Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-pf7kn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-21T22:27:22.588Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Disentangling accent from comprehensibility*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 May 2012

PAVEL TROFIMOVICH  and
TALIA ISAACS
PAVEL TROFIMOVICH*
Affiliation:
Centre for the Study of Learning and Performance, Concordia University
TALIA ISAACS
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
*
Address for correspondence: Pavel Trofimovich, Concordia University, 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. W., Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3G 1M8pavel.trofimovich@concordia.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The goal of this study was to determine which linguistic aspects of second language speech are related to accent and which to comprehensibility. To address this goal, 19 different speech measures in the oral productions of 40 native French speakers of English were examined in relation to accent and comprehensibility, as rated by 60 novice raters and three experienced teachers. Results showed that both constructs were associated with many speech measures, but that accent was uniquely related to aspects of phonology, including rhythm and segmental and syllable structure accuracy, while comprehensibility was chiefly linked to grammatical accuracy and lexical richness.

Keywords

accentcomprehensibilitysecond language speech learning
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 15 , Issue 4 , October 2012 , pp. 905 - 916
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

*

This research was made possible through grants from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Fonds québécois de la recherche sur la société et la culture, and Sir James Lougheed Award of Distinction. We are grateful to Hyojin Song, Yvette Relkoff, Cassandre McLean Ikauno, Margaret Levey, Kathryn MacFadden-Willard, Fabrizio Stendardo, Garrett Byrne, and Joseph Hartfeil for their help with data analyses, and to Tracey Derwing and Murray Munro for sharing some of their testing materials. We also thank Ron Thomson, Carolyn Turner, Sarita Kennedy, and four anonymous BLC reviewers for their helpful input and feedback on the content of this manuscript.

