Foreign-accented English Research Articles

Foreign Accent and Forensic Speaker Identification in Voice Lineups: The Influence of Acoustic Features Based on Prosody.

This research aims to examine both the prosodic-acoustic features and the perceptual correlates of foreign-accented English and foreign-accented Brazilian Portuguese and check how the speakers' productions of foreign and native accents are correlated to the listeners' perception. In the Methodology, we conducted a speech production procedure with a group of American speakers of L2 Brazilian Portuguese and a group of Brazilian speakers of L2 English, and a speech perception procedure in which we performed voice lineups for both languages.For the speech production statistical analysis, we ran Generalized Additive Models to evaluate the effect of the language groups on each class (metric or prosodic-acoustic) of features controlled for the smoothing effect of the covariate(s) of the opposite class. For the speech perception statistical analysis, we ran a Kruskal-Wallis test and a post-hoc Dunn's test to evaluate the effect of the voices of the lineups on the scores judged by the listeners. We nevertheless conducted acoustic (voice) similarity tests based on Cosine and Euclidean distances. Results showed significant acoustic differences between the language groups in terms of variability of the f0, duration, and voice quality. For the lineups, the results indicated that prosodic features of f0, intensity, and voice quality correlated to the listeners' perceived judgments.

Non-Native English Speakers’ Attitudes Towards Polish-Accented English

Worldwide, most research on attitudes towards foreign-accented English has focused on the judgements of native speakers or differences between the groups of native speakers and non-native speakers – and not on the evaluations of international speakers. The present paper goes against this trend and points to the infancy of attitudinal research in a more international context. The paper identifies the necessity for research in two major areas: 1) attitudes of non-native English speakers towards non-native English accents, 2) differences in normative versus intuitive approaches to teaching English pronunciation. Such empirically-oriented research is crucial to enhance the understanding of non-native speakers attitudes to foreign accent and pronunciation teaching relations. To support these claims, the paper first provides an overview of the literature on attitudinal research, an emphasis is put on attitudes of Polish language users. It further discusses the attitudes towards accented speech in the globalised world, in which English has a status of lingua franca; thus, being an accented speaker among other accented speakers is prevalent in various contexts. The tailored-English teaching models are considered here a possible factor influencing the mutual attitudes of non-native speakers. The article advocates taking steps towards a closer fit between pronunciation teaching policies and standards as well as evaluation criteria actually applicable in the context of real multinational use of English.

Translating Foreign Languages and Non-Native Varieties of English in Animated Films

The aim of this paper is to explore how foreign languages (i.e., languages other than English) and non-native varieties of English are used in Anglo-American animated films and to investigate the strategies adopted in Italian dubbing to deal with such multilingual features. The paper combines insights into professional practice with a close examination of a specific case study. The film Despicable Me 2 (dir. Pierre Coffin, Chris Renaud, Illumination Entertainment, 2013) has been chosen for analysis since it displays more than one language and several language varieties (British English, American English and foreign-accented English). The film also exploits visual and verbal stereotypes which enhance the comedic elements of the film. This multiplicity of voices and identities through language variety represents a challenge for audiovisual translators. By analysing the representation of characters and drawing on personal communication with Italian dubbing practitioners, the article aims to unveil how linguistic variation, multilingualism and diversity are dealt with in dubbing. The article will show that, although general trends may be identified as far as foreign languages and non-native varieties are concerned, the solutions offered by dubbing professionals often depend on a variety of factors and agents.

Voice quality differences between American English speakers and Korean learners of English

Various features have been examined as markers of foreign accent including segment-level errors, deviation in subsegmental acoustic properties, as well as prosodic patterns such as intonation, rhythm, and speaking rate. Features that characterize voice quality may also be useful but they have been investigated less extensively in the literature. The present study explores the utility of voice quality features by analyzing and comparing speech samples from American English speakers and Korean learners of English documented in the Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English. Measures of jitter, shimmer, and harmonics-to-noise ratio (HNR) were extracted from vowels and compared between the two speaker groups. Overall, Korean learners produced English vowels with less jitter and shimmer as well as higher HNRs than English speakers. The pattern was consistently found in both scripted and unscripted speech and was more salient among male speakers than female speakers. Furthermore, the same trend, although weaker, was also found when the Korean and English speakers produced vowels in their respective L1s while reading comparable scripts. However, the Korean speakers showed more shimmer while reading scripts in Korean (L1) than English (L2).

