Project Description
This research seeks answers for two research questions: 1) how much information is needed for listeners to detect a foreign accent, especially in slightly accented speech? and 2) which acoustic information triggers the detection of foreign accent. To investigate the first question, we will conduct an online perception experiment. After listening to a series of short, slightly English words, native speakers of English will tell whether the word was spoken by a native speaker or a non-native speaker of English. The English word stimuli, produced by monolingual native speakers of English and Korean-English bilinguals, vary in length (monosyllabic word vs. single vowel) and type (e.g., difficult sound vs. easy sound), so that we can probe the amount of information needed for listeners to detect a foreign accent. To explore the second question, we will inspect different acoustic properties of stimuli we use (e.g., pitch, voice onset time) in the perception experiment and see how much deviation there is between the native and the non-native stimuli. We will examine whether the deviation of particular acoustic properties triggers more responses toward a non-native speaker in the perception experiment.
Tasks and Responsibilites
Under the supervision of Dr. Hanyong Park (Research mentor), the student will be actively involved in most research activities. The student will recruit potential participants for the experiment, and run the experiment, and organize the collected data for further statistical analysis (e.g., making a spreadsheet in Microsoft Excel). They will also do acoustic analysis of the stimuli (e.g., measuring acoustic properties using the speech software Praat). The student will make sure that each step is completed according to the research schedule outlined here. We will present some results from this project at the at the annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the spring (Student) and at a conference such as the Annual Mid-Continental Phonetics & Phonology Conference or the Annual Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in the fall (Research Mentor).
Desired Qualifications
None Listed.