THE INTERLANGUAGE SPEECH INTELLIGIBILITY BENEFIT: ARABIC-ACCENTED ENGLISH

Zachary B. Rasmussen (Rachel Hayes-Harb) Department of Linguistics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112

It is well known that learners of second languages generally speak with accents. Non-native accents result from differences in the sound systems of the speaker's native and second languages (e.g., native French speakers have difficulty with the English ‘th' sound because French has no such sound). Language learners typically pronounce second-language sounds in predictable ways, which is why native speakers of French exhibit characteristically “French" accents when speaking English. What is particularly interesting about non-native accents is that there is some evidence that second-language learners have an advantage over native speakers when it comes to understanding second language speech produced by other learners (Bent & Bradlow, 2003). For example, (A) native French speakers might find French-accented English more intelligible than native English speech, and (B) they might also find French-accented speech more intelligible than do native English listeners. These two effects have been collectively referred to as the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit (ISIB). The research presented here will explore these two different types of ISIB effect, specifically considering the case of Arabic accented English, an understudied variety of non-native speech. Native speakers of Arabic and native speakers of English will participate in a task in which they listen to Arabic-accented English and identify the words they hear. On the basis of previous research (Hayes-Harb et al. submitted), it is hypothesized that: (1) native Arabic listeners will find native English speech more intelligible than Arabic-accented speech (2) Arabic-accented English will be more intelligible to native Arabic listeners than to native English listeners. Data that supports these hypotheses would support the type of ISIB discussed above in example (B), while providing evidence that does not support the type of ISIB discussed in example (A). The results will be presented and discussed along with the implications for the intelligibility of non-native speech. Acoustic features of Arabic-accented speech that contribute to the ISIB will also be discussed.

Additional Abstract Information

Time and Location