Native American English Speakers Research Articles

New insights on compliment responses: A comparison between native English speakers and Chinese L2 speakers

This study explored compliment responses (CR) produced by Chinese ESL and EFL speakers as well as by the native speakers of American English in oral communicative contexts through a naturalistic role-play task. The ESL speakers’ rationales for adopting the CR strategies were further examined through retrospective interviews. The role-play results showed both L2 groups differed from native speakers in multiple ways in their impromptu responses to the compliments carefully embedded in the role play task. While almost all L2 speakers knew how to say “thank you/thanks” to others’ compliments, a number of them, especially the EFL speakers, had difficulties in utilizing a variety of response strategies, such as credit-shifting (e.g. My pleasure/Thanks for having me over). Results from the retrospective interview indicated the two major factors that influenced ESL participants’ CRs, which were their L1 culture and limited L2 linguistic forms.

An Acoustic Analysis of Chinese and English Vowels

This study compares the articulation of two pairs of similar vowels in Mandarin Chinese in Taiwan and American English. Four Taiwanese learners and four native speakers of American English were recruited to produce five vowels for each language. Acoustic vowel qualities of formant one (F1) and formant two (F2 ) values were measured and analyzed. Results show that Chinese English and American English are different in vowel height and frontness. Pedagogical implications are provided for EFL teachers to help Chinese learners improve their pronunciation.

Friends or foes? Communicating feelings through language in cross-cultural interactions

This study examines cross-cultural communication in English between Americans and Brazilians through the lens of intercultural pragmatics. Three groups of speakers participated: native speakers of American English, native speakers of Brazilian Portuguese, and English learners who spoke Brazilian Portuguese as a first language. Using a mixed design including role plays and interviews and both quantitative and qualitative data, the study identified pragmatic transfer among the ESL learners, who also showed evidence of developing awareness of the sociolinguistic norms of the target language and its speakers.

The pragmatics of refusals in English and Japanese: alternative approaches to negotiation

We examine refusals negotiated and understood by adult female native speakers of American English and Japanese. In open role-plays produced by 8 pairs of Japanese and 8 pairs of American English speakers, a request was refused. Semi-structured post-hoc interviews with participants and interpretations were triangulated with bilingual experts. For all participants, a successful outcome involved a speech act set negotiated through several conversational turns. While both groups used fillers, softeners, hedges, and backchannels, fragmented utterances were more common among Japanese speakers. Americans frequently offered alternative plans and commented on the importance of honesty while Japanese participants often implied refusal, using postponement. Some American refusals were experienced as impolite by Japanese informants, while Americans identified the Japanese postponement strategy as problematic.

Learning how to read situations and know what is the right thing to say or do in an L2: A study of socio-cultural competence and language transfer

This study investigates the interlanguage behavior of Chinese learners of American English, focusing on how they offer ‘compliments’ in a second language (L2). In this paper, the behavior of Taiwanese ESL (English-as-a-second-language) learners in the United States is compared with that of Taiwanese native speakers of Mandarin Chinese and with that of native speakers of American English, in order to reveal how the ESL learners perform this speech act in naturally occurring contexts. The results showed that the linguistic strategies and options employed to realize compliments by native Chinese speakers were very different from those used by native speakers of English. For example, Chinese speakers were much less inclined to offer compliments than were English speakers. This tendency was also visible in the L2 of Chinese ESL speakers. Therefore, although there were some similarities between the learners and the target language speakers, the performance of the former, in terms of the use of strategies, positive semantic carriers, syntactic formulaic patterns, supportive moves and/or small talk, could often be seen to reflect native language (L1) communicative styles and the transfer of L1 socio-cultural strategies into L2 behavior.

Vowel Contrast and Speech Intelligibility in Dysarthria

Background/Aims: This study examined the spectral characteristics of American English vowels in dysarthria associated with cerebral palsy (CP), and investigated the relationship between a speaker’s overall speech intelligibility and vowel contrast. Methods: The data were collected from 12 American English native speakers (9 speakers with a diagnosis of CP and 3 controls). Primary measures were F₁ and F₂ frequencies of 3 corner vowels /i, a, u/ and 3 noncorner vowels /I, 3, */. Six acoustic variables were derived from the formant measures, and were regressed against intelligibility: corner vowel space, noncorner vowel space, mean distance between vowels, F₁ and F₂ variability, and overlap degree among vowels. Results: First, the effect of vowel was significant for both F₁ and F₂ measures for all speakers, but post hoc analysis revealed a reduced distinction at lower intelligibility. Second, regression functions relating intelligibility and acoustic variables were significant for overlap degree among vowels, F₁ variability, corner vowel space and mean distance between vowels. Overlap degree among vowels accounted for the greatest amount of variance in intelligibility scores. Conclusion: A speaker’s overall intelligibility in dysarthric speech is better represented by the overlap degree among vowels than by the vowel space.

