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Title: The Attainment of an English Accent

The Attainment of an English Accent

British and American Features in Advanced German Learners

by Alexander Kautzsch (Author)
©2017 Postdoctoral Thesis XXV, 296 Pages
English Studies
Series: Inquiries in Language Learning, Volume 20

Summary

This book investigates inconsistencies in the accent adopted by advanced German learners of English with respect to differences between standard American and British English (rhoticity, t-voicing, the vowels in the lexical sets «bath», «lot» and «thought»). From a theoretical point of view, the volume contributes to understanding the status of L1 transfer in language learners at «ultimate attainment», a stabilized, late stage in language acquisition. Unlike in many studies in second language acquisition, the approach taken here is variationist, taking into account extra- and intra-linguistic factors as potential explanations for variability. The findings suggest that in addition to the target accent the strongest external factor is time spent abroad, while L1 accent and proficiency level seem to have minor impact only.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Preface
  • Vorwort
  • Contents
  • List of Figures
  • List of Tables
  • Acknowledgements
  • 1 Introduction
  • 2 Variation, transfer and ultimate attainment in second language acquisition
  • 2.1 Variation
  • 2.1.1 Internal and external factors
  • 2.1.2 Systematic vs. non-systematic variation
  • 2.2 Transfer in second language (phonological) acquisition
  • 2.3 Ultimate attainment in second language acquisition
  • 2.4 Implications for the present study
  • 3 British English, American English and German: Cross-linguistic comparison and transfer opportunities for German learners
  • 3.1 Rhoticity and linking <r>
  • 3.1.1 Cross-linguistic comparison
  • 3.1.2 Transfer opportunities
  • 3.2 T-voicing
  • 3.2.1 Cross-linguistics comparison
  • 3.2.2 Transfer opportunities
  • 3.3 The bath vowel and the lot / thought distinction
  • 3.3.1 The vowel systems of BrE, AmE and Standard German
  • 3.3.2 The bath vowel
  • 3.3.2.1 Cross-linguistics comparison
  • 3.3.2.2 Transfer opportunities
  • 3.3.3 The lot / thought distinction
  • 3.3.3.1 Cross-linguistics comparison
  • 3.3.3.2 Transfer opportunities
  • 3.4 Summary
  • 4 The attainment of an English accent by advanced German learners: Research questions
  • 5 Methodology
  • 5.1 Speakers
  • 5.2 Diagnostic texts: “Comma gets a cure” and “München”
  • 5.2.1 Comma gets a cure
  • 5.2.2 München
  • 5.3 Rhoticity and linking <r>
  • 5.4 T-voicing
  • 5.5 The bath vowel and the lot / thought distinction
  • 5.5.1 A brief note on lexical sets for German
  • 5.5.2 bath and lot / thought
  • 5.5.3 Vowel measurement in praat
  • 5.5.4 Plotting vowels: The package “Vowels” for R (Kendall & Thomas 2012)
  • 5.6 Statistical analyses
  • 5.6.1 Consonants: Rbrul (Johnson 2009)
  • 5.6.2 Vowels: Boxplots and pairwise t-tests in R
  • 6 Results: The realizations of salient differences between BrE and AmE by advanced German learners
  • 6.1 Rhoticity and linking <r>
  • 6.1.1 Rhoticity
  • 6.1.1.1 Quantitative distribution of rhoticity by target variety, region, proficiency and time spent abroad
  • 6.1.1.2 Summary and Rbrul analysis
  • 6.1.2 Linking <r>
  • 6.1.2.1 Quantitative distribution of linking <r> by target variety, region, proficiency and time spent abroad
  • 6.1.2.2 Summary and Rbrul analysis
  • 6.2 T-voicing
  • 6.2.1 Quantitative distribution of t-voicing by target variety, region, proficiency and time spent abroad
  • 6.2.1.1 Extra-linguistic independent variables L1 accent region, proficiency and time spent abroad
  • 6.2.1.2 Intra-linguistic independent variables position and word class
  • 6.2.2 Summary and Rbrul analysis
  • 6.3 The bath vowel and the lot / thought distinction
  • 6.3.1 The bath vowel
  • 6.3.1.1 Native bath in comparison to German vowel space
  • 6.3.1.2 bath by region, proficiency and time spent abroad
  • 6.3.1.3 Bath in comparison to trap and palm, native bath, and German bäten, Kätzchen, Betten, baten and hatten
  • 6.3.2 The lot / thought distinction
  • 6.3.2.1 Native lot and thought in comparison to German vowel space
  • 6.3.2.2 lot and thought by region, proficiency and time spent abroad
  • 6.3.2.3 Lot and thought in comparison to native lot and thought and German Boten, Socken, baten and hatten
  • 7 Summary and discussion
  • 7.1 Linguistic features
  • 7.1.1 Rhoticity
  • 7.1.2 Linking <r>
  • 7.1.3 T-voicing
  • 7.1.4 Bath
  • 7.1.5 lot / thought
  • 7.2 The influence of extra-linguistic variables on the degree of approximation to the self-chose target accent
  • 7.2.1 The self-chosen target accent
  • 7.2.2 L1 accent region
  • 7.2.3 Proficiency
  • 7.2.4 Time spent abroad
  • 7.3 Transfer and ultimate attainment
  • 8 Conclusion and outlook
  • 9 References

| xiii →

List of Figures

Figure 3.1 The stressed monophthongs of BrE (adapted from Wells 2008: xxiii–xxiv)

Figure 3.2 The stressed monophthongs of AmE (adapted from Wells 2008: xxiii–xxiv)

