23.4047, Diss: Applied Ling/ Language Acq/ Phonetics/ Phonology/ Spanish: Schoonmaker-Gates: 'Perception of foreign accent...'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-23-4047. Mon Oct 01 2012. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 23.4047, Diss: Applied Ling/ Language Acq/ Phonetics/ Phonology/ Spanish: Schoonmaker-Gates: 'Perception of foreign accent...'

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Date: Mon, 01 Oct 2012 11:57:00
From: Elena Schoonmaker-Gates [egates2 at elon.edu]
Subject: Perception of foreign accent in Spanish by native and nonnative listeners: Investigating the role of VOT and speech rate

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Institution: Indiana University Bloomington 
Program: Hispanic Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2012 

Author: Elena Schoonmaker-Gates

Dissertation Title: Perception of foreign accent in Spanish by native and
nonnative listeners: Investigating the role of VOT and
speech rate 

Linguistic Field(s): Applied Linguistics
                     Language Acquisition
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology

Subject Language(s): Spanish (spa)


Dissertation Director(s):
Kimberly L Geeslin
Isabelle Darcy
Manuel Díaz-Campos
Erik W Willis

Dissertation Abstract:

Previous research on the perception of foreign accent has focused on 
the ratings of native and near-native listeners and few studies have 
explored the perception of degree of foreign accent by nonnative 
listeners, despite the fact that it could shed light on what language 
learners perceive as foreign-accented and potentially tell us about their 
developing system. The present dissertation aims to investigate the 
perception of degree of foreign accent in Spanish by both native and 
nonnative listeners, exploring the effects of various listener-specific 
characteristics, including proficiency, on listeners' perception. This 
thesis also explores the role of VOT and speech rate in nonnative 
listeners' perception of foreign accent in Spanish, two cues that have 
been found to influence native listeners' perception of foreign-accented 
English in previous studies. 


In order to accomplish these goals the read speech of 2 native and 2 
nonnative Spanish speakers, in addition to 11 distracter speakers, was 
recorded and Praat's duration tool was used to create VOT and rate-
modified versions of the read sentences. A total of 26 native speakers 
and 140 nonnative learners of Spanish heard and rated 210 modified 
and unmodified utterances on a 9-point scale of degree of foreign 
accent. The statistical analyses revealed significant differences 
between native and nonnative listeners' ratings of unmodified speech. 
In the analyses that compared listener ratings of modified and 
unmodified utterances, both sets of listeners rated speech as more 
accented when it had longer (less native-like) VOTs and when it was 
slower. Conversely, listeners also rated nonnative speech as less 
foreign-accented when it was reproduced with shorter VOTs and at a 
faster rate. A number of listener-specific factors including proficiency, 
course enrollment, pronunciation training, comprehension, and native 
dialect exposure were also found to be significant predictors of 
listeners' foreign accent perception. The results show that both 
linguistic and listener characteristics affect the perception of foreign 
accent by native and nonnative listeners of Spanish, and that contrary 
to previous findings these two listener groups do not necessarily 
perceive degree of foreign accent the same. 






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