Perceived foreign accentedness: Acoustic distances and lexical properties

• Published in: Attention, perception & psychophysics Vol. 77; no. 7; pp. 2438 - 2451
• Main Authors: Porretta, Vincent, Kyröläinen, Aki-Juhani, Tucker, Benjamin V.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.10.2015; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adolescent; Adult; Asian Continental Ancestry Group; Auditory Perception; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Female; Goodness of Fit; Humans; Influence; Language; Linguistics; Listening Comprehension; Male; Native Language; Native languages; Native Speakers; Perceptions; Phonemes; Phonetics; Phonology; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Ratings & rankings; Second Language Learning; Semitic Languages; Speech; Speech Acoustics; Speech Perception - physiology; Studies; Vocabulary; Vowels; Word Recognition; Young Adult; Decision making; Psycholinguistics; Speech perception
• ISSN: 1943-3921; 1943-393X
• DOI: 10.3758/s13414-015-0916-3

In this study, we examined speaker-dependent (acoustic) and speaker-independent (lexical) linguistic influences on perceived foreign accentedness. Accentedness ratings assigned to Chinese-accented English words were analyzed, taking accentedness as a continuum. The speaker-dependent variables were included as acoustic distances, measured in relation to typical native-speaker values. The speaker-independent variable measures were related to the properties of individual words, not influenced by the speech signal. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this represents the first attempt to examine speaker-dependent and speaker-independent variables simultaneously. The model indicated that the perception of accentedness is affected by both acoustic goodness of fit and lexical properties. The results are discussed in terms of matching variability in the input to multidimensional representations.