Contribution of prosody to the perception of a foreign accent: a study based on Spanish/Italian modified speech

In this article, we attempt to quantify the contribution of prosody (timing and melody) to the perception of a foreign accent, by using a prosodic transplantation paradigm. For this experiment, a dozen sentences, which are spoken in (almost) the same way in Italian and Spanish, were recorded. They were read by 3 Spanish monolinguals, 3 Italian monolinguals and 3 Spanish/Italian bilinguals (once in the Spanish way, once in the Italian way). Prosody crossings were performed, and perceptual tests were run with Italian, Spanish and French listeners. Results suggest that prosody outweighs segmental cues in the perception of Spanish-accented Italian and Italianaccented Spanish.