Acquisition of dialectal differences in English by native Japanese speakers

Abstract

Many previous investigations of second language (L2) learning have focused on the acquisition of phonetic segments by groups of non-native speakers living in diverse regions in the US. These studies have not, however, assessed possible dialectal variation in L2 productions. The current study investigates the extent to which dialectal differences found in the vowel systems of two different American English (AE) dialects are acquired by adult Japanese speakers. Four subject groups were identified: native English speakers of a midwestern dialect of AE, native English speakers of a southern dialect of AE, Japanese speakers whose target language is a midwestern AE dialect, and Japanese speakers whose target language is a southern AE dialect. Subjects were recorded saying word and nonword utterances in isolation. Acoustic measures of vowels that can potentially capture differences between the dialects were made. These include vowel duration, and F0, F1, F2, and F3 frequencies measured at five equal distances throughout the vowel. F0–F3 measurements were used to calculate bark differences. Preliminary findings suggest that adult Japanese learners acquire some of the acoustic properties that are consistent with the dialect of the target language. [Work supported by an INRS Award from research funding from ATR (Fox, P.I.).]