The implementation of phrasal prosody by native and non-native speakers of English: SS ANOVA for multi-syllabic intonation contours

Non-native speakers often have difficulties with prosody; stress and intonation patterns that differ from those of native speakers can contribute to “foreign accent,” even at high proficiency levels. Although effects of a listener’s native language on the perception of prosody are well established, few studies have examined non-native prosody production. In particular, it is not known whether the placement of prominence in words and phrases differs between native and non-native speakers in reliable ways. The current study examines a corpus of native and non-native English speech, to look for group differences in the production of intonation contours. Using smoothing spline analysis of variance (SS ANOVA), the phrasal pitch contours of identical speech passages produced by 197 speakers of four different native languages are compared. Results suggest that a speaker’s native language has predictable effects on the production of phrasal intonation patterns.