The current diploma thesis examines Czech listeners' perception of various accents of English from the points of view of comprehensibility, pleasantness, socioeconomic status, and model suitability. The main aim of the study is to contribute to the discussion on how accent variation within the Anglophone world is perceived by non-native speakers, and what aspects influence their evaluations of the accents. The theoretical part of the thesis defines several terms related to the domain, describes selected pronunciation varieties of English, and summarizes research which has focused on native accents of English in the perception of non-native speakers. The research part of the thesis consists of a study, in which 39 Czech students from two types of schools evaluated six accents of English and provided information about their experience with English and Anglophone cultures. The results showed that standard varieties are favoured by the students in all four respects, but also that students' evaluations, especially for pleasantness, may be affected by their relations to the Anglophone world. Key words: Native Accent, Regional Variation, L2 learner, Comprehensibility, Socioeconomic Status, Pronunciation Model, Standard

SILVA, Ana Cristina Cunha da. A produção e percepção do acento em pares mínimos de língua inglesa por aprendizes brasileiros. 2005. 118f. Dissertação (Mestrado em Linguistica) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Departamento de Letras Vernaculas, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Linguística, Fortaleza-CE, 2005. / Submitted by nazareno mesquita (nazagon36@yahoo.com.br) on 2012-06-19T17:32:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_ diss_ACCunha.pdf: 821373 bytes, checksum: 60eb617c66c7fc5a00606d4f70191cc0 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Maria Josineide Góis(josineide@ufc.br) on 2012-06-21T15:46:08Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_ diss_ACCunha.pdf: 821373 bytes, checksum: 60eb617c66c7fc5a00606d4f70191cc0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2012-06-21T15:46:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2005_ diss_ACCunha.pdf: 821373 bytes, checksum: 60eb617c66c7fc5a00606d4f70191cc0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005 / The study aimed at investigating the production and perception of English minimal pairs in a group of Brazilian students of English as a foreign language, equally divided in three different proficiency levels in order to verify which linguistic and social factors could be responsible for the mispronunciation of those lexical items. The stress pattern production was evaluated through reading activities and sentence repetition. The perception of the participants was measured through stress and categorical discrimination activities. It was expected that the linguistic proficiency level would be directly proportional to the amount of correct answers per test, which was partially confirmed, for the results revealed that, in some cases, the learner’s proficiency level is not the only factor responsible for determining the success in stress attribution and vowel reduction, but the amount of hours each one had before studying in the institution where the corpus was collected. Another hypothesis of the research considered that success in the production of the minimal pairs would be a result of a satisfactory perception of those same pairs. However, this hypothesis was not confirmed because the amount of correct answers in the production tests did not accompany the quantitative results of the perception tests, what revealed that learners’ capacities to perceive stress shift and determining the lexical category are more than satisfactory. The production tests presented an excessively reduced number of correct utterances in vowel reduction, which is a fundamental feature for the intelligibility of some minimal pairs. The social variables did not interfere at all with the minimal pairs stress production. / O estudo investigou a produção e a percepção do padrão acentual e a redução vocálica em pares mínimos de língua inglesa em aprendizes brasileiros de língua inglesa, divididos igualmente em três níveis diferentes de proficiência, a fim de verificar que fatores lingüísticos e sociais poderiam ser responsáveis pela má pronúncia desses itens lexicais. A produção dos padrões acentuais foi avaliada através de tarefas de leitura e repetição de sentenças. A percepção dos participantes foi mensurada através de atividades de iscriminação acentual e categórica. Esperou-se que o nível de proficiência lingüística fosse diretamente proporcional ao número total de acertos por testes, hipótese que foi confirmada parcialmente, pois os resultados apontaram que em alguns casos, o nível de proficiência do aprendiz não é o único responsável pelo sucesso na atribuição do acento e de redução vocálica, mas sim o tempo de exposição à língua, confirmado pela quantidade de horas-aula anteriores ao início do curso na instituição em que o corpus foi coletado. Uma outra hipótese preliminar da pesquisa foi a de que o sucesso na produção dos pares mínimos devia-se a uma boa percepção deles. No entanto, essa hipótese não foi confirmada pelo fato dos totais de acertos dos testes de produção não acompanharem linearmente os resultados quantitativos dos testes de percepção, que revelaram capacidades mais do que satisfatórias no que diz respeito à percepção da mudança de acento e determinação da categoria lexical. Os testes de produção apresentaram um número excessivamente reduzido de emissões corretas na redução vocálica, característica fundamental para a inteligibilidade de alguns pares mínimos. As variáveis sociais não influenciaram significativamente no fenômeno de má produção do acento primário de pares mínimos.

The aim of this diploma thesis is to investigate the accent realizations of the initial consonant in wh- words in Welsh English. The theoretical background of this study deals with the development of Welsh language and its interactions with the British standard variety. Together with the previously mentioned the phonological inventories of Welsh, RP, and Welsh English are described in the first part. We further analyzed the development of the <hw> element in the British Isles in general. The research part of this study is concerned with the analysis of the data from 20 speakers of Welsh English. Three speech styles were used for the final analysis: spontaneous speech (informal style), isolated words (formal style) and reading of Cinderella (formal style). Signal-to-noise ratio and voicing of the <hw> segments were measured in order to discover the occurrence and the nature of the <hw> element. The lowest levels of harmonicity were measured in segments that were obtained from the formal reading style. The highest levels were measures in the spontaneous speech tokens. Younger speakers showed higher levels of harmonicity than older speakers. The results of the male and the female participants were different in each type. In the spontaneous speech style the male speakers tended to have lower levels of...

