didactique des Langues Etrangères et Maternelles)
Year2024
Volume9
Issue3
Pages78
Publication date2024-02-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueLanguages (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages9030078
OpenAlexW4392241155
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited31

This research paper addresses the challenge of providing effective feedback on spontaneous speech produced by second language (L2) English learners. As the position of pauses and lexical stress is often considered a determinative factor for easy comprehension by listeners, an automated pipeline is introduced to analyze the position of pauses in speech, the lexical stress patterns of polysyllabic content words, and the degree of prosodic contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables, on the basis of F0, intensity, and duration measures. The pipeline is applied to 11 h of spontaneous speech from 176 French students with B1 and B2 proficiency levels. It appeared that B1 students make more pauses within phrases and less pauses between clauses than B2 speakers, with a large diversity among speakers at both proficiency levels. Overall, lexical stress is correctly placed in only 35.4% of instances, with B2 students achieving a significantly higher score (36%) than B1 students (29.6%). However, great variation among speakers is also observed, ranging from 0% to 68% in stress position accuracy. Stress typically falls on the last syllable regardless of the prosodic expectations, with the strong influence of syllable duration. Only proficient speakers show substantial F0 and intensity contrasts

Linguistics · Natural language processing · Speech recognition · Syllable · Computer Science · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Second Language Acquisition and Learning · Speech and dialogue systems

Tools

Open DOIOpen Access