Perception Of Accent Research Articles

“No” versus “Aniyo”: Back vowel diphthongization in heritage Korean

The effects of a second language on a speaker’s first language phonology are well documented (e.g., Chang, 2013), and much has been done work specifically for heritage language speakers (Polinsky and Kagan, 2007; Montrul, 2010, 2015), who may be bilingual to some degree but are dominant in the majority language. Bilingualism research has identified “separate but nonautonomous phonological systems” (Paradis, 2001) in bilingual children, but few studies address heritage speakers’ phonological systems in relation to ongoing sound change (Konopka and Pierrehumbert, 2010). The current study examines F1 and F2 of the back vowels /o/ and /u/ in samples of read Korean speech from a population of Korean American Californians who identified as natively bilingual and/or heritage speakers of Korean. Forty speakers read short conversational passages in Korean during a bilingual interview. Preliminary results indicate that the heritage speakers’ /u/ vowel shows influence from California English, with greater F2 on average than their central /a/ vowel. The /o/ vowel also has a much lower F1 than expected given Korean’s canonical five-vowel system. Ongoing analysis examines the trajectory of both vowels to determine the influence of California English diphthongized back vowels on Korean monophthongs, and accent perception of the speakers’ Korean.The effects of a second language on a speaker’s first language phonology are well documented (e.g., Chang, 2013), and much has been done work specifically for heritage language speakers (Polinsky and Kagan, 2007; Montrul, 2010, 2015), who may be bilingual to some degree but are dominant in the majority language. Bilingualism research has identified “separate but nonautonomous phonological systems” (Paradis, 2001) in bilingual children, but few studies address heritage speakers’ phonological systems in relation to ongoing sound change (Konopka and Pierrehumbert, 2010). The current study examines F1 and F2 of the back vowels /o/ and /u/ in samples of read Korean speech from a population of Korean American Californians who identified as natively bilingual and/or heritage speakers of Korean. Forty speakers read short conversational passages in Korean during a bilingual interview. Preliminary results indicate that the heritage speakers’ /u/ vowel shows influence from California English, with greater F2 on aver...

The importance of vowel formant frequencies and proximity in vowel space to the perception of foreign accent

This study used speech resynthesis to manipulate vowel formant frequencies in natural speech stimuli to examine the influence of magnitude and direction of spectral deviation from native norms, as well as the proximity of adjacent categories, on foreign-accentedness ratings, comprehensibility ratings and vowel identification. Experiment 1 contrasted the impact of spectral deviation on peripheral and non-peripheral vowels by shifting the first and second formant center frequencies in English vowels /ɔ/, /ʌ/, /ɛ/, /ɑ/, and /æ/ toward the acoustically closest vowel, and either the next-closest vowel, or unoccupied vowel space. To directly compare the impact of different deviation directions and proximity of adjacent categories without being confounded by F1–F2 variability within the individual vowel, formant frequencies in one English vowel, /ɑ/, were manipulated in Experiment 2 toward the four cardinal and four intercardinal directions. Across both experiments, spectral deviation that increased overlap with adjacent categories reduced comprehensibility, and increased both accentedness and misidentification. Neither the direction nor the magnitude of spectral deviations from native norms alone were sufficient to account for task performance. These findings imply that vowel space dispersion, specifically location within vowel space, plays a role in both accentedness judgments and vowel identification.

Japanese EFL learners’ perceptions of different accents in spoken English

Due to the worldwide spread and diversification of English, there is far more variety in English accents than ever before. Nonetheless, most Japanese English language learners have continuously been only exposed to “native” English accents, particularly Received Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA), in their English language classrooms. As the number of “non-native” English speakers exceeds the number of “native” English speakers in the world, it has been recently questioned whether exposing English language learners to only “native” English accents in English language classrooms is appropriate in this globalised world. The present study attempts to investigate 78 Japanese EFL learners’ perceptions of different accents in spoken English. More specifically, the study examines the influence of “native” and “non-native” English accents on Japanese EFL learners’ perceptions of grammaticality. Four “native” English speakers (i.e., the UK, the US, and Australia) and four “non-native” English speakers (i.e., Vietnam, Japan, Zimbabwe, and Russia) provided the speech samples used in the study. To measure the Japanese EFL learners’ perceptions of grammaticality, they were asked to listen to thirty-two grammatical and ungrammatical sentences read out by the eight speakers and judge each sentence using binary categories (i.e., grammatical/ungrammatical). Moreover, they were asked to identify the place of origins of each speaker and label them as either “native” speaker or “non-native” speaker. The potential underlying factors influencing their judgements and evaluations are discussed, and the implications for research and teaching are also suggested.

