Studies of Initial Tonal Acquisition by American English Speakers Learning Yoruba

Kola  Tubosun; Kola  Tubosun

Studies of Initial Tonal Acquisition by American English Speakers Learning Yoruba

Kola Tubosun

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Abstract

This thesis documents the nature and character of initial tonal strategies native English speakers employ when learning Yoruba as a second language, using elicited imitation and other computer tonal analysis of errors and strategies on 40 human subjects of various selected backgrounds. This research also provides initial insight into the detail of tonal acquisition in second language learning in general, allowing for future acquisition and learning procedures to be better understood and better prescribed.

Figures (485)

Table 1: Typical Lexical Tone Contrast in Yoruba (Akinlabi & Liberman, 2000) Aside from the three level tones, Yoruba also has a few phonetic contour tones that occur was intended.

as a rising tone because of the relegating influence of the low (L) tone in the first syllable: There is also a phenomenon not previously discussed in any other published work, which I shall refer to in this work as “upstep”. This is a situation where the high tone is realized as

Table 3: L2 Behavioral Patterns by American English Learners (from Orie 2006). Mid tones are hardly acquired, Orie said, and that American learners have a “narrow pitch stages. In Table 2, her subjects turned every tonal combination into a rigid format of HL or LH or

Table 4: 20 Selected Prompts Culled From Elicited Imitation Test for Analysis

Chart 2: Performance Percentages in Group B In Group C, the highest percentage of production was for low tone, which averaged 97.22%.

Chart 4: Performance Percentages in Group D. Summary of Performances

Chart 6: Performance with Low Tones, Across Test Groups. Mid tone: The percentage correct rate was best with Group C, which has 91.43% correct rate

Chart 7: Performance with Mid Tones, Across Test Groups. incorrect rate of 3.85%, Group A has 90.77% as average correct and 9.23% as average incorrect.

Chart 8: Performance of the High Tone, Across Test Groups.

Chart 9: Performance of the Rising Tone, Across Test Groups. Falling Tone: In a second deviation from the common C>A>B>D pattern, Group C

Chart 10: Performance of the Falling Tone, Across Test Groups.

Chart 11: Performance of Upstep Tone, Across Test Groups. The conclusion from the preceding analysis of response variation across tone types is that

A general conclusion from this analysis of tone types by group is that level tones are easier is easiest to acquire, than mid tone and low tone. Upstep leads the non-level tones in average correct

Image 1: Screenshot of Praat, With Highlighted Syllable Before Pitch Value was Obtained

Table 11: Average Overall Pitch Values for Low Tones from All Subject Groups. From the assumption that the weighted averages of native speakers represent the standard

Table 12: Average Overall Pitch Values for Mid Tone from All Subject Groups. In Table 13, the native speaker pitch range averaged 105.90 Hz. By comparison, Group C

Table 13: Average Overall Pitch Values for High Tone from All Subject Groups.

Table 14: Average Overall Pitch Values from All Subject Groups. Rising Tone In Table 15, there was a variation, with Group D averaging 105.34 Hz. By comparison,

Finally, Table 16 shows upstep performance. Group C had an average performance of 115.4 Table 15: Average Overall Pitch Values from All Subject Groups. Falling Tone an average rate of 110.54 Hz. The pitch range behavior reflects another aberration: the C>A>D>B

Table 16: Average Overall Pitch Values from All Subject Groups. Upstep What the tables show is similar to the result of the earlier error analysis: Group C subjects

Table 17: Breakdown of Overall Error Types For Each Tone by Group A Subjects.

Table 18: Breakdown of Overall Error Types For Each Tone by Group B Subjects.

Table 19: Breakdown of Overall Error Types For Each Tone by Group C Subjects.

Table 20: Breakdown of Overall Error Types For Each Tone by Group D Subjects.

Table 21: Percentage of Type 1 and Type 2 Error Patterns

native speakers would still be able to determine that the speaker is not a native speaker, it is

Chart 14: Overall Performance with Individual Tone Categories categories, high, mid, and low, each group (except Group C) did worse with low tone, not mid tone will therefore posit that Yoruba mid tone, although weak and unstable, as shown in earlier studies

Table 22: Tonal Permutations and word/phrasal examples in Yoruba.

