Presentation

An Acoustic Phonetic Account of the Confusion Between [ɹ] and [L] in Seven Varieties of L2 English: Focus on Intelligibility and Accentedness

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Abstract

The lateral [l] and the rhotic [ɹ] are classified as liquids because their places and manners of articulation overlap in many languages (Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996, p.185). As a result, when some L2 speakers of English produce them, these two segments are perceptually indistinguishable to some speakers of English. This is likely to cause unintelligibility for hearers of General American English (GAE). Other L2 speakers produce them clearly and distinctly. Intelligibility is not compromised, yet their speech is perceived as heavily accented. Both pronunciation patterns are investigated acoustically to determine thresholds at which unintelligibility or accentedness is perceived. The participants in this study are 10 Arabic, 10 Japanese, 10 Korean, 10 Mandarin, 11 Slavic, 6 Somali, and 10 Spanish L2 speakers. Their pronunciations of [l] and [ɹ] are compared and contrasted with those produced by 10 native speakers of American English. All 77 participants read the same Speech Accent Archive text. The acoustic correlates studied in this paper are F3 and vibration rates. Catford’s (1987) relative functional load (RFL) data is used to determine the rate of intelligibility, while Ladefoged (1996)’s trilling threshold is used to gauge the degree of accentedness of the [ɹ]s produced by non-native speakers.

How to Cite:

Koffi, E., (2016) “An Acoustic Phonetic Account of the Confusion Between [ɹ] and [L] in Seven Varieties of L2 English: Focus on Intelligibility and Accentedness”, Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Proceedings 8(1).