Stretching the boundaries

Abstract Nowadays, international communication using English as the medium is a common occurrence. To communicate effectively, English as a second language (ESL) speakers need to possess relevant communicative skills including understanding and being familiar with inner circle accents. This paper seeks to find out ESL learners’ evaluative reactions to four inner circle accents, representing British, American, Australian and New Zealand English varieties, through an accent perception and a survey task conducted on Malaysian undergraduates at a public university in Malaysia. The participants responded to descriptors on speaker attributes categorized into three dimensions: competence, social appeal and accent preference while or after listening to a recorded passage read in one of the four accents by male and female speakers. The learners showed a tendency to prefer certain accents more than others. In general, the best rated accent was the British accent for the male speakers and the American accent for the female speakers. The New Zealand accent was rated the lowest among the male speakers and one of the lowest among the female speakers. The study also found that speaker’s competence, speaker’s social appeal and accent preference were positively correlated. These findings highlight the importance of listening practices and exposure to various English accents in ESL classrooms to prepare students for international and intercultural communication.

Detecting Foreign Accents in Song

This paper presents three experiments exploring the perception and production of accents in song. In a perception experiment, participants listened to passages sung and spoken by native and non-native speakers of English. The participants did better at identifying native speakers when listening to the spoken passages. Accents were also judged as more native-like in song than in speech. In addition, two production experiments compared the acoustic characteristics (pitch, duration, F1 and F2) of sung and spoken vowels, produced by native and non-native speakers of English. Both native and non-native speakers changed the pitch and duration of their vowels when singing; the vowel quality was not consistently shifted. Together, the results indicate that the melody imposed by the song impacts the suprasegmental properties of pronunciation whereas the segmental properties remain largely intact. Based on these results, we conclude that a main reason why accents are more difficult to detect in song than in speech is that the rhythm and melody imposed by the song mask intonational cues to accent.

A Perception Study of the Korean Sibilant Fricatives in Seoul and Daegu Dialects

ABSTRACT This study examines perceptual variations of the Korean sibilant fricatives /s/ and /s*/ in Seoul and Daegu dialects by Seoul and North Gyeongsang speakers. It is well known that speakers of the North and South Gyeongsang dialects have difficulty differentiating the Korean contrast /s-s*/ in either production or perception, or both. It is also widely known that younger Gyeongsang speakers are better able to distinguish the contrast /s-s*/ because of their constant exposure to Standard Korean.1 In order to explore the dialectal variations, Korean sibilant fricative stimuli were produced in three different vowel contexts, in both initial and intervocalic positions, by young adults from Seoul and Daegu. Results of statistical analyses indicate that young North Gyeongsang speakers were able to distinguish /s/ and /s*/ in the Seoul dialect. However, in the Daegu dialect, there were some complex interactions in the perception of these fricatives by both Seoul and North Gyeongsang speakers. In order to engage in further analysis and to reach concrete conclusions through extensive comparison, it is essential to examine the relationship between production and perception of different dialects, as well as the dialectal variations between them.

Probing the Underlying Principles of Perceived Immanent Accents Using a Modeling Approach.

This article deals with the question of how the perception of the “immanent accents” can be predicted and modeled. By immanent accent we mean any musical event in the score that is related to important points in the musical structure (e.g., tactus positions, melodic peaks) and is therefore able to capture the attention of a listener. Our aim was to investigate the underlying principles of these accented notes by combining quantitative modeling, music analysis and experimental methods. A listening experiment was conducted where 30 participants indicated perceived accented notes for 60 melodies, vocal and instrumental, selected from Baroque, Romantic and Post-tonal styles. This produced a large and unique collection of perceptual data about the perceived immanent accents, organized by styles consisting of vocal and instrumental melodies within Western art music. The music analysis of the indicated accents provided a preliminary list of musical features that could be identified as possible reasons for the raters’ perception of the immanent accents. These features related to the score in different ways, e.g., repeated fragments, single notes, or overall structure. A modeling approach was used to quantify the influence of feature groups related to pitch contour, tempo, timing, simple phrasing, and meter. A set of 43 computational features was defined from the music analysis and previous studies and extracted from the score representation. The mean ratings of the participants were predicted using multiple linear regression and support vector regression. The latter method (using cross-validation) obtained the best result of about 66% explained variance (r = 0.81) across all melodies and for a selected group of raters. The independent contribution of each feature group was relatively high for pitch contour and timing (9.6 and 7.0%). There were also significant contributions from tempo (4.5%), simple phrasing (4.4%), and meter (3.9%). Interestingly, the independent contribution varied greatly across participants, implying different listener strategies, and also some variability across different styles. The large differences among listeners emphasize the importance of considering the individual listener’s perception in future research in music perception.

