The Effect Of Rhythmic System On The Perception Of L1, L2 And Unfamiliar Languages/ أثر النظام الإيقاعي في إدراك سرعة النطق للغة الأم واللغة الثانية واللغات غير المألوفة

Lubna Alshaikhmubarak, Yahya Aldholmi

Abstract


This study aims to reveal the effect of listeners’ knowledge of a language rhythmic system on their perception of speech rate, by comparing listeners' perception of speech rate in their native stress-timed language, Arabic, to that of three other languages, one of which is their second language, each belonging to a different linguistic rhythm: German (stress-timed), Spanish (syllable-timed), and Japanese (mora-timed). Forty-five male and female participants listened to 120 sentences (30 from each language), and gauged the speech rate of each sentence on a seven-point Likert scale. The results revealed that participants perceived the speech rate of their native and second languages as usual, but perceived the speech rate of unfamiliar languages differently, depending on the linguistic rhythm of those languages. They perceived the speech rate of German (a stress-timed language) as usual, and that of Spanish (a syllable-timed language) as relatively fast. Participants' perception of Japanese speech rate varied depending on their second language, with the speech rate appearing fast to participants who knew German and normal to those who knew Spanish.

Keywords


Speech Rate; Perceived Speech Rate; Rhythm; Arabic

Full Text:

PDF

References


آل الشيخ مبارك، لبنى والظلمي، يحيى (2025) أثر النظام الإيقاعي للغة الأم في إدراك سرعة نطق اللغات غير المألوفة. مجلة العلوم العربية والإنسانية، 18، (4)، 09-49.

Aldholmi, Y. (2020, October). Syllable rate vs. segment rate in perceived speech rate. In A. Botinis (Ed.) Proceedings of 11th ExLing (21-24). ExLing Society.

Aldholmi, Y., & Park, H. (2019). Interactions between temporal acoustics and indexical information in speech rate perception. In A. Khalfaoui & Y. Haddad (Eds.) Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXI: Papers from the annual symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Norman, Oklahoma, 2017, 8 (235-261). John Benjamins Publishing Company. https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.8.10ald.

Boersma, P. & Weenink, D. (2024). Praat: Doing Phonetics by Computer. (Version 6.4.06). Praat. https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/.

Bosker, H. R., & Reinisch, E. (2017). Foreign languages sound fast: Evidence from implicit rate normalization. Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 1063. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01063.

Bosker, H. R., Reinisch, E., & Sjerps, M. J. (2017). Cognitive load makes speech sound fast, but does not modulate acoustic context effects. Journal of Memory and Language, 94, 166-176. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jml.2016.12.002.

Chen, H. C. (2010). Second language timing patterns and their effects on native listeners' perceptions. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 36(2), 183-212. https://doi.org/10.6241/concentric.ling.201007_36(2).0002.

Conrad, L. (1989). The effects of time-compressed speech on native and EFL listening comprehension. Studies in second language Acquisition, 11(1), 1-16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44487470.

Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1992). The monolingual nature of speech segmentation by bilinguals. Cognitive psychology, 24(3), 381-410. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0285(92)90012-Q.

Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1986). The syllable's differing role in the segmentation of French and English. Journal of memory and language, 25(4), 385-400. https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-596X(86)90033-1.

Dauer, R. M. (1983). Stress-timing and syllable-timing reanalyzed. Journal of phonetics, 11(1), 51-62. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0095-4470(19)30776-4.

Dellwo, V. (2010). Influences of speech rate on the acoustic correlates of speech rhythm: An experimental phonetic study based on acoustic and perceptual evidence [Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Bonn]. https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:5-20033.

Dellwo, V., Ferragne, E., & Pellegrino, F. (2006). The perception of intended speech rate in English, French, and German by French speakers. In Speech Prosody, Dresden, Germany, 2-5 May 2006. ISCA, 101-104. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-111782.

Derwing, T., M., & Munro, M. J. (2001). What speaking rates do non-native listeners prefer? Applied linguistics, 22(3), 324-337. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/22.3.324.

Droua-Hamdani, G. (2023). MSA speech rhythm pattern in a multilingual setting. ACM Trans. Asian Low-Resour. Lang. Inf. Process. 22(7), Article 185, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.1145/3593295.

Fenk-Oczlon, G., & Fenk, A. (2010). Measuring basic tempo across languages and some implications for speech rhythm. In Proceedings of INTERSPEECH 2010, 1537-1540. https://doi.org/10.21437/Interspeech.2010-448.

Grabe, E., & Low, E. L. (2002). Durational variability in speech and the rhythm class hypothesis. In C. Gussenhoven & Na. Warner (Eds.), Laboratory phonology 7 (pp. 515-546). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110197105.2.515.

Guiraud, H., Bedoin, N., Krifi-Papoz, S., Herbillon, V., Caillot-Bascoul, A., Gonzalez-Monge, S., & Boulenger, V. (2018). Don’t speak too fast! Processing of fast rate speech in children with specific language impairment. PloS one, 13(1): e0191808. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0191808.

