Perceived Foreign Accent in Three Varieties of Non-native English*

What aspects of the speech signal cause listeners to perceive a foreign accent? While many studies have explored this question for a single variety of non-native speech, few have simultaneously considered non-native speech from multiple native language backgrounds. In this perception study, American Englishspeaking listeners rated stop-vowel sequences extracted from English words produced by L1 American English, L1 Hindi, L1 Korean, and L1 Mandarin talkers on a continuous scale of degree of foreign accent. Stepwise linear regression models revealed that VOT, vowel quality, f0, and vowel duration contributed significantly to the ratings. Additionally, listeners rated productions by all varieties of non-native talkers as sounding foreign-accented to some degree, with those by L1 Hindi talkers as most foreign-accented, and those by L1 Mandarin talkers as more foreign-accented than those by L1 Korean talkers. The results suggest that several acoustic properties contribute substantially to the perception of foreign accent, at least for stop-vowel sequences, and that some varieties of non-native English sound more accented than others. *I thank Mary Beckman, Cynthia Clopper, and Jeff Holliday for valuable input as this project developed, and audiences at the 161 meeting of the ASA and LabPhon13 for helpful comments on previous versions