Language input effects on children's words and vowels: An accent categorization and rating study

Abstract

This study assesses the effects of heterogeneous speech input on ratings of children's words and vowels. First, we examined whether exposure to a certain accent type or to different languages can predict accent categorization as standard, regional or foreign. Second, we examined how perceived accent strength of words and isolated vowels can be predicted by the amount of input children receive in distinct accents and languages and by lexical frequency. To this end, speech samples of 51 monolingual German children and simultaneous bilingual children speaking German and another language (mean age 9; 9) were presented to 63 monolingual German adult raters. In Experiment 1, 31 raters assessed the category (standard, regional, foreign) and degree of accent of children's words, while in Experiment 2, 32 raters assessed vowels extracted from these words. The results show that an equal proportion of monolingual and bilingual children were categorized as having a Standard German accent. Children who were rated as foreign-accented were more likely to be bilingual, while children who were rated as regionally-accented were more likely to be monolingual. As predicted, foreign-accent strength increased with a greater amount of input in the other language of the bilinguals. Lexical frequency predicted accentedness ratings of vowels (but not of words). These findings show that not only other language input but also accented input matter when assessing perceived accent.