Shambhu Nath Saha

English is used as a language for international communication throughout the world today. English is also being studied and spoken as a second language in more countries than ever before. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of variations present in the dialects of English spoken in the world today is a fundamental issue for the development of English language education as well as spoken language science and technology. This paper reported the detail investigation of phonetic influence of native (L1) Bengali speakers' English compared to American English. For this study, 40 L1 Bengali speakers' read speech data in English was analyzed based on automatic annotation by the HTK tool with a modified TIMIT dictionary. The result shows that L1 Bengali speakers could pronounce same and similar American English consonant phonemes without any difficulty, but they replaced new English consonant and vowel phonemes by Bengali phonemes which are close to those English phonemes.

English is used as a language for international communication throughout the world today. English is also being studied and spoken as a second language in more countries than ever before. Thus, a comprehensive understanding of variations present in the dialects of English spoken in the world today is a fundamental issue for the development of English language education as well as spoken language science and technology. This paper reported the detail investigation of phonetic influence of native (L1) Bengali speakers' English compared to American English. For this study, 40 L1 Bengali speakers' read speech data in English was analyzed based on automatic annotation by the HTK tool with a modified TIMIT dictionary. The result shows that L1 Bengali speakers could pronounce same and similar American English consonant phonemes without any difficulty, but they replaced new English consonant and vowel phonemes by Bengali phonemes which are close to those English phonemes.

Pause plays important roles for the intelligibility, naturalness and fluency of speech. This paper reported the effect of native (L1) Bengali speakers’ fluency of English on occurrence probability and duration of sentencemedial pauses with respect to three factors: phrase type, phrase length (l), distance (d). In this analysis, 40 nonnative (L2) English (L1 Bengali) speakers’ data was divided into five different groups (poor, average, good, very good and excellent) based on their English fluency level. From result of this comparative study, it is seen that occurrence probability and duration of sentence-medial pauses for each phrase type, each l value and each d value increase as L2 English speakers’ fluency decreases. Moreover like L1 English speakers, occurrence probability and duration of sentence-medial pauses are almost linearly dependent on l and d respectively for L2 English speakers regardless of their fluency. Furthermore effect of three factors on sentencemedial pauses of ...

Acoustically, English lexical stress is multidimensional and involving manipulation of duration, intensity, fundamental frequency (F0) and vowel quality. The current study investigates the acquisition of English lexical stress by L1 Bengali speakers at the phonological level in terms of the properties of acoustic cues. For this purpose, this study compares 20 L1 Bengali speakers' use of acoustic correlates for the production of English lexical stress in context sentence and neutral frame sentence. The result of this study showed that L1 Bengali speakers were not able to achieve neutral frame sentence like control over duration, intensity, F0 and to a limited extent vowel quality in context sentence. As a result, unlike neutral frame sentence, L1 Bengali speakers were not sensitive to English lexical stress contrast in context sentence. This analysis reveals that, the difference between the neutral frame and context sentences in terms of L1 Bengali speakers’ realization of phonol...

Automatic annotation is needed for analysis of a large number of English speech data. In this study, the application of adapted HTK for automatic alignment of Bengali speakers' English speech is examined. The HTK tool with TIMIT dictionary is not suitable for Bengali speakers' English utterances. A new pronunciation dictionary reflecting Bengali accented English was added to the module. Accuracy of proposed alignment method with new pronunciation dictionary was examined manually and it depicted accurately 82% of predicted English pronunciation patterns of Bengali speakers. But newly defined HTK module has few problems due to the difference in English and Bengali phonology segmentally and prosodically. However, the HTK module with new pronunciation dictionary produced better alignment of Bengali ac-cented English and was able to accurately detect acoustic information of Bengali speak-ers' English. Moreover, the study shows the potential for HTK with expanded pronunciation dictionary to be used for automatic L2 alignment.

— English lexical stress is multidimensional in nature and acoustically related to combination of fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity and vowel quality. Current study investigates the acquisition of English lexical stress by L1 Bengali speakers at phonological level. This study compares 20 L1 Bengali speakers' use of acoustic correlates for production of English lexical stress in context sentence and neutral frame sentence. Result of this study showed that L1 Bengali speakers were not able to achieve neutral frame sentence like control over duration, intensity, F0 and to a limited extent vowel quality in context sentence. This experiment reveals that due to the influence of Bengali phonology of lexical stress placement (restricted to the initial syllable of a word) on L1 Bengali speakers' English speech, L1 Bengali speakers were not sensitive to contrastive stress pattern in context sentence, unlike neutral frame sentence.

