The Polish language has a complex sibilant structure when compared to languages like English. Of particular interest here are the alveolo-palatal and retroflex sibilants. There have been some previous studies on Polish sibilants examining production and perception of children (under 5 years). However, there is a greater need for understanding adult perception of children’s productions and the perception of different populations listening to children’s productions. Contributing to perception studies would, therefore, allow for a more in-depth analysis of this field of research.
This paper builds on the findings of a production-perception study of Polish sibilants in typical children (Zygis et al., 2023) and expands the results by examining English and Heritage Polish population perceptions of Polish children’s productions. The Zygis et al. study examined Polish children and their production and perception of the contrasting sibilants. The study looked at the perception of the children for their own production and adults’ productions. Their study acquired recordings of 80 Polish children aged 35–106 months producing words with /s, ʂ, ɕ/. One of their tasks involved the child participants hearing their own productions of word-medial sibilants: /kasa/, /kaʂa/ and, /kaɕa/ at random. They then had to choose between three images (corresponding to Polish words, e.g.: kasa for cash register) to indicate the stimuli they heard. Their study found that there were a number of acoustic parameters that children used to identify sibilants. They observed that especially the younger children, “appear [to] pay more attention to formants independent of the sibilant and [that] the cue weighting [for these young children] changes during the acquisition process” (Zygis et al., 2023).
For the present study, we wanted to explore the perception of these word-medial sibilants for different phonetic environments and for non-native listener populations. The three phonetic conditions included: the whole word as in the original study, the isolated sibilant, and the (isolated) sibilant together with the preceding vowel. The audio files (taken from Zygis et al, 2023) were edited and played to both native English and Polish Heritage listeners at McMaster University in Hamilton, to determine the perception of the three-way Polish sibilant distinction. This distinction is non-existent in English for English listeners or influenced by both Heritage and English phonetics/phonology for Heritage speakers. The sibilant distinction in English lies between /s/ and /ʃ/, therefore the task for the English native participants was to choose between buttons that indicated “kasa | as | s” (for the /s/ sibilant) or “kasha | ash | sh” (for /ʃ/) to indicate which sibilant they perceived. The Heritage speakers of Polish were English participants with varying levels of Polish fluency residing in the Southern Ontario area. They used the same design (three-way sibilant distinction) as the original study. A total of 41 English and 13 Heritage listeners participated in the study. It was hypothesized that the English native listeners would categorize all Polish alveolars as (English) alveolars, but it was not clear how retroflex and alveolo-palatal contrasts from the children’s complex productions would be resolved by the English listeners. It was further assumed that the perception of stimuli with vowel transitions (e.g., /kasa/ and /as/ in contrast to isolated /s/) would significantly differ comparing English listeners and Polish Heritage listeners. In our results, English participants increasingly categorized all manipulations of /s/ as /s/, and /ɕ/ as the /ʃ/ sibilant, especially for the older children’s productions. Their perceptions for the retroflex /ʂ/ was split, half as /s/ perceptions, across conditions. Phonetic information in the form of formants (on top of the spectral noise of the isolated sibilant) did not significantly improve distinction for the English participants. The Polish Heritage speakers showed difficulty in correctly identifying /ʂ/ variations especially in the older children. Phonetic environment and age had varying effects depending on the sibilant. As Polish Heritage participants are familiar with three-way sibilant contrasts, it was interesting to see how these Heritage speakers’ classification differed from that of English participants, especially for stimuli from children who are in the very initial stages of speech development (i.e., decreased articulatory and acoustic accuracy). / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc) / Unfamiliar speech sounds are often labelled into sounds of familiar, acoustic categories. The perception of foreign speech sounds is relevant and interesting to study in Canada with its diverse linguistic pool. As fascinating it would be to study many foreign languages, the focus of our study will be on one particular language and, more specifically, one group of speech sounds. This paper explores the findings of a production-perception study on Polish sibilants (“a type of consonant sound where the tip of the tongue is brought near the roof of the mouth for the air to be pushed past to make hiss sounds (ex: s, z, sh, zh in English))”. Encyclopedia Britannica) in typical children and the perception of their productions by others. This study builds on previous work done by Zygis and colleagues (2023) that focused on Polish children's production, self-perception, and native Polish adults' perception of sibilant productions. The child participants were aged 35-106 months and produced words with the sounds /s, ʂ, ɕ/. These symbols are standardized representations of sounds in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) that correspond to speech sounds that may be present in languages. For our study, the audio recordings (from Zygis et al., 2023) were manipulated and played to native English speakers at McMaster University to determine their distinction of the three sibilant contrasts /s, ʂ, ɕ/, which do not exist in English. In English, there is a two-way distinction of the previously mentioned sibilants which is represented by the IPA symbol /s/ (as in “[s]ake”) and /ʃ/ (like in “[sh]ake”). The goal was to observe how the English participants categorized /s, ʂ, ɕ/ into either /s/ and /ʃ/. Another round of the experiment was done with native English participants with varying Polish fluency residing in the Ontario area to capture their perception of the manipulated sibilant stimuli. English participants increasingly categorized all manipulations of /s/ as /s/ and /ɕ/ as the /ʃ/ sibilant, especially with the older children. Their perceptions for the retroflex /ʂ/ was split, half as /s/ perceptions, across conditions. Phonetic information in the form of vowel information (on top of the isolated sibilant information) did not significantly improve sibilant distinction for the English participants. The Polish Heritage speakers showed difficulty in correctly identifying /ʂ/ variations, especially in the older children. Phonetic environment and age had varying effects depending on the sibilant. The findings from this study contribute to our understanding of cross-language differences in the acquisition of foreign speech sounds. Note, that acquisition here refers to learning of speech sounds, which does not mean perfection but rather the process of developing the sounds. Our findings contribute to child-produced Polish sibilants and yield further insight into the acoustic characteristics that listeners rely on in making perceptual judgments of foreign sounds.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/29123 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Lim, Dakyung (Rachel) |
| Contributors | Stroinska, Madga, Pape, Daniel, Cognitive Science of Language |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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