18.1681, Books: Lang Acquisition/Phonetics/Phonology/Psycholing: Hongyan

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LINGUIST List: Vol-18-1681. Fri Jun 01 2007. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 18.1681, Books: Lang Acquisition/Phonetics/Phonology/Psycholing: Hongyan

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1)
Date: 30-May-2007
From: Rianne Giethoorn < lot at let.uu.nl >
Subject: English as a Lingua Franca: Hongyan

 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 01 Jun 2007 19:44:44
From: Rianne Giethoorn < lot at let.uu.nl >
Subject: English as a Lingua Franca: Hongyan 
 



Title: English as a Lingua Franca 
Subtitle: Mutual intelligibility of Chinese, Dutch and American speakers of English 
Series Title: LOT Disseratation Series  

Publication Year: 2007 
Publisher: Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics / Landelijke - LOT
	   http://www.lotpublications.nl/
	
Author: Wang Hongyan

Paperback: ISBN:  Pages: 260 Price: Europe EURO 24.08


Abstract:

English has become the language of international communication in politics,
business, and science. As a result of this development, we are now
confronted with a bewildering variety of 'Englishes', spoken with many
different non-native accents. Research determining how intelligible
non-native speakers of varying native-language backgrounds are to each
other and to native speakers of English has only just started to receive
attention. 

The present thesis investigated the extent to which Chinese, Dutch and
American speakers of English are mutually intelligible. Intelligibility of
vowels, simplex consonants and consonant clusters was tested in meaningless
sound sequences, as well as in words in meaningless and meaningful short
sentences. Speakers (one male, one female per language background) were
selected so as to be optimally representative of their peer groups, which
were made up of young academic users of English. Intelligibility was tested
for all nine possible combinations of speaker and listener backgrounds. 

Results show that Chinese-accented English is less intelligible overall
than Dutch-accented English, which is less intelligible than American
English. Generally the native-language background of the speaker was less
important for the intelligibility than the background of the listener.
Also, the results reveal a clear and consistent so-called interlanguage
speech intelligibility benefit: speakers of English - whether foreign or
native - are more intelligible to listeners with whom they share the same
native-language background than to listeners with a different native
language. I argue that this interlanguage benefit is best quantified in
relative terms. 

This book should be of interest to phoneticians, phonologists, applied
linguists and to teachers of English as a foreign language. 



Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology
                     Psycholinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)


Written In: English  (eng)
	
See this book announcement on our website: 
http://linguistlist.org/get-book.html?BookID=26017


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