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Segmental, prosodic and fluency features in phonetic learner corpora
Edited by Jürgen Trouvain, Frank Zimmerer, Bernd Möbius, Mária Gósy and Anne Bonneau
[International Journal of Learner Corpus Research 3:2] 2017
► pp. 175–195

A bi-directional task-based corpus of learners’ conversational speech

| University of the Basque Country
| Ikerbasque Basque Science Foundation
| University of Edinburgh
| Ikerbasque Basque Science Foundation
| University of Edinburgh

This paper describes a corpus of task-based conversational speech produced by English and Spanish native talkers speaking English and Spanish as both a first and a second language. For cross-language comparability, speech material was elicited using a picture-based task common to each native language group. The bi-directionality of the corpus, stemming from the use of the same speakers and the same language pairing, makes it possible to separate native language factors from the influence of speaking in a first or second language. The potential for studying first language influences and non-native speech using the corpus is illustrated by means of a series of explorations of acoustic, segmental, suprasegmental, and conversational phenomena. These analyses demonstrate the breadth of factors that are amenable to investigation in a conversational corpus and reveal different types of interactions between the first language, the second language, and non-nativeness.

Keywords: L2 speech, Diapix corpus, conversation, vowels, picture task
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The DiapixFL corpus
    • 2.1Materials
    • 2.2Participants
    • 2.3Recording setup and procedure
    • 2.4Annotation
  • 3.Illustrative findings
    • 3.1Turn types
    • 3.2Speech rate
    • 3.3Energy, spectral tilt, and voicing
    • 3.4Fundamental frequency
    • 3.5Corner vowels
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 4 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ijlcr.3.2.04gar
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