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A note on native and non-native accentedness judgements

Authors: Dzintra Bond; Verna Stockmal; Dace Markus;

A note on native and non-native accentedness judgements

Abstract

Talkers in a second language can readily be identified as speaking with a foreign accent, characterized by both specific and more general deviations from the phonology of a target language. In this study, we examined the identifications of native and non-native talkers by listeners with various amounts of knowledge of the target language. Native and non-native speakers of Latvian provided materials. All the non-native talkers spoke Russian as their first language and were long-term residents of Latvia. We used Latvian as the target second language and speech samples produced either by native speakers or by ethnic Russians for whom Latvian is a second language. The text for reading was identical, talkers could not be distinguished by lexical selection or morphological and syntactic errors. A listening test, consisting of identical sentences excerpted from a short recorded passage, was presented to three groups of listeners: native speakers of Latvian, Russians for whom Latvian was a second language, and Americans with no knowledge of either language. The listeners were asked to judge whether each utterance was produced by a native or non-native talker and then evaluate the talker’s proficiency. The Latvians identified the non-native talkers accurately (88%) while the Russians were somewhat less accurate (79%). The American listeners were least accurate but still identified the non-native talkers at above chance levels, 63%. Sentence durations correlated with the judgments provided by the American listeners but not with the judgments provided by the native or L2 listeners. Interesting that there were no significant correlations between utterance duration and correct identification for Russian and Latvian listeners. Because these listeners knew the target language, they had many sources of information available to them rather than a relatively obvious characteristic such as fluency or speech rate. Research for portions of this project was provided by a grant from the International Research & Exchanges Board, with funds provided by the US Department of State (Title VII program) and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The final conclusions of the study, organisation and publication of the article were supported by the National Research Programme “Latvian language” Nr. VPP-IZM-2018/2-0002.

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selected citations
These citations are derived from selected sources.
This is an alternative to the "Influence" indicator, which also reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Citations provided by BIP!
popularity
This indicator reflects the "current" impact/attention (the "hype") of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Popularity provided by BIP!
influence
This indicator reflects the overall/total impact of an article in the research community at large, based on the underlying citation network (diachronically).
BIP!Influence provided by BIP!
impulse
This indicator reflects the initial momentum of an article directly after its publication, based on the underlying citation network.
BIP!Impulse provided by BIP!
1
Average
Average
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