McCarthy, K; Evans, B; (2019) The perception of familiar and unfamiliar accents by bilingual and monolingual children. In: Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. (pp. pp. 2203-2207). International Phonetic Association

Preview

Text McCarthyEvans_ICPhS2019.pdf - Published Version Download (422kB) | Preview

Abstract

In large urban cities, children typically grow-up in a diverse multicultural environment. Depending on their local language environment, children are often exposed to regional as well as foreign-accents. This study investigated whether children’s accent processing is affected by the variability in their ambient language environment. English monolingual and Sylheti-English bilingual children were assessed on their ability to identify sentences in three accent conditions: London-English (familiar to all), Sylheti-accented English (only familiar to the bilinguals), Spanishaccented English (unfamiliar to all). All children were most accurate in the London-English accent condition, however the groups differed with their dominant familiar accent: the monolinguals were more accurate at recalling the London-English sentences than the bilinguals, and the bilinguals were more accurate in the Sylheti-accented condition than the monolinguals. The results suggest that variation in linguistic experience in early life, give rise to differences in the processing of familiar and unfamiliar accented speech.

Download activity - last month

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Download activity - last 12 months

Export as CSVXMLJSON

Downloads by country - last 12 months

Export as JSONXMLCSV

Archive Staff Only

View Item