The influence of segmental and suprasegmental errors on the intelligibility of non-native speakers of Dutch

In the field of second language acquisition research the overall interest in pronunciation is relatively limited. Within the group of researchers that do take an interest in pronunciation, many adhere to the idea that prosodic errors are more detrimental to intelligibility of nonnative speakers than segmental errors. This view can be found in recent handbooks for foreign language teaching as well. However, the empirical basis for this is rather weak, since it is mainly based on studies involving pronunciation judgments rather than measuring functional intelligibility.