Phonetic Accommodation on the Segmental and the Suprasegmental Level of Speech in Native-Non-Native Collaborative Tasks

Abstract

This paper presents the investigation and analysis of speech accommodation effects in data obtained from Spanish learners of German with varying proficiency levels. The production data were recorded during a collaborative map task of the Spanish learners of German among each other and with a native speaker of German. The map task was designed to target words and phrases with specific segmental and suprasegmental characteristics. These characteristics were derived from contrastive analyses of Spanish and German. The main objectives of the paper were to investigate whether segmental and suprasegmental characteristics of the target language German are affected by phonetic accommodation to varying degrees and whether these differences depend on the proficiency level of the speaker or the interlocutor. The statistical analysis, using regression analyses, revealed inconsistent accommodation effects across learners of different proficiency levels as well as different linguistic phenomena. In line with previous findings the results can best be accounted for by an adaptation of a dynamic system approach.

Keywords: Phonetic accommodation; Spanish–German; collaborative task; segmentals; suprasegmentals.

Figure 1.

Examples of four types of /r/ realization found in the data in the word Ringe: top left [ʁɪŋə] with an initial uvular fricative; top right [ɾiŋgə] with an initial flap; bottom left [rɪŋgə] with an initial apical trill; and bottom right [ʀɪŋə] with a uvular trill.

Figure 2.

Illustration of measurements obtained for the calculation of the pitch range (forange) with the maximum fundamental frequency (fomax), the minimum fundamental frequency (fomin). The gray rectangle illustrates the accented syllable.

Figure 3.

Native-like /r/ realization as uvular fricative in word initial position at recording time 1 (rect1) and recording time 2 (rect2) highly proficient (HP) speakers and speakers with a lower proficiency level (LP) in the map-task completion with the native German control (G), with the highly proficient control (HPc), and the control for low proficiency (LPc).

Figure 4.

Pitch range in phoneme level for prenuclear accents at recording time 1 (rect1) and recording time 2 (rect2) highly proficient (HP) speakers and speakers with a lower proficiency level (LP) in the map-task completion with the native German control (G), with the highly proficient control (HPc), and the control for low proficiency (LPc).

Figure 5.

Ratio between intended (ARi) and realized articulation rate (ARr) at recording time 1 (rect1) and recording time 2 (rect2) of highly proficient (HP) speakers and speakers with a lower proficiency level (LP) in the map-task completion with the native German control (G), with the highly proficient control (HPc), and the control for low proficiency (LPc).