A mt won gokée wa A mu won gokeé wa MID TONE

Word-final Averages (x5) Word/Sentence-medial Averages (x5)

Group B: English Speakers with Other Non-Tonal Second Languages (German, French, Spanish) Group C: English Speakers with Exposure to Chinese

Boluwaji Oshodi

Issues in Language Studies

Acquiring a language begins with the knowledge of its sounds system which falls under the branch of linguistics known as phonetics. The knowledge of the sound system becomes very important to prospective learners particularly L2 learners whose L1 exhibits different sounds and features from the target L2 because this knowledge is vital in order to internalise the correct pronunciation of words. This study examined and contrasted the sound systems of Yorùbá a Niger-Congo language spoken in Nigeria to that of Malay (Peninsular variety), an Austronesian language spoken in Malaysia with emphasis on the areas of differences. The data for this study were collected from ten participants; five native female Malay speakers who are married to Yorùbá native speakers but live in Malaysia and five Yorùbá native speakers who reside in Nigeria. The findings revealed that speakers from both sides have difficulties with sounds and features in the L2 which are not attested in their L1 and they tended ...

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A Tonal Identification of Yoruba Dialects

Kolawole Adeniyi

Dialectologia, 2021

This article studies variations in the realisation of contour tones in Oyo, Ibadan, Ife, Igbomina, Ijebu, Ijesa, Ilorin, and Onko dialects of Yoruba and reports that the dialects exploit different dimensions of contour tone realisation to distinguish themselves. Ife, Igbomina and Ijesa dialects reduce the frequency of contour tones via high tone lowering and contour levelling, whereas Ijebu dialect multiplies contours in several ways. For instance, where the other dialects have MH and HH sequences, Ijebu has LH [LR], which increases its frequency of contour tones. In addition, Ijebu is the only dialect in which the M participates in contour tone formation whereby, ML sequence is realised MMU L. On the other extreme, Onko does not realise the falling contour at all. It is consequently argued that these dissimilarities between tonal contours are key indicators of dialectal variations among Yoruba dialects and they are more discernible than segmental and other grammatical indicators that have been more widely studied.

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A Contrastive Study of the Phonology of Igbo and Yoruba

Cecilia A. Eme

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Interlanguage as Linguistic System: Prosodic Evidence from Ìgbò Learners and Users of Yorùbá Tones

Bolu Oshodi

Journal of Cognitive Science, 2016

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Production and Perception Problems of English Dental Fricatives by Yoruba Speakers of English as a Second Language

