The contribution of speech rate, rhythm, and intonation to perceived non-nativeness in a speaker's native language

This study investigates for the first time the relative contribution of speech rate, rhythm and intonation to perceived non-nativeness in the speech of L1 attriters and the extent to which sentence type mediates listeners' perceptions. To this end, the study transferred the speech rate, rhythm, and intonation (and combinations thereof) of monolingual English speakers from England to the segmental materials of bilingual native speakers of English living in Austria, and vice versa, using the prosodic transplantation paradigm. The results of an accent rating experiment in which native English listeners (n = 160) evaluated the nativeness of the manipulated productions revealed that transfer of the monolinguals' speech rate, but not intonation and rhythm, led to an increase in the perceived nativeness of the bilinguals' productions. Conversely, transfer of the bilinguals' intonation and rhythm, but not speech rate, led to a decrease in the perceived nativeness of the monolinguals' productions. Moreover, the study found that combinations of manipulated cues enhanced the effects of individual cues in isolation further and that sentence type plays a critical mediating role in nativeness ratings. Together, the findings of this study demonstrate that listeners make similar use of the three prosodic cues when judging non-nativeness in L1 attriters, as shown previously in L2 learners.