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

References


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

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