Dare Owolabi

Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2012

Pronunciation is one aspect of language that cannot be easily mastered by a second language user, especially after the age of puberty. This paper discusses the difficulties involved in adult learners of a second language. The emphasis is on Yoruba learners of English as second language, with particular reference to the production of the dental fricatives /ѳ / and /δ/, which are non-existent in Yoruba language phonology. It is opined that only young children who are ten years or under can truly master the intricacies of a second language, including its phonology. This study, used an unobtrusive observation method as a classroom teacher, complemented by an empirical study. The researcher watched and listened several times to adult studentteachers in their speech behavior. This led to the design of a special passage given to the teacher-trainees by the researcher and was analyzed through frequency counts, to confirm the unobtrusive observations. It was discovered that although there may be production problem on the part of Yoruba speakers of English as a second language, there seems to be no perception problem as mutual intelligibility is still attained, notwithstanding the mispronunciation of these sounds. The study's conclusion is that with the widespread of English globally, variations, especially in pronunciation, are bound to occur, and as long as such variations do not border on unintelligibility, either locally or internationally, they remain part of world's Englishes. Index Terms-production problem, perception problem, English dental fricatives, Yoruba speakers of English, second language I. INTRODUCTION/RESEARCH ISSUE The place of English as a global language is not in dispute. The number of people, spread across the different continents, that uses the language for one purpose or the other, attests to the fact that English is, indeed, a global language. Chinese is said to have a higher number of speakers. The staggering number of Chinese speakers is as a result of China"s population, and not necessarily a consequence of the spread of the language across the globe. English, on its part, has been successfully exported round the world to the extent that, through language contact, according to Sinclair (1988), the native speakers no longer have control over it. In Nigeria, English came in the 18 th century with the slave trade. It came then as a foreign language (EFL) as it was and still not indigenous to the Nigerian linguistic environment. Folorunso (2004) conceives a foreign language in relative terms, as a means of communication which is external to the cultural and political homogeneity of the language community. With the colonization of Nigeria by British imperialists, English, being the official language, as well as the language of instruction in western education, grew in leaps and bounds in the country. Today, the language has since changed status from a foreign language that it was at its advent, to a second language that it is now. A useful distinction is made between English as a foreign language (EFL) and English as a second language (ESL), and this is useful for our present purpose. Okedara, (1983) posits that a language is foreign when it is restricted to the classroom as a mere school subject to be taught just as any other school subject. Ogunsiji, (2004) argues that when, however, a language is not only taught in the classroom as a school subject, but has its use extended to other domains and used extensively, in addition to the mother tongues, it has attained the status of a second language. In addition to the above, Ayodele, (2004) says a foreign language is distinguished from a second language by the higher priority of use which the latter enjoys and that it is acquired, almost as a matter of course as development is being experienced in the mother tongue. This has been the situation of the English language in Nigeria. With the colonization of Nigeria by British imperialists, English became the official language. Today, the language has also become a second language because its use extends to other domains and it is used extensively in addition to the various mother tongues. In Nigeria today, English is not just a subject taught in Nigerian schools, right from the kindergarten: it has also found usage in other areas outside the classroom, where it is used as a medium of instruction. It is also the language of government, commerce, judiciary and bilateral relations. Besides, Fakuade (2004) describes English as the language of social integration among the over two hundred and fifty ethnic nationalities that make up the country and that it is acquired by its users almost as matter of course as they are developing with the mother tongue.

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PHONOLOGICAL ACCURACY, APPROXIMATION, AND SUBSTITUTION OF THE ENGLISH CENTRAL VOWELS BY EDUCATED YORUBA ENGLISH SPEAKERS

akamo O princewill (PhD)

PHONOLOGICAL ACCURACY, APPROXIMATION, AND SUBSTITUTION OF THE ENGLISH CENTRAL VOWELS BY EDUCATED YORUBA ENGLISH SPEAKERS, 2023

Appropriate articulation of the English Central Vowels (ECVs) −/ ᴧ, ɜ:, ə /− is important to the intelligibility of expressions of Educated Yoruba English Speakers (EYESs). Previous linguistic studies on educated Yoruba English (EYE) focused largely on the general description of English central vowels and the geo-tribal peculiarities of the realisation of English central vowels. However, scant attention was paid to the articulatory impact of the ECVs on achieving Standard Nigerian English pronunciation that will be globally recognised. Therefore, this study was designed to examine the production of ECVs by EYESs, with a view to determining the nature of their articulation accuracy, approximation, and substitution of the ECVs. Noam Chomsky and Morris Halle's Generative Phonology served as the theoretical framework, with analyses contingent on statistics and phonology. Overall, the EYESs substituted adjacent Yoruba vowels for the English central vowels, achieving marginal 0 2 5 C accuracy only with / :/. There were no significant differences regarding age and gender among the EYESs. The articulation of the central vowels by educated Yoruba English Speakers features substitution of adjacent Yoruba vowels for the English central vowels, not accuracy or approximation.