What’s in a face? The impact of nonlinguistic ‘ethnic’ facial features on accent perception

ABSTRACTSociolinguistic research on language attitudes has revealed that non-standard accented speakers are usually perceived more negatively than members of the dominant speech community. Few studies, however, have examined whether a speaker’s ethnicity, evidenced by nonlinguistic factors such as appearance, may play a role in listeners’ perception of accent. This project is based on studies by Rubin (1992. “Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of nonnative English-speaking teaching assistants.” Research in Higher Education 33 (4): 511–531. http://www.jstor.org/stable/401960471992) investigating perceptions of foreign academics by undergraduate students in the US. In those studies, participants listened to a short lecture presented with a projection of either a Caucasian or a Chinese face and completed a listening comprehension test and a speakers’ evaluation rating scale. Unknown to the participants, the recording was produced by a single standard American-English speaker. Participants exposed to the Chinese face perceived a non-standard accent and rated the speaker more negatively than those exposed to the Caucasian face. Our present study extends Rubin (1992) by examining data collected through an online survey from languages and linguistics university students in Australia. Unlike Rubin’s (1992) findings, this study found no statistically significant differences between responses based on exposure to a Chinese or Caucasian face, a fact that could be attributed primarily to the multilingual and multicultural composition of Australian universities.

Effects of pitch contour and speaking rate on perception of foreign-accented speech

Perception of foreign accent is typically studied using an accentedness rating task. For example, native English listeners rate the degree of accentedness in sentences produced by non-native English speakers. However, in the past studies, it has been unclear that on what criteria participants used to judge accentedness. Here, native English speakers rated the accentedness of Korean-accented English sentences on a scale from 1 (strong accent) to 9 (little to no accent). Participants rated sentences that were unmodified or had one acoustic property removed. In one block, pitch contours of sentences were flattened and set to their mean values. In another block, speaking rates were set to the grand mean of all speaking rates (3.8 syllables/second). This way, changes in accentedness ratings across unmodified and modified sentences were attributable to the acoustic property that was removed. Accentedness ratings were not systematically influenced by manipulations of pitch contours but were influenced by speaking rate manipulations. Increasing the speaking rate (to 3.8 syllables/second) made sentences sound less accented than their unmodified versions; decreasing the speaking rate made sentences sound more accented than their unmodified versions. Results suggest that the speaking rate directly contributes to ratings of foreign accentedness.

Frequency of Using Najdi Arabic Words Among Saudi College Male Students

The study of dialects may be subsumed under the very broad rubric of colloquialism which comes at the bottom of the formality versus informality scale. We focus on the Najd dialect perception, as the central dialect in Saudi Arabia, among Saudi male college students. By conducting two experiments, questionnaires and follow-up semi-structured interviews, on 137 male students, user-based frequencies of the topper 50 Najdi words are generated. The second phase aims at semantically categorizing the topper content words so that conclusions can be drawn about the inclination of using Najdi words among the college students. Results show that the categorization of the retrieved 50 Najdi words, according to the part of speech, demonstrates that the most applauded Najdi Arabic words are verbs and adjectives. Synonyms are even retrievable from this method of compilation. Nouns are the most resistant part of speech at the morphological level.

Cross-linguistic Influences on Sentence Accent Detection in Background Noise.

This paper investigates whether sentence accent detection in a non-native language is dependent on (relative) similarity between prosodic cues to accent between the non-native and the native language, and whether cross-linguistic differences in the use of local and more widely distributed (i.e., non-local) cues to sentence accent detection lead to differential effects of the presence of background noise on sentence accent detection in a non-native language. We compared Dutch, Finnish, and French non-native listeners of English, whose cueing and use of prosodic prominence is gradually further removed from English, and compared their results on a phoneme monitoring task in different levels of noise and a quiet condition to those of native listeners. Overall phoneme detection performance was high for the native and the non-native listeners, but deteriorated to the same extent in the presence of background noise. Crucially, relative similarity between the prosodic cues to sentence accent of one’s native language compared to that of a non-native language does not determine the ability to perceive and use sentence accent for speech perception in that non-native language. Moreover, proficiency in the non-native language is not a straightforward predictor of sentence accent perception performance, although high proficiency in a non-native language can seemingly overcome certain differences at the prosodic level between the native and non-native language. Instead, performance is determined by the extent to which listeners rely on local cues (English and Dutch) versus cues that are more distributed (Finnish and French), as more distributed cues survive the presence of background noise better.

