‘Native’ and ‘non‐native’ perception of stress in Singapore English

Abstract

Many scholars have noted how Singapore English (SgE) exhibits different stress placement patterns as compared to British or American English. Much work has also been done to suggest that such deviations of stress placement patterns from the traditional 'native' norms create problems for intelligibility. This study is concerned with the way stress in SgE is perceived by speakers of different Englishes, comparing specifically two groups of participants: the speakers of SgE; and the speakers of British, American and Australian Englishes (the traditional Inner Circle English speakers). The analyses of a perception test indicate that stress is perceived differently between speakers of different Englishes.

Prominence and intonation in Singapore English

“…Even so, with the exception of duration in two-syllable APs, the effects of phrasal position on these cues override those of stress pattern. The confluence of acoustic cues on the AP-final syllable may therefore explain Tan's (2015) finding that SgE listeners often perceive prominence on the final syllable of words.…”

Ranking Competencies of Oral Output: A Unit of Analysis for Low-Proficient L2 Speakers

“…The words "think" and "possible" may be acceptable to be pronounced as "shink" and "posshibulu", however, how about "aplipliate" and "laber"? As in Tan's (2015) paper, Singapore English speakers are sensitive towards their own pronunciation, however, in Orikasa's (2016) paper, the Japanese students thought that the speech sample spoken by a Japanese speaker as American English. This indicates that Singapore accent is established and Singapore English speakers speak in more of less the same way.…”

“…These types of research can certainly provide a great insight into how intelligible speakers of the Expanding Circle are to other non-native speakers or to native speakers. Only recently, studies like Tan's (2015) and River's (2011) started to examine the standpoint of non-native speakers of English, however, they have not been able to suggest any methods how non-native speakers should study to be more confident in their English as a Lingua Franca. These studies represent the very situation that Berns (2008) suggests in terms of ELF usage that non-native English speakers need to be confident in their own accents and not let them be the obstacle in communication.…”

The articulatory correlates of Singapore English vowels

“…In order to obtain naturalistic Singapore English speech (as natural as we possibly can elicit in an experimental setting, at least), a few considerations had to be made. Firstly, Singaporeans are particularly susceptible to speech accommodation and hyperarticulation, which means that they have a tendency to adjust their accent to the person they are addressing, and in the process losing some of the characteristic Singaporean features in their speech (Deterding & Poedjosoedarmo, 2000;Liu, 2011;Tan, 2015). In addition, based on previous experience (Lin & Moisik, 2019), we also realised that Singaporean participants tend not to give very elaborate replies in an interview format.…”