Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-dh8gc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T12:31:20.775Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Nonsegmental Factors in Foreign Accent

Ratings of Filtered Speech

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2008

Murray J. Munro
Murray J. Munro
Affiliation:
Simon Fraser University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Untrained native English listeners assigned foreign accent scores to sentence and narrative utterances that had been rendered unintelligible through low-pass filtering. Utterances produced by native English talkers were assigned consistently higher ratings than those produced by Mandarin-speaking learners of English, even when the listeners were unfamiliar with the content. Because these filtered speech stimuli contained very little of what could be considered segmental information, the results suggest that untrained listeners can identify foreign-accented speech on the basis of nonsegmental information alone, whether they are presented with material of known or of unknown content. Acoustical analyses of the stimuli suggested that differences in speaking rates, intonation patterns, and timing may have played a role in the listeners' assessments, although the cues to foreign-accentedness may have varied from talker to talker and from utterance to utterance. Surprisingly, no relationship was observed between the ratings of the filtered and unfiltered versions of the nonnative stimuli.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , March 1995 , pp. 17 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Adams, C., & Munro, R. (1978). In search of the acoustic correlates of stress: Fundamental frequency, amplitude, and duration in the connected utterances of some native and nonnative speakers of English. Phonetica, 35, 125–156.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Anderson-Hsieh, J., Johnson, R., & Koehler, K. (1992). The relationship between native speaker judgments of nonnative pronunciation and deviance in segmentais, prosody, and syllable structure. Language Learning, 42, 529–555.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Archibald, J. (1992). Adult abilities in L2 speech: Evidence from stress. In Leather, J. & James, A. (Eds.), New sounds 92: Proceedings of the 1992 Amsterdam Symposium on the Acquisition of Second-Language Speech (pp. 1–17). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam.Google Scholar
Bannert, R. (1981). Phonological strategies in the second language learning of Swedish prosody. In Dressler, W., Pfeiffer, O., & Rennison, J. (Eds.), Phonologica 1980: Akten der Vierten Internationalen Phonologie-Tagung (pp. 29–33). Innsbruck: Dogil.Google Scholar
Bush, C. (1967). Some acoustic parameters of speech and their relationships to the perception of dialect differences. TESOL Quarterly, 1, 20–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruttenden, A. (1986). Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Crystal, D. (1969). Prosodic systems and intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Bot, K. (1986). The transfer of intonation and the missing data base. In Kellerman, E. & Smith, M. (Eds.), Cross-linguistic influence in second-language acquisition (pp. 110–133). New York: Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Dirven, R., & Oakshott-Taylor, J. (1984). Listening comprehension (part 1). Language Teaching, 17, 89–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flege, J., & Bohn, O.-S. (1989). An instrumental study of vowel reduction and stress placement in Spanish-accented English. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 11, 35–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grover, C., Jamieson, D., & Dobrovolsky, M. (1987). Intonation in English, French, and German: Perception and production. Language and Speech, 30, 277–295.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johansson, S. (1978). Studies of error gravity: Native reactions to errors produced by Swedish learners of English. Göteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.Google Scholar
Ladefoged, P. (1982). A course in phonetics. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.Google Scholar
Lepetit, D. (1989). Cross-linguistic influence in intonation: French/Japanese and French/English. Language Learning, 39, 397–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Morley, J. (1991). The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 481–520.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, M., & Derwing, T. (1994). Evaluations of foreign accent in extemporaneous and read material. Language Testing, 11, 253–266.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ohala, J., & Gilbert, J. (1981). Listeners' ability to identify languages by their prosody. In Leon, P. & Rossi, M. (Eds.), Problèmes de prosodie: Vol. II. Expérimentations, modèles et fonctions (pp. 123–131). Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Palmer, J. (1976). Linguistic accuracy and intelligibility. In Nickel, G. (Ed.), Proceedings of the 4th International Congress of Applied Linguistics (pp. 505–513). Stuttgart: Hockschul.Google Scholar
Pennington, M., & Richards, J. (1986). Pronunciation revisited. TESOL Quarterly, 20, 207–225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shrout, P., & Fleiss, J. (1979). Intraclass correlations: Uses in assessing rater reliability. Psychological Bulletin, 86, 420–428.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Van Els, T., & De Bot, K. (1987). The role of intonation in foreign accent. The Modern Language Journal, 71, 147–155.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wenk, B. (1985). Speech rhythms and second language acquisition. Language and Speech, 28, 157–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Willems, N. (1982). English intonation from a Dutch point of view. Dordrecht: Foris.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wingstedt, M., & Schulman, R. (1987). Comprehension of foreign accents. In Dressler, W. (Ed.), Phonologica 1984: Proceedings of the Fifth International Phonology Meeting (pp. 339–344). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar