Sounds are everywhere in anyone’s daily routine: the steps of someone walking, a dog barking, lightening, blowing of the wind, human voices, baby crying, someone coughing, airplanes passing by, sounds, noises of all sorts. All this variety of sounds can be classified in two types:

The number of phonemes in Brazilian Portuguese, especially the vowels, is higher than in the General Latin American Spanish. This more extensive sound inventory combined with the greater variation in the quality of Portuguese vowels makes it harder for speakers of Spanish to understand spoken Portuguese. The closer spoken Spanish is to the written Spanish, the easier it is for speakers of Portuguese to understand. The written language factor suggests that this well-known phenomenon is easier to observe in academic environments because college students and teachers can readily visualize sounds of the Spanish spoken language in the written symbols. This understanding, however, can be superficial or limited to the topic of discussion, the language aptitude of the individual, and the regional varieties of each language and other factors.

Humans process linguistic rules (or principles) intuitively as they speak and listen. However, some of the language principles are learned in their circles or social interactions under social pressure and cultural values. Social pressure and cultural values are present in their families, schools, friend circles, radio, television, and other versions of social contexts. These social circles produce awareness between socially prestigious and stigmatized forms. Speakers pay attention to these differences as they continue to evolve in the language or languages that they speak. Otherwise, they run into the risk of becoming ostracized by their groups. On the other hand, they might, on purpose, mix register to surprise those in their groups for a laugh or to be mean.

The procedures for transcription used in this section is similar to what is normally done in Phonetics but adapted to the views of this book. Although it is helpful to transcribe speech with the supporting view of the acoustic images of recordings, it is important to develop listening skills independently from the image of the sounds. These are the four steps used for this transcription technique.

As seen in the Introduction, it is often heard in the academia that native speakers of Portuguese understand a good deal of spoken Spanish, whereas native speakers of Spanish have more difficulty understanding spoken Portuguese. For Portuguese and Spanish, this type of observation makes more sense in an academic environment. Professors and students who are native speakers of Spanish and Portuguese in a university setting are more likely to be the ones who will make the above statement true. It is a linguistic phenomenon known as mutual intelligibility between two typologically closed natural languages. Other languages of the same family may have mutual intelligibility in which one of them is more easily understood than the other. However, if one tries to find mutual intelligibity between speakers of Portuguese and Spanish in rural areas Portugal, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Bolivia, Andalucía, to mention some, or among low-, or mid-social classes, without a college background, then it may not work. In general, the spoken languages should be expected to be harder to understand than the written languages.

Prosody encompasses the dynamic elements of spoken discourse, namely the prosodies intonation, tone, word and noun-phrase stresses, sentence stress, speech rhythm, quality, pauses, duration, tempo of speech, and phonological processes. The word dynamic appears in italics to call to the attention that there is a sharp difference between sounds in actual discourse and static sounds and sounds produced in isolation. Real speech is not a series of static speech events. Sound segments as one sees them in sound charts are static, and rarely if ever, occur in actual discourse in the way they are presented in charts. But they are useful as reference in traditional representations of speech sounds.

This chapter deals with the use of traditional western musical notation to transcribe and analyze Speech Prosody. Prosody is everything that extends beyond vocalic and consonantal segments. The term can be used in the singular or plural. Some of the prosodies are intonation, speech contours, word stress, sentence stress, speech rhythm, voice quality, duration, the tempo of speech, (re)syllabification, and all phonological processes. From the perspective of this book, the equivalent of Speech Prosody in music is Speech Melody or Speech Melodies. As these terms say, Speech Prosodies and Speech Melodies deal with speech phenomena. However, Speech Prosodies are mainly associated to speech and hearing in any situation outside music, whereas Speech Melodies are associated with speech and hearing in music.

This chapter presents some of the foundations of Phonetics and Phonology. At the end of this chapter there are practice exercises for all sections. Going forward, the terms Mainstream Spanish and Mainstream Brazilian Portuguese will be used alternatively with their corresponding abbreviations MSp and MBP as needed.

