In this study, we compare the effects of English lexical features on word duration for native and non-native English speakers and for non-native speakers with different L1s and a range of L2 experience. We also examine whether non-native word durations lead to judgments of a stronger foreign accent. We measured word durations in English paragraphs read by 12 American English (AE), 20 Korean, an...

English vowel productions were acoustically examined in a group of native Mandarin speakers. The first and second formant frequencies (F1 & F2) of 11 English vowels were examined in the syllable-level productions of 40 Mandarin speakers compared to 40 American English speakers. Results of the comparative acoustic analysis indicated that the Mandarin speakers differed significantly from the Amer...

The reiterant speech of ten native speakers of French was analyzed to develop baseline measures for syllable and consonant/vowel timing for a series of two-, three-, four-, and five-syllable French words spoken in isolation. Ten native speakers of English, who learned French as a second language, produced reiterant versions of both the French words and a comparable set of English words. The nat...

Despite the global spread of English, it seems that voices from Persian-speaking teachers concerning English as an international language (EIL) teaching methods and materials are underrepresented. The present study set out to explore how nonnative Persian-speaking English language teachers respond to the increasing global dominance of EIL and native- and non-native-speakers’ language norms with...

We examined the possible relationship between perception and production of /r–l/ by native Japanese speakers. Little evidence of a relationship between the cues used for perception and those for production was found for native Japanese and native English speakers. However, we found evidence of a shift from a reliance on conjunctive cues to single cues as listeners progressed from relatively naï...

This study examined how well phonetic similarity predicted ultimate attainment in the production of Danish /i, y, u/ and /d, t/ by highly experienced native speakers of English and of Spanish. Experiment 1 compared the VOT of /d, t/ and the F2 of /i, y, u/ as produced by native speakers of the three languages. Experiment 2 examined the perceptual assimilation of Danish [i, y, u] to native /i, u...