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The nature of Yoruba intonation : a new Experimental Study

Eunice Fajobi

2005

In spite of active research work on the prosodic features of world languages in the last few decades, tone is the only prosodic feature in Yoruba that has received considerable attention in the field of linguistic research. Intonation, on the other hand, has suffered a near-neglect. All there is to be flagged up in the existing literature on the intonational system of the language are mutual effects of tones on each other. But there is more to Yoruba intonation than such effects. Recent approaches do not facilitate any comparison of Yoruba intonation with that of non-tone languages. The present investigation seeks to give a more sophisticated account of Yoruba intonation. Drawing on universal traits of intonation across languages, I report, in this paper, some of the new findings of a new elicitation study on the nature of Yoruba intonation. Acoustic analysis of the Fo patterns in some spoken Yoruba sentences in the following categories: declarative and three types of interrogative ...

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Tone loans: the adaptation of English loanwords into Yoruba

michael kenstowicz

35th Annual Conference on African Linguistics, …, 2004

In this paper we present the results of a study of the tonal adaptation of English loanwords into Yoruba. The study is based on the c. 800 word corpus assembled in the appendix to Ojo (1977).1 Yoruba is a language whose lexical items are composed of open-syllables that ...

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Teaching English-Yoruba Prosodies in Context: Connectivity in Disparity

Adebukunola Atolagbe

International Journal of English Language Teaching, 2014

The paper discusses a core feature that differentiates Nigerian English from other native Standard English varieties, namely the English prosodies of Stress-Rhythm-Intonation, in the light of the dominant L2 transfer feature of Nigerian spoken English's Yoruba 'tone-prominence'. Particular attention is given to Pitch which translates phonetically into Yoruba 'Tones'. It discusses how the language use of popular street urchins in Lagos, Nigeria (popularly called 'Area boys') has been successfully used (among other registers) to teach the English prosodies of stress (embedding 'pitch'), Rhythm and Intonation (also embedding 'pitch') in a multilingual but largely Yoruba L2 'tone-prominence' speech community. A prosodic theoretical framework is adopted in the discussions and analysisof data, hitherto used in teaching a graduating class of B.A. English students who had been taught courses in English phonology throughout their four year course. It is argued that despite the disparity between the two language systems of Yoruba and English at the prosodic level, the language of 'Lagos Area Boys' creates some connectivity which the typical undergraduate student of English can identify with and which is used to successfully teach Pitch in particular, even though that language register is largely 'tone-prominence' based. Moving from the known to the unknown is always a useful teaching methodology and this approach has been employed here. Thus, an established connectivity in disparity can and indeed has, been used successfully within the Yoruba-English L2 language contact situation.

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Disambiguating Yorùbá tones: At the interface between syntax, morphology, phonology and phonetics

Bryan Gick, Rose-Marie Dechaine

Lingua, 2011

This paper considers a particular type of tonal behavior in Yorùbá with the goal of testing whether syntactic and phonological domains converge or diverge. We consider two types of syntactically conditioned phonological rules: (i) the appearance of phonological elements not present lexically (epenthesis/insertion), (ii) the loss of phonological elements (deletion). These types of rules are often tightly interconnected as the

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Deviant Realization of Foreign Vowels in the Speech-Form of Yoruba-English Nigerian Bilinguals

George A D E K U N L E OJO

Open Journal of Modern Linguistics, 2014

This paper discusses deviant realization of borrowed phonemes from English into Yorùbá. It is not gainsaying that when a foreign phoneme enters into the syllable structure of English it changes its tongue position both horizontally and vertically. The reason for this change is not far-fetched. Since the majority of the foreign phonemes are absent in native languages, they tend to be substituted with the closest phonemes in the recipient language. This paper has been able to account for the various substitutions of foreign vowels that occur in the speech-form of Nigerians who codemix English with Yorùbá in their daily conversations. This has been done through the analysis of corpus of data collected from the existing foreign words as spoken by Yoruba-English bilinguals. The result of analysis shows that two or more foreign phonemes become one native phoneme that is entirely different from the input when processed in the recipient language.

