1. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Chapter 8 Acquisition of a Phonological System in Adulthood Amber Franklin 1

2. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Introduction Many individuals learn a second language at ages beyond childhood – Educational requirements – Travel goals – Competitive skill in the job marked – Integration into a host country US Census: 19.7% of individuals over age 5 years speak a language other than English at home Most adults acquiring a new language will not master the phonological system to the same extent that native speakers do This chapter – Presents theoretical background addressing reasons for foreign accents – Considers variables affecting foreign accent in a target language – Explores accent modification in clinical practice 2

3. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Learning a New Target Language as an Adult Some terminology “Acquisition” refers to understanding and speaking a language without explicit instruction “Learning” refers to understanding and speaking a language with the help of explicit instruction Many adults use a combination of both mechanisms (immersion, instruction) Native language (NL), often referred to as L1 Target language (TL): language new to the speaker, regardless of how many other languages were acquired/learned previously 3

4. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Age of Learning and Pronunciation Proficiency Five hypotheses addressing speech productions in non-native languages Critical period hypothesis (CPH) (Lenneberg, 1967) CPH claims that changes in neuroplasticity during puberty make it impossible to achieve native-like pronunciation in a TL Some studies are consistent with this hypothesis (Patkowski, 1990; Scovel, 1969) There is evidence contradicting the CPH – Some individuals achieve native-like pronunciation despite being first exposed to the TL late in childhood (MacLeod & Stoel-Gammon, 2010) or even well past puberty (Abu-Rabia & Kehat, 2004; Moyer, 1999, 2004; Munro & Mann, 2005) – In a study of Korean immigrants (Yeni-Komshian, Flege & Liu, 2000), proficiency in English Did not drop off rapidly after an age of arrival at puberty but rather, it dropped after an age of arrival in early childhood Proficiency in English came at the expense of native-like pronunciation in Korean 4

5. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Other Hypotheses Sensitive period hypothesis (Oyama, 1976) – Broadened the time window for achieving native-like pronunciation Constant ability (Moyer, 1999) – All speakers retain the ability to achieve native-like pronunciation Linear decline across the lifespan (Flege, Munro, & McKay, 1995) Sigmoidal decline (Flege & Fletcher, 1992) – Early age of exposure: near native pronunciation – Middle phase with S-shape decline as a function of age of exposure; high variability in proficiency among TL speakers – Later age of exposure: far from native-like proficiency 5

6. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Flege’s Speech Learning Model (SLM) The Speech Learning Model (SLM) (Flege, 1995) states that with increasing age there exists a reduced likelihood that the speaker will establish new phonetic categories for second language sounds that do not already exist in the NL SLM has seven hypotheses – Category assimilation: The speaker does not create a new category for a TL sound but, rather, substitutes a similar native sound for it in modified form Neither the NL nor TL sound are native-like – Category dissimilation: The speaker creates a new phonetic category and produces NL and TL differently from each other The sound may be distorted in both languages – An allophonic perceptual relationship exists between phonetic segments in the NL and the TL – New phonemic categories are formed in the TL when an individual can differentiate between a TL phoneme and its most similar NL phoneme – An individual can more readily distinguish between a TL phoneme and the closest NL phoneme when the phonetic distance between those two phonemes increases. – An individual’s ability to distinguish between NL and similar TL phonemes decreases with age – An individual’s production of a TL phoneme will be reflective of that phoneme’s long-term memory representation 6

7. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Quantifying Second Language Pronunciation Proficiency Segmental accuracy – Transcription Global pronunciation proficiency – Intelligibility: to what extent a listener can understand what was said Orthographic record – Comprehensibility: Listener’s perception of how difficult it is to understand the speaker Rating scales of amount of listening effort – Accentedness: Listener’s impression of how different the speaker’s productions were from those of native speakers Rating scales of accentedness – Fluency: How smooth and free-flowing the speech is Rating scale of fluency – These measures are not independent of each other – Multiple measures should be taken to characterize a TL speaker’s productions 7

8. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Oral proficiency exams for the purpose of qualifying for education programs or jobs Assess pronunciation, fluency, grammar, comprehensibility Require answering open-ended questions, conversational role-play – Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages Conducted over the phone or in-person – Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit (SPEAK) Developed by the Test of English as a Foreign Language 8

9. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Test scores on proficiency tests depend on – Speaker’s true proficiency – Evaluator’s familiarity with the speaker’s NL (Carey, Mannell & Dunn, 2010) – Type of language (Kim, 2001) SPEAK “Grammar” scale discriminated more effectively discriminated among European NL speakers than the “Pronunciation” scale SPEAK “Pronunciation” scale more effectively discriminated among Asian NL speakers than the “Grammar” scale 9

10. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Motivation as a Variable Affecting Accentedness Instrumental (extrinsic) motivation: economic and career goals Integrative (intrinsic) motivation: cultural, social goals Other variables affecting accentedness – Frequency of spoken interactions in the TL – Length of residence where the TL is natively spoken – Number of years of formal instruction in the TL 10

11. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Accent Modification in Clinical Practice The role of the speech-language pathologist (SLP) – Growing area of professional activity for SLPs and English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers – Clients are mostly adults – Because there is no pure form of the TL, the term “accent modification” is preferred over the term “accent reduction” – Goal: improving intelligibility – An accent is a difference, not a disorder (ASHA Joint Subcommittee of the Executive Board on English Language Proficiency, 1998) 11

12. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Speech Sample Elicitation Different types of speech samples result in different accentedness ratings (Munro & Mann, 2005) – Single words (least accented) – Sentences (second-least accented) – Scripted paragraphs (most accented) – Spontaneous conversation (not assessed in this study; note that speakers can avoid words that are difficult to pronounce, giving the impression of greater mastery) – Picture description task (second-most accented) This shows that ratings based on single words can over-estimate a speaker’s proficiency Reading paragraphs can introduce disfluencies based on difficulties related to reading, not speaking A careful speech pattern analysis should include a variety of elicitation strategies to get the most complete view of the client’s accent 12

13. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Target Selection Intervention can be focused on different levels – Segmental level (consonants, vowels) – Suprasegmental level (e.g., intonation, stress patterns) Research study” Which is most effective? (Derwing, Munro, & Weibe, 1998) Segmental level alone – Better accentedness ratings in a sentence reading task than clients working on suprasegmental goals Suprasegmental level alone – Improved comprehensibility and fluency ratings on a picture description task A comprehensive approach should include segmental as well as global aspects of speech production Functional load – Target sounds that affect intelligibility most should be prioritized, e.g. vowels – Other factors influencing functional load: Position of the sound within a word Number and frequency of minimal pairs produced by a phoneme substitution 13

14. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural Considerations Accent and identity – Often, increased proficiency in the TL goes along with adoption of cultural and social behaviors (Marx, 2002) – Some loss of NL features Marx reported speaking native English with overlaid non-native German prosodic patterns – Self-perceptions by non-native English speakers (Gluszek & Dovidio, 2010) Strong accentedness was correlated with perceived stimatization Speakers with Asian and Latino accents perceived greater stigmatization than speakers with European accents Native speakers of English thought that non-native speakers of English had greater difficulty than the non-native speakers reported 14

15. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Accent Discrimination and Language Rights Non-native speakers of English sometimes face accent discrimination (Munro, 2003) Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects individuals in the U.S. from any discrimination based on national origin (Nguyen, 1993) The Equal Opportunities Employment Commission declared that speech accent is related to national origin and thereby falls under the purview of Title VII 15

16. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders 16 8S1 Sample 1 8S2 Sample 2 8S3 Sample 3 8S4 Sample 4 8S5 Sample 5 8S6 Sample 6 8S7 Native speaker of Indonesian: Summary of experience with English 8S8 Native speaker of Indonesian: Rainbow Passage 8S9 Native speaker of Indonesian: Stella Passage 8S10 Native speaker of Indonesian: Rainbow narrative in Indonesian 8S11 Native speaker of Mandarin: Summary of experience with English 8S12 Native speaker of Mandarin: Rainbow Passage 8S13 Native speaker of Mandarin: Stella Passage 8S14 Native speaker of Mandarin: Rainbow narrative in Taiwanese 8S15 Native speaker of German: Summary of experience with English 8S116 Native speaker of German: Rainbow Passage 8S17 Native speaker of German: Stella Passage 8S18 Native speaker of German: Rainbow narrative in German 8S19 Native speaker of French: Summary of experience with English 8S20 Native speaker of French: Rainbow Passage 8S21 Native speaker of French: Stella Passage 8S22 Native speaker of French: Rainbow narrative in French

17. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders 17 Sidebar 8.1 Other Ingredients in Acquiring a Target Language as an Adult The phonetic and phonologic repertoire of a TL is only one of many components to be acquired by adult learners. Other components include the vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and even the written form of the language. An example of a person who expertly mastered all aspects except the phonetic and phonological systems of English is Henry Kissinger, who, despite having lived in the United States for most of his long adult life, never quite lost his German accent. Is the phonology different? Why would an adult acquiring a TL experience greater difficulty achieving native-like proficiency in phonology compared to grammar and vocabulary? The critical period has been more closely tied to phonology than to other areas of language such as morphology, syntax and pragmatics. However, in an article published in 2000 entitled “A critical review of the critical period research,” Scovel state the following: “Despite the fact that foreign accents emerge in early adulthood and, with rare exception, remain indelible after puberty, adult learners can, should and do improve their pronunciation and intelligibility in a second language.” (Scovel, 2000 page 17).

18. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Connections This chapter discusses how individuals acquire the phonological system of English long after another phonological system has been established Chapter 9 reviews crosslinguistic trends in the childhood acquisition of other languages in general Chapters 13 and 14 address aspects of childhood acquisition of multiple languages 18

19. NOVA Comprehensive Perspectives on Child Speech Development and Disorders Concluding Remarks Adults are capable of learning a new phonological system Insights from studying this process has helped to drive theoretical frameworks and models of target language learning Motivation related to professional development and social acculturation are strong predictors of proficiency As the cultural diversity in North America increases, speech-language pathologists are more likely to provide intervention targeting intelligibility and native- like production 19