Speech articulator movements recorded from facing talkers using two electromagnetic articulometer systems simultaneously.

Two 3-D electromagnetic articulometer systems, the Carstens AG500 and Northern Digital WAVE, have been used simultaneously without mutual interference to record the speech articulator movements of two talkers facing one another 2 m apart. A series of benchmark tests evaluating the stability of fixed distances between sensors attached to a rotating rigid body was first conducted to determine whether the two systems could operate independently, with results showing no significant effect of dual operation on either system. In the experiment proper, two native speakers of American English participated as subjects. Sensors were glued to three points on the tongue, the upper and lower incisors, lips, and left and right mastoid processes for each subject. Independent audio tracks were recorded using separate directional microphones, which were used to align the kinematic data from both subjects during post-processing. Data collected were of two types: extended spontaneous conversation and repeated incongruent word sequences (e.g., talker one produced “cop top...;” talker two “top cop...”). Both talkers show strong positive correlations between speech rate (in syllables/s) and head movement. The word sequences also show error and rate effects related to mutual entrainment. [Work supported by ARC Human Communication Science Network (RN0460284), MARCS Auditory Laboratories, NIH.]

Frequency of consonant articulation errors in dysarthric speech

This paper analyses consonant articulation errors in dysarthric speech produced by seven American-English native speakers with cerebral palsy. Twenty-three consonant phonemes were transcribed with diacritics as necessary in order to represent non-phoneme misarticulations. Error frequencies were examined with respect to six variables: articulatory complexity, place of articulation, and manner of articulation of the target phoneme; and change in articulatory complexity, place, and manner resulting from the misarticulation. Results showed that target phonemes with high articulatory complexity were most often misarticulated, independent of intelligibility, but low-intelligibility speakers reduced the complexity of target consonants more frequently. All speakers tended to misarticulate to the adjacent place of the target place, but this pattern was most prominent for high-intelligibility speakers. Low- and mid-intelligibility speakers produced more manner errors than high-intelligibility speakers. Based on these results, a two-part model of consonant articulation errors is proposed for CP-associated spastic dysarthia.

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.

On the Applicability of Cultural Scripts in Teaching L2 Compliments

Abstract I n this study, Natural Semantic Metalanguage(henceforth NSM) was used to carry out a comparative analysis. The compliment response behavior of native Persian speakers was compared with that of Native American English speakers to see if it can provide evidence for applicability of NSM model which is claimed to be universal. The descriptive technique was the cultural scripts approach, using conceptual primes proposed in the NSM theory. The cultural scripts were presented in both English and Persian Metalanguages. The data were taken from a corpus of 50 hours of recording the live interviews from the Persian and English TV channels. The results showed the applicability of NSM model for cross-cultural comparisons. Then, the paper concludes with the pedagogical implications of the development of the theory of cultural scripts for teaching L2 socio-pragmatics in general and compliments in particular.

Neuroanatomical Characteristics and Speech Perception in Noise in Older Adults

Previous research has attributed older adults' difficulty with perceiving speech in noise to peripheral hearing loss. However, recent studies have suggested a more complex picture and implicate the central nervous system in sensation and sensory deficits. This study examines the relationship between the neuroanatomical structure of cognitive brain regions and the ability to perceive speech in noise in older adults. In particular, the neuroanatomical characteristics of the left ventral and dorsal prefrontal cortex (PFC) are considered relative to standard measures of hearing in noise. The participants were 15 older and 14 younger right-handed native speakers of American English who had no neurologic deficits and scored better than normal on standardized cognitive tests. We measured the participants' peripheral hearing ability and their ability to perceive speech in noise using established tests. Anatomical magnetic resonance images were taken and analyzed to extract regional volumes and thicknesses of several key neuroanatomical structures. Younger adults had better hearing sensitivity and better speech perception in noise ability than older adults. For the older adults only, the volume of the left pars triangularis and the cortical thickness of the left superior frontal gyrus were significant predictors of performance on the speech in noise test. These findings suggest that, in addition to peripheral structures, the central nervous system also contributes to the ability to perceive speech in noise. In older adults, a decline in the relative volume and cortical thickness of the PFC during aging can therefore be a factor in a declining ability to perceive speech in a naturalistic environment. These findings are consistent with the decline-compensation hypothesis, which states that a decline in sensory processing caused by cognitive aging can be accompanied by an increase in the recruitment of more general cognitive areas as a means of compensation. We found that a larger PFC volume may compensate for declining peripheral hearing. Clinically, recognizing the contribution of the cerebral cortex expands treatment possibilities for hearing loss in older adults beyond peripheral hearing aids to include strategies for improving cognitive function. We conclude by considering several mechanisms by which the PFC may facilitate speech perception in noise, including inhibitory control, attention, cross-modal compensation, word prediction and phonological working memory, although no definitive conclusion can be drawn.

