Kornder Lisa, Mennen Ineke
Department of English Studies, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
Front Psychol. 2021 Oct 8;12:717615. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.717615. eCollection 2021.
The aim of this study was to explore if and to what extent Austrian-English late sequential bilinguals who have been living in a second language (L2) environment for several decades are perceived to sound native in their first language (L1) when being compared to monolingual Austrian German (AG) control speakers. Furthermore, this investigation aimed to identify if listeners differ in their judgments of nativeness of L1 pronunciation depending on their own language background. For this purpose, two groups of native Austrian German listeners ( = 30 each), who differed regarding their linguistic background (Austrian German monolingual and Austrian German-English bilingual listeners) were asked to rate spontaneous speech samples produced by Austrian English bilingual and Austrian German monolingual speakers. Results showed that the bilingual L1 speech was perceived to sound overall less native compared to monolingual control speech. It was further observed that the two listener groups significantly differed in their perception of nativeness: Bilingual listeners were overall less likely to judge bilingual L1 pronunciation to sound non-native compared to monolingual listeners. To date, this is the first study to show that listener experience influences their perception of nativeness of L1 pronunciation and, thus, adds a new dimension to the notion of the native speaker.
本研究的目的是探讨在第二语言（L2）环境中生活了几十年的奥地利-英语晚期连续双语者，与以奥地利德语（AG）为母语的单语对照者相比，在其第一语言（L1）发音上被认为有多么地道。此外，本调查旨在确定听众对L1发音地道程度的判断是否因其自身语言背景而异。为此，两组以奥地利德语为母语的听众（每组30人），他们在语言背景上有所不同（奥地利德语单语者和奥地利德语-英语双语者），被要求对奥地利英语双语者和奥地利德语单语者的自发语音样本进行评分。结果表明，与单语对照语音相比，双语者的L1语音总体上被认为不那么地道。进一步观察到，两组听众在地道程度的感知上存在显著差异：与单语听众相比，双语听众总体上不太可能认为双语者的L1发音不地道。迄今为止，这是第一项表明听众经验会影响他们对L1发音地道程度的感知的研究，从而为母语者的概念增添了一个新的维度。
