IDENTIFYING A FOREIGN ACCENT IN AN UNFAMILIAR LANGUAGE

This study explores the question of whether native and nonnative listeners, some familiar with the language and some not, differ in their accent ratings of native speakers (NSs) and nonnative speakers (NNSs). Although a few studies have employed native and nonnative judges to evaluate native and nonnative speech, the present study is perhaps the first to include nonnative judges who were unfamiliar with the language they were judging. This study compares accent ratings of four different groups listening to Brazilian Portuguese spoken by NSs and NNSs. The 25 speakers of Portuguese were 5 NSs and 20 NNSs who were NSs of American English. The four listening groups were (a) Brazilian Portuguese listeners, (b) American English listeners with Portuguese experience, (c) American English listeners without Portuguese experience, and (d) English as a second language listeners without Portuguese experience. Although there were some differences, the results show striking similarities across groups, suggesting that listeners' first and second languages do not strongly affect ratings of foreign accents. The study also has implications for the critical period hypothesis because it raises the possibility that there are salient universal features of nonnative speech.

[1]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  MODELING PERCEPTIONS OF THE ACCENTEDNESS AND COMPREHENSIBILITY OF L2 SPEECH The Role of Speaking Rate , 2001, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[2]  Ralf Kompe,et al.  Generating non-native pronunciation variants for lexicon adaptation , 2004, Speech Commun..

[3]  Roy C. Major,et al.  English voiceless stop production by speakers of Brazilian Portuguese , 1987 .

[4]  N. Takagi,et al.  Global foreign accent and voice onset time among Japanese EFL speakers , 1999 .

[5]  D. Singleton,et al.  The age factor in second language acquisition : a critical look at the critical period hypothesis , 1995 .

[6]  James Emil Flege,et al.  Factors affecting degree of foreign accent in an L2: a review , 2001, J. Phonetics.

[7]  C. Snow,et al.  Age Differences in the Pronunciation of Foreign Sounds , 1977, Language and speech.

[8]  René M. Dailey,et al.  Language attitudes in an Anglo-Hispanic context: The role of the linguistic landscape , 2005 .

[9]  S. Oyama.  A sensitive period for the acquisition of a nonnative phonological system , 1976 .

[10]  G. Ioup,et al.  Reexamining the Critical Period Hypothesis , 1994, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[11]  K. Koehler,et al.  The Relationship Between Native Speaker Judgments of Nonnative Pronunciation and Deviance in Segmentais, Prosody, and Syllable Structure , 1992 .

[12]  S. Jay Samuels,et al.  The Relationship Between Age and Accuracy of Foreign Language Pronunciation. , 1973 .

[13]  Matthias Jilka,et al.  TESTING THE CONTRIBUTION OF PROSODY TO THE PERCEPTION OF FOREIGN ACCENT , 2003 .

[14]  Tracey M. Derwing.  What Do ESL Students Say About Their Accents , 2003 .

[15]  A. Findlay,et al.  In what sense English? an exploration of English migrant identities and identification , 2004 .

[16]  A. Favell,et al.  Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , 2008 .

[17]  Ferenc Bunta,et al.  Testing the Effects of Regional, Ethnic, and International Dialects of English on Listening Comprehension , 2005 .

[18]  James Emil Flege,et al.  Pronunciation Proficiency in the First and Second Languages of Korean-English Bilinguals. , 2000 .

[19]  C. Fowler,et al.  Gestural drift in a bilingual speaker of Brazilian Portuguese and English , 1997 .

[20]  David Birdsong,et al.  Nativelikeness and non-nativelikeness in L2A research , 2005 .

[21]  P. Ptacek,et al.  Age recognition from voice. , 1966, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[22]  I. R. MacKay,et al.  Evaluating the effects of chronological age and sentence duration on degree of perceived foreign accent , 2006, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[23]  H. Magen.  The perception of foreign-accented speech , 1998 .

[24]  Herbert W. Seliger.  Maturational Constraints in the Acquisition of Second Language Accent. , 1975 .