Hirschi, K., Kang, O., Hansen, J., & Looney, S. D. (2023). Fluency Benchmarks and Impacts of Practice With Instantaneous Assessment on International Teaching Assistants' Speech Rate and Pause Units. In R. I. Thomson, T. M. Derwing, J. Levis, & K. Hiebert (Eds.), Proceedings of the 13th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, 13(1). https://doi.org/10.31274/psllt.15711.

Hirozane, Y. (2019). Different degrees of effects of pauses on english rate perceived by English and Japanese speakers. In J. Levis, C. Nagle, & E. Todey (Eds.), Proceedings of the 10th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, 10(1), 285-295. Iowa State University. https://www.iastatedigitalpress.com/psllt/article/15384/galley/13541/view.

Kahloon, L., Shorey, A. E., King, C. J., & Stilp, C. E. (2023). Clear speech promotes speaking rate normalization. JASA Express Letters, 3(5), 055205. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0019499.

Koreman, J. (2006). Perceived speech rate: The effects of articulation rate and speaking style in spontaneous speech. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119(1), 582-596. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.2133436.

Lancia, L., Li, J., & Fougeron, C. (2023). How speech rate, syllabic complexity and diversity affect the emergence of speech rhythm in speeded syllable repetition. In R. Skarnitzl & J. Volín (Eds.), Proceeding of the 20th ICPhS, ID-923, 1122-1126. Guarant International. https://guarant.cz/icphs2023/923.pdf.

Lidji, P., Palmer, C., Peretz, I., & Morningstar, M. (2011). Listeners feel the beat: Entrainment to English and French speech rhythms. Psychonomic bulletin & review, 18(6), 1035-1041. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13423-011-0163-0.

Medina, A., Socarrás, G., & Krishnamurti, S. (2020). L2 Spanish listening comprehension: The role of speech rate, utterance length, and L2 oral proficiency. The Modern Language Journal, 104(2), 439-456. https://doi.org/10.1111/modl.12639.

O’Dell, M., & Nieminen, T. (2019). Syllable Rate, Syllable Complexity and Speech Tempo Perception in Finnish. In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain, & P. Warren (Eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia, 622-626. https://assta.org/proceedings/ICPhS2019/papers/ICPhS_671.pdf.

Osser, H., & Peng, F. (1964). A cross cultural study of speech rate. Language and Speech, 7(2), 120-125. https://doi.org/10.1177/00238309640070.

Pfitzinger, H. R., & Tamashima, M. (2006). Comparing perceptual local speech rate of German and Japanese speech. In Proceeding of the Speech Prosody, 1, 105-108. TUD Press Dresden. http://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2006-30.

Pfitzinger, H. R. (1999, August). Local speech rate perception in German speech. In Proceeding of the XIVth ICPhS, 2, 893-896. https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS1999/papers/p14_0893.pdf.

Pfitzinger, H. R. (1998). Local speech rate as a combination of syllable and phone rate. In Proceeding of the 5th ICSLP 1998, 0523. http://doi.org/10.21437/ICSLP.1998-545.

Pfitzinger, H. R. (1996). Two approaches to speech rate estimation. In Proceeding of the 6th Australian International Conference on SST, 96, 421-426. https://assta.org/proceedings/sst/SST-96/cache/SST-96-Chapter15-1-p57.pdf.

Plug, L., Lennon, R., & Smith, R. (2020). Listeners’ sensitivity to syllable complexity in speech tempo perception. In Proceedings of Speech Prosody 2020. 6-10. https://doi.org/10.21437/SpeechProsody.2020-2.

Plug, L., & Smith, R. (2021). The role of segment rate in speech tempo perception by English listeners. Journal of Phonetics, 86, 101040. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2021.101040.

Polyanskaya, L., Ordin, M., & Busa, M. G. (2017). Relative salience of speech rhythm and speech rate on perceived foreign accent in a second language. Language and speech, 60(3), 333-355. https://doi.org/10.1177/0023830916648720.

R Core Team (2024). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing. http://www.R-project.org.

Reinisch, E. (2016). Natural fast speech is perceived as faster than linearly time-compressed speech. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 78(4), 1203-1217. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-016-1067-x.

Schwab, S. (2014). La perception du débit en espagnol L1 et L2: effet de la langue maternelle, du degré d’accent perçu et des compétences en L2. Nouveaux Cahiers de Linguistique Française, 2014(31), 117-128. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-126025.

Schwab, S., & Grosjean, F. (2004). La perception du débit en langue seconde. Phonetica, 61(2-3), 84-94. https://doi.org/10.1159/000082558.

Yonezaki, H. (2017). Effects of change in speech rates on Japanese EFL listeners’ word recognition. ARELE, Japan, 28, 33-48. https://doi.org/10.20581/arele.28.0_33.




DOI: https://doi.org/10.18860/ijazarabi.v9i1.32966

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2026 Lubna Alshaikhmubarak, Yahya Aldholmi

License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/