SPEECH RHYTHM OF ENGLISH AS L2: THE INFLUENCE OF DURATION AND F0 ON FOREIGN ACCENT INVESTIGATION

Resumo

When speaking a foreign language (L2), non-native speakers’ (NNS) speech contains some variable degree of foreign accent (FA) that is perceivable by the native speakers (NS) of that language based on the production of phonetic gestures characteristic of their mother tongue (L1), and  that differ from those of the  the foreign language (L2)  in terms of the segmental  (vowels and consonants) and prosodic (stress, rhythm and intonation) features . Causes such as neuro-plasticity and length of residence, for example, are claimed to interfere in L2 production. This work aims to analyze how L2 speech rhythm of English is produced by Brazilian Portuguese (BP) speakers and how acoustic correlates such as duration and fundamental frequency (F0) influence FA degree. This research is based on Barbosa (2006) for the dynamic determination of speech rhythm in addition to Ramus et. al. (1999) and so, on the choice of metrics and segmentation procedures. As for the methods of analysis, phonetic data from 20 BP and 04 American speakers were collected. Next the data were segmented into diferent unit  procedures for the purpose of carrying out acoustic, perceptual and statistical analysis. Results pointed out to a significant difference between L1 and L2 rhythms.