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Tone Realization in Hausa Spoken By Fulfulde Native Speakers

Ahmad Shehu

One of the effects of language contact is multilingualism (the ability of an individual to speak more than a language). Though Fulfulde is still spoken widely across Adamawa state, Hausa is fast growing, taking over most urban communications, and is widely seen as a prestigious language especially among the minority tribes in the state. Research have shown that the first language (L1) influence on second language (L2) cut across all linguistic aspects, but is more prevalent on the phonology. On this basis, Fulfulde native speakers might struggle in their attempt to realize Tone when speaking Hausa, as Tone is not phonemic in Fulfulde. This paper attempts to investigate the realization of Tone by Fulfulde native speakers and to assess whether such difficulty is as a result of the influence of their language on the L1. 10 sets of Hausa minimal pairs (20 lexical items) with tone particles were selected, 12 of them (6 pairs) were presented in isolation, while 8 (4 pairs) were used in sentences. The data was presented to 20 native speakers of Fulfulde from rural areas that have little exposure to the native Hausa community. The results show that Fulfulde native speakers find it difficult to distinguish lexical items based on Tone variation.

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A Contrastive Analysis of the Production of English and Yoruba Vowels by Yoruba-English Bilingual Students in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka

Olawe Opeyemi

Global Journal of HUMAN-SOCIAL SCIENCE: G Linguistics & Education, 2021

This study examined the production of English vowels by Yoruba-English bilingual undergraduate students at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. The instrument used for data collection was the pronunciation of a prepared word list. Sixty (60) students who speak Yoruba as their first language were randomly selected from five departments. The bilingual status of the students made it possible to assemble a corpus which reveals their various levels of competency in English. The result of the findings indicate that Yoruba language vowels differ to a large extent from English language and due to this, there are certain variations and deviations in the realization of English vowels by Yoruba-English bilingual students. From the data gathered, analysis shows that we do not have an equal number of vowels in both languages and there are some vowels in Yoruba that are not present in the English language.

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Some Yoruba Developmental Linguistic Errors and their Structural Imports

Johnson Folorunso Ilori

Ifè̩ Journal of Languages and Literatures, Volume 4 Number 1 pages 51-64, 2018

Child language errors are not errors in the real sense of the term but manifestations of developmental stages of language acquisition of the child. Given the systematic and rule-governed nature of such errors in a manner comparable to those usually found in the performances of adult foreign/second language learners/users, such errors not only present interesting feedbacks on the linguistic development of the child (i.e. showing what the child has acquired successfully and what he is yet to acquire given his age and aptitude) but also provide useful insights on the linguistic structure of the language concerned and how such is acquired. This paper examines some linguistic developmental errors in the speech forms of a native-Yoruba child when he was between the ages of 4 and 6. As evident in the data, strings of Yoruba-English code-mixing were very minimal as the child's exposure to English prior to and during the study period was relatively minimal. However, the fact that the child had been exposed to more than two dialects of Yoruba namely Ọ̀ yó ̣-Ibadan Yoruba, Standard Yoruba, and Ọ̀ kà/Ìkàré ̣-Àkókó Yoruba is evident in the structural forms and types of errors manifested. Findings show a conglomeration of syntactic, semantic, and phonological errors some of which are actually traceable to influences from English and those other dialects of Yoruba to which the child had been exposed. The study concludes that the noted error types manifested (namely substitution, omission, and contradiction) are purely developmental in nature, which implies that the subject's brain as at the period of study was yet to develop the capability to handle the complexity of the constructions involved. The study has far reaching theoretical and practical implications and application for Yoruba as second/foreign language programmes in terms of material development and management of learner errors.

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Tonal Sandhi in the Yoruba Language

Olusanmi Babarinde

Research on Humanities and Social Sciences, 2013

This paper looks at a phonological phenomenon called tonal sandhi which is seen as an interaction among tones especially in register tone languages like Yoruba. The work examines various grammatical constructions where this linguistic feature usually occurs. It is observed that tones do not change or displace one another especially when words appear in isolation. Such interaction which often leads to displacement is noticeable in speech within some grammatical constructions. We equally discover that vowel elision leads to tone movement (since tone operates on a different tier, it does not get elided with vowel). This in turn leads to tone displacement.