Children’s recognition of American English consonants in noise

In contrast to the availability of consonant confusion studies with adults, to date, no investigators have compared children's consonant confusion patterns in noise to those of adults in a single study. To examine whether children's error patterns are similar to those of adults, three groups of children (24 each in 4-5, 6-7, and 8-9 yrs. old) and 24 adult native speakers of American English (AE) performed a recognition task for 15 AE consonants in /ɑ/-consonant-/ɑ/ nonsense syllables presented in a background of speech-shaped noise. Three signal-to-noise ratios (SNR: 0, +5, and +10 dB) were used. Although the performance improved as a function of age, the overall consonant recognition accuracy as a function of SNR improved at a similar rate for all groups. Detailed analyses using phonetic features (manner, place, and voicing) revealed that stop consonants were the most problematic for all groups. In addition, for the younger children, front consonants presented in the 0 dB SNR condition were more error prone than others. These results suggested that children's use of phonetic cues do not develop at the same rate for all phonetic features.

Identification of the place of articulation of trilingual postvocalic nasals and stops by native speakers of American English, Korean and Japanese.

Native speakers of American English and Korean produced postvocalic nasals and stops in /CVC/ frames in which the syllable final segment was a consonant with airstream blocking, and native speakers of Japanese produced more nasal /N/ and obstruent /Q/ in /CVNCV/ and /CVQCV/ frames. In Japanese stimuli, the consonant after the nasal or the obstruent was always a stop. Their utterances were recorded and edited to be used as stimuli for the experiment. The release burst of the English stimuli and the second syllable of Japanese stimuli were deleted. Native speakers of these three languages were recruited as listeners. They identified the place of articulation of the syllable‐final nasals and stops of the three languages. As predicted, Japanese listeners performed most poorly because there are no phonemic contrasts between postvocalic nasals or stops in Japanese. Korean listeners outperformed the other two groups of listeners in identifying the place of articulation. Postvocalic stops in Korean are not released, so the Korean listeners may not depend on the release burst to identify the place of articulation of a syllable final stop. However, they made more voicing errors than American listeners probably because voiced stops in Korean cannot occur in a postvocalic position.

Psychometric functions for rough voice quality.

Dysphonic voices arising from laryngeal lesions are generally believed to vary across three perceptual dimensions—breathiness, roughness, and strain. This experiment sought to evaluate the psychometric functions for roughness and to determine the acoustic cues for its perception. Ten normal-hearing listeners, all native speakers of American English, were recruited for this experiment. The perception of roughness in dysphonic voices was evaluated for 34 voices from the Kay Elemetrics Disordered Voice Database (Kay-Pentax, Inc., Lincoln, NJ). Listeners compared the roughness of these test stimuli against that for a sawtooth wave with a 40-Hz squared-cosine amplitude modulation (AM). The modulation depth of the sawtooth wave was varied from low to high in a paired comparison task. Psychometric functions for roughness were derived by plotting the listener response for each stimulus pair against the modulation depth of AM sawtooth wave. The data for each stimulus were fitted with a logistic function, and various parameters (threshold, slope, and saturation point) were computed. These parameters were then compared to various acoustic measures obtained from each voice to determine candidate acoustic cues for roughness.

Perceptual similarity of unfamiliar regional dialects.

Linguistic experience has been shown to influence the perception of regional dialect variation. Recent studies have found that the amount and type of experience with regional dialect variation affect performance in identifying or categorizing regional dialects. Experience also shapes the perceived similarity among regional varieties. To examine the effect of familiarity on the perceived similarity of regional dialects, a paired comparison perceptual similarity rating task was carried out with a group of unfamiliar regional dialects. Native speakers of American English made explicit judgments about the similarity of unfamiliar talkers from the United Kingdom and Ireland based on the regional dialect. Results show that listeners judged the regional dialects of pairs of talkers from the same dialect region as more similar than those of pairs of talkers from different dialect regions. A multidimensional scaling analysis revealed two dimensions of perceptual dialect similarity, both reflecting the geographic location of the cities of origins of the talkers (north versus south and east versus west). Thus, despite being unfamiliar with the regional dialects in the study, listeners were able to use dialect‐specific differences in the acoustic signal to make judgments on the perceptual similarity of talkers based on regional dialect.

Prosodic interaction between speakers of American and British English.

