English Vowels and Consonants by Native Arabic ... - Rush University

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14 Language and Speech 0(0)dialect backgrounds, most of the listeners had resided in the UAE for several years. Unfortunately,no comprehensive description of the phonological characteristics of English dialects spoken in theUAE or neighboring countries exists. The present study points to a need for such descriptions andhighlights the complexity of the question of whether dialectal differences can be separated fromnative language interference in a setting where diverse English and Arabic dialects interact on adaily basis. It is hoped that future research will provide systematic descriptions of local UAE Englishdialects, examine the effects of specific vowel and consonant confusion patterns, and detailperceptual relationships among vowels and consonant systems specific to individual English andArabic dialects (e.g., see Clopper, Levi, & Pisoni, 2006, re: perceptual similarity across AE dialects).Such studies would enhance our understanding of changes in phonological representationthat occur in the course of learning a second language.Age of acquisition has been shown to be a powerful predictor of ultimate perceptual mastery ofsecond language speech sounds (e.g., Flege, MacKay, & Meador, 1999). Thus, one reason for thelack of clear native Arabic language interference effects is likely to be the young age at which thenative Arabic participants started to learn English. Future research might examine comparisonsbetween early and late Arabic-English bilinguals in the region, matched, to the extent possible, onsocio-economic characteristics and dialectal background, in order to investigate more precisely theeffects of native Arabic language interference on the perception of AE speech sounds.Another possible confound is that the key words representing the vowels differed in their lexicalfrequency, with ‘had’, for example, being far more frequently said than ‘hud’. However, thesehighly proficient listeners would be expected to be very familiar with English sound-spelling correspondenceand would thus be expected to select the responses based on the corresponding writtenvowel in the key word rather than on the lexical frequency of the key word.4.5 Implications for communicationAn understanding of the potential interference effects, or lack thereof, of Arabic as the first languageon the perception and production of English can be utilized in teaching English as a secondlanguage to native speakers of Arabic. Syed (2003) addresses the need for research-based knowledgeto develop informed pedagogy as one of the main four central contributing aspects to enhanceteaching English as a second language in the Gulf region. The present study suggests that it may beprudent to pay attention to factors such as vocalic context, for example, while working with anative Arabic-speaking student showing difficulty in perceiving the /ð/ in English.The finding of particular difficulty with AE vowel perception in a country where AE is spokenfrequently points to the importance of being able to adjust to dialectal variations in order for communicationto be successful. Clearly, being a proficient early learner of English or a speaker of alocal English dialect does not prevent listeners from having difficulties in the perception of speechsounds from a different dialect. These perceptual difficulties, and associated communication problems,may be further exacerbated by suboptimal communication settings such as reverberant andnoisy lecture halls or by hearing impairment, which would further limit or distort perceptuallysalient acoustic cues. Similarly, the accuracy of clinical assessment of speech perception abilities(i.e., speech audiometry) may also be affected by native language and native dialect-specificspeech sound confusions (Calandruccio, 2010). Work on training listeners on perception of dialectalvariations (Clopper & Pisoni, 2004) and perceptual adaptation to accent (i.e., Bradlow & Bent,2008) may enhance the comprehension of several varieties of a language in regions in which thatlanguage is required for communication.Downloaded from las.sagepub.com at RUSH UNIV on June 8, 2012
Shafiro et al. 15AcknowledgementsThe authors wish to thank Lauren Liria, J.D. Purdy, Cristina Sanchez, Valerie Levy, Elanna Seid, and Wid AlBayaty for their helpful suggestions and assistance with preparation of the manuscript. We are grateful to Drs.Shannon and Hillenbrand for making their stimuli available for this study and to the participants in this studyfor their kind cooperation.Note1. To determine whether additional proficiency in Arabic by four of the participants in the NE group couldhave affected the identification results, all error analyses described in the Results section below wererepeated without these participants. However, no significant differences in identification error patternsemerged: for any vowel or consonant sound the difference in scores between all NE participants andthose without NE participants who also spoke Arabic was always smaller than 5 percentage points.Therefore the NE participants who spoke Arabic were kept as part of the NE group.ReferencesAbu-Rabia, S., Share, D., & Mansour, M. (2003). Word recognition and basic cognitive processes amongreading-disabled and normal readers in Arabic. Reading and Writing, 16, 423–442.Amayreh, M., & Dyson, A. (1998). The acquisition of Arabic consonants. Journal of Speech, Language, andHearing Research, 41, 642–653.Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perceptionand linguistic experience: Issues in cross language research (pp. 171–203). Baltimore: York Press.Best, C. T., & Tyler, M. D. (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities andcomplementarities. In O. S. Bohn and M. J. Munro (Eds.), Language experience in second language speechlearning: In honor of James Emil Flege (pp. 13–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2007). Praat: Doing phonetics by computer (Version 5.1.07). [Computer program]Available online at http://www.praat.org/ (December 2009).Bohn, O. S., & Flege, J. E. (1990). Interlingual identification and the role of foreign language experience inL2 vowel perception. Applied Psycholinguistics, 11, 303–328.Bradlow, A. R., & Bent, T. (2003). Listener adaptation to foreign-accented English. Proceedings of theInternational Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 15, 2881–2884.Bradlow, A. R., & Bent, T. (2008). Perceptual adaptation to non-native speech. Cognition, 106, 707–729.Calandruccio, L. (2010). Sentence recognition for non-native speakers: Researchers reduce linguistic bias inaudiology assessment. The ASHA Leader, Oct. 12.Clarck, M. (2006). Beyond antagonism? The discursive construction of ‘new’ teachers in the United ArabEmirates. Teaching Education, 17, 225–237.Clarke, C. M. (2003). Processing time effects of short-term exposure to foreign-accented English (UnpublishedPhD thesis). University of Arizona, Tucson.Clopper, C. G., & Bradlow, A. R. (2008). Perception of dialect variation in noise: Intelligibility and classification.Language and Speech, 51, 175–198.Clopper, C. G., Levi, S. V., & Pisoni, D. B. (2006). Perceptual similarity of regional varieties of AmericanEnglish. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 566–574.Clopper, C. G., & Pisoni, D. B. (2004). Effects of talker variability on perceptual learning of dialects.Language and Speech, 47, 207–239.Cowell, M. (1964). A reference grammar of Syrian Arabic. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Dewey, G. (1923). The relative frequency of English speech sounds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Donaldson, G. S., & Kreft, H. A. (2006). Effects of vowel context on the recognition of initial and medialconsonants by cochlear implant users. Ear and Hearing, 27, 658–677.Downloaded from las.sagepub.com at RUSH UNIV on June 8, 2012
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