Native American English Speakers Research Articles

A cross-cultural study of disagreement strategies to suggestions between Persian EFL learners and American native English speakers

The speech act of disagreement is one of the areas of research that has not received much attention in the Iranian context. The focus of this study is to investigate the ways in which this act is expressed by Persian EFL learners and American native English speakers. To collect the data 140 participants (100 Persian EFL learners and 40 American native English speakers) were selected randomly from among undergraduate and graduate students of University of Isfahan and Islamic Azad University (Najafabad branch) majored in English and from Concordia University in Ann Arbor, Michigan. This study is an attempt to find out the role that power might play in the employment of strategies to mitigate the threat of the act of disagreement in two nations. Students were asked to complete a discourse completion test (DCT) designed by the researcher. They were supposed to read nine situations, and react to them via making disagreements. Respondents were expected to disagree with three interlocutors with higher status, three peers and three with lower status. In order to analyze the utterances of disagreement, Muntigl and Turnbull’s taxonomy (1998) was employed. The results revealed that although both nationalities were concerned about the power status of interlocutors and try to apply the appropriate strategies while expressing their disagreements, Persian EFL learners were more cautious.

Nonnative audiovisual speech perception in noise: dissociable effects of the speaker and listener.

Nonnative speech poses a challenge to speech perception, especially in challenging listening environments. Audiovisual (AV) cues are known to improve native speech perception in noise. The extent to which AV cues benefit nonnative speech perception in noise, however, is much less well-understood. Here, we examined native American English-speaking and native Korean-speaking listeners' perception of English sentences produced by a native American English speaker and a native Korean speaker across a range of signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs;−4 to −20 dB) in audio-only and audiovisual conditions. We employed psychometric function analyses to characterize the pattern of AV benefit across SNRs. For native English speech, the largest AV benefit occurred at intermediate SNR (i.e. −12 dB); but for nonnative English speech, the largest AV benefit occurred at a higher SNR (−4 dB). The psychometric function analyses demonstrated that the AV benefit patterns were different between native and nonnative English speech. The nativeness of the listener exerted negligible effects on the AV benefit across SNRs. However, the nonnative listeners' ability to gain AV benefit in native English speech was related to their proficiency in English. These findings suggest that the native language background of both the speaker and listener clearly modulate the optimal use of AV cues in speech recognition.

Functional connectivity associated with acoustic stability during vowel production: implications for vocal-motor control.

Vowels provide the acoustic foundation of communication through speech and song, but little is known about how the brain orchestrates their production. Positron emission tomography was used to study regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during sustained production of the vowel /a/. Acoustic and blood flow data from 13, normal, right-handed, native speakers of American English were analyzed to identify CBF patterns that predicted the stability of the first and second formants of this vowel. Formants are bands of resonance frequencies that provide vowel identity and contribute to voice quality. The results indicated that formant stability was directly associated with blood flow increases and decreases in both left- and right-sided brain regions. Secondary brain regions (those associated with the regions predicting formant stability) were more likely to have an indirect negative relationship with first formant variability, but an indirect positive relationship with second formant variability. These results are not definitive maps of vowel production, but they do suggest that the level of motor control necessary to produce stable vowels is reflected in the complexity of an underlying neural system. These results also extend a systems approach to functional image analysis, previously applied to normal and ataxic speech rate that is solely based on identifying patterns of brain activity associated with specific performance measures. Understanding the complex relationships between multiple brain regions and the acoustic characteristics of vocal stability may provide insight into the pathophysiology of the dysarthrias, vocal disorders, and other speech changes in neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Stimulus length and scale label effects on the acoustic correlates of foreign accent ratings

Previous studies have investigated acoustic correlates of accentedness ratings, but methodological differences make it difficult to compare their results directly. The present experiment investigated how choices about stimulus length and rating scale labels influence the acoustic correlates of listeners’ rating responses. Four conditions crossed two stimulus lengths (CV syllable vs. disyllabic word) with two sets of rating labels (“no foreign accent”/“strong foreign accent” vs. “native”/“not native”). Monolingual American English listeners heard samples of English from native speakers of American English, Hindi, Korean, Mandarin, and Spanish and indicated their responses on a continuous rating line. Regression models evaluated the correlations between listeners’ ratings and a variety of acoustic properties. Patterns for accentedness and non-nativeness ratings were identical. VOT, F1, and F2 correlated with ratings on all stimuli, but vowel duration correlated with ratings on disyllabic word stimuli only. If vowel duration is interpreted as a reflection of global temporal properties, this result suggests that listeners may perceive such properties in utterances as short as two syllables. Thus, stimulus design is vital in identifying components of foreign accent perception that are related to differences between a talker’s first and second languages as opposed to components that are related to general fluency.

