Segmental and Prosodic Reasons for Non-Native Timing of her in Polish Learners, English Speech

Abstract

Foreign speech timing problems depend on both segmental and prosodic factors. Thus inadequate durations and duration proportions may result from segmental substitutions involving sounds of different intrinsic length, activation of L1 instead of FL sandhi processes and generally non-native temporal organisation of utterances caused by the use of L1 rhythmic patterns. This paper focuses on absolute duration and timing relations of the unstressed pronoun her pronounced by a group of Polish learners in three phrases appearing in a read text: (1) but everyone called her Cinders. (2) When her sisters had gone, (3) It was her fairy godmother. The respondents, thirteen college students of English, were recorded at the beginning of their first year and seven months later, after two semesters of general English and practical phonetic training. The data were then compared to native Southern British English production recorded in the IViE database. Discrepancies in absolute and relative duration of the pronoun are believed to be connected with the substitution of /x/ for /h/, a consonant prone to elision in native English speech, insufficient vowel reduction, and rhoticity of the coda. The data show the scale of the problem and Polish learners’ development in the course of practical phonetic training. The first recording reveals significantly longer durations in Polish learners’ performance, magnified by fluency problems. The second recording, preceded by pronunciation training, indicates smaller length differences between Polish and English speakers. It also turns out that the duration of onset in Polish learners’ performance contributes more to non-native timing of the weak form than its rhyme.