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The Perception and Production of Nonnative English Consonants In Liv-Randi Lersveen The perception and production of nonnative English consonants in native Norwegian speakers Master’s thesis in Linguistics Trondheim, May 2018 Master’s thesis Master’s NTNU Faculty of Humanities Faculty Department of Language and Literature Norwegian University of Science and Technology of Science University Norwegian Abstract This study looked at the perception and production of the English unvoiced and voiced alveolar stops, alveolar fricatives, postalveolar fricatives and affricates. The voiced sounds in each of these pairs are nonnative to Norwegian speakers, except for the alveolar stops which are both present in the Norwegian sound system. Both a perception test and a production task were performed. Two groups of native Norwegian speakers participated. Group 1 consisted of people who had not spent more than a maximum of 6 weeks in an English-speaking country, and group 2 consisted of people who had lived in an English-speaking country for a period of time (4-10 months). A control group, consisting of native speakers of English also conducted the same experiments. The perception task had an AXB design, where the listeners task was to identify which of the two words in a minimal pair word X was equal to; e.g. looking at the contrast /s/ and /z/ by using the minimal pair <ice> and <eyes> and playing <eyes> as word X. Different English- native speakers had produced the stimuli which consisted of 18 different minimal pairs, which contrasted in the target sounds. In the production task, the stimuli were presented both orthographically and by audio one by one, and participants were instructed to read the word out loud after hearing the stimulus. The recordings from the production task were then judged by two native speakers on a 5-point scale, where the sound in question was rated from 1-wrong sound to 5- native-like. The raters were blind to the hypothesis. The study hypothesized that the frequency of minimal pairs containing the contrasting sounds would influence the results of the L2 groups in both the perception experiment and the production experiment. It was also hypothesized that time spent in English-speaking country would have an effect in both experiments. Contrary to the expectations, no effect was found on the influence of time spent in English-speaking country in either the perception or production results. The results showed an effect of the frequency of minimal pairs containing the contrasting sounds in the perception experiment, but not the production experiment. ii Acknowledgements I would like to thank both my advisers, without them this project would not have been possible. I would like to thank my adviser Anne Dahl for answering questions, for helpful feedback on drafts, and for always being full of optimism. I would like to thank my adviser Wim van Dommelen for giving feedback faster than what should be humanly possible, and for always wanting to discuss any questions I had concerning my thesis, big or small. I would like to thank all the people who helped make this study possible. The project could not have been completed without the people who participated in the experiments, produced stimuli, or rated the recordings. I would like to thank my parents, who have always had faith that I could do anything I put my mind to. I would especially like to thank my mom for always picking up the phone whenever I called to complain about my thesis. I would like to extend a big thank you to all my fellow master’s students for the five years leading up to this moment. A special thank you goes to Inger Anne who has helped keep my head straight during the process of writing this thesis, and Siri for sitting together with me the final days before submission. I would like to thank Sigrid for taking her time and helping me proof-read my thesis. You saved me many typos and double-spacings. Any errors that remain are totally my own. Trondheim, May 14th 2018 Liv-Randi Lersveen iii iv Content Abstract ....................................................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................... iii 1.0 Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 1 2.0 Theory .................................................................................................................................. 3 2.1 Terms and definitions ....................................................................................................... 3 2.2 Previous research on SLA phonology .............................................................................. 3 2.3 Different models of SLA phonology ................................................................................ 6 2.4 The sound systems of Norwegian and English ................................................................. 7 2.5 The language situation in Norway .................................................................................... 9 2.6 Research on English as an L2 on Norwegian speakers .................................................. 10 2.7 My hypotheses ................................................................................................................ 11 3.0 Method ............................................................................................................................... 15 3.1 Participants ..................................................................................................................... 15 3.2 The experiments ............................................................................................................. 16 3.2.1 Perception ................................................................................................................ 17 3.2.2 Production ................................................................................................................ 18 3.3 Analysis .......................................................................................................................... 19 4.0 Results ................................................................................................................................ 21 4.1 Perception ....................................................................................................................... 22 4.1.1 Percentage of correct responses on perception ........................................................ 22 4.1.2 Effect of different explanatory variables on perception........................................... 23 4.1.3 Effect of sound pair on perception ........................................................................... 25 4.1.4 Effect of voicing feature on perception.................................................................... 26 4.2 Production ....................................................................................................................... 28 4.2.1 The average z-scored rating on production .............................................................. 28 4.2.2 Effect of different explanatory variables on production .......................................... 29 4.2.3 Effect of sound pair on perception ........................................................................... 30 4.2.4 Effect of voicing feature on production ................................................................... 32 4.3 Relationship between perception and production ........................................................... 34 4.3.1 Instances of both raters giving a score of 1 on the production ................................ 35 4.4 Summary of the results ................................................................................................... 36 5.0 Discussion .......................................................................................................................... 37 5.1 On the issue of native input ............................................................................................ 37 5.2 The effect of different explanatory variables ................................................................. 37 5.3 Differences with respect to the sound pairs .................................................................... 38 5.4 The correlation between perception and production ...................................................... 42 5.5. Limitations of this study ................................................................................................ 43 6.0 Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 45 Sources ..................................................................................................................................... 47 Appendix 1 – Relevance for the teaching profession Appendix 2 – Perception word list Appendix 3 – Production word list Appendix 4 – Questionnaire Norwegian speakers Appendix 5 – Questionnaire English speakers Appendix 6 – Table of production and perception results 1.0 Introduction The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 – 1951) (Wittgenstein and Ogden, 2014, p. 149, Satz 5.6) The world is getting smaller and smaller. One reason for this is all the new technology, but another assumed important reason is the access of a world language. Today, anyone who can make themselves understood in English can travel
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