Language proficiency, context influence foreign-accent adaptation

Listeners adapt quickly to changes in accent (Bradlow & Bent, 2003; Clarke & Garrett, 2004; inter alia). The cause of this brief delay may be due to the cost of processing accented speech, or may reflect a surprise effect associated with task expectations (Floccia et al., 2009). The present study examines a link between accent familiarity and processing delays with listeners who have varying degrees of familiarity with target languages: monolingual Texans with little or no formal exposure to Spanish, early Spanish-English bilinguals, and Korean learners of English. Participants heard four blocks of English sentences—Blocks 1 and 4 were produced by two native speakers of American English, and Blocks 2 and 3 were produced by native speakers of Spanish or Korean- and responded to written probe words. All listener groups responded more slowly after an accent change; however, the degree of delay varied with language proficiency. L1 Korean listeners were less delayed by Korean-accented speech than the other listeners, while changes to Spanish-accented speech were processed most slowly by Spanish-English bilinguals. The results suggest that adaptation to foreign-accented speech depends on language familiarity and task expectations. The processing delays are analyzed in light of intelligibility and accentedness measures.

Identification and response latencies for Mandarin-accented isolated words in quiet and in noise

This study compared the intelligibility of native and foreign-accented American English speech presented in quiet and mixed with two different levels of background noise. Two native American English speakers and two native Mandarin Chinese speakers for whom English is a second language read three 50-word lists of phonetically balanced words (Stuart, 2004). The words were mixed with noise at three different signal-to-noise levels—no noise (quiet), SNR + 10 dB (signal 10 dB louder than noise) and SNR 0 (signal and noise at equal loudness). These stimuli were presented to ten native American English listeners who were simply asked to repeat the words they heard the speakers say. Listener response latencies were measured. The results showed that for both native and accented speech, response latencies increased as the noise level increased. For words identified correctly, response times to accented speech were longer than for native speech but the noise conditions affected both types equally. For words judged incorrectly, however, the noise conditions increased latencies for accented speech more than for native speech. Overall, these results support the notion that processing accented speech requires more cognitive effort than processing native speech.

Perceptual distinctiveness of dental vs. palatal sibilants in different vowel contexts

This paper reports a similarity rating experiment and a speeded AX discrimination experiment to test the perceptual distinctiveness of dental vs. palatal sibilants in different vowel contexts. The stimuli were pairs of CV sequences where the onsets were [s, ts, tsʰ] vs. [ɕ, tɕ, tɕʰ] as in Mandarin Chinese and the vowels were [i, a, o]; the durations of the consonants and vowels were set to values close to those in natural speech; the inter-stimulus-interval was set at 100ms to facilitate responses based on psychoacoustic similarity. A significant effect of vowel contexts was observed in the similarity rating by 20 native American English speakers, whereby the dental vs. palatal sibilants were judged to be the least distinct in the [i] context. A similar pattern was observed in the speeded AX discrimination, whereby the [i] context introduced slower “different” responses than other vowels. In general, this study supports the view that the perceptual distinctiveness of a consonant pair may vary with differe...

Sounding Like Your Race in the Employment Process: An Experiment on Speaker Voice, Race Identification, and Stereotyping

Research has shown that listeners can identify black and white speakers with high accuracy rates from voice alone, but few studies have investigated whether individuals can identify Asian American native English speakers. In a three-part hypothetical employment process experiment, recordings of white, black, and US-born Asian American voices are used to test participants’ (N = 49) race identification of unseen speakers, evaluations of speakers’ employability, and accuracy of race identification with the introduction of headshots. Key findings show the following: judges demonstrate high accuracy rates of identifying white and black speakers based on voice alone, judges rated the black speaker at least eight times less likely to be hired than the white and Asian American speakers, and accuracy rates of race identification for the Asian American speaker rose dramatically with the introduction of headshots. The study contributes to research on Asian American English speech and extends work on stereotyping and employment discrimination.