Blocked practice outperforms random practice in sports and musical training. This study examines whether the principle of blocked practice and random practice applies to correcting L2 Mandarin learners’ tone errors. Three treatments were designed: (1) repeating the target word (blocked practice), (2) repeating the target word in the original context (blocked practice combined with random practice), and (3) repeating the target word in a new context (random practice). Nineteen L2 Mandarin learners received treatments to correct their tone errors and then participated in the post-treatment assessments. The results showed that the third treatment was the best among the three, which indicated that repeating the target words without context is not as effective as repeating them in a context when correcting the tone errors. A pedagogical modal is proposed based on the findings. The limitations of the current study and methodological refinement are also discussed.

This chapter discusses second language pronunciation of Mandarin from the perspective of the native Mandarin speakers who listen to it. For such listeners, second language Mandarin often bears a noticeable foreign accent. I will provide a framework for defining foreign accent and for distinguishing accented pronunciation from pronunciation errors. I will then review the results of research related to foreign-accented Mandarin and how it affects listeners’ judgments, comprehension, and the efficiency with which they process second language Mandarin speech. Naturally, lexical tones will receive special attention in this discussion.

Following the research direction proposed in Zhang (Journal of Chinese Language Teachers Association 45(1):39–65, 2010, The second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones by English, Japanese and Korean speakers. [Doctoral Dissertation], University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2013, Second language acquisition of Mandarin Chinese tones—Beyond first language transfer, Brill, 2018), this study examines the tone errors and substitution patterns in spontaneous connected speech produced by L2 learners who have progressed further into advanced or superior levels of proficiency. Based on the distinct patterns of errors and substitution patterns in their speech samples, effects of phonological universals in the format of constraints, including tone markedness scales (TMS), tone-position constraints (TPC) and the obligatory contour principle (OCP), are studied. Comparisons are made between the findings about tonal acquisition made in previous studies on lower-level learners and the higher-level learners in this study. With these error data, analyses and comparisons, I argue that some effects of the above-mentioned universals are still visible (TMS and T4-T4 OCP) while others are masked. It is a special configuration of the coarticulation rule applying to T2-T4 and T2-T1 combinations that really distinguishes the tonal system found in these very advanced learners from that of the other learners and that of the native speakers of Mandarin. Pedagogical practices that are designed to re-configure this rule will allow learners at this stage of tone acquisition to proceed into native-like speech production.

Tones are the primary focus in teaching L2 Chinese pronunciation. Seemingly, less effort is made to integrate the tone category and tone word learning. The current study tested whether the use of (near) minimal pairs formed by monosyllabic and disyllabic words that the learners have previously learned can direct L2 Chinese learners’ attention to tonal contrast, thus, improve their tone production and memorization of the tone words. 66 beginner-level learners were assigned to a dictation only (traditional) group and a perception plus production training (experimental) group in which minimal and near-minimal pairs that included tonal contrasts were used as training stimuli. Both groups recorded the target words in a pretest, an immediately administered posttest, and a delayed posttest. Using native speakers’ comprehensibility judgment as assessment, we found that the experimental group had better comprehensibility than the traditional group in the immediate and delayed posttests. The comprehensibility ratings seemed to vary across words. Participants also had two dictations in the pretest and delayed posttest respectively. The words used in the recording tasks had a significantly higher dictation score than those not used in the recording tasks in the posttest. The pedagogical significance of these findings is discussed.

The present study examined the relationship between L2 learners’ task-related lexical access and their utterance fluency. Two groups of American learners of Chinese participated in the study. The first group of learners (N = 15) took part in a vocabulary test requiring them to translate 198 words related to four speaking tasks from L1 to L2. Learners’ accuracy and reaction time were recorded. Learners then completed four speaking tasks. Six features of their utterance fluency were measured. The second group of learners (N = 13) participated in a stimulated recall interview, which was conducted to obtain additional details regarding how lexical access affects utterance fluency in L2 speech. According to the results, significant correlations were found among vocabulary size and all three facets of utterance fluency: speed fluency (speech rate, mean length of runs), breakdown fluency (mean length of silent pauses, number of silent pauses), and repair fluency (number of disfluencies), excluding the number of filled pauses. However, among all fluency measures, only speech rate was significantly correlated to lexical retrieval speed. Moreover, stimulated recall responses revealed that around two-third of the disfluencies were reported to be caused by vocabulary-related issues. The findings confirmed that efficient task-related lexical access was crucial for producing fluent speech in second language.

