Intonational Foreign Accent: Speech Technology and Foreign Language Teaching

2. Method In an experimental setting native speakers of American English are asked to read short German stories and repeat short German utterances. During the recording sessions they also produce a number of samples of German spontaneous speech. The recorded utterances are then examined for non−native intonation patterns, which are either obviously inappropriate for German or just to some smaller degree different from the corresponding utterances spoken by native speakers of German (such comparisons are possible only for the non−spontaneous utterances). The identified differences are then described by tone labels. The tone labels in turn serve as the reference for the rule−based generation of F0 contours. Consequently, it is possible to control the shape of the generated contour via the tone labels and the prescriptive intonation rules they are associated with.