Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in Second Language Studies
First Advisor
Vance Schaefer
Second Advisor
Jimin Kahng
Third Advisor
Ala Simonchyk
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This study investigated the influence of stress on perceived fluency, a critical dimension of fluency study, alongside utterance and cognitive fluency. Perceived fluency is defined as the inferences listeners make about speakers’ cognitive fluency based on their perceptions of utterance fluency (Segalowitz, 2010). Previous research demonstrated that factors such as pause phenomena and speech rate significantly affected subjective fluency ratings (Bosker et al., 2012; Kahng, 2018). Stress was also identified as a contributing factor through qualitative analysis (Préfontaine and Kormos, 2016), yet had not been thoroughly examined using quantitative methods.
The cue-weighting theory of speech perception suggests that listeners from different linguistic backgrounds perceive the same acoustic stimuli differently due to the differential weighting of acoustic cues in their first language (L1) (Francis et al., 2000; Francis and Nusbaum, 2002), this study explored how L1 stress patterns affect second language (L2) perceived fluency. The participants consisted of four groups: 10 Standard Korean (SK) speakers, who do not use lexical stress or tones for meaning differentiation; 10 Standard Mandarin (SM) speakers, who utilize both lexical tones and stress; 10 Taiwanese Mandarin (TM) speakers, who use lexical tones but not stress; and 20 Native American English speakers (NS), who rely mainly on lexical stress, where stressed syllables typically have a longer duration, higher intensity, and higher pitch.
Participants rated the fluency of original (O) and manipulated audios—pitch manipulated (PM), duration manipulated (DM), and intensity manipulated (IM)—on a 9-point scale. The findings revealed that stress features impacted fluency ratings, although their overall effect was moderate. Each group exhibited unique sensitivities to changes in the manipulated English speech conditions: the TM group was most sensitive to pitch changes, followed by the SM group. All groups reacted most significantly to changes in duration and least to intensity variations.
These findings offer insights into L2 assessment, teacher training, and the study of perceived fluency, highlighting the nuanced role of stress in fluency perception across different linguistic backgrounds.
Recommended Citation
Zhang, Tian, "The Impact of Perception of L1 Stress Features on L2 Perceived Fluency" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2902.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2902