Volume 76, Issue 5

Background/Aims: Non-native speech is frequently characterized as being more variable than native speech. However, the few studies that have directly investigated phonetic variability in the speech of second language learners have considered a limited subset of native/non-native language pairings and few linguistic features. Methods: The present study examines group-level withinspeaker variability and central tendencies in acoustic properties of vowels andstops produced by learners of Japanese from two native language backgrounds, English and Mandarin, as well as native Japanese speakers. Results: Results show that non-native speakers do not always exhibit more phonetic variability than native speakers, but rather that patterns of variability are specific to individual linguistic features and their instantiations in L1 and L2. Conclusion: Adopting this more nuanced approach to variability offers important enhancements to several areas of linguistic theory.

Sequences of similar (i.e., partially identical) words can be hard to say, as indicated by error frequencies, longer reaction and execution times. This study investigates the role of the location of this partial identity and the accompanying differences, i.e. whether errors are more frequent with mismatches in word onsets ( top cop ), codas ( top tock ) or both ( pop tot ). Number of syllables ( tippy ticky ) and empty positions ( top ta ) were also varied. Since the gradient nature of errors can be difficult to determine acoustically, articulatory data were investigated. Articulator movements were recorded using electromagnetic articulography, for up to 9 speakers of American English repeatedly producing 2-word sequences to an accelerating metronome. Most word pairs showed more intrusions and greater variability in coda than in onset position, in contrast to the predominance of onset position errors in corpora from perceptual observation.