This diploma thesis examines the foreign accent of Czech speakers in English. We focus on the factor of phone duration, which relates to both segmental and prosodic levels of phonetic description and is one of the correlates of prosodic prominence and speech rhythm. 84 words were selected from the texts avaible in the Prague Phonetic Corpus that have analogues in the loanword lexicon of Czech. Pronunciations of these words by native speakers (professional radio reporters) were compared with productions by Czech university students. The students were recorded prior to atteding a course in English phonetics. Based on our observations of durational patterns, we infer some plausible tendencies to be expected in Czech production of English. As durational interference from Czech into English has up to this date been a relatively unresearch domain, the present study adopts a qualitative research methodology. Keywords: Duration, Foreign Accent, Czech English, Interference 6

Foreign accent can be everything from hardly detectable to rendering the second language speech unintelligible. It is assumed that certain aspects of a specific target language contribute more to making the foreign accented speech intelligible and listener friendly, than others. The present thesis examines a teaching strategy for Swedish pronunciation in second language education. The teaching strategy “Basic prosody” or BP, gives priority to temporal aspects of Swedish prosody, which means the temporal phonological contrasts word stress and quantity, as well as the durational realizations of these contrasts. BP does not prescribe any specific tonal realizations. This standpoint is based on the great regional variety in realization and distribution of Swedish word accents. The teaching strategy consists virtually of three directives: · Stress the proper word in the sentence. · Stress proper syllables in stressed words and make them longer. · Lengthen the proper segment – vowel or subsequent consonant – in the stressed syllable. These directives reflect the view that all phonological length is stress-induced, and that vowel length and consonant length are equally important as learning goals. BP is examined in the light of existing findings in the field of second language pronunciation and with respect to the phonetic correlates of Swedish stress and quantity. Five studies examine the relation between segment durations and the categorization made by native Swedish listeners. The results indicate that the postvocalic consonant duration contributes to quantity categorization as well as giving the proper duration to stressed syllables. Furthermore, native Swedish speakers are shown to apply the complementary /V: C/ - /VC:/ pattern also when speaking English and German, by lengthening postvocalic consonants. The correctness of the priority is not directly addressed but important aspects of BP are supported by earlier findings as well as the results from the present studies. / <p>För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se</p>

Foreign accent can be everything from hardly detectable to rendering the second language speech unintelligible. It is assumed that certain aspects of a specific target language contribute more to making the foreign accented speech intelligible and listener friendly, than others. The present thesis examines a teaching strategy for Swedish pronunciation in second language education. The teaching strategy “Basic prosody” or BP, gives priority to temporal aspects of Swedish prosody, which means the temporal phonological contrasts word stress and quantity, as well as the durational realizations of these contrasts. BP does not prescribe any specific tonal realizations. This standpoint is based on the great regional variety in realization and distribution of Swedish word accents. The teaching strategy consists virtually of three directives: · Stress the proper word in the sentence. · Stress proper syllables in stressed words and make them longer. · Lengthen the proper segment – vowel or subsequent consonant – in the stressed syllable. These directives reflect the view that all phonological length is stress-induced, and that vowel length and consonant length are equally important as learning goals. BP is examined in the light of existing findings in the field of second language pronunciation and with respect to the phonetic correlates of Swedish stress and quantity. Five studies examine the relation between segment durations and the categorization made by native Swedish listeners. The results indicate that the postvocalic consonant duration contributes to quantity categorization as well as giving the proper duration to stressed syllables. Furthermore, native Swedish speakers are shown to apply the complementary /V: C/ - /VC:/ pattern also when speaking English and German, by lengthening postvocalic consonants. The correctness of the priority is not directly addressed but important aspects of BP are supported by earlier findings as well as the results from the present studies. / <p>För att köpa boken skicka en beställning till exp@ling.su.se/ To order the book send an e-mail to exp@ling.su.se</p>

Previous research done in sociophonetic variation of second language speakers has often looked at constraints of formality affecting degree of foreign accent and how this degree of formality can have effects on what speaking styles speakers choose to employ. Furthermore, other social constraints of convergence and divergence of speech affect speaker speaking style. However, no known previous research has examined interdental fricative /θ ð/ substitution based on each speaker's interlocutor. This study explores second language speakers' English interdental fricative substitution sounds in terms of sociophonetic variation of formality and speaker interlocutor(s). Five native language pairs of Arabic, Cantonese, French, Portuguese, and Vietnamese origin were part of the study, comprising ten participants in total. The study finds age of English onset, as verified by the literature, to be the most determining factor for accurate articulation of these marked fricatives. However, other constraints for substitution choice are at hand including phonological limitations and estimated linguistic experience based on demographic information given by survey participants. The primary aim of the study is to associate some of the interdental fricative substitutions with a social variable. Data for the study include recordings of each participant reading a poem by him/herself, a dialogue with the other same native language participant, and a dialogue with a native speaker of American English. The data analysis examined the replacement sounds in terms of native language background, linguistic experience variables, and phonological constraints. In addition, quantities and ratios of specific replacement sounds for each participant per recording and per native language pair were compared and contrasted to find if speech accommodation theory (SAT), as proposed by Giles et al. (1991), played a role in any of the participants' choices for substitution. The study finds both convergence and divergence of interdental fricative substitutions to be characteristic of speakers with less linguistic experience in English. An additional stronger finding is that most participants' most common sound substitutions for the voiced and voiceless interdental fricatives were independent in place and manner, the voiced most commonly replaced by dental and alveolar plosives [ḏ d] and the voiceless most commonly replaced by labiodental fricative [f], which could be an indication of each fricative's acoustic and phonemic representation in each non-native speaker's phonological component, supported by findings of Brannen (2002). Some literature suggests that varying values of [continuant] in speakers' native languages are the means by which speakers choose the replacement sounds they do. However, such an explanation cannot be the only valid one when inherent variability comes into play and different places and manners of articulation are chosen for both interdental fricatives.

