The Interlanguage Speech Intelligibility Benefit (ISIB) of English Prosody: The Case of Focal Prominence for Korean Learners of English and Natives

Abstract

This study investigated the speech intelligibility of Korean-accented and native English focus speech for Korean and native English listeners. Three different types of focus in English, broad, narrow and contrastive, were naturally induced in semantically optimal dialogues. Seven high and seven low proficiency Korean speakers and seven native speakers participated in recording the stimuli with another native speaker. Fifteen listeners from each of Korean high & low proficiency and native groups judged audio signals of focus sentences. Results showed that Korean listeners were more accurate at identifying the focal prominence for Korean speakers' narrow focus speech than that of native speakers, and this suggests that the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit-talker (ISIB-T) held true for narrow focus regardless of Korean speakers' and listeners' proficiency. However, Korean listeners did not outperform native listeners for Korean speakers' production of narrow focus, which did not support for the ISIB-listener (L). Broad and contrastive focus speech did not provide evidence for either the ISIB-T or ISIB-L. These findings are explained by the interlanguage shared by Korean speakers and listeners where they have established more L1-like common phonetic features and phonological representations. Once semantically and syntactically interpreted in a higher level processing in Korean narrow focus speech, the narrow focus was phonetically realized in a more intelligible way to Korean listeners due to the interlanguage. This may elicit ISIB. However, Korean speakers did not appear to make complete semantic/syntactic access to either broad or contrastive focus, which might lead to detrimental effects on lower level phonetic outputs in top-down processing. This is, therefore, attributed to the fact that Korean listeners did not take advantage over native listeners for Korean talkers and vice versa.

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“…In addition, with the main purpose of the present study in mind, it seems worth mentioning the results from Han el al. (2011) and Lee, Han, Choi, and Lim (2012) here. In these studies, ISIB-T effects among Korean learners of different proficiency levels were found more frequently and with stronger statistical power.…”

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“…In addition, with the main purpose of the present study in mind, it seems worth mentioning the results from Han el al. 2011and Lee, Han, Choi, and Lim (2012) here. In these studies, ISIB-T effects among Korean learners of different proficiency levels were found more frequently and with stronger statistical power.…”