Wagner Mónica Anna, Broersma Mirjam, McQueen James M, van Hout Roeland, Lemhöfer Kristin
Donders Centre for Cognition, Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition, and Behaviour, Radboud Universiteit, The Netherlands.
Centre for Language Studies, Radboud Universiteit, The Netherlands.
Lang Speech. 2025 Jun;68(2):313-343. doi: 10.1177/00238309241256653. Epub 2024 Aug 7.
Research with nonnative speech spans many different linguistic branches and topics. Most studies include one or a few well-known features of a particular accent. However, due to a lack of empirical studies, little is known about how common these features are among nonnative speakers or how uncommon they are among native speakers. Moreover, it remains to be seen whether findings from such studies generalize to lesser-known features. Here, we demonstrate a quantitative approach to study nonnative accent features using Dutch-accented English as an example. By analyzing the phonetic distances between transcriptions of speech samples, this approach can identify the features that best distinguish nonnative from native speech. In addition, we describe a method to test hypotheses about accent features by checking whether the prevalence of the features overall varies between native and nonnative speakers. Furthermore, we include English speakers from the United States and United Kingdom and native Dutch speakers from Belgium and The Netherlands to address the issue of regional accent variability in both the native and target language. We discuss the results concerning three observed features. Overall, the results provide empirical support for some well-known features of Dutch-accented English, but suggest that others may be infrequent among nonnatives or in fact frequent among natives. In addition, the findings reveal potentially new accent features, and factors that may modulate the expression of known features. Our study demonstrates a fruitful approach to study nonnative accent features that has the potential to expand our understanding of the phenomenon of accent.
对非母语语音的研究涵盖了许多不同的语言分支和主题。大多数研究都聚焦于特定口音的一两个广为人知的特征。然而，由于缺乏实证研究，对于这些特征在非母语者中究竟有多普遍，或者在母语者中又有多罕见，我们知之甚少。此外，此类研究的结果能否推广到不太为人所知的特征，仍有待观察。在此，我们以带有荷兰口音的英语为例，展示一种研究非母语口音特征的定量方法。通过分析语音样本转录之间的语音距离，这种方法能够识别出最能区分非母语语音和母语语音的特征。此外，我们还描述了一种通过检查这些特征在母语者和非母语者中的总体分布是否存在差异来检验关于口音特征假设的方法。再者，我们纳入了来自美国和英国的英语使用者以及来自比利时和荷兰的荷兰母语使用者，以解决母语和目标语言中区域口音变异性的问题。我们讨论了关于三个观察到的特征的结果。总体而言，这些结果为带有荷兰口音的英语的一些广为人知的特征提供了实证支持，但也表明其他一些特征在非母语者中可能不常见，或者实际上在母语者中很常见。此外，研究结果揭示了潜在的新口音特征，以及可能调节已知特征表达的因素。我们的研究展示了一种富有成效的研究非母语口音特征的方法，它有可能扩展我们对口音现象的理解。
