The contribution of speech timing, f0 change, and voice quality to perceived prosodic proficiency in L2: a cross-lingual perspective

Abstract

Various studies have remarked the difficulty of the English stress and intonation systems to language learners. The current study takes a holistic approach to EFL prosody by investigating the contribution of speech timing, f0 change, and voice quality to the prediction of prosodic proficiency in EFL speakers with four different yet typologically close L1s. This study continues from an earlier one that suggests syllable duration to be the best feature for capturing relevant prominence characteristics of EFL speakers. However, the results varied depending on speaker L1. Acoustic parameters were analyzed from 216 read utterances produced by EFL speakers with either Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, or Polish as their L1. Generalized linear mixed models were used to inspect the effect of acoustic parameters and speaker L1 on prosodic proficiency assessed by 40 trained raters. The results show a significant effect of timing parameters on assessed EFL proficiency, but the effect is considerably stronger for Hungarian EFL learners than for the other groups. Parameters of f0 change, in turn, proved more significant for Hungarian and Polish than for Czech and Slovak EFL learners. Further research is suggested to scrutinize the L1 effect in producing EFL prosody.