English lexical stress is multidimensional in nature and acoustically related to combination of fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity and vowel quality. Errors in any or all of these correlates could interfere with perception of the stress contrast, but it is unknown which correlates are most difficult for Bengali speakers to acquire. This study compares the use of these correlates in the production of English lexical stress contrasts by 10 L1 English and 20 L1 Bengali speakers. Results showed that although Bengali speakers used all four acoustic correlates in similar manner like English speakers, but they produced significantly less native like stress patterns. English speakers reduced vowel duration significantly more in the unstressed vowels compared to Bengali speakers and degree of intensity and F0 increase in stressed vowels by English speakers was higher than that by Bengali speakers. There were also significant differences in formant patterns across speaker groups, such that Bengali speakers produced English like vowel reduction in certain unstressed syllables, but in other cases Bengali speakers have tendency to either not reduce or incorrectly reduce vowels in unstressed syllables. Results suggest that Bengali speakers' production of English lexical stress contrast is influenced by L1 language experience and L1 phonology.

— English lexical stress is acoustically related to combination of fundamental frequency (F0), duration, intensity and vowel quality. Current study compares the use of these correlates by 10 L1 English and 20 L1 Bengali speakers to find out which correlates are most difficult for Bengali speakers to acquire. Results showed that English and Bengali speakers used the acoustic correlates of vowel duration, intensity and F0 in similar manner, but Bengali speakers produced significantly less English like stress patterns. English speakers reduced vowel duration significantly more in the unstressed vowels compared to Bengali speakers and degree of intensity and F0 increase in stressed vowels by English speakers was higher than that by Bengali speakers. Moreover Bengali speakers produced English like vowel quality in certain unstressed syllables, but in other cases there were significant differences in vowel quality across groups. This study supports the idea of interference from L1 to L2 (nonnative) phonology.

Pause plays important roles for the intelligibil-ity, naturalness and fluency of speech. This paper reported the effect of native (L1) Ben-gali speakers' fluency of English on occurrence probability and duration of sentence-medial pauses with respect to three factors: phrase type, phrase length (l), distance (d). In this analysis, 40 nonnative (L2) English (L1 Bengali) speakers' data was divided into five different groups (poor, average, good, very good and excellent) based on their English fluency level. From result of this comparative study, it is seen that occurrence probability and duration of sentence-medial pauses for each phrase type, each l value and each d value increase as L2 English speakers' fluency decreases. Moreover like L1 English speakers, occurrence probability and duration of sentence -medial pauses are almost linearly dependent on l and d respectively for L2 English speakers regardless of their fluency. Furthermore effect of three factors on sentence-medial pauses of fluent L2 English speakers is more close to that of L1 English speakers compared to less fluent L2 English speakers.

Every language has its own phonemic system, which holds unique as well as common features. A language shares some phonemes with other languages, but no two languages have the same phonemic inventory. Contrastive analysis is the field of study in which different phonemic systems are laid side by side to find out similarities and dissimilarities between the phonemes of the languages concerned. The purpose of this study is to derive which phonemes are used by the L1 Bengali speakers to recognize American English phonemes which are new and similar to their L1 Bengali phonology. The results of this study showed typical  phonological problems of American English pronunciation
by L1 Bengali speakers which will help to develop Computer Assisted Spoken Language Learning (CASLL) tool for faster acquisition of American English language speaking of L1 Bengali speakers.

English speech of L1 English and L1 Bengali speakers of the same discourse is analyzed by applying hierarchical discourse prosody framework HPG (Hierarchy of
Prosodic Phrase Group) in order to find the between-and within group similarities and differences in speech planning of L1 (native) and L2 (non-native) English speakers for prosodic organization at discourse level. The analysis reveals that the speech rate of L1 speakers is higher than speech rate of L2 speakers; L2 speakers contain more break boundary than that of the L1 speakers at every discourse prosodic level in the organization, which exhibit the fact that L2 speakers use more intermediate chunking units and larger scale planning units than that of L1 speakers. Between-group differences are also found through the analysis of phrase component at prosodic phrase level (PPh) and accent component at prosodic word level (PW).
These findings can be attributed to L2 speakers’ improper
phrasing, improper word level prominence and ambiguous
difference between content words and function words in
discourse prosodic organization.

Due to the importance of English grows day by day, it is necessary to acquire English language properly for second language learner where proper acquisition involves in correct pronunciation. Forty native (LI) Bengali speakers' read
speech data of "The North Wind and the Sun" was analyzed to find out the phonetic and phonological problems of LI Bengali speakers' English speech. During the study automatic phoneme alignment was carried out by the HTK tool with a modified TIMIT dictionary. The result shows that LI Bengali speakers substitute new English consonant and vowel phonemes by Bengali sounds which are close to those English sounds. In case of phonological problem, it was observed that vowels are inserted by LI Bengali speakers to break up consonant clusters or avoid syllable final coda consonant. The effect of fluency on phonetic and phonological problems of LI Bengali speakers was also presented in the paper.