Previous studies on categorical perception of tones mainly focus on native speakers and naïve second language (L2) listeners. Attempting to fill in this gap, this study examined the categorical perception of Mandarin tones by both native and L2 speakers along three tone continua in Mandarin Chinese. Both discrimination and identification tasks were employed in the study. The results of the discrimination task showed that the L2 listeners mainly relied on psychoacoustic cues in tone pair discrimination, while native listeners mainly relied on their phonological knowledge. As a result, the non-linguistic tone processing in discrimination tasks would not enable the L2 learners to normalize speech, namely learning to de-emphasize within-category differences and to focus more on between-category differences, hence building a relatively less stable L2 tone system, as well as the difficulty in acquiring tone categories. The results of the identification tasks confirmed the existence of the T2–T3 and T1–T3 and T4–T3 (only to some extent) continua in Mandarin Chinese for both native and L2 listeners, and the potential confusion between Tone 3 and the other tones in Mandarin Chinese seems to explain the difficulty in acquiring this tone for both native and L2 speakers.

This study examines the effects of segments, intonation and rhythm on the perception of second language (L2) accentedness and comprehensibility by focusing on a tone language, Mandarin Chinese. Fifteen Chinese sentences were manipulated by transferring the segments, intonation and rhythm between native and L2 speakers. 64 Chinese judges listened to the original and the manipulated sentences and were asked to rate the accentedness and comprehensibility of these sentences. Results of the Chinese native judges’ ratings showed that segments contribute more to the perception of L2 accentedness and comprehensibility than intonation and rhythm, and that intonation contributed more to L2 perception than rhythm. It was also found that accentedness ratings highly correlated with comprehensibility judgment. The findings of this study confirm what some recent studies have found regarding the contribution of segments and prosody to L2 perception, but differ from some previous studies in regards to the relationship between L2 accentedness and comprehensibility. This study has both theoretical and pedagogical implications.

This study investigates various fluency and disfluency features of oral performances by second language (L2) learners of Chinese to explore how these features differ and develop at different levels of oral proficiency in L2 Chinese. Although fluency has been extensively researched, few studies have explored oral fluency in L2 Chinese, with the available ones addressing a small number of fluency features or a restricted range of learner proficiency. The present study extends this body of research by including L2 learners at various curricular levels and by examining a more comprehensive set of fluency features. Oral responses to a narrative task were collected from thirty-eight L2 learners of Chinese at a US university. Their responses were holistically scored on four different levels and were analyzed for eleven fluency and disfluency features, including features of the amount and rate of speech, pausing, and repairs. Results showed that features of the amount and rate of speech and silent pausing not only demonstrated strong relationships with score levels but could also distinguish among the various levels with more distinctive differences observed at higher score levels than at lower ones. These findings have important implications for the teaching and assessment of speaking in L2 Chinese.

Fundamental frequency (F0), listening environment, and semantic context are three important factors for both tonal and non-tonal language intelligibility by native speakers. However, it remains unclear how these factors affect second language (L2) learners of Mandarin Chinese and whether there are differences between native and L2 Mandarin speakers. Through speech re-synthesis and sentence counterbalancing, this study investigated the possible effects of F0 (i.e., natural F0 versus flattened F0) on the intelligibility of Mandarin speech by L2 Mandarin learners from different proficiency levels in quiet and white noise conditions when controlling for sentence context. A mixed-effect statistical model confirmed the main effects of F0 contour, listening environment, and proficiency level. That is to say, the lack of natural F0 contour, the presence of noise, and the lower proficiency level would predict the reduction in intelligibility when adjusting for the other two variables. However, no significant interactions were found. Specifically, the hypothesis that flattened sentences are as intelligible as natural sentences for more advanced learners was not supported due to the change of experimental subjects from native speakers to L2 speakers. It was proposed that compared to native speakers, L2 speakers’ underdeveloped utilization of secondary cues and semantic contexts, due to a developing proficiency level, may lead to non-significant interactions. The finding of the effect of F0 on intelligibility also illustrates the importance of tone accuracy and diversifying L2 learners’ linguistic input in Chinese pronunciation teaching and learning.

