Language Dependency of /s/ Production: Native Dutch Versus Non-Native English.
Meike M de Boer, Willemijn F L Heeren
PMID 38641956WHAT IT FOUND
Dutch speakers' /s/ sounds change acoustically when they switch to English.
Center of gravity and spectral shape shifted, while dispersion remained stable on average. Individual variation was high, meaning these acoustic features are unreliable for comparing speakers across languages.
Key findings
01Center of gravity (CoG) for /s/ was more than 800 Hz higher in L2 English than in L1 Dutch.
02Spectral standard deviation (SD) was the only acoustic parameter that showed no overall difference between languages.
03Skewness and kurtosis were language-dependent, but the difference between languages decreased or disappeared when the following sound was labial.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The sample consisted only of female students with above-average English proficiency, so results may not apply to males or those with lower proficiency. The study focused on spontaneous monologues, which may differ from conversational speech. Individual speaker variation in acoustic adaptation was high, limiting the generalizability of the group findings to specific cases.
Declared interests
Funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO VIDI grant). The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the stability of standard deviation as a reliable marker for cross-linguistic speaker identification. While the group average showed no language effect, individual speakers varied significantly, with some showing higher and others lower standard deviations in their second language.