Grado en Estudios Ingleses

URI permanente para esta colecciónhttps://hdl.handle.net/11441/40693

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A research on “vocal fry”
(2024) Iglesias Lagares, Leandro; Cuenca Villarín, María Heliodora; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
This study aims at examining the type of phonation known as “vocal fry”, how it is produced and who is more prone to using vocal fry in their daily speech. For this study, two tests were carried out; a production test, in which 10 participants were selected according to their variety of English, nationality, and sexuality, in order to see how these factors affect the use of vocal fry; and a perception test, in which samples from the production test were provided to 16 listeners as to give their views and opinions on each sample. The results of the study seem to suggest that vocal fry is more prone in female American English speakers, however, it also points to female British English speakers, and queer people, as they are also prone to making use of this type of phonation in a less severe way. Moreover, variables such as speech rate were also analyzed in this study to see if they are conditioning factors in the use of vocal fry. This study will tackle all these points and will shed light to this interesting type of phonation.
Eye-tracking and assessment of syllable frequency manipulation effect in individuals with a potential risk of dyslexia
(2023) García Zambrana, Nerea; Cuenca Villarín, María Heliodora; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
The primary objective of the present study is to investigate the possible effects of syllable frequency manipulation in Spanish “dyslexic” individuals. The research is based on an eye-tracked lexical decision task in Spanish (L1) and in English (L2). Pseudowords were categorized into four major groups: HF-HF, HF-LF, LF-HF and LF-LF. All the target pseudowords were disyllabic pseudowords following the pattern CVC.CVC in both languages and CV.CV only in Spanish. Two female individuals with symptoms of dyslexia, in addition to one female individual diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder participate in the study. The task assigned to them was to determine the existence of the pseudoword as soon as possible. The results show that both English and Spanish CVC.CVC present an inhibitory effect when the pseudowords are made up by high- frequency syllables. The case of CV.CV pseudowords is totally the opposite. When syllable frequency is manipulated, the findings suggest that low-frequency syllables are more prominent than high-frequency ones in both CVC.CVC and CV.CV Spanish disyllabic pseudowords. In the case of the English study, the results indicate that syllable frequency does not seem to be an important factor when participants must decide whether the target sequence of letters or phonetic symbols composed of high-frequency and low-frequency syllables is a word or a pseudoword,
Intuitive-Imitative and Analytic-Linguistic approaches effects on the production of Voice Onset Time (VOT) by Spanish learners of English
(2024) Benítez García, Antonia; Cuenca Villarín, María Heliodora; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
This research aims to investigate the effects that explicit instruction on pronunciation through two approaches, namely intuitive-imitative and analytic linguistic, have on the production of voice onset time (VOT) by Spanish learners of English. The data was collected from 15 elementary-intermediate Spanish learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) pertaining to a private language school in Lebrija, Seville, while receiving regular courses of English at school. The 15 students were divided into three five-member groups. Two of them received a teaching session on pronunciation, and the remaining one served as a control group. VOT data was elicited under a sentence-reading task both in a pre- and post-test. Results show that the participants from the analytic-linguistic group who had received explicit instruction produced the voiceless stops /p, t, k/ with more English-like values than those from the other two groups. This could imply that short-term but intensive pronunciation instruction through the display of the phonetic alphabet, place, and manner of articulation affects their VOT values towards more target-like ones.
Research on Vowel Formant Frequencies and Voice Perturbation Parameters in Pathological Voices after Larynx Cancer
(2023) Rueda Logroño, Blanca; Cuenca Villarín, María Heliodora; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
The present study aims at analyzing the influence that larynx cancer has had in the voice parameters and formant frequency in English and Spanish vowels through the acoustic analysis of sustained vowels and a list of words. Two syllable words were considered for the Spanish task (CVCV) and words with different syllabic patterns were used for the English part. Besides, vowels /a/ and /e/ were taken into account for voice parameters. Three participants have been selected: two men and one woman. The activity they were given consisted of pronouncing different words with all the English and Spanish vowels to check their irregular voice after that their illness left them. Moreover, they were asked to pronounce long /a/ and /e/ to check their voice parameters. The results of the study seem to suggest that both English and Spanish vowels have uncommon formant frequencies and voice parameters irregular results. This is due to the fact that all of them have suffered larynx cancer and have different consequences: one of them does not have larynx, the other one has only one vocal fold and the last one have both vocal folds, but only one of them works correctly.
Transcription of Tongue Twisters by Automatic Systems and their Pedagogical Use
(2024) Gago Luna, Pedro; Cuenca Villarín, María Heliodora; Universidad de Sevilla. Departamento de Filología Inglesa (Lengua Inglesa)
This research aims to assess the transcription capabilities of four different automatic systems to understand non-native English speakers from various countries, and then suggest whether their use can be applied in educational settings. Five tongue twisters spoken by those non-native speakers are transcribed, alongside with a native Irish speaker's rendition for comparison. The success or failure in transcribing these challenging sentences may showcase the systems’ proficiency in handling simpler sentences spoken by learners of English as a Second Language (ESL).

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Examinando Grado en Estudios Ingleses por Autor "Cuenca Villarín, María Heliodora"