EFFECTS OF AN ARABIC ACCENT ON EFL LEARNERS' PRODUCTIVE INTELLIGIBILITY

This study aimed at investigating the effects of a foreign accent, namely the Iraqi Arabic accent, at the segmental level on the productive intelligibility of Iraqi EFL learners. Drawing on an intelligibility pronunciation principle, i.e. Gimsons (2001) Minimum General Intelligibility (MGI), the study applied a mixed-methods research approach to measure the extent to which features of this accent impede the productive intelligibility of these learners and to identify the communication strategies they use to overcome intelligibility failures. To achieve these aims, two data collection tools were used: a production intelligibility test and a speaking task. Although the overall quantitative findings revealed that Iraqi EFL learners foreign-accented English was intelligible at the segmental level, most intelligibility failures were ascribed to the mispronunciation of non-existent English phonemes. The qualitative aspect of the study aimed at identifying the communication strategies Iraqi EFL learners use to overcome these intelligibility failures. In this respect, several strategies were identified, namely the let-it-pass strategy, the replacement strategy, the repetition strategy and the time gaining strategy. The article concludes with the implications and applications of the findings.Corresponding author: Ahmad NazariDOI:: doi.org/10.24071/llt.2020.230201

Analysis of vowel production in Mandarin/Hindi/American- accented English for accent recognition systems

With globalization and emerging voice-activated systems, accent recognition systems have gained more importance. Foreign-accented English shows different acoustical characteristics from native English pronunciation. It varies based on native language of speakers. This work investigated the similarities and differences between spectral and time-domain characteristics of vowel production for English /hvd/ words spoken by native Mandarin, Hindi, and American English speakers. Fundamental frequency, the first four formants, mel-cepstral coefficients, linear predictive coefficients, harmonicity, spectral centroid, spectral spread, tonality, spectral flatness, pitch range coefficients, and zero crossings rate were examined for male and female speakers of English. One-way ANOVA was performed to find the significant correlations. Lindblom’s perceptual distance of the corner vowels was calculated for further analysis. Our preliminary findings indicated that the vowel spaces of the male L2 speakers were smaller than the male L1 speakers’ vowel space. The F1-F2 space of the corner vowel /ɑ/ presented the most variance among L1 and L2 speakers. The vowel space of the female Hindi-accented English was found to be nearly triangular shaped. For the vowels /i/ and /ɪ/, Mandarin- and Hindi-accented English showed similar characteristics. Short-time energy had significant means between L1 and L2 speakers (p < 0.001) for the vowels /i/ as in ‘heed’ and /ɪ/ as in ‘hid’. Higher F1 frequencies were calculated for the vowels /ӕ/ as in ‘had’, /ε/ as in ‘head’ and /ʌ/ as in ‘hud’ spoken by Mandarin-accented speakers. Time-domain based features provided noteworthy differences between the female L1 and L2 speakers of English. The baseline classification system showed that spectral features had higher impacts on recognizing Mandarin- and Hindi-accented English.

To believe or not to believe? How voice and accent information in speech alter listener impressions of trust.

Our decision to believe what another person says can be influenced by vocally expressed confidence in speech and by whether the speaker-listener are members of the same social group. The dynamic effects of these two information sources on neurocognitive processes that promote believability impressions from vocal cues are unclear. Here, English Canadian listeners were presented personal statements (She has access to the building) produced in a confident or doubtful voice by speakers of their own dialect (in-group) or speakers from two different "out-groups" (regional or foreign-accented English). Participants rated how believable the speaker is for each statement and event-related potentials (ERPs) were analysed from utterance onset. Believability decisions were modulated by both the speaker's vocal confidence level and their perceived in-group status. For in-group speakers, ERP effects revealed an early differentiation of vocally expressed confidence (i.e., N100, P200), highlighting the motivational significance of doubtful voices for drawing believability inferences. These early effects on vocal confidence perception were qualitatively different or absent when speakers had an accent; evaluating out-group voices was associated with increased demands on contextual integration and re-analysis of a non-native representation of believability (i.e., increased N400, late negativity response). Accent intelligibility and experience with particular out-group accents each influenced how vocal confidence was processed for out-group speakers. The N100 amplitude was sensitive to out-group attitudes and predicted actual believability decisions for certain out-group speakers. We propose a neurocognitive model in which vocal identity information (social categorization) dynamically influences how vocal expressions are decoded and used to derive social inferences during person perception.

Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented speech and its transfer to an unfamiliar talker.

