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Learning prosody and fluency characteristics of second language speech: The effect of experience on child learners' acquisition of five suprasegmentals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2007

PAVEL TROFIMOVICH  and
WENDY BAKER
PAVEL TROFIMOVICH
Affiliation:
Concordia University
WENDY BAKER
Affiliation:
Brigham Young University
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Abstract

This study examined second language (L2) experience effects on children's acquisition of fluency-(speech rate, frequency, and duration of pausing) and prosody-based (stress timing, peak alignment) suprasegmentals. Twenty Korean children (age of arrival in the United States = 7–11 years, length of US residence = 1 vs. 11 years) and 20 age-matched English monolinguals produced six English sentences in a sentence repetition task. Acoustic analyses and listener judgments were used to determine how accurately the suprasegmentals were produced and to what extent they contributed to foreign accent. Results indicated that the children with 11 years of US residence, unlike those with 1 year of US residence, produced all but one (speech rate) suprasegmentals natively. Overall, findings revealed similarities between L2 segmental and suprasegmental learning.

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Articles
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Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , April 2007 , pp. 251 - 276
Copyright
2007 Cambridge University Press

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