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Chapter 15 - Foreign Accent in L2 Japanese

Cross-Sectional Study

from Part IV - Accentedness and Acoustic Features

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 January 2021

By
Kaori Idemaru ,
Misaki Kato  and
Kimiko Tsukada
Edited by
Ratree Wayland
Ratree Wayland
Affiliation:
University of Florida
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Summary

Accents in second language speech have multiple perceptual consequences, including breakdown in communication and undesirable judgements about accented speakers. Whereas perceived accents are likely influenced by various acoustic variables, it is not clear which acoustic variables influence the perceived accents the most and whether such important predictors of accents change as learners’ proficiency develops. Here we report a study that has examined acoustic sources of foreign accent in second language Japanese produced by American learners at different instructional levels, including beginning and intermediate late learners and early bilinguals. We collected speech samples from these learners as well as a control group of native speakers, and measured 27 segmental and prosodic variables. These acoustic variables were related to accent rating scores obtained from native listeners. Confirmatory analyses showed that 24 out of 27 variables tested were reliably associated with listeners’ accentedness judgements. Exploratory analyses showed that prosodic features were most predictive of beginning to intermediate late learners’ accents, whereas vowel features were most predictive of early bilinguals’ accents. These results shed light on issues related to the acoustic sources of foreign accent and the development of second language speech.

Keywords

ForeignAccentL2JapaneseCross-SectionalEnglishDevelopmentSpeech
Type
Chapter
Information
Second Language Speech Learning
Theoretical and Empirical Progress
 , pp. 377 - 396
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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