Plasticity in vowel perception and production: A study of accent change in young adults

Evans, Bronwen G.; Iverson, Paul

doi:10.1121/1.2722209

Cited by 168 publications

(146 citation statements)

References 27 publications

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“…Evans and Iverson (2007) investigated vowel perception and production amongst university students from the north of England, as they adapted their accent from regional to educated (i.e., SE) norms. Participants were tested in their production and perception at regular intervals over a period of two years using a battery of tests.…”

Section: Familiarity With a Native Accent And Speech Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions.

Adank¹,

Evans²,

Stuart‐Smith³

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

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209

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This study aimed to determine the relative processing cost associated with comprehension of an unfamiliar native accent under adverse listening conditions. Two sentence verification experiments were run in which listeners heard sentences at various signal-to-noise ratios. In Experiment 1, these sentences were spoken in a familiar native or an unfamiliar native accent, or in two familiar native accents. In Experiment 2, they were spoken in a familiar or unfamiliar native accent or in a non-native accent. The results indicated that the differences between the native accents influenced the speed of language processing under adverse listening conditions and that this processing speed was modulated by the relative familiarity of the listener with the native accent.Furthermore, the results demonstrated that the processing cost associated with the nonnative accent was larger than for the unfamiliar native accent.

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Section: Familiarity With a Native Accent And Speech Comprehensionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions.

Adank¹,

Evans²,

Stuart‐Smith³

et al. 2009

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Perfor

Self Cite

213

209

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, we chose only speakers who did not change their place of residence, to avoid different accent influences (cf. Clopper and Pisoni 2006;Evans and Iverson 2007). The EFL speakers have acquired English only in academic settings; all the other speakers acquired English in naturalistic settings.…”

Section: Choice Of Speakersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Plus Ça Change… Serbian EFL Students' Attitudes Towards Varieties of English

Paunović

2009

Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics

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This paper presents the findings of a sociolinguistic study investigating the attitudes of adult Serbian EFL students (N=114), trained as future EFL teachers, to 8 regional and 2 EFL varieties of English, relative to accent identification. A modified verbal-guise technique, based on semantic differential scales for 15 traits in the dimensions of social prestige, social closeness, and personal integrity, was combined with a direct-method questionnaire. The findings show that the participants were not familiar enough with different regional accents, but, rather, that they relied on broad constructs such as "British" or "American" English. They expressed conservative attitudes, rating most favourably the varieties they associated with the notions of "standard" and "correct", and least favourably those associated with common negative stereotypes or "foreign" accents. In the light of the participants' meagre results in accent recognition, we argue that further language attitude research is needed in the EFL context, where attitudes to varieties gain even more weight with the shift towards education for intercultural communication.

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“…What happens to adults' more fully-formed linguistic systems in cases of dialect contact has been examined as well (Trudgill 1986;Munro et al 1999;Evans and Iverson 2007). Studies have found that adults acquire some features of the new dialect, but rarely, if ever, do the adults fully acquire the new dialect.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Novelty and social preference in phonetic accommodation

Babel

McGuire

Walters

et al. 2014

Laboratory Phonology

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Phonetic imitation is the unintentional, spontaneous acquisition of speech characteristics of another talker. Previous work has shown that imitation is strongly moderated by social preference in adults, and that social preference affects children's speech acquisition within peer groups. Such findings have led to the suggestion that phonetic imitation is related to larger processes of sound change in a change-by-accommodation model. This study examines how preferential processing of particular voice types affects spontaneous phonetic accommodation, interpreting the results in the context of how sound change can be propagated through a speech community. To explore this question eight model talkers previously rated as attractive, unattractive, typical, and atypical for each gender were used in an auditory naming paradigm. Twenty participants completed the task, and an AXB measure was used to quantify imitation. Female participants imitated more than male participants, but this varied across model voices. Females were found to rely more on social preference than men, while both groups imitated the atypical voices. The results suggest that females adapt their speech to auditory input more readily, but the nature of the accommodation does not qualify as direct evidence for a change-by-accommodation model given the constrained context of the task.

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Plasticity in vowel perception and production: A study of accent change in young adults

Cited by 168 publications

References 27 publications

Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions.

Comprehension of familiar and unfamiliar native accents under adverse listening conditions.

Plus Ça Change… Serbian EFL Students' Attitudes Towards Varieties of English

Novelty and social preference in phonetic accommodation

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