Scaling of apparent accentedness by magnitude estimation and sensory modality matching

Brennan, Eileen M.; Ryan, Ellen Bouchard; Dawson, William E.

doi:10.1007/bf01066988

Cited by 40 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 10 publications

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“…Considerable evidence from this body of work indicates that phonetically unsophisticated listeners can reliably judge nonnative speaker status and strength of accent when presented with utterances of varying durations (Brennan et al, 1975;Derwing and Munro, 1997;Flege, 1984;Major, 2007;Munro et al, 2006;Thompson, 1991). Nonetheless, the process by which particular speakers are judged to be native or foreign is not fully understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Detection of nonnative speaker status from content-masked speech

Munro

Derwing

Burgess

2010

Speech Communication

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Detection of nonnative speaker status from content-masked speech

Munro

Derwing

Burgess

2010

Speech Communication

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“…The Accentedness Index was found to be a significant predictor of the Preliminary Accentedness scale, and of ac centedness assessments of the same mate rial by naive native listeners in a previous experiment. An earlier experimental investi gation along the same lines by Brennan et al [4] showed that linguistically untrained listeners can give reliable judgements of the degree of accentedness of English speech samples produced by Spanish-English bilin guals. The accentedness judgements were found to be highly correlated with the oc currence of specific features of accented pronunciation.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Perceived Strength and Identity of Foreign Accent in Swedish

Cunningham-Andersson

Engstrand²

1989

Phonetica

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We report three listening experiments focussing on the phonetic correlates of perceived foreignness and perceived strength of foreign accent in Swedish. In the first experiment, it is shown that accentedness can be reliably measured on the basis of a relatively short speech sample and that a statistical count of deviating pronunciations correlates significantly with subjective judgements of accentedness by linguistically naive listeners. The second experiment shows a significant correlation between number of deviant features and perceived accent strength and a significant correlation between judgements of degree of deviation and foreignness. Some features are associated with impressions of stronger accents than others, and some with perception of ‘Finnish’ accent. The third experiment establishes which combinations of deviant phonetic characteristics most strongly tend to give the impression of Finnish accent.

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“…In addition, because a number of researchers have demonstrated that native listeners are quite capable of detecting accents or deviations from their own internalized phonetic norms (Asher & Garda, 1969;Brennan & Brennan, 1981;Brennan, Ryan, & Dawson, 1975;Flege, 1984), it was deemed important to determine whether or not the bilinguals could be detected as being bilingual. Thus, II native speakers of American English were presented with recordings of the 20 subjects reading an English-language passage of approximately 150 words (recordings were dubbed versions of those already obtained from the subjects as part of thegeneral language-proficiency evaluation).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Consonant and vowel perception and production: Early English-French bilinguals and English monolinguals

Mack

1989

Perception & Psychophysics

105

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This study is a comparative analysis of the English phonetic systems of 10 fluent adult EnglishFrench bilinguals who acquired their two languages prior to age 8 and who were English-dominant, and of 10 adult English monolinguals. The objective of the study was to determine whether or not early English-dominant bilinguals perceive and produce speech as English monolinguals do. Discrimination and identification tests of synthetic Id-tl and Ii-II continua and speech production tests revealed that the bilinguals' discrimination and production of Id/ and It! and their production of /II did not differ significantly from the monolinguals'. However, the bilinguals' identification of Id-tl and Ii-II and one aspect of their production of Iii did differ significantly from that ofthe monolinguals. The present results indicate that early bilingualism can yield monolinguallike performance in at least one of the bilinguals' languages, but only with respect to certain aspects of the phonetic system. These findings are viewed in light of sound-class distinctions, the perception-production dichotomy, and bilingual phonetic transfer and restructuring.An abiding concern in bilingual research is whether or not individuals who acquire two languages in early childhood possess phonetic systems like those of monolingual speakers. One view is that such individuals (commonly referred to as "early bilinguals") are capable of acquiring complete control of a second-language phonetic system (Lenneberg, 1967;Penfield, 1953;Penfield & Roberts, 1959;Seliger, 1978) and, indeed, that they may be entirely monolingual-like in both of their languages (Baetens Beardsmore, 1986). An opposing view is that early bilinguals experience no particular phonological advantage and, in some respects, may be at a disadvantage compared to late (adolescent or adult) bilinguals (Ekstrand, 1976;Snow & Hoefnagel-Hohle, 1977, 1978. A position intermediate to these is that, although early bilinguals are more likely than late bilinguals to perceive and/or produce their languages in a monolingual-like manner (Asher & Garcia, 1969;Fathman, 1975;Larew, 1961;Oyama, 1976Oyama, ,1982Seliger, Krashen, & Ladefoged, 1975; Tabta, Wood, & Loewenthal, 1981a, 1981b, they still may not function exactly as monolinguals do. For example, in a recent study of Spanish-English bilinguals, Flege and I wish to thank Sheila Blumstein for her ever-helpful advice on and support of this project, Philip Lieberman and Michel Paradis for their indespensable counsel, and John Mertus for his speech programs and valuable assistance. Sincere thanks are also extended to James E. Flege for his insightful comments on an earlier draft and to the editor and reviewers for their pertinent and appreciated comments and suggestions. Any errors or omissions remaining are the responsibility of the author. Portions of this project were funded by a Helen Swallow Richards Endowed Fellowship from the American Association of University Women. Correspondence may be addressed to Molly Mack, Division of English as an Inte...

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Scaling of apparent accentedness by magnitude estimation and sensory modality matching

Cited by 40 publications

References 10 publications

Detection of nonnative speaker status from content-masked speech

Detection of nonnative speaker status from content-masked speech

Perceived Strength and Identity of Foreign Accent in Swedish

Consonant and vowel perception and production: Early English-French bilinguals and English monolinguals

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