Phonetic Accommodation on the Segmental and the Suprasegmental Level of Speech in Native-Non-Native Collaborative Tasks.
Christiane Ulbrich
PMID 34666563WHAT IT FOUND
Spanish speakers of L2 German with higher proficiency made /r/ and pitch more German-like when talking to a native German or high-proficiency control; lower-proficiency speakers showed little change with the native German speaker.
Key findings
01Higher-proficiency speakers increased native-like uvular fricative /r/ by 8 percentage points with the native German control and by 10 percentage points with the high-proficiency Spanish control.
02Higher-proficiency speakers increased pitch range from 3.5 to 4.6 semitones with the native German control and from 3.1 to 4.2 semitones with the high-proficiency Spanish control.
03Lower-proficiency speakers showed no significant /r/ accommodation and increased pitch range only with non-native controls, not with the native German control.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Only twelve female Castilian Spanish speakers of L2 German were studied, all with no reported speech, language, or hearing problems. The participants were grouped by C1 or B2.1 German level, so the findings apply to these proficiency categories rather than other levels. The study used Castilian Spanish and Northern Standard German, and a German map task with a half-height divider, so it may not reflect everyday conversation. The analysis used only the first 30% and last 30% of recordings, not the whole interaction. Control speaker results were averaged across conversations with all participants, so individual control effects are not shown.
Declared interests
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that lower-proficiency speakers cannot accommodate. They did not show a significant /r/ change, but their pitch range increased with non-native controls, so the pattern depends on the feature and the interlocutor.