Including L2-English Varieties in Listening Tests for Adolescent ESL Learners: L1 Effects and Learner Perceptions

ABSTRACTBecause English is widely used as a lingua franca, language testers have started to consider the introduction of non-native accents into English listening tests. This study investigates how accents influence test-takers’ performance, and also elicits test-takers’ subjective perception of accents. Eighty adolescent L1-Mandarin test takers were divided into four groups of equal proficiency, with each group listening to one accented version of the same English listening test. The test input was delivered in Australian, Spanish, Vietnamese, and Mandarin-accented English varieties with tasks measuring lexical and propositional comprehension and consisting of picture selection, true/false, and gap completion items. Test-takers’ perceptions of accent familiarity, comprehensibility, and their attitudes were also measured. Results indicate that the test takers who received Mandarin-accented input performed best, lending support to a shared-L1 effect, with the strongest advantage for lexical comprehension. No significant difference was observed in test scores among the groups exposed to non-Mandarin accents. Findings also reveal that the type of accent was not significantly related to test-takers’ attitude toward it. The central implication from this study is that there is potential for the inclusion of non-native accents into listening tests for adolescent learners if the shared-L1 effect can be addressed.

The effect of talkers’sex and age in the perception of pitch accents: Implication for sound change of Kyungsang Korean

The effect of talkers’sex and age in the perception of pitch accents: Implication for sound change of Kyungsang Korean

El español de Puerto Rico: percepciones dialectales y actitudes lingüísticas

En el artículo se analizan las percepciones dialectales y las actitudes lingüísticas de los hablantes puertorriqueños con respecto a su variedad de español. Desde los postulados teóricos de la dialectología perceptual y las actitudes lingüísticas como disciplinas, se profundiza en las percepciones, creencias, valoraciones y reacciones de los hablantes de esta variedad de español. Específicamente, la investigación se centra en el modo en que los puertorriqueños perciben su propia modalidad de lengua en el mundo hispanohablante, las similitudes y diferencias que establecen con respecto a otras variantes de español, los rasgos a través de los cuales se auto caracterizan lingüísticamente y las actitudes que manifiestan. Los datos se obtuvieron a partir de la aplicación de un cuestionario en el Área Metropolitana de Puerto Rico a una muestra de cincuenta y cuatro informantes, estratificada según las variables sociolingüísticas sexo, edad y nivel de instrucción.

Understanding Chinese tourists' perceptions of Cantonese as a regional dialect

This study aimed to offer an in-depth understanding of Chinese tourists' perceptions of Cantonese as a regional dialect. Using two samples of Chinese tourists (sample 1: n = 134; sample 2: n = 331) at popular tourist attractions in Guangzhou, China, four dimensions of Chinese tourists' perceptions of the Cantonese dialect, namely, local characteristics, captivation, functionality, and dialect understanding, were identified and confirmed. Furthermore, functionality, dialect understanding, and local characteristics were found to influence tourist satisfaction; local characteristics and captivation predicted revisit intention; and captivation and dialect understanding affected recommendation intentions. Slight differences in dialect perceptions were identified between Chinese tourists who had knowledge of the Cantonese dialect and those who had no knowledge of the dialect at all. Destination marketing and management implications were provided.

The Sociolinguistic Repetition Task: A New Paradigm for Exploring the Cognitive Coherence of Language Varieties.

Sociolinguistic studies generally focus on specific sociolinguistic variables. Consequently, they rarely examine whether different sociolinguistic variables have coherent orientation in a specific language variety (a social or a regional dialect) or whether the speakers freely mix sociolinguistic variants. While different attempts have been made to identify coherence and mixing in the production or perception of dialects, our aim is to answer this question at the level of the cognitive representation of varieties. For this purpose, we draw on the phenomenon of sociolinguistic restoration: when they repeat sociolinguistically mixed utterances, people tend to make them homogeneous. The first experiment-a repetition task-reproduced sociolinguistic restoration in an experimental setting. The second experiment-a judgment task-ensured that participants perceived the difference between homogeneous and mixed utterances. We conclude that high-order coherent representations influence the reconstruction of utterances during the repetition task.

