The influence of talker accent strength on accent categorization

Abstract

Listeners' identification accuracy for nonnative-accented words tends to decrease as the talker's accent strength increases. However, the influence of accent strength on accent categorization has not been investigated. We hypothesized that nonnative talkers with stronger accents would have more salient cues to their native languages and thus, listeners would show increased accent categorization accuracy. To test this hypothesis, monolingual American English listeners categorized sentences produced by 12 native and 24 nonnative talkers in a 12-alternative forced-choice task with 8 nonnative accent categories and 4 regional dialect categories. Three talkers from each language/dialect background with different accent strengths (i.e., mild, moderate, strong) were included. The talkers' accent/dialect strengths were determined by 20 listeners' ratings on a 9-point scale (nonnative talkers: 1 = no foreign accent and 9 = very strong foreign accent; native talkers: 1 = Standard American English and 9 = very strong regional dialect). For the nonnative talkers, preliminary results show a moderate correlation between accent categorization accuracy and accent strength. However, within specific language backgrounds, adherence to the expected accuracy pattern varied substantially. Future analyses will investigate how accent strength influences confusion patterns across accents and dialects. [Work supported by an Indiana University Hutton Honors College grant.]