[25]  T. Scovel,et al.  FOREIGN ACCENTS, LANGUAGE ACQUISITION, AND CEREBRAL DOMINANCE1 , 1969 .

[26]  M. Munro.  Nonsegmental Factors in Foreign Accent , 1995, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[27]  K. Loewenthal,et al.  Foreign Accents: Factors Relating to Transfer of Accent from the First Language to a Second Language , 1981 .

[28]  R. Major.  Gender and stylistic variation in second language phonology , 2004, Language Variation and Change.

[29]  R. Major.  Foreign accent : the ontogeny and phylogeny of second language phonology , 2001 .

[30]  Alene Moyer,et al.  Age, Accent and Experience in Second Language Acquisition: An Integrated Approach to Critical Period Inquiry , 2004 .

[31]  J. Flege.  Age of learning affects the authenticity of voice-onset time (VOT) in stop consonants produced in a second language. , 1991, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[32]  S. Boyd.  Foreign-born Teachers in the Multilingual Classroom in Sweden: The Role of Attitudes to Foreign Accent , 2003 .

[33]  James J. Asher,et al.  The Optimal Age to Learn a Foreign Language , 1969 .

[34]  T. Scovel,et al.  A CRITICAL REVIEW OF THE CRITICAL PERIOD RESEARCH , 2000, Annual Review of Applied Linguistics.

[35]  Manuela González-Bueno,et al.  VOICE-ONSET-TIME IN THE PERCEPTION OF FOREIGN ACCENT BY NATIVE LISTENERS OF SPANISH , 1997 .

[36]  B. Planken,et al.  AGE AND ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE , 1997, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[37]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  THE MUTUAL INTELLIGIBILITY OF L2 SPEECH , 2006, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[38]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  Canadians in Alabama: a perceptual study of dialect acquisition in adults , 1999 .

[39]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  The effects of speaking rate on listener evaluations of native and foreign-accented speech , 1998 .

[40]  Daniel O. Jackson,et al.  Second Language Acquisition and the Critical Period Hypothesis , 2000 .

[41]  T. Houtgast,et al.  Quantifying the intelligibility of speech in noise for non-native listeners. , 2002, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[42]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  The Effects of Pronunciation Instruction on the Accuracy, Fluency, and Complexity of L2 Accented Speech. , 2003 .

[43]  T. Houtgast,et al.  Quantifying the intelligibility of speech in noise for non-native talkers. , 2002, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[44]  Murray J. Munro,et al.  Effects of age of second-language learning on the production of English consonants , 1995, Speech Commun..

[45]  An Optimality Theoretic Account of Hungarian ESL Learners' Acquisition of /[epsilon]/ and /[ash]/. , 2004 .

[46]  M. Munro.  A Primer on Accent Discrimination in the Canadian Context , 2003 .

[47]  J. Flege,et al.  Talker and listener effects on degree of perceived foreign accent. , 1992, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[48]  Murray J. Munro,et al.  The effects of age of second language learning on the production of English vowels , 1996, Applied Psycholinguistics.

[49]  A. Moyer.  ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN L2 PHONOLOGY , 1999, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[50]  Mari Takada,et al.  Segmentals and global foreign accent: The Japanese flap in EFL , 2000 .

[51]  R O Coleman,et al.  Male and female voice quality and its relationship to vowel formant frequencies. , 1971, Journal of speech and hearing research.

[52]  J. Esling,et al.  Voice Quality Settings and the Teaching of Pronunciation. , 1983 .

[53]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  Second Language Fluency: Judgments on Different Tasks , 2004 .

[54]  J. Flege.  Factors affecting degree of perceived foreign accent in English sentences. , 1988, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[55]  Ferenc Bunta,et al.  The Effects of Nonnative Accents on Listening Comprehension: Implications for ESL Assessment , 2002 .

[56]  V. Tartter.  Happy talk: Perceptual and acoustic effects of smiling on speech , 1980, Perception & psychophysics.

[57]  A. R. Elliott,et al.  Field Independence/Dependence, Hemispheric Specialization, and Attitude in Relation to Pronunciation Accuracy in Spanish as a Foreign Language , 1995 .