abstract: The speech of non-native (L2) speakers of a language contains phonological rules that differentiate them from native speakers. These phonological rules characterize or distinguish accents in an L2. The Shibboleth program creates combinatorial rule-sets to describe the phonological pattern of these accents and classifies L2 speakers into their native language. The training and classification is done in Shibboleth by support vector machines using a Gaussian radial basis kernel. In one experiment run using Shibboleth, the program correctly identified the native language (L1) of a speaker of unknown origin 42% of the time when there were six possible L1s in which to classify the speaker. This rate is significantly better than the 17% chance classification rate. Chi-squared test (1, N=24) =10.800, p=.0010 In a second experiment, Shibboleth was not able to determine the native language family of a speaker of unknown origin at a rate better than chance (33-44%) when the L1 was not in the transcripts used for training the language family rule-set. Chi-squared test (1, N=18) =1.000, p=.3173 The 318 participants for both experiments were from the Speech Accent Archive (Weinberger, 2013), and ranged in age from 17 to 80 years old. Forty percent of the speakers were female and 60% were male. The factor that most influenced correct classification was higher age of onset for the L2. A higher number of years spent living in an English-speaking country did not have the expected positive effect on classification. / Dissertation/Thesis / Appendix C / Appendix E / Appendix F / Ph.D. English 2013

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the influence of foreign accent on credibility of non- native speakers of English. The study was inspired by Lev-Ari and Keysar (2010), who observed that native speakers of English are less likely to believe non-native speakers. In our research we used the same set of statements and similar settings of the experiment to find out whether foreign accent will have the same negative effect on credibility of non- native speakers as perceived by non-native listeners. 6 native speakers from Britain and the USA, and 6 non-native speakers recorded the set of trivia statements for the test and 45 non-native listeners rated on a scale whether they thought the statement they hear is true or not. The results were analysed from multiple points of view such as the influence of accent on credibility, the influence of gender on credibility, and we have also analysed the individual speakers and items in the test to see if the results could be influenced by the behaviour of one individual speaker or an item. The results of the experiment revealed that foreign accent has a negative effect on the credibility of non-native speakers as perceived by non-native listeners. Czech respondents rated British accent of English to be the most credible, while people who spoke with a foreign...

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The productions of adult second language (L2) learners are often detected as having a foreign accent by native speakers of the target language. However, there is no clear answer for what kind of problems contribute to L2 learners’ foreign accent. This thesis aims to investigate potential factors behind foreign accent. We intend to achieve this goal by examining cross-linguistic empirical evidence of the L2 acquisition of Japanese lexical pitch accent by English learners. L2 prosody has been found to significantly influence native speakers’ auditory impression of foreign accent. L2 prosody also allows us to test crosslinguistic differences in the function of the key acoustic correlates of L2 contrasts. In this thesis we examine F0, which signals both lexical pitch accent and phrasal distinctions in Japanese, but which signals only phrasal distinctions, not lexical distinctions, in English. For adult L2 learners to achieve target-like productions, the literature suggests that three abilities are the key factors: 1) learners’ ability to differentiate the acoustic correlate of the target L2 contrasts, 2) ability to articulate the acoustic correlate of the target L2 contrasts and 3) ability to categorize the target L2 contrasts. This thesis evaluates all three of these potential factors. The main contribution of this thesis is to provide a comprehensive view of foreign accent, by investigating possible interactions between the factors and by examining the different abilities of the same learners. Another contribution is to provide empirical evidence for the nature of learners’ problems with foreign accent during L2 acquisition, by testing two groups of English learners of Japanese (experienced and inexperienced) in comparison with Japanese native speakers. The first experiment used intelligibility scores and overall F0 patterns to quantify the degree of foreign accent in the learners’ productions of Japanese lexical pitch accent. The second experiment showed that the learners’ ability to differentiate F0 contours in a nonspeech context was equal to that of the native speakers. The third experiment showed that the learners’ ability to articulate the F0 contours in a non-speech context differed from that of the native speakers. The fourth experiment showed that although learners were able to hear the phonetic differences between the target L2 contrasts, due to poor formation of the target L2 categories and poor lexical assignment ability, the inexperienced learners seem to have greater difficulty than experienced learners both in categorizing boundary items into the target L2 categories and in assigning the L2 categories to lexical items. Overall, the foreign accent of adult L2 learners’ productions is explained through a combination of articulation and categorization factors. Importantly, this cross-sectional study has indicated how learners’ problems with foreign accent change as they gain L2 experience. Whereas experienced learners seem to have problems mainly in the articulation and phonetic realization of the L2 contrasts, the inexperienced learners seem to have mainly problems in phonetic and lexical-phonological representations of the target L2 categories in addition to articulation and phonetic realization. This study offers both theoretical insights for the field of L2 speech acquisition research and also practical insights for the L2 classroom.