How fast can listeners adapt to unfamiliar foreign accents? Clarke and Garrett [J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 116, 3647-3658 (2004)] (CG04) reported that native-English listeners adapted to foreign-accented English within a minute, demonstrating improved processing of spoken words. In two web-based experiments that closely follow the design of CG04, the effects of rapid accent adaptation are examined and its generalization is explored across talkers. Experiment 1 replicated the core finding of CG04 that initial perceptual difficulty with foreign-accented speech can be attenuated rapidly by a brief period of exposure to an accented talker. Importantly, listeners showed both faster (replicating CG04) and more accurate (extending CG04) comprehension of this talker. Experiment 2 revealed evidence that such adaptation transferred to a different talker of a same accent. These results highlight the rapidity of short-term accent adaptation and raise new questions about the underlying mechanism. It is suggested that the web-based paradigm provides a useful tool for investigations in speech adaptation.

Discourse Intonation and Information Structure: An Empirical Study of ExistentialThereConstructions in Non-native Spontaneous Speech

AbstractThe management of given and new information is one of the key components of accomplishing coherence in oral discourse, which is claimed to be a problematic area for language learners (Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995: 14). Research on discourse intonation proposes that instead of the given/new dichotomy, givenness should be viewed as a continuum, with different types of accessibility (Baumann &amp; Grice 2006). Moreover, Prince (1992) previously categorized information structure into Hearer-old/Hearer-new and Discourse-old/Discourse-new information. There is consensus on the fact that focus or prominence associated with new information is marked with nuclear pitch accent, and its main acoustic cue, fundamental frequency (f0) (Ward &amp; Birner 2001: 120). Non-native intonation has been reported to display numerous differences in f0 range and patterns compared to native speech (Wennerstrom 1994; Baker 2010). This study is an attempt to address the issue of marking information structure in existentialtheresentences by means of f0 in non-native spontaneous speech. Data originates from task-based interactions in the Wildcat Corpus of Native- and Foreign-Accented English (Van Engen et al. 2010). This paper examines two issues: (1) information structure in relation to the notions of givenness and different types of accessibility (Baumann &amp; Grice 2006) and to Prince’s (1992) multidimensional taxonomy and (2) the use of f0 peaks to mark the prominence of new information. Several differences were measured among native speakers regarding the use of f0, sentence type, and complexity.

Effects of early home language environment on perception and production of speech

The effects of exposure to non-English heritage languages versus exposure to foreign-accented English during early childhood on language performances later in life were investigated. Three groups of young adult participants who differed in their early home language environment were examined on a series of linguistic tasks. Results showed that people who were mostly exposed to accented English in the early home environment are more native-like in various aspects of English language performance than those who were mostly exposed to their non-English heritage language, including vocabulary, pronunciation, and processing of certain types of speech stimuli. Early and extended exposure to accented speech, however, does not appear to enhance the ability to perceive foreign accents in general, and may in fact produce a disadvantage when listening to unfamiliar accents. These findings provide some initial insight into the consequences of migrant parents choosing to speak one language over the other with their children.

Speech-on-speech masking with variable access to the linguistic content of the masker speech for native and nonnative english speakers.

Masking release for an English sentence-recognition task in the presence of foreign-accented English speech compared with native-accented English speech was reported in Calandruccio et al (2010a). The masking release appeared to increase as the masker intelligibility decreased. However, it could not be ruled out that spectral differences between the speech maskers were influencing the significant differences observed. The purpose of the current experiment was to minimize spectral differences between speech maskers to determine how various amounts of linguistic information within competing speech Affiliationect masking release. A mixed-model design with within-subject (four two-talker speech maskers) and between-subject (listener group) factors was conducted. Speech maskers included native-accented English speech and high-intelligibility, moderate-intelligibility, and low-intelligibility Mandarin-accented English. Normalizing the long-term average speech spectra of the maskers to each other minimized spectral differences between the masker conditions. Three listener groups were tested, including monolingual English speakers with normal hearing, nonnative English speakers with normal hearing, and monolingual English speakers with hearing loss. The nonnative English speakers were from various native language backgrounds, not including Mandarin (or any other Chinese dialect). Listeners with hearing loss had symmetric mild sloping to moderate sensorineural hearing loss. Listeners were asked to repeat back sentences that were presented in the presence of four different two-talker speech maskers. Responses were scored based on the key words within the sentences (100 key words per masker condition). A mixed-model regression analysis was used to analyze the difference in performance scores between the masker conditions and listener groups. Monolingual English speakers with normal hearing benefited when the competing speech signal was foreign accented compared with native accented, allowing for improved speech recognition. Various levels of intelligibility across the foreign-accented speech maskers did not influence results. Neither the nonnative English-speaking listeners with normal hearing nor the monolingual English speakers with hearing loss benefited from masking release when the masker was changed from native-accented to foreign-accented English. Slight modifications between the target and the masker speech allowed monolingual English speakers with normal hearing to improve their recognition of native-accented English, even when the competing speech was highly intelligible. Further research is needed to determine which modifications within the competing speech signal caused the Mandarin-accented English to be less effective with respect to masking. Determining the influences within the competing speech that make it less effective as a masker or determining why monolingual normal-hearing listeners can take advantage of these differences could help improve speech recognition for those with hearing loss in the future.