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Tonal Adaptation Strategies in Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò Loanword Phonologies

Emuobonuvie Maria Ajiboye

International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 2020

Studies on tonal adaptation strategies in English loanwords of the Nigerian languages (NLs): Yoruba (Y), Hausa (H), Bini (B) and Emai (E) commonly translate the prosodic structure of the loanwords into native prosodic configurations. Translation of pitch melody of borrowed words in the NLs tends to be determined by the position of English word stress. Comparative/typological studies that independently examine such tonal adaptation in Nigerian smaller languages are scanty. Consequently, this paper examines the pattern of word stress adaptation into tone in English loanwords in Èwùlù (Igboid) and Ùrhòbò (Edoid), with a view to revealing the Èwùlù and Ùrhòbò tonal adaptation features common to Y, H, B and E but specific to Èwùlù and/or Ùrhòbò. The empirical observations of data are explained with Autosegmental Theory (Goldsmith, 1976), which formally expresses the relations that hold between the tone loans, tone bearing units and CV nodes operating at different tiers....

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Production and perception of L2 English orthographic and phonological representations by L1 Tera/Hausa speakers : an experimental study

Ishaku MUSA

2017

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Grapho-Phonic Discrepancy in English and the Problem of Vowel Production by Yoruba Speakers of English as a Second Language

Dare Owolabi

2017

This study examined Yoruba speakers of English as a second language to discover their recognition of some vowels and their production as a result of the inconsistencies between spelling and sounds in the English language as opposed to what is obtainable in the Yoruba language. The study is an empirical one, designed to identify the problem of these learners of English as a second language after watching similar category of students commit the same errors over a period of time. Forty respondents, randomly selected, from a class of fifty seven students on a sandwich program, were used for this study. The exercise took place in a fairly furnished language laboratory, with a laboratory technician in attendance as a colistener. Each of the forty students was made to read a specially prepared passage laced with specific words to discover how they pronounce some vowel sounds in different word environments in the English language. The speech production of each respondent was recorded by the...

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ANTITHETICAL PHONOTACTIC CONSTRAINTS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND YORÙBÁ LANGUAGES: A SOURCE OF PHONOLOGICAL IMPRECISION AMONG THE L2 SPEAKERS

akamo O princewill (PhD)

ANTITHETICAL PHONOTACTIC CONSTRAINTS BETWEEN ENGLISH AND YORÙBÁ LANGUAGES: A SOURCE OF PHONOLOGICAL IMPRECISION AMONG THE L2 SPEAKERS, 2022

The operative tools for studying phonology in any language, either locally or cross-linguistically, are vowels and consonants. They are inherent features of phonetics and phonology in every language, as phonotactic constraints differ from language to language, and phonological impediment ensues when the constraints are breached by either transfer, substitution, insertion, or deletion. Consequently, it explains why many L2 learners struggle with the articulation of target language sounds, which often influences syllabification and intelligibility. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the dissimilarities in the phonotactic constraints of the syllable structures of English and Yorùbá languages induce pronunciation impairment in English for Yorùbá-English speakers. The Natural Phonology Theory of David Stampe serves as the theoretical foundation for this research. One hundred National Diploma students of Lagos State Polytechnic participated in the study. They are all Yorùbá by origin, with some dialectical differences. They were given a thirty-word list that encapsulates words with monosyllables, disyllables, and multi-syllables. The participants had to pronounce the words aloud. Their pronunciations were recorded on a digital recorder and subjected to perceptual, phonological, and syllabification analyses, supported by sonority hierarchical schemas. Finally, the study reveals that Yorùbá speakers of English have myriad phonological challenges as a result of the divergent Yorùbá and English phonotactic constraints.

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The Phonetic Interpretation of Tone in Igbo

Soonhyun Hong

Phonetica, 1993

This article presents a preliminary study of the phonetic interpretation of tone in Igbo, a Kwa language of southeastern Nigeria. The experimental method varies the speaker’s pitch range orthogonally with variation in tonal material, and fits a model to measurements of maxima and minima in the resulting Fo contour. A new interpretation of downstep is proposed as a result.

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Studies of Initial Tonal Acquisition by American English Speakers Learning Yoruba

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