Refusals in Egyptian Arabic and American English

This study investigated how native speakers of Egyptian Arabic and native speakers of American English realized the speech act of refusal in equal and unequal status situations. Ten native speakers of Egyptian Arabic and 10 native speakers of American English participated in the study. Data were elicited using context-enhanced role plays consisting of six refusal situations eliciting refusals of requests and offers. Results showed marked quantitative and qualitative differences between the two groups. For example, the Egyptians produced more words and turns than their American counterparts. The Egyptians also tended to be particularly verbose and indirect when interacting with someone higher in status. Results also showed that while the Egyptians preferred family oriented reasons to support their refusals, the Americans tended to use personal reasons. With regard to the use of individual refusal strategies, the Americans showed a preference for expressions of regret and gratitude whereas the Egyptians tended to use religious expressions (e.g., invoking the name of God) and proverbs. Discourse-level differences were also observed and were found to be more pronounced in interactions with someone higher in status.

A influência do contexto fonético-fonológico nos valores de Voice Onset Time: verificação de dados de três sistemas linguísticos

This study investigates the effects of place of articulation and vowel quality on the Voice Onset Time (VOT) of voiceless stop consonants /p/, /t/ and /k/ in word initial position. Ten Brazilian proficient learners of English and five native speakers of American English participated in this study, which verified production in Brazilian Portuguese (L1), American English (L1) and Brazilian learner’s English (L2).Results, based on the description of absolute and relative VOT values,point towards a tendency verified by previous studies of a direct correlation between place of articulation and VOT values: the further back the place of articulation, the longer VOT is going to be. As regards vowel quality effects, the frontness of the vowel following the stop was revealed as an important factor influencing VOT.

An Interlanguage Pragmatic Study on Chinese EFL Learners’ Refusal: Perception and Performance

Refusals have been widely examined across languages in the literature. However, few attempts have been made to elicit both perception and performance data for method-triangulation. In addition, Chinese EFL learners’ refusals are relatively less investigated. The present study aims to bridge this gap and has two major purposes. One is to examine the cross-cultural differences between Chinese and English refusals. The other is to study how Chinese EFL learners perceive and perform the speech act of refusal. The data were recruited from three participant groups: 30 native speakers of Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan (NSC), 30 Chinese EFL learners in Taiwan (EFL), and 30 native speakers of American English in America (NSE). The research instrument was a questionnaire with two major parts: Scaled Response Questionnaire (SRQ) and Discourse Completion Task (DCT). Elicited data were analyzed in terms of three perspectives: perception of face-threat, overall strategy use, and strategy patterns. The results showed the similarities and differences between Chinese and English refusals. As for EFL learners, they tended to perceive the face-threat greater, and used more strategies and softening devices than Chinese and Americans. In addition, some L2 native expressions were never used by learners. Further instructions are needed to help learners refuse others appropriately.

Compliment Responses: A Comparative Study of Native English Speakers and Iranian L2 Speakers

Responding to compliments is intellectually demanding on the part of the receiver since a balance should be made in order for not rejecting the addressor's compliment and not praising one's self. In this study an attempt has been made to shed light on compliment responses produced by Iranian EFL speakers as well as by the native speakers of American English in oral communicative contexts through naturalistic role-play tasks and retrospective interviews. The results revealed that the L2 participants differed from native speakers in different aspects. In addition to the shortage of cultural background, the lack of knowledge on linguistic forms could be regarded as the factors impacting the way the participants responded to compliments.

Teaching Requestive Downgraders in L2: How Effective are Written vs. Oral Output-Based Tasks?