Spoken language as a means of communication contains huge amounts of information apart from the linguistic message that is conveyed. It is often the first channel of interaction between people and based on the speaker’s manner of talk, we create a mental image of the speaker as a person, of the speaker’s background, origin and personal qualities. Through five case studies, this dissertation investigates how immigrants to Sweden are judged based on their foreign accents (Cases 1—3) and how the use of an interpreter in court can affect the legal process and the judging of the immigrant (Cases 4—5). Case 1 investigated Swedish students’ attitudes towards immigration and immigrants through a survey-based study and revealed that Swedish students hold predominantly positive attitudes towards immigrations and immigrants. Case 2, using accent imitation, asked if Swedish speakers have a cognitive prototype for British English accented Swedish and found that this was the case. This demonstrated that Swedes have models of accented Swedish accents. Case 3 asked Swedish students to rate their impressions of speakers of nine foreign accented Swedish voices on 18 six-point semantic differential scales. They also rated their impressions of each voice for five social factors. The results suggest that the listeners evaluated the voices based on perceived social desirability, or perceived cultural distance between the listener and the voice’s country of origin. Juxtaposing these findings with those of Case 1 suggests that even among a group who are positive to immigrants and immigration some groups of immigrants are more welcome than others. Case 4 examined discourse disfluencies in a bilingual court hearing and a Swedish-Polish bilingual court hearing in detail. The case showed that most of the dialogue-related difficulties have other sources than the interpreter, even if the interpreter at first glance often appeared to be part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Case 5 examined the interpreter’s role in courtroom dialogue situations through interviews with a court interpreter and a lay judge. The study found that the picture of the interpreter’s role differs between the various actors in the court setting. This, in combination with a lack of knowledge about cultural differences in dialogue strategies, creates complications, can have an impact on the perception of the witness and, ultimately, affect the legal rights of the accused. Furthermore, as the interpreter most frequently speaks foreign accented Swedish, the perception and evaluation of their foreign accented Swedish can further place some immigrant groups at a double legal disadvantage when being judged.

The purpose of this research was to investigate the nature of listeners' attitudes toward foreign-accented speech and the manner in which those attitudes are formed. This study measured 165 participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward US- and foreign-accented audio stimuli. Implicit attitudes were measured with an audio Implicit Association Test. The use of audio stimuli as repeated tokens for their phonological attributes represents an innovation in IAT methodology. Explicit attitudes were elicited through self-report. The explicit task was contextualized as a fictional medical malpractice trial; participants heard the recorded audio testimony of two actors (one US-accented and one Korean-accented) portraying opposing expert witnesses. Four test conditions counterbalanced across participants were created from the recordings. Participants rated the experts on fourteen dependent variables ('traits'): believability, credibility, judgment, knowledge, competence, trustworthiness, likeability, friendliness, expertise, intelligence, warmth, persuasiveness, presentation style, and clarity of presentation. Participants were also asked for their attitudes toward the speakers relative to each other (i.e., Which doctor would you side with in this dispute?). The question of speaker preference was posed as a binary choice, an 11- point slider scale measure, and two confirmation questions asking participants to state how fair they thought an outcome for each party would be. This study's hypothesis that participants' implicit and explicit attitudes toward the same speech would diverge was confirmed. The IAT results indicated an implicit bias [ D =.33, p∠.05] in favor of the US-accented speaker, while the self-report results indicated an explicit bias [ F (2,121)=3.969, p=.021, η 2 =.062] in favor of the foreign-accented speaker in the slider scale and confirmation questions [ F (2,121)=3.708, p=.027, η 2 =.058, and F (2,121)=3.563, p=.031, η 2 =.056]. While the binary choice question showed a trend toward favoring the foreign-accented speaker, the result was not significant. No discernable pattern was found to exist in attitudes toward the speaker by trait. This study's findings argue for the recognition of both implicit and explicit attitude constructs and the integration of implicit attitudes measurement methodologies into future language attitudes research. Additional theoretical implications of these findings for future language attitudes research are also discussed, including implications for selecting an appropriate cognitive processing model.