The production and perception of English, French and German intonation

Abstract

'Foreign accent' has generally been equated with non-native pronunciation and much research has focused on the area of non-native pronunciation (for example, Briere 1966, Flege 1980). We were interested in other components of non-native speech which create or add to the listener's impression of 'foreign accent'. Specifically, we were interested in the role intonation plays in identifying a non-native speaker. It is not known how widely intonation is used to identify speakers of a different language or dialect. This unanswered question forms the central inquiry of this paper.