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Chapter 13 - Comparing Segmental and Prosodic Contributions to Speech Accent

from Part IV - Accentedness and Acoustic Features

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

By
Marina Oganyan ,
Richard Wright  and
Elizabeth McCullough
Edited by
Ratree Wayland
Ratree Wayland
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Summary

In this study, segmental and prosodic properties of word-length stimuli were assessed together. Six talkers from 5 L1 backgrounds (American English, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish) were recorded reading English stop-initial trochaic words. The productions were played for 20 monolingual American English-speaking listeners rated the accentedness of each talker. For each token, the deviation from native English productions was determined for segmental (VOT, vowel quality) and three prosodic properties (ratios of duration, intensity, f0 across the two syllables). For each non-native language background, a linear mixed-effects regression model was created to predict accentedness ratings from the phonetic deviations, and the significance of each fixed effect was examined. In each model, the significant predictors included both segmental and prosodic properties. For Hindi and Spanish talkers, the single best predictor was segmental; however, for Korean and Mandarin talkers, the single best predictor was prosodic. Thus, even for short stimuli, both segmental and prosodic information must be considered in accounting for accentedness judgments. We conclude that listeners are sensitive to the different ways that foreign accent may be manifested across different non-native backgrounds.

Keywords

SpeechSecondLanguageAccentSegmentalProsodicEnglishKoreanMandarinHindi
Type
Chapter
Information
Second Language Speech Learning
Theoretical and Empirical Progress
 , pp. 337 - 349
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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