Made available in DSpace on 2017-06-01T18:24:36Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_talita_galindo.pdf: 1610221 bytes, checksum: 68c3ba95f304a843ebb1291fe4ba80d5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-03-28 / This research aims at investigating the intonational patterns in the construction of meaning in children's productions of the 1st year of elementary school, using different text genres. For this, we have investigated children who attend a private college of the City of Recife, aged between 6 and 7 years, both male and female. Data were collected during reading activities, where the teacher told stories to students using different kinds of texts, such as fable, fairy tale, comic book and letter. The research presents a qualitative analysis of the activity of reading, analyzing the role of intonation in the construction of meaning. Data analysis was performed on the model of Interactive Intonation by David Brazil (1985), seeking to identify the intonation clues provided in the teacher reading to his students and their relation to the construction of meaning. The results show that intonation takes three textual functions, organizational, informative and interactive, playing a significant role in the construction of meaning in reading activity, and that the proeminent words used by the teacher, were almost the same used by the students, helping to build the meaning in reading . The research contributed both to the development and improvement of the oral speech activity particularly as related to the intonational patterns to construct meaning, and providing a better textual production, but also to develop strategies that can reduce the difficulties in the oral production of children through the construction of moments of interaction between therapist and patient, promoting the development of the oral text by the child, giving a new meaning to reading / Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo principal investigar os padrões entoacionais na construção de sentido em produções de crianças do 1º ano do ensino fundamental, utilizando diferentes gêneros textuais. Para isso, foram investigadas crianças de um Colégio particular da Cidade do Recife, na faixa etária entre 6 e 7 anos, tanto do gênero masculino quanto do feminino. Os dados foram coletados durante atividades de leitura, onde a professora contou histórias para seus alunos utilizando diferentes gêneros textuais, como fábula, conto de fadas, história em quadrinhos e carta. A pesquisa apresenta uma análise qualitativa da atividade de leitura, analisando o papel da entoação na construção de sentido. A análise dos dados foi realizada com base no modelo Interativo Entoacional de David Brazil (1985), buscando identificar as pistas entoacionais fornecidas na leitura da professora para seus alunos e sua relação com a construção de sentido. Os resultados mostram que a entoação assume três funções textuais: a organizacional, a informativa e a interacional, que apresentam um papel significativo para a construção de sentido durante a atividade de leitura, e que as palavras com proeminências utilizadas pela professora, em sua grande maioria, foram as mesmas escolhidas por seus alunos, contribuindo para construir o sentido no momento da leitura. A pesquisa oferece subsídios tanto para o desenvolvimento e aprimoramento do olhar do fonoaudiólogo escolar com relação à oralidade e aos seus aspectos prosódicos, na produção de crianças em processo de desenvolvimento da aquisição da leitura-escrita, como para o desenvolvimento de estratégias que possam diminuir as dificuldades na produção oral da criança, através da construção de momentos de interação entre terapeuta e paciente, promovendo a elaboração do texto oral da criança, dando um novo sentido a sua leitura

The aim of this study is to use a verbal guise test to investigate Swedish upper secondary school students’ language attitudes toward GA and RP. While research has been conducted on this topic before, few studies have incorporated all three cognitive, affective and conative components of the mentalist approach to language attitude, and even fewer with younger student participants, which are two components the present study included. The findings of the present study indicate differences in evaluation of the RP and GA speakers. The investigated L2 speakers of English, the 17-19 year old participants, favoured the RP speaker in terms of the cognitive categories serious, intelligent and responsible, while the GA speaker was evaluated more favorably for the categories not arrogant, kind, calm and gentle. The participants also felt more trust while listening to the RP speaker, while other affective categories did not generate considerable differences in evaluation of the speakers. Lastly, in the conative component, the students self-reported using and aiming for similar pronunciation to GA rather than RP. Several of these results are supported by previous research, but contrasting findings occur as well.

The main aim of this study is to investigate Swedish upper secondary school students’ awareness of and attitudes to varieties of English, especially with a focus on accents. Based on a survey with both open-ended and closed questions, this study is both qualitative and quantitative. The questionnaire was distributed digitally to several teachers at three upper secondary schools in Sweden, one school in Eskilstuna and the other two in Stockholm. The number of participants in total was 88. The results revealed that the students were aware of several varieties of English, but the most known varieties were American, British, Irish and Indian English. Furthermore, the students were enthusiastic about both American and British English, but American English was the most common. In addition, the majority of the students believed that it was essential to learn about varieties of English in school and that American, British and Canadian were the most important varieties to learn about. In conclusion, the students have a general awareness of and an openness to linguistic variation, as well as being positive towards learning about different varieties of English in school.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.