An acoustic phonetic study on the production accuracy of lexical stress contrasts in Arabic and Mandarin-accented English

Abstract

The researcher explored the socio-morphophonetic characteristics of English as a second language lexical prosodic competence. One hundred participants from Midwest USA (29), Saudi Arabia (38), and China (33) were recorded producing English lexical stress (ELS) in tokens containing seven different stress-moving suffixes—[-ic], [-ical], [-ity], [-ian], [-ify], [-ial], and [-ious]. Fundamental frequency, duration, and intensity productions were analyzed using Praat. In total, 2125 vowels in 800 spectrograms were analyzed (excluding stress placement and pronunciation errors). Statistical sampling techniques were used to evaluate acquisition of accurate ELS production versus native language and language proficiency. Speech samples of native-speakers were analyzed to provide norm values for cross-reference and to provide insights into the proposed Salience Hierarchy of the Acoustic Correlates of Stress (SHACS). The results support the notion that a SHACS does exist in the L1 sound system and that native-like command is attainable for English language learners through increased study/L2 input. Saudi English speakers, who often do not fully reduce vowels, produced durational contrasts more accurately when they had studied English for longer. Similarly, proficient Chinese learners of English seemed to be able to overcome negative transfer from their tonal system as they produced pitch in a more native-like manner.