Non-native speaker pause patterns closely correspond to those of native speakers at different speech rates

Abstract

When speaking a foreign language, non-native speakers can typically be readily identified by their accents. But which aspects of the speech signal determine such accents? Speech pauses occur in all languages but may nonetheless vary in different languages with regard to their duration, number or positions in the speech stream, and therefore are one potential contributor to foreign speech production. The aim of this study was therefore to investigate whether non-native speakers pause 'with a foreign accent'. We recorded native English speakers and non-native speakers of German or Serbo-Croatian with excellent English reading out an English text at three different speech rates, and analyzed their vocal output in terms of number, duration and location of pauses. Overall, all non-native speakers were identified by native raters as having non-native accents, but native and non-native speakers made pauses that were similarly long, and had similar ratios of pause time compared to total speaking time. Furthermore, all speakers changed their pausing behavior similarly at different speech rates. The only clear difference between native and non-native speakers was that the latter made more pauses than the native speakers. Thus, overall, pause patterns contributed little to the acoustic characteristics of speakers' non-native accents, when reading aloud. Non-native pause patterns might be acquired more easily than other aspects of pronunciation because pauses are perceptually salient and producing pauses is easy. Alternatively, general cognitive processing mechanisms such as attention, planning or memory may constrain pausing behavior, allowing speakers to transfer their native pause patterns to a second language without significant deviation. We conclude that pauses make a relatively minor contribution to the acoustic characteristics of non-native accents.

The Influence of Different Prosodic Cues on Word Segmentation

“…This may be because pauses involve an immediate and very salient decrease in signal amplitude, relative to the other cues we tested (Fletcher, 2010 ). Additionally, pauses should provide nearly unambiguous signals for word boundaries because, in real speech, pauses almost exclusively occur at word boundaries and are not as flexibly distributed as changes in duration or pitch (Trainor and Adams, 2000 ; Fletcher, 2010 ; Matzinger et al, 2020 ).…”

“…The cue convergence hypothesis can be put forward for each of our prosodic cues separately, though it is more plausible for some changes than for others. Pause cues might be associated with word boundaries because in everyday speech, perceptible pauses occur almost exclusively at word boundaries, and hardly ever within words (Trainor and Adams, 2000 ; Fletcher, 2010 ; Sohail and Johnson, 2016 ; Matzinger et al, 2020 ). Lengthened syllables might also serve as signals for word-finality because domain-final elements are lengthened in everyday speech language-universally (Oller, 1973 ; Klatt, 1975 ; Vaissière, 1983 ; Tyler and Cutler, 2009 ; Fletcher, 2010 ; but also: White et al, 2020 ).…”

Information encoding and transmission profiles of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speech

“…SR is the rate of syllable production over the entire recording including pauses and other major disfluencies (nsyll/ total duration), while AR is the rate of syllable production with silent pauses and other major disfluencies removed (nsyll/total duration minus pauses and disfluencies). By definition, for any given recording, AR is greater than SR. Because pausing and other disfluencies may be more prevalent in L2 speech than in L1 speech (e.g., see de Jong, 2016;Trouvain, Fauth & Möbius, 2016;Matzinger, Ritt & Fitch, 2020 and references therein), the magnitude of L2 versus L1 differences in SR will, if anything, be larger than L2 versus L1 differences in AR. In order to adopt a conservative stance, this study focuses on AR rather than SR. Any AR differences between L2 and L1 speech would likely be larger for SR. Average syllable duration is calculated based on AR (i.e., average syllable duration is equal to 1/AR).…”

Voice modulatory cues to structure across languages and species

“…Language-universally, pauses are realized at the end of sentences or phrases but hardly ever occur within phrases or within words [28,116]. This is further supported by second language learning studies finding that second language learners have hardly any problems acquiring pause characteristics typical of their second language [117,118]. Thus, while in principle, pauses could occur anywhere within the breathing range, it is most probable that domain-general cognitive processing mechanisms constrain them to occur at specific positions in the vocal output-namely at those positions where they structure the vocal output most efficiently and with the least processing effort.…”