The contribution of temporal cues to perceived nativeness in the native speech of English migrants to Austria.

Learning a second language can affect pronunciation in the first language, and may result in the impression of non-nativeness. The role of segments and prosody in perceived non-nativeness is unknown. We investigated the role of temporal features to perceived non-nativeness
in the L1 speech of English migrants to Austria, using a design where segmental and temporal cues are swapped. Results revealed that the relative importance of temporal features in listeners’ impression of non-nativeness depends on whether the segmental string comes from
monolingual (i.e. non-attrited) or bilingual (i.e. attrited) speakers. In the former situation, listeners attend to the transferred temporal information and judge the manipulated stimuli as less native. However, when segments originate from bilingual speakers, listeners ignore the
transferred temporal information. This suggests that there needs to be some correspondence between segmental and prosodic information for listeners to attend to temporal information in their judgements of nativeness