Comparative Acoustic Analyses of L2 English: The Search for Systematic Variation.

Previous research has shown that exposure to multiple foreign accents facilitates adaptation to an untrained novel accent. One explanation is that L2 speech varies systematically such that there are commonalities in the productions of nonnative speakers, regardless of their language background. A systematic acoustic comparison was conducted between 3 native English speakers and 6 nonnative accents. Voice onset time, unstressed vowel duration, and formant values of stressed and unstressed vowels were analyzed, comparing each nonnative accent to the native English talkers. A subsequent perception experiment tests what effect training on regionally accented voices has on the participant's comprehension of nonnative accented speech to investigate the importance of within-speaker variation on attunement and generalization. Data for each measure show substantial variability across speakers, reflecting phonetic transfer from individual L1s, as well as substantial inconsistency and variability in pronunciation, rather than commonalities in their productions. Training on native English varieties did not improve participants' accuracy in understanding nonnative speech. These findings are more consistent with a hypothesis of accent attune-ment wherein listeners track general patterns of nonnative speech rather than relying on overlapping acoustic signals between speakers.

Laturnus R 《-》

Listening Effort by Native and Nonnative Listeners Due to Noise, Reverberation, and Talker Foreign Accent During English Speech Perception.

Peng ZE ，Wang LM 《-》

Second-language experience and speech-in-noise recognition: effects of talker-listener accent similarity.

Previous work has shown that the intelligibility of speech in noise is degraded if the speaker and listener differ in accent, in particular when there is a disparity between native (L1) and nonnative (L2) accents. This study investigated how this talker-listener interaction is modulated by L2 experience and accent similarity. L1 Southern British English, L1 French listeners with varying L2 English experience, and French-English bilinguals were tested on the recognition of English sentences mixed in speech-shaped noise that was spoken with a range of accents (French, Korean, Northern Irish, and Southern British English). The results demonstrated clear interactions of accent and experience, with the least experienced French speakers being most accurate with French-accented English, but more experienced listeners being most accurate with L1 Southern British English accents. An acoustic similarity metric was applied to the speech productions of the talkers and the listeners, and significant correlations were obtained between accent similarity and sentence intelligibility for pairs of individuals. Overall, the results suggest that L2 experience affects talker-listener accent interactions, altering both the intelligibility of different accents and the selectivity of accent processing.

Pinet M ，Iverson P ，Huckvale M 《-》

Accent-independent adaptation to foreign accented speech.

Baese-Berk MM ，Bradlow AR ，Wright BA 《-》

Visual information affects adaptation to novel talkers: Ethnicity-specific and ethnicity-independent learning of L2-accented speech.

Aoki NB ，Zellou G 《-》