Previous work has found that interaction between speakers influences their production, in that phonetic similarity of the speakers to each other increases [Sancier and Fowler, J. Phonetics 25, 421–426 (1995); Pardo, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 119, 2382–2393 (2006); and Tobin, J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 125, 2757 (2009)]. These studies have mostly focused on segmental properties of speech. Little is known, however, about how prosodic properties of speech are affected in conversational interaction. An experiment is presented that examines the interaction between native speakers of British English and American English. Using the synchronous speech paradigm [Cummins, ARLO 3, 7–11 (2002) and Zvonik and Cummins, in Proceedings of the Eurospeech 2003 (2003), pp. 777–780] where two speakers read sentences at the same time, we examine how speakers influence each other at the prosodic level. Eight subjects (4 dyads), each consisting of one British and one American speaker, read the following: a short story that contained four words where the two dialects differ in stress pattern, 13 target words where the dialects differ in vowels, and 84 sentences with varying intonation patterns (question, statement, and focus). The goal was to examine how speakers adjust to each other’s speech, and whether certain prosodic properties are more susceptible to adjustment to the co-speaker’s production than others.

Referencing in a Second Language: Korean EFL Learners' Cohesive Use of References in Written Narrative Discourse

This study examined Korean English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' ability to establish textual cohesion in English through appropriate selection of reference forms and reference management strategies in their written narrative discourse. It employed both quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore how the language-specific reference choices and strategies in their first language (L1) may be evident in their second language (L2) discourse production. Participants were Korean adult EFL learners and American native English speakers (NES) in college. Findings from the quantitative analysis of the written narratives showed that the specifically Korean referential strategies of heavily relying on nominals were not evident in the Korean EFL learners' English narrative discourse. However, a closer look at the data with a qualitative approach revealed that the Korean EFL learners' referential strategies were very different from those of the NES. More specifically, the qualitative analysis revealed that, unlike the NES who alternated the use of noun phrases and pronouns strategically to achieve certain discourse effects, the Korean participants did not display such sophisticated use of reference forms within an extended L2 discourse. The findings are attributed to the L1-specific reference management conventions and to the L2 learners' lack of practice and competence in referential strategies at the discourse level.

Insertion preferred to deletion in learner speech: A study of Korean English.

Do language learners prefer insertion or deletion, when they are forced to produce the target speech that is not permissible in native phonology? To answer this question, we analyzed the speech data from 6,887 word data of L1 English, L2 English, and L1 English loanwords, which were elicited from 11 native speakers of American English, 181 Korean adult learners of American English, and 11 native speakers of Korean. We measured the acoustic features that are relevant to insertion and deletion in English. We focused on whether non-native English evidence effects of the native Korean more in the deletion of a consonant, as in [kansep] for the English loanword concept; or in the insertion of a vowel, as in [kanseptㅁ]. The results indicate that the learner speech manifests significantly more insertion errors than deletion errors, in both word-level and sentence-level production. The error rate drops drastically after instruction to support that explicit instruction is effective in phonological acquisition of the learner speech.

Perceptual learning of systematic variation in Spanish-accented speech.

Spoken language is characterized by an enormous amount of variability in how linguistic segments are realized. In order to investigate how speech perceptual processes accommodate to multiple sources of variation, adult native speakers of American English were trained with English words or sentences produced by six Spanish-accented talkers. At test, listeners transcribed utterances produced by six familiar or unfamiliar Spanish-accented talkers. With only brief exposure, listeners perceptually adapted to accent-general regularities in spoken language, generalizing to novel accented words and sentences produced by unfamiliar accented speakers. Acoustic properties of vowel production and their relation to identification performance were assessed to determine if the English listeners were sensitive to systematic variation in the realization of accented vowels. Vowels that showed the most improvement after Spanish-accented training were distinct from nearby vowels in terms of their acoustic characteristics. These findings suggest that the speech perceptual system dynamically adjusts to the acoustic consequences of changes in talker's voice and accent.

Stereotypes of Cantonese English, apparent native/non-native status, and their effect on non-native English speakers’ perception

This study examined the effect of information about native/non-native speaker status on non-native listeners’ perception of English words with word-final stops. A survey study conducted with 38 Chinese learners of English in Guangzhou, China examined their stereotypes about Cantonese English. They described it negatively and named features including flat intonation and deleted/incomplete word-final sounds. Fifty-two learners from the same university participated in the listening study. These participants listened to recordings by a native American-English speaker. Half of the participants were told that the speaker was American, whereas the other half were told that she was Cantonese. When the speaker was said to be American, listeners tended to hear words as produced with a fully released stop, including aspiration and/or an epenthetic vowel, although aspiration/an epenthetic vowel was often not present. When the speaker was said to be Cantonese, listeners tended to hear stops as actually produced, whether fully released or not. The results reveal that non-native listeners do not necessarily judge the pronunciation of non-native speakers according to stereotypes, such as the stereotype that Cantonese-accented English does not release word-final stops. However, their idealised perception of native English results in more negative perception of the same features in non-native speech.