In a pioneering study, Lev-Ari and Keysar (2010) observed that unknown statements are judged less credible when uttered with foreign accent compared to native accent. This finding was interpreted in ...terms of processing fluency; when intelligibility is reduced, the credibility of the message decreases. Here, we use the illusory truth paradigm to explore how accent affects credibility. In a between-participant design, participants were exposed to unknown statements uttered by native-accented or foreign-accented speakers. After a distractor task, the same statements were presented with new statements, and participants assessed their truthfulness. Truthfulness ratings were higher for repeated statements than for new statements, replicating the illusory truth effect. Contrary to the processing fluency hypothesis, the effect was similar in both the foreign-accented and native-accented speech groups. A new group of participants rated the speakers' voices on various social traits. A negative bias against foreign speakers was observed. However, this negative-bias did not affect truth ratings.The impact of foreign-accented speech on message credibility is discussed in the context of two factors, processing fluency and out-group stereotype activation.
In British society, we celebrate diversity and champion equality across many areas, such as race and religion. However, where do British accents stand? Do notions such as ‘common’ or ‘posh’ still ...exist regarding certain accents, to the extent that people are deemed fit, or not, for certain professions, despite their qualifications? Accent and Teacher Identity in Britain explores these questions and Alex Baratta’s research shows that those with accents regional to the North and Midlands are most likely to be told by mentors and senior staff to essentially sound less regional, whereas those from the Home Counties are less likely to be given instructions to change their accent at all. Baratta investigates the notion of linguistic power, in terms of which accents appear to be favoured within the context of teacher training and from the perspective of teachers who feel they lack power in the construction of their linguistic teacher identity. He also questions modifying one’s accent to meet someone else’s standard for what is ‘linguistically appropriate’, in terms of how such modified accents impact on personal identity. Is accent modification regarded by the individual neutrally or is it seen as ‘selling out’?
Many studies have demonstrated that stimuli that are easy to process are generally better evaluated compared to stimuli that are harder to process. It is, however, an open question whether people ...speaking with a foreign accent are judged to be less truthful compared to native speakers due to the greater difficulty of decoding their speech. In this paper, we provide new data to this debate by comparing the credibility of speakers of French, both with a familiar or unfamiliar native accent, and with a familiar and unfamiliar foreign accent. Our results indicate that native Native-speakers do not evaluate statements uttered with a foreign-accent as less truthful compared to a native one.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Second language (L2) learners of Spanish whose first language (L1) is English tend to find Spanish lexical stress patterns difficult to acquire. This study investigates whether such difficulty ...derives, at least in part, from an obstacle encountered during perceptual processing: reduced perceptual sensitivity to stress distinctions. Participants were adult L1 English L2 Spanish learners of various proficiency levels. The experiment was a categorical matching task with triads of auditory stimuli minimally contrasting in stress (target) or segmental composition (baseline), an ABX task. The results show that learners were more accurate in the baseline condition than in the target condition, suggesting reduced perceptual sensitivity to stress relative to other contrasts. The reduction in accuracy, however, was restricted to trials in which matching items were not adjacent, further suggesting an obstacle with phonological processing in working memory rather than perceptual categorization. The default stress processing routines of L1 English L2 Spanish learners, optimized for their L1 (not their L2), may be responsible for the acquisitional obstacles with this feature of the Spanish language.
It is well-established for assertions that the information-structural status of referents influences prosodic prominence: givenness reduces and contrastive focus increases prominence. We present ...production data in German on the prosodic marking of givenness and contrast in comparison to newness in two non-assertive speech acts: polar exclamatives and polar questions. The results show that contrastive focus is consistently marked in both speech acts: through an increase of prosodic prominence on the contrastive element itself, and through a decrease of prominence of a word in the prenuclear region that in sentences without contrast typically is prominent. Givenness is not clearly marked prosodically in either speech act. We argue that givenness is necessary, but not sufficient for deaccentuation. First, if deaccentuation requires an accent shift (so that the intonation phrase is headed), the semantic-pragmatic effects of the shifted accent must fit the discourse context. We argue that there are subtle discourse conditions on accent shift in the questions involving VERUM focus, which prevent a shift. Second, deaccentuation is disfavored if speech act marking requires accentuation, as in exclamatives. Overall, the different functions of prosody show subtle interactions, which hint at a subordinate functional load of givenness marking but not of contrast marking.
