Presentation about "Native Vs Non-Native Accent" delivered by the students of MA in Linguistics at Manouba University: Salah Mhamdi, Rabeb Bouzazi and Sihem Chalouati on Tuesday, February 6, 2018.

1. Native vs Non-native
accent

2. Plan :
 I/ native accent
 A) definition
 B) Examples
 II/ Non-native accent :
 A) definition
 B) Examples
Data research
III/ Intelligibility and comprehensibility:
A) Intelligibility
B) Comprehensibility
C) Intelligibility and comprehensibility in
relation to accent
IV/ Effects of Non-native accent

3. A distinctive way of prononcing a
language, especially one
associated with a particular
country,area ,or social class .

4. • The accent can be affected by these features :
1) The position of lips,tongue and jaw.
2) the length and quality of the sound.
3) The choice of consonants and vowels .
4) Where you place the stress in a word .
5) The range of pitch and tone .
6) The way you join your syllabus together .

5. English has a huge number of accents
worldwide.
These are normally split into two categories
Native accent Non-Native accent

6. A person who speaks English as their
mother tongue will have a native accent.
In England, every region has a diffrent
accent .
For example :
1) Received Pronunciation
2) Cockney

7. *the closest the United Kingdom has ever
had to a “standard accent.”
*It is related to the upper-classes in
London and other areas of Southeast
England.
*It emerged from the 18th- and 19th-
Century upper classes, and has remained
the “gold standard” ever since.

8. Features :
1. Non-rhoticity
2. Trap-bath split
3. The vowels tend to be a bit more
conservative than other accents in
Southern England.

9. Cockney is probably the second most
famous British accent.
It originated in the East End of
London, but shares many features
with and influences other dialects in
that region.

10. Features:
1. Raised vowel in words.
2. Non-rhoticity.
3. Trap-bath split.
4. London vowel shift.
5. Glottal Stopping.
6. L-vocalization.
7. Th-Fronting.

11. what is a Non-native accent?
*Anybody who speaks English as a second
language may have a non-native accent.
*This is where sounds, mouth positions,
structures, rhythms, intonation and sound
selections are being used from that
person's mother tongue.

12. For example, many non-native speakers use
short vowels from their language in place of
the unusual long vowels in English.
- Difficulty with dentanl
fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ for speakers with
no native /θ/ and /ð/in their dialect's
phonemic inventory.
- Egyptian speakers tend to pronounce
the affricate /d͡ʒ/ as a [ʒ].

13. The folowing question was asked to students
who are specialized in :
• French
• Bio-medical
• Chemistry
• Translation
• German
• English
• Data science

14. Student
1) Age : ……………..
2) Your accent :
A. Native
B. Near native
C. Non-native
1) Your teachrs accent is :
A. Native
B. Near native
C. Non-native
1) Do you want to have a native accent :
A. Yes
B. No

15. 1) Your accent :
A. Native = 0%
B. Near-native =30%
C. Non-native= 70%
1) Your teachrs’ accent is :
A. Native= 13%
B. Near-native= 67%
C. Non-native =20%
1) Do you want to have a native accent :
A. Yes= 80%
B. No=20% ( it does not matter)

16. Accent, Intelligibility &
Comprehensibility
 Intelligibility: the "listener's actual
understanding of L2 speech" (Munro &
Derwing, 1999)
 Comprehensibility: the "listener's
subjective experience of the ease or
difficulty of understanding speech" (Munro
& Derwing, 1999)

17. Research
 Aim:
Differentiating between the linguistic
aspects of L2 speech which are mostly
related to accent and those related to
comprehensibility.

18. 40 speech samples
19 measures
4 main categories:
1. Phonology
2. Fluency
3. Lexis and grammar
4. Discourse

19. Phonology
 Segmental errors
 Syllable structure errors
 Word stress errors
 Rhythm
 Pitch contour
 Pitch range

20. Fluency
 Overall number of filled pauses
 Total number of unfilled pauses
 Pause errors
 Repetitions and self-correction
 Articulation rate
 Mean length of run (MLR)

21. Accuracy of Lexis and Grammar
 Sum of words with at least one
morphosyntactic error
 Lexical errors
 Token frequency
 Type frequency

22. Discourse
 Story cohesion
 Story breadth
 Story depth

23.  Findings:
The results of the research showed that
accent is related to "pronunciation of
vowels and consonants" and "naturally
sounding rhythm" while comprehensibility
is related to grammatical and lexical
errors.

24.  Disentangling accent from
comprehensibility aims at:
1- enhancing the assessment of L2
speaking ability
2- recognizing the linguistic features that
lead to accent prejudice (Lippi-Green,
2011)

25. Effects of Accentedness
"When you hear somebody speaking in an
accent, it's almost like they are invading
your language while they are speaking to
you because if you hear someone speak
another language, you almost don't care.
But when they speak your language with
an accent, it feels like an invasion of
something that belongs to you. And,
immediately, we change." Trevor Noah

26. Effects of Accentedness
Phonological aspects that of prosody,
segment and syllable structure accuracy
are considered significant in rating L2
speech as they have a great impact on
Listener's comprehension.
Anderson-Hsieh, Johnson and Koehler
(1992)
incorrect stress placement can influence
listener's evaluating of L2 speech. Hahn

27. Lack of fluency (pausing, articulation rate,
etc.) on the part of L2 speakers can
influence comprehensibility
Derwing, Rossiter, Munro and Thomson
(2004)

28. Grammatical and lexical features affect
comprehensibility
"quit" "leave"
"forgeted "forgot"

29. Accent Discrimination/Accentism
“the perception that certain accents are
inferior to others”
Employers prefer non-accented
applicants
(call centers, schools, etc.)

31. Guadalupe V. Aguayo. Joshua Lott for The New York Times

32. Kasha, from Poland experienced
trauma due to accent prejudice
Trauma

33. Accent Reduction
“systematic approach for learning or
adopting a new speech accent. It is the
process of learning the sound system (or
phonology) and melodic intonation of a
language so the non-native speaker can
communicate with clarity to be
understood by the general public of this
second language."

34. “To cultivate an English accent is already a
departure away from what you are.”
Sean Connery

35.  References
 Christensen, B. (September 13, 2017). "What Is Accent Reduction?". Accent
Freedom. (Accessed Feb. 5, 2018).
 Lacey, M. (2011). In Arizona, complaints that an accent can hinder a teacher's
career. The New York Times (September 25, 2011), p. A18 URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/us/in-arizona-complaints-that-an-
accent-can-hinder-a-teachers-career.html (Accessed Feb. 5, 2018).
 McArthur, T. (1992). The Oxford Comapnion to the English Language. Oxford
University Press.
 Nordquist, R. (March 06, 2017). accent prejudice (accentism). ThoughtCo.
URL: https://www.thoughtco.com/accent-prejudice-accentism-1689053
(Accessed Feb. 5, 2018).
 Trofimovich, P. & Isaacs, T. (2012). Disentangling accent from
comprehensibility. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 15(4), 905-916.
 YouTube video "Some people are unkind to me because of my accent". BBC
Stories (September 25, 2017), URL:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5BT4Li2wEk (Accessed Feb. 5, 2018).