This study investigates the process of generalizing a learned sub-lexical contrast across speakers of different non-native accents of English. We examine the generalization of a novel cue (voicing-cued release) that is non-contrastive in English, but contrastive in the manipulated speech of our L2 speakers of English, to a speaker with the same or different L1 as our training speakers (Exp. 1)....

This study investigated the prosodic features of non-native spoken English. Sixteen recordings were extracted from an in-progress test-based learner corpus, each consisted of read-aloud and question-and-answer parts by a learner who had received a grade of 3 (passing) or 5 (highest) on a five-point scale. A group of 8 native speakers was recruited and recorded under the same test scenario as a ...

This paper shows a method to diagnose potential mispronunciations in second language learning by studying the characteristics of the speech produced by a group of native speakers and the speech produced by various non-native groups of speakers from diverse language backgrounds. The method compares the native auditory perception and the non-native spectral representation on the phoneme level usi...

This study examined how well phonetic similarity predicted ultimate attainment in the production of Danish /i, y, u/ and /d, t/ by highly experienced native speakers of English and of Spanish. Experiment 1 compared the VOT of /d, t/ and the F2 of /i, y, u/ as produced by native speakers of the three languages. Experiment 2 examined the perceptual assimilation of Danish [i, y, u] to native /i, u...

In this study we investigate whether non-native speakers using a speech recognition system would benefit from phone models of their own native language. For Dutch as the target recognition language, we found that American speakers do not in general benefit from American English models when speaking Dutch. However, using a CVC test methodology, we can conclude that for a certain level of profici...