Phonetic studies of Hawaiian speakers and learners

自20世纪70年代至80年代以来，现代夏威夷语的复兴导致了今天一个繁荣的夏威夷语社区，拥有一个健全的k -12学前夏威夷语教育体系，以及夏威夷语的大学和教师培训项目。尽管有大量的使用者和可用的历史语言和语音材料，但夏威夷语的语音研究仍未得到充分的代表。这个项目考察了三组说话者的声音系统：(1)希洛现代夏威夷语的不断增长的社区，(2)希洛现代夏威夷语的中等水平学习者的成年学生，以及(3)在20世纪70年代至80年代的广播节目Ka Leo hawaii （KLH）中采访的复兴前的夏威夷长老。为了确定儿童和成人学习者习得的这种语言的语音特性，研究小组首先研究了熟练的成年夏威夷语使用者的声学特性。然后，他们转向评估成人语言学习者，目的是识别对这一群体来说可能更具挑战性的声音。该项目有助于夏威夷语的语音记录，包括与语言教师和其他社区成员合作创建教学材料。该项目还为夏威夷语的自动语音识别（ASR）开发做出了贡献。ASR的进步有助于缓解夏威夷语转录员的短缺，他们在美国的教育、政府和娱乐环境中发挥着关键作用。目前的研究重点是夏威夷语语音的实现和习得，包括多个韵律位置的口音和声门顿音，夏威夷语元音长度的区别，以及/v/的[w~v]变体。由于先前对KLH访谈的口头和声门停顿的研究表明，它们的实现受到韵律因素的影响，因此本研究中的启发材料根据（词汇）单词位置、韵律单词位置和音节重音来操纵停顿发生的位置。研究韵律结构和词内格律结构在制约夏威夷语音语音实现中的作用，有助于越来越多的文献研究多层次语音结构如何与语音实现相结合。这些研究还允许检查第二语言学习者是否对这些细粒度的语音属性敏感。除了生产研究之外，一项感知研究调查了在感知单词开头的声门顿音时使用的语音质量信息。本研究的最后一个组成部分是继续研究KLH说话者的谈话记录，重点研究夏威夷语中元音长度区分的实施，以及什么因素导致了/v/的[w~v]变体的发音变化。这些研究的结果有助于设计关于声音习得的教学材料和视频，这可能对成年夏威夷语学习者提出挑战。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The revitalization of Modern Hawaiian since the 1970s-80s has led to a thriving community of Hawaiian speakers today, with a robust system of pre-K-12 Hawaiian-medium education, as well as university and teacher training programs in the Hawaiian language. Despite the critical mass of speakers and availability of historical language and speech materials, phonetic research on Hawaiian is underrepresented. This project examines the sound system of the speech of three groups of speakers: (1) the growing community of Modern Hawaiian speakers in Hilo, (2) adult students who are intermediate-level learners of Modern Hawaiian in Hilo, and (3) pre-revitalization Hawaiian elders interviewed in the 1970s-80s on the radio program Ka Leo Hawai'i (KLH). To establish the phonetic properties of the language being acquired by children and adult learners, the team first examines the acoustic properties of proficient adult speakers of Hawaiian. They then turn to assessing adult language learners, with an aim toward identifying sounds which may be more challenging for this group. This project contributes to the phonetic documentation of the Hawaiian language, including work with language teachers and other community members to create pedagogical materials. The project also contributes to ongoing work in the development of automatic speech recognition (ASR) for Hawaiian. The advancement of ASR helps to alleviate the shortage of Hawaiian transcribers, who play a critical role in US educational, government, and entertainment contexts.The current research focuses on the realization and acquisition of Hawaiian sounds including oral and glottal stops in multiple prosodic positions, the vowel length distinction in Hawaiian, and the [w~v] variants of /v/. Since previous research on oral and glottal stops examining the KLH interviews indicated that their realization affected by prosodic considerations, the elicitation materials in this study manipulate where the stops occur with respect to (lexical) word position, prosodic word position, and syllabic stress. Studying the role of prosodic and word-internal metrical structure in conditioning the phonetic realization of Hawaiian sounds contributes to a growing literature regarding how multiple levels of phonological structure interface with phonetic implementation. These studies also allow for an examination of whether second language learners are sensitive to these fine-grained phonetic properties. In addition to the production studies, a perception study investigates what voice quality information is used in perceiving word-initial glottal stops. A final component of this research is a continued study of the speech of the KLH speakers from their recorded interviews, focusing on the implementation of the vowel length distinction in Hawaiian, and on what factors condition variation in the pronunciation of [w~v] variants of /v/. The outcome of these studies contributes to the design of instructional materials and videos regarding the acquisition of sounds that may present a challenge for adult learners of Hawaiian.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.