Effects of listener characteristics on foreign-accentedness rating of a non-standard English dialect

This project analyzes what characteristics of listeners affect whether they perceive Chicano English as foreign-accented English. Many Americans assume Chicano English (CE) is non-native English spoken by native Spanish speakers, but CE is often spoken as a native dialect of English. CE is a very common dialect in Tucson, Arizona, and this project examines the correlation between listeners' ethnicity, familiarity with Hispanic people, and political stance on immigration, and their perception of CE as foreign-accented. Stimuli are sentences read by CE and other Tucson speakers that contain phonetic environments where CE has features that distinguish it from Standard American English (SAE) . The listener population is Southern Arizonans of various ethnicities with varying degrees of exposure to CE and Spanish. The experiment uses a Foreign Accentedness Rating (FAR) task, as well as classification of stimuli as spoken by a Hispanic vs. Anglo speaker and background questions on listeners' language background and political opinions. Highly accurate identification of ethnicity is predicted, as well as correlations between some measures of the listeners' background and strength of FAR rating of CE speakers. Conclusions involve the effect of long-term exposure to a local dialect and sociolinguistic status on perceived degree of foreign accent.

Effects of speaker variability on learning foreign-accented English for EFL learners.

Using a cognitive load theory approach, we investigated the effects of speaker variability when individuals are learning to understand English as a foreign language (EFL) spoken by foreign-accented speakers. The use of multiple, Indian-accented speakers was compared to that of a single speaker for Chinese EFL learners with a higher or lower English language proficiency. Translation accuracy scores and cognitive load self-rating scales were used to measure differences between various acquisition conditions. After 3 consecutive days of acquisition, contrasting effects were found depending on levels of expertise. Analyses revealed that multiple-speaker acquisition conditions facilitated perceptual learning of foreign-accented English for higher expertise EFL learners, whereas single-speaker acquisition facilitated learning for lower expertise EFL learners. These results suggest that effective learning of foreign language in spoken form should take into account both the instructional format and learners’ expertise levels.

Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English

This paper investigated how foreign-accented stress cues affect on-line speech comprehension in British speakers of English. While unstressed English vowels are usually reduced to /ə/, Dutch speakers of English only slightly centralize them. Speakers of both languages differentiate stress by suprasegmentals (duration and intensity). In a cross-modal priming experiment, English listeners heard sentences ending in monosyllabic prime fragments--produced by either an English or a Dutch speaker of English--and performed lexical decisions on visual targets. Primes were either stress-matching ("ab" excised from absurd), stress-mismatching ("ab" from absence), or unrelated ("pro" from profound) with respect to the target (e.g., ABSURD). Results showed a priming effect for stress-matching primes only when produced by the English speaker, suggesting that vowel quality is a more important cue to word stress than suprasegmental information. Furthermore, for visual targets with word-initial secondary stress that do not require vowel reduction (e.g., CAMPAIGN), resembling the Dutch way of realizing stress, there was a priming effect for both speakers. Hence, our data suggest that Dutch-accented English is not harder to understand in general, but it is in instances where the language-specific implementation of lexical stress differs across languages.

Pauses in Korean-accented conversational English

The current study investigates the characteristics of speech disfluencies (i.e., silent and filled pauses) produced by Korean learners of English. Unlike previous studies that focused on speech disfluencies in read English speech by Korean talkers (e.g., Lee, 2007; Yom, 2006; Cha, 2005), this study gathered English disfluency data uttered by Korean speakers in a more naturalistic setting referred to as the Diapix task in the literature (Kim et al., 2011; Van Engen et al., 2010; Baker & Hazan, 2010) where two talkers were involved in a spontaneous dialogue to achieve a common goal. One central finding of the current study is that Korean learners of English produce pauses to a greater extent when their conversation partner is another non-native speaker of English than when their partner is a native speaker of English. We put forward a hypothesis that can account for this finding--pauses serve as a facilitatory perceptual cue for Korean learners of English, independent from their more typical role as repairing errors (Levelt, 1983; Kormos, 1999). Additional implications that the current findings have for the studies of speech disfluencies in foreign-accented conversational English are discussed.

