Global Foreign Accent and Voice Onset Time Among Japanese EFL Speakers

This study examines children's ability to detect accent-related information in connected speech. British English children aged 5 and 7 years old were asked to discriminate between their home accent from an Irish accent or a French accent in a sentence categorization task. Using a preliminary accent rating task with adult listeners, it was first verified that the level of accentedness was similar across the two unfamiliar accents. Results showed that whereas the younger children group behaved just above chance level in this task, the 7-year-old group could reliably distinguish between these variations of their own language, but were significantly better at detecting the foreign accent than the regional accent. These results extend and replicate a previous study (Girard, Floccia, & Goslin, 2008) in which it was found that 5-year-old French children could detect a foreign accent better than a regional accent. The factors underlying the relative lack of awareness for a regional accent as opposed to a foreign accent in childhood are discussed, especially the amount of exposure, the learnability of both types of accents, and a possible difference in the amount of vowels versus consonants variability, for which acoustic measures of vowel formants and plosives voice onset time are provided.

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Acquisition outcomes across domains in adult simultaneous bilinguals with French as weaker and stronger language

Journal of French Language Studies ◽

10.1017/s0959269513000197 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 24 (3) ◽

pp. 347-376 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

TANJA KUPISCH ◽

TATJANA LEIN ◽

DAGMAR BARTON ◽

DAWN JUDITH SCHRÖDER ◽

ILSE STANGEN ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Heritage Language ◽

Voice Onset Time ◽

Onset Time ◽

The Other ◽

Foreign Accent ◽

Language Attrition ◽

Bilingual Speakers ◽

Language Context ◽

Relative Vulnerability

ABSTRACTThis study investigates the adult grammars of French simultaneous bilingual speakers (2L1s) whose other language is German. Apart from providing an example of French as heritage language in Europe, the goals of this paper are (i) to compare the acquisition of French in a minority and majority language context, (ii) to identify the relative vulnerability of individual domains, and (iii) to investigate whether 2L1s are vulnerable to language attrition when moving to their heritage country during adulthood. We include two groups of German-French 2L1s: One group grew up predominantly in France, but moved to Germany during adulthood; the other group grew up predominantly in Germany and stayed there. Performance is compared in different domains, including adjective placement, gender marking, articles, prepositions, foreign accent and voice onset time. Results indicate that differences between the two groups are minimal in morpho-syntax, but more prominent in pronunciation.

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Voice onset time and global foreign accent in German–French simultaneous bilinguals during adulthood

International Journal of Bilingualism ◽

10.1177/1367006915589424 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 20 (6) ◽

pp. 732-749 ◽

Cited By ~ 17

Author(s):

Tatjana Lein ◽

Tanja Kupisch ◽

Joost van de Weijer

Keyword(s):

Voice Onset Time ◽

Onset Time ◽

Foreign Accent ◽

Childhood Environment ◽

Voiceless Stop ◽

New Perspective ◽

Crosslinguistic Influence ◽

The Impact ◽

The Voice

Aims and objectives: In this study, we investigated crosslinguistic influence in the phonetic systems of simultaneous bilinguals (2L1s) during adulthood. Methodology: Specifically, we analyzed the voice onset time (VOT) of the voiceless stop /k/ in the spontaneous speech of 14 German–French bilinguals who grew up in France or Germany. We looked at both languages, first comparing the groups, second comparing their VOT to their global accent. Data and analysis: The material consisted of interviews, lasting for about half an hour. Findings/conclusions: Most 2L1s showed distinct VOT-ranges in their two languages, even if they were perceived to have a foreign accent in the minority language of their childhood environment. We conclude that the phonetic systems of 2L1s remain separate and stable throughout the lifespan. However, the 2L1s from France had significantly shorter VOTs in German than the 2L1s from Germany, and their speech was overall more accented. These findings are discussed with respect to the role of intra- and extra-linguistic factors. Originality: Our study adds a new perspective to existing VOT studies of bilinguals by using naturalistic speech data and by comparing two groups of 2L1s who have the same language combination but grew up in different countries, which allows us to evaluate the impact of their childhood environment on VOT development. Significance/implications: Language exposure during childhood seems to be beneficial for pronunciation during adulthood.

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