References

Albrechtsen, D., Henriksen, B., & Færch, C. (1980). Native speaker reactions to learners’ spoken interlanguage. Language Learning, 30, 365–396.Google Scholar
Anderson-Hsieh, J., Johnson, R., & Koehler, K. (1992). The relationship between native speaker judgments of nonnative pronunciation and deviance in segmentals, prosody, and syllable structure. Language Learning, 42, 529–555.Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2010). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer [computer program] (version 5.1.29). www.praat.org.Google Scholar
Cartier, F. A. (1975). Criterion-referenced testing in language skills. In Palmer, L. A. & Spolsky, B. (eds.), Papers on language testing 1967–1974, pp. 19–24. Washington, DC: TOEFL.Google Scholar
Clopper, C. G., & Pisoni, D. B. (2004). Some acoustic cues for the perceptual categorization of American English regional dialects. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 111–140.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cobb, T. (2000). The compleat lexical tutor [website]. http://www.lextutor.ca.Google Scholar
Council of Europe (2001). Common European Framework of Reference for Languages: Learning, Teaching, Assessment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Creswell, J. W., & Plano-Clark, V. (2011). Designing and conducting mixed-methods research (2nd edn.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Derwing, T. M. (2003). What do ESL students say about their accents? The Canadian Modern Language Review, 59, 547–566.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derwing, T. M., & Munro, M. J. (2009). Putting accent in its place: Rethinking obstacles to communication. Language Teaching, 42, 476–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derwing, T. M., Munro, M. J., & Thomson, R. I. (2008). A longitudinal study of ESL learners’ fluency and comprehensibility development. Applied Linguistics, 29, 359–380.Google Scholar
Derwing, T. M., Rossiter, M. J., & Ehrensberger-Dow, M. (2002). “They speaked and wrote real good”: Judgements of non-native and native grammar. Language Awareness, 11, 84–99.Google Scholar
Derwing, T. M., Rossiter, M. J., Munro, M. J., & Thomson, R. I. (2004). Second language fluency: Judgments on different tasks. Language Learning, 54, 665–679.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dupoux, E., Peperkamp, S., & Sebastián-Gallés, N. (2001). A robust method to study stress “deafness”. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 1606–1618.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fayer, J. M., & Krasinski, E. (1987). Native and nonnative judgments of intelligibility and irritation. Language Learning, 37, 313–326.Google Scholar
Foote, J. A., Holtby, A. K., & Derwing, T. M. (2011). Survey of the teaching of pronunciation in adult ESL programs in Canada, 2010. TESL Canada Journal, 29, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gass, S., & Varonis, E. (1984). The effect of familiarity on the comprehensibility of nonnative speech. Language Learning, 34, 65–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hahn, L. D. (2004). Primary stress and intelligibility: Research to motivate the teaching of suprasegmentals. TESOL Quarterly, 38, 201–223.Google Scholar
Isaacs, T. (2008). Towards defining a valid assessment criterion of pronunciation proficiency in non-native English speaking graduate students. Canadian Modern Language Review, 64, 555–580.Google Scholar
Isaacs, T., & Thomson, R. I. (in press). Rater experience, rating scale length, and judgments of L2 pronunciation: Revisiting research conventions. Language Assessment Quarterly.Google Scholar
Isaacs, T., & Trofimovich, P. (2010). Falling on sensitive ears? The influence of musical ability on extreme raters’ judgments of L2 pronunciation. TESOL Quarterly, 44, 375–386.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Isaacs, T., & Trofimovich, P. (in press). Deconstructing comprehensibility: Identifying the linguistic influences on listeners’ L2 comprehensibility ratings. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 34 (3). doi:10.1017S0272263112000150.Google Scholar
Kang, O. (2010). Relative salience of suprasegmental features on judgments of L2 comprehensibility and accentedness. System, 38, 301–315.Google Scholar
Kang, O., & Rubin, D. L. (2009). Reverse linguistic stereotyping: Measuring the effect of listener expectations on speech evaluation. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 28, 441–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kang, O., Rubin, D., & Pickering, L. (2010). Suprasegmental measures of accentedness and judgments of language learner proficiency in oral English. The Modern Language Journal, 94, 554–566.Google Scholar
Labov, W., Ash, S., & Boberg, C. (2006). The atlas of North American English: Phonetics, phonology and sound change. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Lacey, M. (2011). In Arizona, complaints that an accent can hinder a teacher's career. The New York Times (September 25, 2011), p. A18.Google Scholar
Lev-Ari, S., & Keysar, B. (2010). Why don't we believe non-native speakers? The influence of accent on credibility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1093–1096.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levis, J. M. (2005). Changing contexts and shifting paradigms in pronunciation teaching. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 369–377.Google Scholar
Levis, J. M. (2006). Pronunciation and the assessment of spoken language. In Hughes, R. (ed.), Spoken English, TESOL and applied linguistics: Challenges for theory and practice, pp. 245–270. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lippi-Green, R. (2011). English with an accent: Language, ideology and discrimination in the United States (2nd edn.). London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mallows, C. L. (1964). Some comments on Cp. Technometrics, 15, 661–675.Google Scholar
Martin, J. R., & Rose, D. (2003). Working with discourse: Meaning beyond the clause. London: Continuum.Google Scholar
Munro, M. J. (2003). A primer on accent discrimination in the Canadian context. TESL Canada Journal, 20, 38–51.Google Scholar
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1994). Evaluations of foreign accent in extemporaneous and read material. Language Testing, 11, 253–266.Google Scholar
Munro, M. J., & Derwing, T. M. (1999). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 49, 285–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munro, M. J., Derwing, T. M., Burgess, C. S. (2010). Detection of nonnative speaker status from content-masked speech. Speech Communication, 52, 626–637.Google Scholar
Oppenheimer, D. M. (2008). The secret life of fluency. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 237–241.Google Scholar
Ramus, F., Nespor, M., & Mehler, J. (1999). Correlates of linguistic rhythm in the speech signal. Cognition, 73, 265–292.Google Scholar
Reber, R., & Schwarz, N. (1999). Effects of perceptual fluency on judgements of truth. Consciousness and Cognition, 8, 338–342.Google Scholar
Robinson, G. C., & Stockman, I. J. (2009). Cross-dialectal perceptual experienced of speech-language pathologists in predominantly Caucasian American school districts. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 138–149.Google Scholar
Rubin, D. L. (1992). Nonlanguage factors affecting undergraduates’ judgments of non-native English-speaking teaching assistants. Research in Higher Education, 33, 511–531.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
SAS Institute Inc. (2004). SAS/STAT® 9.1 user's guide. Cary, NC: SAS Institute Inc.Google Scholar
Schairer, K. E. (1992). Native speaker reaction to non-native speech. Modern Language Journal, 76, 309–319.Google Scholar
Southwood, M. H., & Flege, J. E. (1999). Scaling foreign accent: Direct magnitude estimation versus interval scaling. Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 13, 335–349.Google Scholar
Stein, N. L., & Glenn, C. G. (1979). An analysis of story comprehension in elementary school children. In Freedle, R. (ed.), New directions in discursive processing, pp. 53–120. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Teddlie, C., & Tashakkori, A. (2009). Foundations of mixed methods research: Integrating quantitative and qualitative approaches in the social and behavioral sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Trofimovich, P., Gatbonton, E., & Segalowitz, N. (2007). A dynamic look at L2 phonological learning: Seeking processing explanations for implicational phenomena. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 29, 407–448.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
University of Cambridge ESOL Examinations (2008). Certificate of Proficiency in English: Handbook for teachers. Cambridge: UCLES.Google Scholar
Vaissière, J. (1991). Rhythm, accentuation and final lengthening in French. In Sundberg, J., Nord, L. & Carlson, R. (eds.), Music, language, speech and brain (Wenner–Gren International Symposium Series 59), pp. 108–120. London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varonis, E. M., & Gass, S. (1982). The comprehensibility of non-native speech. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 4, 114–136.Google Scholar
Wennerstrom, A. (2001). The music of everyday speech: Prosody and discourse analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Whittlesea, B. W. A. (1993). Illusions of familiarity. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 19, 1235–1253.Google Scholar