Training statistical models to detect nonnative sentences requires a large corpus of non-native writing samples, which is often not readily available. This paper examines the extent to which machinetranslated (MT) sentences can substitute as training data. Two tasks are examined. For the native vs non-native classification task, nonnative training data yields better performance; for the ranking...

Smiling, as a visual expression and nonverbal behavior, has been the subject of many studies, but less is known about smiled speech. This paper aims at examining the perception of smiling in audio only, visual only and in audiovisual conditions, among three different linguistic groups. The subjects’ reaction times and the perceived intensity of the smiles were recorded, during a task where subj...

This study aims to examine acoustic characteristics of English vowels produced by 1 Australian English talker and 3 Japanese learners of English in spontaneous speech. Primary stressed vowels in multi-syllabic words were extracted from five 15minute interview sessions. While there was a considerable overlap between different vowel categories both in native and nonnative vowel spaces, centroids ...

In forensic investigations, it would be helpful to be able to identify a speaker’s native language based on the sound of their speech. Previous research on foreign accent identification suggested that the identification accuracy can be improved by using linguistic forms in which non-native characteristics are reflected. This study investigates how native and non-native speakers of Japanese diff...

The ability to distinguish statistically different populations of speakers or writers can be an important asset in many NLP applications. In this paper, we describe a method of using document similarity measures to describe differences in behavior between native and non-native speakers of English in a writing task.

Objective: To assess the degree of metabolic control and the presence of type 2 diabetes complications in diabetic immigrants. Methods: Cross-sectional case-control observational study, matched by age and sex. Cases: Hindustani diabetic immigrants (n= 116) and non-hindustani (n= 113). Controls: native diabetic patients with type 2 diabetes (n= 229). The relation male/female was 6.7, 0.8 y 2, re...

Smiling is a visible expression and it has been shown that it is audible too (Tartter [5], Tartter and Braun [6], Schröder et al. [4], Aubergé and Cathiard [1]). The aim of this paper is to investigate the perception of the prosody of smile in 2 different languages. In order to elicitate smiled speech, 6 speakers of Québec French were required to read sentences displayed with or without caricat...

This study tests whether Australian English (AusE) and European Spanish (ES) listeners differ in their categorisation discrimination of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowels. In particular, we investigate two theoretically relevant measures vowel category overlap (acoustic vs. perceptual categorisation) as predictors non-native difficulty. We also the individual listener’s own native productions pre...