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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton August 7, 2018

Re-Examining Phonetic Variability in Native and Non-Native Speech

  • Charlotte Vaughn ORCID logo , Melissa Baese-Berk and Kaori Idemaru
From the journal Phonetica

Abstract

Background/Aims: Non-native speech is frequently characterized as being more variable than native speech. However, the few studies that have directly investigated phonetic variability in the speech of second language learners have considered a limited subset of native/non-native language pairings and few linguistic features. Methods: The present study examines group-level withinspeaker variability and central tendencies in acoustic properties of vowels andstops produced by learners of Japanese from two native language backgrounds, English and Mandarin, as well as native Japanese speakers. Results: Results show that non-native speakers do not always exhibit more phonetic variability than native speakers, but rather that patterns of variability are specific to individual linguistic features and their instantiations in L1 and L2. Conclusion: Adopting this more nuanced approach to variability offers important enhancements to several areas of linguistic theory.


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*Charlotte R. Vaughn, 1290 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR 97403 (USA), E-Mail cvaughn@uoregon.edu

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Received: 2017-01-29
Accepted: 2018-01-20
Published Online: 2018-08-07
Published in Print: 2019-08-01

© 2018 S. Karger AG, Basel

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