The present study examines the impact of focused tasks on the development of Iranian EFL learners’ pragmatic competence. To this end, the researchers devised the dictogloss (DIG) as a written output-based task to explicitly raise learners’ awareness of the requestive downgraders. The researchers also administered the recast feedback during an oral output-based task to implicitly raise learners’ awareness of the target features. Prior to the experiment, 147 Iranian EFL learners and 43 American native English speakers were asked to participate in the study to help the researchers develop the instruments. To carry out the study, the researchers matched 60 Iranian EFL learners in two groups based on their scores on the Oxford Placement Test (2004). The groups were then randomly assigned to instructional conditions, namely the DIG task and the recast. Findings demonstrated that participants in both tasks preformed significantly better in the immediate and delayed posttests than in the pretest. The results also revealed that neither the effects of instructional treatment nor the effects of time were significant between the groups on the perception and production measures. Similarly, participants in both groups maintained the positive effects of the treatment in the delayed posttest on the same measures. For the recognition measure, although the effects of treatment were marginally significant in favor of the participants in the DIG task, they could not maintain the positive effects of treatment in the delayed posttest. This rendered the effect of time non-significant on this measure.

Temporal alignment between head gesture and prosodic prominence in naturally occurring conversation: An electromagnetic articulometry study

Studies of the relationship between speech events and gesticulation have suggested that the peak of the prosodic pitch accent serves as a target with which body gestures may be coordinated (Roth, 2002; Loehr, 2004). While previous work has relied on controlled speech elicitation generally restricted to nonrepresentational extension/retraction (Leonard and Cummins, 2011) or iconic (Kelly et al., 2008) gestures, here we examine the kinematics of the speech articulators and associated head movements from pairs of individuals engaged in spontaneous conversation. Age and gender matched native speakers of American English seated 2 m apart were recorded using two electromagnetic articulometer (EMA) devices (Tiede and Mooshammer, 2013). Head movements were characterized by the centroid of reference sensors placed on the left and right mastoid processes and the upper incisors. Pitch accents were coded following the ToBI implementation of Pierrehumbert's intonational framework following Beckman and Elam (1997). Preliminary findings show that the apex (point of maximum excursion) of head movements within an IP in general precedes the peak of the associated pitch accent, and is consistently aligned with co-occurring articulatory events within the syllable. [Work supported by NIH NIDCD-DC-012350.]

The rhythm of Aviation English by Native American English speakers

Air traffic controllers (ATC) and pilots at international airports must speak Aviation English (AE). Native and non-native English speakers alike must learn and effectively communicate using this technical language based on standard English. This project calculates the rhythmic profile of Native Speaker Aviation English (NSAE), which serves as the target for learners of AE and against which potential communication failures can be evaluated. NSAE rhythmic profile can be contrasted with the first language (L1) prosody to evaluate learner AE production and model training methods for specific L1 AE learners. NSAE generally exhibits flat intonational contours, so we focus on rhythm metrics. Our previous study’s findings demonstrated that NSAE metrics pattern differently than standard American English, falling between “stress-timed” and “syllable-timed” languages. Rhythm metrics based on consonant and vowel duration are affected by AE’s lack of function words (i.e., fewer reducible vowels), standard phraseology (producing prosodic chunking), and rapid speech rate (reflecting compressibility differential between vowel and consonant segments). We are training an automatic speech aligner to segment ATC NSAE and calculating a baseline for American NSAE using qualitative metrics (Ramus 2000; Low et al., 2000; Dellwo 2006). We will present our findings on how NSAE patterns with similarly evaluated languages.

Can adjustment to accented speech affect native language perception?

The human auditory system can quickly accommodate foreign-accented speech. However, the cognitive mechanisms underlying perceptual adjustment to non-native speech are not fully understood. The current study examined the perceptual consequences of adaptation toward foreign-accented speech on native language perception. Native English speakers performed an auditory shadowing task on word-length utterances in English. There were four blocks of trials. The words in the critical block (Block 3) were spoken by either a native American English speaker or a native Spanish speaker. The speaker in flanking blocks (Blocks 1–2, 4) was the same speaker, a different speaker with the same accent, or a different speaker with a different accent. Shadowing response times in the critical block were used to assess rapid perceptual adjustment and readjustment. Results showed that the nature of the preceding context influenced response times. Response times for items in the first quartile of the critical block were reliably slower when accent and talker changed than when accent and talker remained constant. These findings suggest that listeners develop perceptual expectations about ongoing speech, which when violated incur a short-term processing cost even for spoken words in the listeners’ native language.

