Word durations in non-native English

Rachel E. Baker; Melissa Baese-Berk; Laurent Bonnasse-Gahot; Midam Kim; Kristin J. Van Engen; Ann R. Bradlow

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2010.10.006

Word durations in non-native English

Rachel E. Baker^*, Melissa Baese-Berk, Laurent Bonnasse-Gahot, Midam Kim, Kristin J. Van Engen, Ann R. Bradlow

^*Corresponding author for this work

Linguistics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

48 Scopus citations

Abstract

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.

Original language	English (US)
Pages (from-to)	1-17
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Phonetics
Volume	39
Issue number	1
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2010.10.006
State	Published - Jan 2011

Funding

We would like to thank Kelsey Mok for her excellent measurements, Page Piccinini for assistance with running the experiment, and both of them for their assistance in developing the alignment conventions. We thank Matt Goldrick for his advice on our statistical analyses. We also gratefully acknowledge Chun Liang Chan and Janet Pierrehumbert for their roles in the technical innovations that facilitated this work. These data were presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Portland, OR, in May 2009; we thank the participants for their comments. This work was supported by Grant R01-DC005794 from NIH-NIDCD .

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Language and Linguistics
Linguistics and Language
Speech and Hearing

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10.1016/j.wocn.2010.10.006

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title = "Word durations in non-native English",

abstract = "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.",

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note = "Funding Information: We would like to thank Kelsey Mok for her excellent measurements, Page Piccinini for assistance with running the experiment, and both of them for their assistance in developing the alignment conventions. We thank Matt Goldrick for his advice on our statistical analyses. We also gratefully acknowledge Chun Liang Chan and Janet Pierrehumbert for their roles in the technical innovations that facilitated this work. These data were presented at the Acoustical Society of America meeting in Portland, OR, in May 2009; we thank the participants for their comments. This work was supported by Grant R01-DC005794 from NIH-NIDCD . ",

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N2 - 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.

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Word durations in non-native English

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