The relation between perceived non-native features in the L1 speech of English migrants to Austria and their phonetic manifestation in L1 productions

Abstract

Aims: The purpose of this research was to investigate to what extent the most commonly identified non-native features in the L1 speech of late consecutive bilinguals are reflected in differences in the bilinguals’ productions of these features compared with those of monolingual speakers of the L1. Design: We investigated the L1 accent of English migrants to Austria and monolingual English speakers in the United Kingdom in two inter-related studies. Data: In Study 1, an accent-perception experiment, native English listeners rated the nativeness of the monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ L1 English productions of read sentences, using a 6-point scale, and subsequently commented on the accentual features associated with perceived non-nativeness. In Study 2, the monolinguals’ and bilinguals’ productions of the most commonly identified non-native features from Study 1 were compared acoustically and auditorily. Findings: The accent-perception experiment revealed significantly higher non-nativeness ratings for the bilinguals than the monolinguals. These were associated with a wide range of segmental and prosodic features ( n = 836 feature tokens), with /iː/ and /ɪ/ the most commonly identified for segments, and articulation rate and intonation for prosody. The phonetic analysis of these features in Study 2, in turn, revealed that the bilinguals produced /ɪ/ closer to /iː/ than the monolinguals and had more final rises in questions, with the articulation rate differences between them just failing to reach significance. Originality: This is the first study to document a direct link between the features perceived as non-native in bilinguals’ L1 speech and their measurable manifestation in non-native L1 speech productions. Significance: This research contributes significantly to our understanding of the relationship between the perception and production of attrition in L1 speech, and shows that where listeners are able to provide consistent, detailed descriptions of the features associated with non-nativeness, they truthfully reflect measurable patterns in the speech signal.