Imitation of English vowel duration upon exposure to native and non-native speech

• Authors: Magdalena Zając , Arkadiusz Rojczyk
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The study reproduces pilot work concerned with the imitation of English vowel duration by Polish learners (Zając 2013). Its aim was to expand on the findings of the previous study, i.e. determine if the magnitude of imitation may depend on the native/non-native status of the model talker and investigate whether the provision of explicit instructions to imitate at the beginning of the experiment affects convergence strategies of the participants. The dependent variable was the duration of three English front vowels analysed in shortening and lengthening contexts. The stimuli included pre-recorded English word pairs pronounced by a native and a non-native model talker. The experimental procedure consisted of three tasks: (1) reading the English word pairs displayed sequentially on a computer screen (baseline condition), producing the English words after exposure to (2) the native model talker’s voice and (3) the non-native model talker’s voice (shadowing conditions). The results show that the magnitude of imitation in the pronunciation of L2 learners may differ as a function of the model talker (native vs. non-native). The provision of explicit instructions to imitate at the beginning of the experimental procedure was found not to have a significant impact on the convergence strategies of the subjects.

Keywords

EN

phonetic imitation; L2 pronunciation; English vowel duration; vowel duration as a cue to consonant voicing; Polish learners of English

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2014
• Volume: 50
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 495-514

Dates

received

2014-06-30

revised

2014-10-14

accepted

2014-10-20

online

2014-11-14

Contributors

author

Magdalena Zając

• University of Łódź, Łódź, Poland

author

Arkadiusz Rojczyk

Identifiers

DOI

10.1515/psicl-2014-0025