The effect of long-term second dialect exposure on sentence transcription in noise

Ninety expatriate and non-migrant listeners in the US and England completed a sentence transcription in noise task (−4 dB SNR), transcribing both English and US speakers. Both non-migrant groups are, relatively, more accurate with their own dialect – they have an own-dialect advantage – and comparatively both expatriate groups show a much smaller advantage, doing better with their non-native dialect than the non-migrants, though critically not worse with their native dialect. Additionally, variation within each subcategory of listener type suggests more fine-grained effects of exposure on transcription accuracy, even for non-migrants. These results show that second dialect exposure does not simply alter pronunciation, but also the ways in which listeners process dialects, and can do so without significantly affecting first dialect perception.

L1 listeners’ perception of L2 pronunciation: effect of prosody on accentedness ratings in Swedish


 
 
 This paper reports on a study in which L1 speakers (n = 53) of Swedish rated the accentedness of read-aloud sentences produced by L2 speakers (n = 6) of Swedish. The aim of the study was to investigate the effect of certain prosodic features on the accentedness ratings. These features include Swedish tone accents and and deviant speech rhythm (e.g. lack of primary stress, and realization of multiple stresses). The results reveal that utterances with deviant speech rhythm yielded perceptions of stronger foreign accent than utterances with target-like rhythm. As for the tone accents, their effect on the scores were non-existent or only marginal. As missing tone accents have been previously found not to compromise intelligibility, the results of the present study reinforce the conclusion according to which emphasis in teaching should be put on prosodic features other than tone accents, especially rhythm.
 
 

Which Phonetic Features Should Pronunciation Instructions Focus on? An Evaluation on the Accentedness of Segmental/Syllable Errors in L2 Speech

Many English language instructors are reluctant to incorporate pronunciation instruction into their teaching curriculum (Thomson 2014). One reason for such reluctance is that L2 pronunciation errors are numerous, and there is not enough time for teachers to address all of them (Munro and Derwing 2006; Thomson 2014). The current study aims to help language teachers set priorities for their instruction by identifying the segmental and structural aspects of pronunciation that are most foreign-accented to native speakers of American English. The current study employed a perception experiment. 100 speech samples selected from the Speech Accent Archive (Weinberger 2016) were presented to 110 native American English listeners who listened to and rated the foreign accentedness of each sample on a 9-point rating scale. 20 of these samples portray no segmental or syllable structure L2 errors. The other 80 samples contain a single consonant, vowel, or syllable structure L2 error. The backgrounds of the speakers of these samples came from 52 different native languages. Global prosody of each sample was controlled for by comparing its F0 contour and duration to a native English sample using the Dynamic Time Warping method (Giorgino 2009). The results show that 1) L2 consonant errors in general are judged to be more accented than vowel or syllable structure errors; 2) phonological environment affects accent perception, 3) occurrences of non-English consonants always lead to higher accentedness ratings; 4) among L2 syllable errors, vowel epenthesis is judged to be as accented as consonant substitutions, while deletion is judged to be less accented or not accented at all. The current study, therefore, recommends that language instructors attend to consonant errors in L2 speech while taking into consideration their respective phonological environments.

Lexical accent perception in highly-proficient L2 Japanese learners: The roles of language-specific experience and domain-general resources

This article reports empirical findings on the roles of domain-general resources and language-specific experience in the second language (L2) acquisition of Japanese lexical pitch accent. Sixty-one advanced-proficiency L2 Japanese learners from two first languages (L1s), Mandarin Chinese and Korean, identified and categorized Japanese nouns embedded in short sentences in two aurally-presented tasks. Mixed effects models showed that although the tonal-language Chinese group outperformed non-tonal Korean speakers, L2 lexical knowledge, but not overall proficiency or learning experience, predicted performance on both perception tasks regardless of L1, suggesting that long-term knowledge of L2 phonological structure facilitates perception of lexical-level prosody. Domain-general resources, however, played no predictive role in advanced learners’ accent perception. A decision-tree analysis then revealed further divergence in perception accuracy by accent pattern, L1, and task type. Taken together, the results establish a close connection between language learning experience and L2 speech perception at the advanced level, and highlight the complexity inherent in the learning of non-native prosodic categories.