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Automatic stress exaggeration by prosody modification to assist language learners perceive sentence stress

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose a set of automatic stress exaggeration methods that can enlarge the differences between stressed and unstressed syllables. Our stress exaggeration methods can be used in computer-aided language learning systems to assist second language learners perceive stress patterns. The intention of our automatic stress exaggeration methods is to support hyper-pronunciation training which is commonly used in classrooms by teachers. In hyper-pronunciation training, exaggeration is used to help learners increase their awareness of acoustic features and effectively apply these features into their pronunciation. Duration, pitch and intensity have been claimed to be the main acoustic features that are closely related to stress in English language. Thus, four stress exaggeration methods are proposed in this paper: (i) duration-based stress exaggeration, (ii) pitch-based stress exaggeration, (iii) intensity-based stress exaggeration, and (iv) a combined stress exaggeration method that integrates the duration-based, pitch-based and intensity-based exaggeration methods. Our perceptual experimental results show that resynthesised stimuli by our proposed stress exaggerated methods can help learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) better perceive English stress patterns significantly.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand

    Jingli Lu, Ruili Wang & Liyanage C. De Silva

  2. State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China

    Jingli Lu & Ruili Wang

  3. Faculty of Science, University of Brunei Darussalam, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam

    Liyanage C. De Silva

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  1. Jingli Lu
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  2. Ruili Wang
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  3. Liyanage C. De Silva
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Correspondence to Ruili Wang.

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Lu, J., Wang, R. & De Silva, L.C. Automatic stress exaggeration by prosody modification to assist language learners perceive sentence stress. Int J Speech Technol 15, 87–98 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10772-011-9124-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10772-011-9124-2

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