Purpose: This study examines the degree to which adolescents in Iceland are judged by native Icelandic speakers to have a foreign accent both in Icelandic and in English, two languages that are ...learned under different conditions, as the community and school language, and through school and incidental exposure. Method: Fifty-eight adolescents, 27 with Icelandic as their first language (L1), 21 as their second language (L2), and 10 as one of two L1s read passages in Icelandic and English. Twelve untrained native speakers of Icelandic rated the degree of foreign accent, comprehensibility, and confidence level and selected from multiple-choice options what they thought was the L1 of the speakers. Results: Significant group differences were found in Icelandic but not in English. L2 speakers had a significantly greater foreign accent than the other groups in Icelandic; however, there was substantial overlap with some L2 speakers judged to be native and some L1 speakers judged as nonnative. All groups had a significantly greater accent in English than in Icelandic. Accent was judged more sternly than comprehensibility and confidence and related differently to vocabulary proficiency. Conclusions: Accent is typically not considered in studies of bilingual attainment in children for purposes of clinical assessment or educational placement but should be given closer attention. The study confirms previous findings that many young L2 learners have a detectable foreign accent. The overlap with L1 speakers also raises questions about the ideal of a native accent. More research is needed on how accent relates to bilingual and multilingual proficiency and on its impacts on comfort level, ease of communication, choice of language, and language exposure.
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DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, ODKLJ, OILJ, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK, VSZLJ
This volume offers a definitive source for understanding social influences in L2 pronunciation, demonstrating the importance of empirical findings from a number of research perspectives, and ...outlining the directions that future work can take. The aim is to present a coherent argument for the significance of social factors and how they contribute to phonological acquisition.
In weight-sensitive languages, stress is influenced by syllable weight. As a result, heavy syllables should attract, not repel, stress. The Portuguese lexicon, however, presents a case where weight ...seems to negatively impact stress: antepenultimate stress is more frequent in light antepenultimate syllables than in heavy ones. This pattern is phonologically unexpected and appears to contradict the typology of weight and stress: it is a case where lexical statistics and the grammar conflict. Portuguese also contains gradient, not categorical, weight effects, which weaken as we move away from the right edge of the word. In this article, I examine how native speakers’ grammars capture these subtle weight effects, and whether the negative antepenultimate weight effect is learned or repaired. I show that speakers learn the gradient weight effects in the language, but do not learn the unnatural negative effect. Instead, speakers repair this pattern and generalize a positive weight effect to all syllables in the stress domain. This study thus provides empirical evidence that speakers may not only ignore unnatural patterns, but also learn the opposite pattern.
Modelling German Word Stress Tomaschek, Fabian; Domahs, Ulrike; Domahs, Frank
Glossa (London),
02/2023, Letnik:
8, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Standard linguistic and psycholinguistic approaches to stress assignment argue that the position of word stress is determined on the basis of abstract information such as syllable weight and number ...of syllables in the word. In the present study, we contrasted this approach with a perspective based on learning analogies according to which speakers learn to associate basic word form cues to stress position. To do so, we use a simple two-layer neural network trained with an error-driven learning mechanism to predict stress position in German morphologically simple and complex words. We find that networks trained on word forms outperformed networks trained on cues that represent abstract information. Moreover, most standard approaches assign stress from right to left. We tested this proposal and found that in morphologically simple words, assignment from right yielded better results than assignment from left, supporting the standard approach. By contrast, in morphologically complex words assignment from left outperformed assignment from right. We discuss the implications of our results for psycholinguistic theories of stress assignment by taking into account word form cues, abstract cues, assigning direction, and the representation of stress in the mental lexicon.
תיבה המסתיימת בפתח גנובה נחשבת למוטעמת במלעיל ואין צורך שתחול בה נסיגה כדי ליצור חציצה של הברה בלתי מוטעמת בין שתי הברות מוטעמות. אף על פי כן יש במקרא היקרויות אחדות של נסיגת הטעם במילה המסתיימת בפתח ...גנובה. את הדבר הזה אפשר להסביר לאור התפתחות מערכת התנועות והטעמים של המסורת הטברנית: הנסיגה קדמה לאימוץ פתח גנובה, ופלישתו של פתח זה היא שקבעה הברה לא מוטעמת יתרה בין שתי ההברות המוטעמות.
In order to avoid two consecutive stressed syllables, the accent of a millǝraʻ word may be shifted from the ultima to the penultima (and under certain conditions to the antepenultima) open syllable before a word stressed in its first syllable. This change is called nesiga (‘receding’). A nesiga is not to be expected in a word containing a pataḥ furtivum, because such a word is considered by the Masoretes as a millǝʻel word itself, i.e. a word stressed in the penultima. Nevertheless, there are a few occurrences of nesiga in words containing a pataḥ furtivum: בוקע מים (Isa 63, 12), כל-בצע בצע (Prov 1,19), מנע בר (ibid.11, 26), שלח מים (Job 5,10). This anomality can be explained on the light of the diachronic development of the Tiberian tradition: before the pataḥ furtivum was adopted, the accentual system, included the nesiga, had been already fixed, and it was the intrusion of the pataḥ furtivum that created an extra non-stressed syllable between the two stressed syllables of the compound.
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