Computer-assisted perceptual training is effective in learning Mandarin tones both in monosyllabic and disyllabic words, but disyllabic tone training is nearly twice as effective as monosyllabic tone training (Li et al., A sound approach to language matters in honor of Ocke-Schwen Bohn. Aarhus University Library/Royal Danish Library—AU Library Scholarly Publishing Service, pp. 303–319, 2019). The present study analyzed the tone identification performance of Mandarin learners on both monosyllabic and disyllabic stimuli to provide explicit, meaningful information for teaching and learning tones. The results showed that all learners identified T4 significantly better than T1, T2, and T3 in the monosyllabic stimuli. In the disyllabic stimuli, T3 in the first syllable position was the most difficult to perceive, followed by T2, T1, and T4; in the second syllable position, T2 was the most problematic, followed by T1, T3, and T4. In addition, tone errors in both types of stimuli were analyzed to find the easier and the more difficult tone pairs after training. Finally, the learners were found to be generally proficient at perceiving tones in the final but not initial syllable, in compatible but not in conflicting tonal context, and in same tonal sequence but not in different tonal sequence. These findings provide evidence for successful tone learning through the increased utilization of disyllabic stimuli in Chinese language teaching.

It is rather unclear what is meant by “normal” voice quality, just as it is often unclear what is meant by “voice quality” in general. To shed light on this matter, listeners heard 1-sec sustained vowels produced by 100 female speakers, half of whom were recorded as part of a clinical voice evaluation and half of whom were undergraduate students who reported no vocal disorder. Listeners compared 20 voices at a time in a series of sort-and-rate trials, ordering the samples on a line according to the severity of perceived pathology. Any voices perceived as normal were placed in a box at one end of the line. Judgments of “normal” versus “not-normal” status were at chance. Listeners were relatively self-consistent, but disagreed with one another, especially about what counts as normal. Agreement was better, but still limited, about what counts as “not normal.” Strategies for separating “normal” from “not normal” differed widely across individual listeners, as did strategies for determining how much a given voice deviated from normal. However, acoustic modeling of listeners’ responses showed that several acoustic measures—F0, F1 and F2, and F0 coefficient of variation—appeared more often than others as significant predictors of both categorical judgments and of scalar normalness ratings. These variables did not account for most of the variance in these analyses, and did not appear together in the perceptual models for even half of the listeners, but they did appear individually in most analyses, suggesting that in practice the concept of “normal” may have some small core of meaning based on F0 and vowel quality. Thus, the answer to our initial question of what it means for a voice to sound normal is a complex one that depends on the listener, the context, the purpose of the judgment, and other factors as well as on the voice.

A speaker’s voice impacts listeners’ perceptions of its owner, leading to inference of gender, age, personality, and even height and weight. In this chapter, we describe research into the qualities of speech that are deemed “attractive” by a listener. There are a number of ways that a person can be found attractive. We will review the research into what makes speakers attractive in the political and business domains, and what vocal properties lead to perceptions of trust. We then turn our attention to research into “likeability” and romantic attraction. While the lexical content of a speaker’s speech is important to their attractiveness, we focus this survey on prosodic qualities, those acoustic properties that describe “how” the words are said rather than “what” the words are. Of course, attractiveness is subjective; what is attractive to one listener may not be to another. Properties of the listener and other contextual qualities can have a significant impact on the voices which are found to be attractive. The most comprehensive research in this topic includes analyses of both the speaker and the listener, since attraction is frequently a mutual phenomenon; when people are attracted to someone, they want to be found attractive in return. We will also summarize work that has investigated attraction dynamics in two-party conversations.

This chapter examines the relationship among a suite of voice evaluation metrics—vocal attractiveness, voice typicality, gender categorization fluency, intelligibility, acoustic similarity, and perceptual similarity—in a set of 60 American English voices with the goal of understanding how these evaluation metrics predict listeners’ abilities to accurately recall voices. This question of what makes a voice memorable has been studied from a range of perspectives, as it raises critical theoretical issues about auditory memory and phonetic encoding, in addition to having applied concerns in the context of earwitness testimony. We find that the more subjective voice evaluation measures of stereotypicality and attractiveness predict listeners’ ability to recall voices more so than the more objective measures related to voice similarity and processing. These results suggest that listeners’ cognitive organization of voices is influenced by social assessments of voices.