Perceptual adaptation to foreign-accented English.

Abstract

Foreign-accented speech presents an interesting challenge for native listeners due to its deviations from native accented speech along multiple acoustic-phonetic dimensions. Nevertheless, since these deviations arise primarily from interactions of the native (L1) and target (L2) language sound systems, they are highly systematic both within individuals and across talkers from the same L1. Moreover, since numerous features of English are typologically rare (e.g., coda clusters and large vowel inventory), various foreign-accents of English frequently converge on similar specific deviations (e.g., cluster reduction and vowel category conflation). Thus, despite a high degree of deviation from native talker norms, the systematicity of foreign-accented speech should facilitate listener adaptation. We examined adaptation at the level of the individual (talker-dependent), the L1 (talker-independent), and the population (accent-independent). First, we showed variation in the speed and extent of talker-dependent adaptation depending on the talker’s baseline English speech intelligibility. Second, we demonstrated that talker-independent adaptation required exposure to multiple talkers of the accent. Finally, we demonstrated that exposure to multiple accents (e.g., Korean-, Hindi-, Mandarin-, and Romanian-accented English) can facilitate accent-independent adaptation, i.e., adaptation to both a trained accented (Mandarin-accented English) and an untrained accent(Slovakian-accented English). This work builds a strong case for highly flexible speech perception mechanisms.