Word durations in non-native English

In this study, we compare the effects of English lexical features on word duration for native and non-native English speakers and for non-native speakers with different L1s and a range of L2 experience. We also examine whether non-native word durations lead to judgments of a stronger foreign accent. We measured word durations in English paragraphs read by 12 American English (AE), 20 Korean, and 20 Chinese speakers. We also had AE listeners rate the ‘accentedness’ of these non-native speakers. AE speech had shorter durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, greater reduction of function words, and less between-speaker variance than non-native speech. However, both AE and non-native speakers showed sensitivity to lexical predictability by reducing second mentions and high-frequency words. Non-native speakers with more native-like word durations, greater within-speaker word duration variance, and greater function word reduction were perceived as less accented. Overall, these findings identify word duration as an important and complex feature of foreign-accented English.

The Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English: communicative efficiency across conversational dyads with varying language alignment profiles.

This paper describes the development of the Wildcat Corpus of native- and foreign-accented English,a corpus containing scripted and spontaneous speech recordings from 24 native speakers of American English and 52 non-native speakers of English.The core element of this corpus is a set of spontaneous speech recordings, for which a new method of eliciting dialogue-based, laboratory-quality speech recordings was developed (the Diapix task). Dialogues between two native speakers of English, between two non-native speakers of English (with either shared or different LIs), and between one native and one non-native speaker of English are included and analyzed in terms of general measures of communicative efficiency.The overall finding was that pairs of native talkers were most efficient, followed by mixed native/non-native pairs and non-native pairs with shared LI. Non-native pairs with different LIs were least efficient.These results support the hypothesis that successful speech communication depends both on the alignment of talkers to the target language and on the alignment of talkers to one another in terms of native language background.

Effects of listener experience with foreign accent on perception of accentedness and speaker age.

The current study examined the effects of foreign accent and listener experience on the perception of a speaker’s age and native language. Ten audio stimuli were prepared from the recording of five Arabic speakers and five English speakers (18–79 years old) from the Speech Accent Archive [Weinberger (2009)] for the perception experiment. Thirty native speakers of English participated in the perception experiment through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk website, estimated the speaker age, rated the speaker’s accentedness, and estimated the native language of the speaker. The listeners were divided into two groups based on their experience with foreign accented English (experienced and inexperienced groups). Higher correlation was found between perceived age (PA) and actual chronological age (CA) for the native (English) stimuli than for the Arabic‐accented stimuli in both listener groups. The correlation between PA and CA was higher in the experienced listeners than in the inexperienced listeners. Accentedness rating suggests that the inexperienced listeners tend to rate both native and non‐native speakers neutrally on the scale. The results suggest that experiences with any foreign accented speech facilitates identification of age from speech and help to form the ability to perceive differences in the degree of foreign accented speech.

Perceptual adaptation to foreign-accented English.

Foreign-accented speech presents an interesting challenge for native listeners due to its deviations from native accented speech along multiple acoustic-phonetic dimensions. Nevertheless, since these deviations arise primarily from interactions of the native (L1) and target (L2) language sound systems, they are highly systematic both within individuals and across talkers from the same L1. Moreover, since numerous features of English are typologically rare (e.g., coda clusters and large vowel inventory), various foreign-accents of English frequently converge on similar specific deviations (e.g., cluster reduction and vowel category conflation). Thus, despite a high degree of deviation from native talker norms, the systematicity of foreign-accented speech should facilitate listener adaptation. We examined adaptation at the level of the individual (talker-dependent), the L1 (talker-independent), and the population (accent-independent). First, we showed variation in the speed and extent of talker-dependent adaptation depending on the talker’s baseline English speech intelligibility. Second, we demonstrated that talker-independent adaptation required exposure to multiple talkers of the accent. Finally, we demonstrated that exposure to multiple accents (e.g., Korean-, Hindi-, Mandarin-, and Romanian-accented English) can facilitate accent-independent adaptation, i.e., adaptation to both a trained accented (Mandarin-accented English) and an untrained accent(Slovakian-accented English). This work builds a strong case for highly flexible speech perception mechanisms.

Rapid adaptation to foreign-accented English

This study explored the perceptual benefits of brief exposure to non-native speech. Native English listeners were exposed to English sentences produced by non-native speakers. Perceptual processing speed was tracked by measuring reaction times to visual probe words following each sentence. Three experiments using Spanish- and Chinese-accented speech indicate that processing speed is initially slower for accented speech than for native speech but that this deficit diminishes within one minute of exposure. Control conditions rule out explanations for the adaptation effect based on practice with the task and general strategies for dealing with difficult speech. Further results suggest that adaptation can occur within as few as two to four sentence-length utterances. The findings emphasize the flexibility of human speech processing and require models of spoken word recognition that can rapidly accommodate significant acoustic-phonetic deviations from native language speech patterns.