Speaker and listener variables affecting second language vowel intelligibility.

Abstract

Research investigating the development of second language (L2) phonology often relies on native speaker evaluation of L2 productions. However, listener variables that might affect these judgments remain little understood. For example, Levi et al. (2007) argued that the lexical frequency of L2 speech tokens influences listeners. However, they used somewhat incommensurate measures to compare listener vis‐a‐vis speaker variables. The present study investigates the impact of speaker and listener variables on English vowel intelligibility using three distinct listening tasks and compares three speaker groups: first language (L1) English, L1 Mandarin, and L1 Slavic. Speakers repeated a word list comprising 10 target English vowels, each embedded in three separate monosyllabic verbs and varying in terms of lexical familiarity for speakers and lexical frequency for listeners. L1 English judges identified the recorded vowels in two conditions that included lexical information, and one condition in which the vowel portions of the recorded words were presented in isolation, preventing listener reference to the vowels’ lexical context. Results indicate an interaction between lexical familiarity for speakers, speaking prompt type, and intelligibility scores. Lexical frequency for listeners did not impact intelligibility scores.