Effects of speech rate, phonetic background and gender on vowel reduction in the speech of nonnative speakers of English

• Authors: Bogna Brzezicha , Małgorzata Kul
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper reports the results of a study investigating vowel reduction in the speech of non-native speakers of English. The aim was to unravel the links between reduction and speech rate, phonetic training and gender. We hypothesized that (i) Polish speakers of English reduce vowels; (ii) they speak slower than native speakers; (iii) the higher the rate, the higher the reduction degree; (iv) speakers with phonetic training reduce less than those lacking it; (v) male subjects reduce more than the female ones. In order to realize these aims, an acoustic analysis of vowels was performed on 2 hrs 42 mins of speech produced by 12 Polish speakers of English. The subjects were di-vided into an experimental group consisting of 6 students of English and a control group with 6 speakers who had no phonetic training. The obtained results positively verify that non-native speakers reduce vowels and cast some doubts on whether they speak slower than native speakers. The role of rate and gender could not be established due to statistical and methodological issues. The group with no phonetic training outperformed the group which underwent phonetic training, pointing instead to the role of exposure and perhaps music training in acquiring native-like reduction patterns.

Keywords

EN

casual speech; non-native speakers; reduction rate; phonetic training; gender

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 50
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 397-417

Dates

received

2014-02-15

revised

2014-07-31

accepted

2014-10-20

online

2014-11-14

Contributors

author

Bogna Brzezicha

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

author

Małgorzata Kul

• Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/psicl-2014-0021