Perceived foreign accent in L3 English: the effects of heritage language use

ABSTRACT

Bringing to the field of third language (L3) research a new population of speakers, namely heritage speaker (HS) L3 learners, this study investigates the accents of 19 German-Italian HSs in L3 English. In an accent rating experiment, the speech samples of the HSs and three control groups (monolingual speakers of English, Italian, and German) were rated for ‘degree of foreign accent’ and ‘source of accent’. The role of ‘Italian use’ and ‘phonetic-phonological proficiency in Italian’ was also investigated for patterns of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) into English. For ‘degree of foreign accent’, the HSs were rated as moderately accented, on par with German controls, but as weaker accented than Italian controls. For ‘source of accent’, the HSs were perceived as German-sounding in most ratings (66.8%), while an Italian-sounding accent was detected in certain HSs (9.5% of ratings). Regression analyses showed CLI from Italian to be significantly predicted by the amount of ‘Italian use’, measured using a detailed background questionnaire. We conclude that, while accent in L3 English is predominantly affected by German, the typologically closer and majority language, CLI from Italian co-occurs in speakers who used their heritage language frequently.

KEYWORDS:

• L3 phonology
• perceived foreign accent
• CLI
• heritage speakers
• language use

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The terms ‘early bilingual’ and ‘heritage speaker’ are used interchangeably to refer to speakers who grew up with two languages – their heritage language and the majority language – before age 6 (cf. Rothman, 2009).

2 In some recent work, the term transfer has been linked to competence based influence, while the term CLI has been related to performance, or surface-level influence (Rothman et al., 2019). We use the term CLI herein, acknowledging that perceived foreign accent, as a holistic measure of speech production, reflects an interplay of phonetic-phonological processes.

3 Originally, 21 participants were tested. One was removed due to a slight stutter, and another due to a Swiss German accent.

4 It cannot be ruled out that knowledge of further foreign languages could affect the speakers’ accents in English. For example, Cabrelli Amaro (2016) showed evidence of regressive phonological transfer from a later-learned L3 into a typologically similar L2. However, there is little evidence to suggest that a later-learned, typologically distant language would have an influence on accent in English.

5 The stimuli for the English vocabulary test were taken from the DIALANG placement test, available on https://dialangweb.lancaster.ac.uk/. This test was chosen because it there are comparable versions available in German and Italian, which the HSs completed in the context of a different study.

6 Despite the lower degree of familiarity, the results nonetheless suggest that the raters could reliably distinguish between the German and Italian accents, which is important for the interpretation of the bilinguals’ accent.