Dances of the tongue: Temporal cues and temporal context in the production and perception of vowels

One focus of the research program of Joanne Miller and her colleagues has been on the influence of temporal context (including speaking rate) on the perception of consonant contrasts differentiated primarily by temporal cues (e.g., Voice Onset Time as a major cue for voicing contrasts; formant transition durations for manner contrasts). This talk will summarize some of my own findings on the role of temporal context (speaking style and rate) in the perception of vowels by native and non-native speakers of American English (AE). In AE Consonant-Vowel-Consonant syllables, duration varies systematically, but redundantly, among vowels contrasting in vowel “height,” cued primarily by first formant (F1) target frequency. Additional patterns of F1 temporal trajectories (timing of F1 maximum frequency and temporal symmetry/asymmetry of F1 onset and offset trajectories) differentiate so-called tense (long) and lax (short) AE vowels. Results of this research support the conception of speech production as a rhythmic activity with nested levels of timing control. Temporal patterns in syllabic- and multisyllabic-length segments of speech simultaneously provide information for phonetic identity and super-segmental structure within an exquisitely choreographed “dance” of the articulators. Differences in perception by native and non-native listeners support the conclusion that these are language-specific, learned patterns.

Tests of a dual-system model of speech category learning

In the visual domain, more than two decades of work posits the existence of dual category learning systems. The reflective system uses working memory to develop and test rules for classifying in an explicit fashion. The reflexive system operates by implicitly associating perception with actions that lead to reinforcement. Dual-systems models posit that in learning natural categories, learners initially use the reflective system and with practice, transfer control to the reflexive system. The role of reflective and reflexive systems in second language (L2) speech learning has not been systematically examined. Here monolingual, native speakers of American English were trained to categorize Mandarin tones produced by multiple talkers. Our computational modeling approach demonstrates that learners use reflective and reflexive strategies during tone category learning. Successful learners use talker-dependent, reflective analysis early in training and reflexive strategies by the end of training. Our results demonstrate that dual-learning systems are operative in L2 speech learning. Critically, learner strategies directly relate to individual differences in category learning success.

A Cognitively Grounded Measure of Pronunciation Distance

In this study we develop pronunciation distances based on naive discriminative learning (NDL). Measures of pronunciation distance are used in several subfields of linguistics, including psycholinguistics, dialectology and typology. In contrast to the commonly used Levenshtein algorithm, NDL is grounded in cognitive theory of competitive reinforcement learning and is able to generate asymmetrical pronunciation distances. In a first study, we validated the NDL-based pronunciation distances by comparing them to a large set of native-likeness ratings given by native American English speakers when presented with accented English speech. In a second study, the NDL-based pronunciation distances were validated on the basis of perceptual dialect distances of Norwegian speakers. Results indicated that the NDL-based pronunciation distances matched perceptual distances reasonably well with correlations ranging between 0.7 and 0.8. While the correlations were comparable to those obtained using the Levenshtein distance, the NDL-based approach is more flexible as it is also able to incorporate acoustic information other than sound segments.

A cross-cultural examination of the backchannel behavior of Japanese and Americans: Considerations for Japanese EFL learners

Listenership (consisting of backchannel feedback) and its e�耀 ect on intercultural communication were investigated in 30 dyadic conversations in English between Japanese and American participants. The �耀 ndings of this study demonstrate several di�耀 erences in how members of each culture used back- channels in terms of frequency, variability, placement, and function. This study also found evidence supporting the hypothesis that backchannel conventions that are not shared between cultures contribute to negative perceptions across cultures. Thus, the �耀 ndings of this study support the conclusion that listenership warrants more attention in EFL classes in Japan. Further, toward creating a peda- gogical framework, this study also provides EFL professionals with a comprehen- sive account of the listenership of Japanese EFL speakers. Finally, this study also o�耀 ers potential insights into the linguistic variation of native English speakers. That is, the negative perceptions that the American native English speakers re- ported of their Japanese EFL speaking interlocutors' listener responses in this study were not as pronounced as those reported by the British native English speakers in a previous study conducted by the same researcher.