Figure 3.3 The stressed monophthongs of German (adapted from Duden 2005: 37)

Figure 3.4 The vowels of BrE and AmE BATH (adapted from Cruttenden 2008: 113, 118; 2014: 121, 124)

Figure 3.5 The vowels of BrE and AmE BATH in comparison with German BATEN / HATTEN and BETTEN / KÄTZCHEN / BÄTEN

Figure 3.6 The vowels of BrE and AmE LOT and THOUGHT

Figure 3.7 The vowels of BrE and AmE LOT and THOUGHT in comparison with German BATEN / HATTEN and SOCKEN / BOTEN

Figure 5.1 Spectrogram of rhotic before

Figure 5.2 Spectrogram of non-rhotic before

Figure 5.3 Spectrogram of at a superb private practice in PRAAT

Figure 5.4 X-ray images of the vowels /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, and /u/ as produced by Belgian phonetician Didier Demolin

Figure 5.5 Spectrogram of body in PRAAT

Figure 5.6 Sample F1-F2 vowel plot of English monophthongs by one speaker

Figure 5.7 Tab-separated plain text file containing formant values of one speaker

Figure 5.8 Exemplary data frame “vowels” in R

Figure 5.9 Basic F1-F2 plot in R using function vowelplot()

Figure 5.10 Data frame “vowels_means” created by compute.means()

Figure 5.11 F1-F2 plot showing one speaker’s mean values of English vowels ← xiii | xiv →

Figure 5.12 Z3-Z1/Z3-2 plot showing one speaker’s Bark normalized mean values of English vowels

Figure 5.13 Z3-Z1/Z3-2 plot showing one speaker’s Bark normalized mean values of English and German vowels (excluding German rounded front vowels)

Figure 5.14 Z3-Z1/Z3-2 plot showing ten speaker’s Bark normalized mean values of German vowels (excluding German rounded front vowels) and standard deviations

Figure 5.15 The set-up of boxplots

Figure 6.1 Overall rhoticity rates

Figure 6.2 Overall rhoticity rates by region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.3 Overall rhoticity rates by time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.4 Overall rhoticity rates by region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.5 Overall rhoticity rates by time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.6 Rhoticity rates in content and function words by region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.7 Rhoticity rates in content and function words by time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.8 Rhoticity rates in stressed and unstressed syllables by region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.9 Rhoticity rates in stressed and unstressed syllables by time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.10 Rhoticity rates in content and function words by region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.11 Rhoticity rates in content and function words by time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.12 Rhoticity rates in stressed and unstressed syllables by region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.13 Rhoticity rates in stressed and unstressed syllables by time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.14 Overall linking <r> rates ← xiv | xv →

Figure 6.15 Linking <r> rates by region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.16 Linking <r>rates by time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.17 Linking <r> rates by region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.18 Linking <r> rates by time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.19 Linking <r> rates in content and function words by region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.20 Linking <r> rates in content and function words by time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.21 Linking <r> rates in content and function words by region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.22 Linking <r> rates in content and function words by time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.23 Overall rates of t-voicing

Figure 6.24 Overall rates of t-voicing by region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.25 Overall rates of t-voicing by time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.26 Overall rates of t-voicing by region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.27 Overall rates of t-voicing by time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.28 Rates of t-voicing by position, region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.29 Rates of t-voicing by position and time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.30 Rates of word-final t-voicing by word class, region and proficiency level (AmE target)

Figure 6.31 Rates of word-final t-voicing by word class and time spent abroad (AmE target)

Figure 6.32 Rates of t-voicing by position, region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.33 Rates of t-voicing by position and time spent abroad (BrE target) ← xv | xvi →

Figure 6.34 Rates of word-final t-voicing by word class, region and proficiency level (BrE target)

Figure 6.35 Rates of word-final t-voicing by word class and time spent abroad (BrE target)

Figure 6.36 BATH, TRAP and PALM in BrE and AmE native speakers

Figure 6.37 BATH, TRAP and PALM in BrE and AmE native speakers; BÄTEN, KÄTZCHEN, HATTEN and BATEN in German speakers from NRW

Figure 6.38 Z3-Z1 and Z3-Z2 across vowels (BrE BATH vs NRW German vowels)

Figure 6.39 Z3-Z1 and Z3-Z2 across vowels (AmE BATH vs NRW German vowels)

Figure 6.40 BATH, TRAP and PALM in BrE and AmE native speakers; BÄTEN, KÄTZCHEN, HATTEN and BATEN in German speakers from Bavaria

Figure 6.41 Z3-Z1 and Z3-Z2 across vowels (BrE BATH vs BY German vowels)

Figure 6.42 Z3-Z1 and Z3-Z2 across vowels (AmE BATH vs BY German vowels)

Details

Pages
XXV, 296
Publication Year
2017
ISBN (PDF)
9783631721001
ISBN (ePUB)
9783631721018
ISBN (MOBI)
9783631721025
ISBN (Hardcover)
9783631720998
DOI
10.3726/b11017
Language
English
Publication date
2017 (June)
Keywords
British Accent American Accent L1 Transfer Ultimate Attainment Variationist Approach
Published
Frankfurt am Main, Bern, Bruxelles, New York, Oxford, Warszawa, Wien, 2017. XXV, 296 pp., 126 b/w ill., 8 coloured ill., 78 b/w tables
Product Safety
Peter Lang Group AG

Biographical notes

Alexander Kautzsch (Author)

Alexander Kautzsch is a linguist in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Regensburg. His main research interests include phonological second language acquisition, English in Namibia, and the historical evolution of African American English.

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Title: The Attainment of an English Accent