Temporal characteristics of Chinese-accented English: Preliminary findings

Abstract

This study investigated several temporal features of English to determine the extent of their occurrence in the speech of talkers of Chinese-accented English who had relatively limited experience with spoken English. Specifically, the extent to which these speakers produced the following temporal contrasts was examined: (1) tense versus lax vowel duration, (2) vowel duration before voiced versus voiceless consonants, and (3) vowel and consonant duration in sentence-final versus nonfinal position. Preliminary data from sentences produced by eight non-native and eight native talkers indicates that the native English speakers and the Chinese-accented talkers did not differ in the extent to which they realized the inherent duration difference between tense and lax vowels. However, the native English subjects tended to show substantially greater vowel lengthening before voiced versus before voiceless consonants than the Chinese-accented talkers. In addition, while the two groups did not differ significantly in the extent to which they lengthened sentence-final consonants relative to nonfinal consonants, the native English talkers showed greater sentence-final vowel lengthening than the Chinese-accented talkers. When group differences for a given temporal parameter were found, 1 or 2 of the non-native subjects typically fell within the range of performance shown by the native speakers.