Chapter 8
Acquisition of a Phonological System
in Adulthood
Amber Franklin
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Introduction
• Many individuals learn a second language at ages beyond childhood
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Educational requirements
Travel goals
Competitive skill in the job marked
Integration into a host country
• US Census: 19.7% of individuals over age 5 years speak a language
other than English at home
• Most adults acquiring a new language will not master the
phonological system to the same extent that native speakers do
• This chapter
– Presents theoretical background addressing reasons for foreign
accents
– Considers variables affecting foreign accent in a target language
– Explores accent modification in clinical practice
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Learning a New Target Language as an
Adult
Some terminology
• “Acquisition” refers to understanding and speaking a
language without explicit instruction
• “Learning” refers to understanding and speaking a
language with the help of explicit instruction
• Many adults use a combination of both mechanisms
(immersion, instruction)
• Native language (NL), often referred to as L1
• Target language (TL): language new to the speaker,
regardless of how many other languages were
acquired/learned previously
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Age of Learning and Pronunciation
Proficiency
Five hypotheses addressing speech productions in non-native languages
• Critical period hypothesis (CPH) (Lenneberg, 1967)
• CPH claims that changes in neuroplasticity during puberty make it
impossible to achieve native-like pronunciation in a TL
• Some studies are consistent with this hypothesis (Patkowski, 1990; Scovel,
1969)
• There is evidence contradicting the CPH
– Some individuals achieve native-like pronunciation despite being first exposed
to the TL late in childhood (MacLeod & Stoel-Gammon, 2010) or even well
past puberty (Abu-Rabia & Kehat, 2004; Moyer, 1999, 2004; Munro & Mann,
2005)
– In a study of Korean immigrants (Yeni-Komshian, Flege & Liu, 2000) ,
proficiency in English
• Did not drop off rapidly after an age of arrival at puberty but rather, it dropped after an
age of arrival in early childhood
• Proficiency in English came at the expense of native-like pronunciation in Korean
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Other Hypotheses
• Sensitive period hypothesis (Oyama, 1976)
– Broadened the time window for achieving native-like
pronunciation
• Constant ability (Moyer, 1999)
– All speakers retain the ability to achieve native-like
pronunciation
• Linear decline across the lifespan (Flege, Munro, & McKay,
1995)
• Sigmoidal decline (Flege & Fletcher, 1992)
– Early age of exposure: near native pronunciation
– Middle phase with S-shape decline as a function of age of
exposure; high variability in proficiency among TL speakers
– Later age of exposure: far from native-like proficiency
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Flege’s Speech Learning Model (SLM)
• The Speech Learning Model (SLM) (Flege, 1995) states that with increasing age
there exists a reduced likelihood that the speaker will establish new phonetic
categories for second language sounds that do not already exist in the NL
• SLM has seven hypotheses
– Category assimilation: The speaker does not create a new category for a TL sound
but, rather, substitutes a similar native sound for it in modified form
• Neither the NL nor TL sound are native-like
– Category dissimilation: The speaker creates a new phonetic category and produces
NL and TL differently from each other
• The sound may be distorted in both languages
– An allophonic perceptual relationship exists between phonetic segments in the NL
and the TL
– New phonemic categories are formed in the TL when an individual can differentiate
between a TL phoneme and its most similar NL phoneme
– An individual can more readily distinguish between a TL phoneme and the closest
NL phoneme when the phonetic distance between those two phonemes increases.
– An individual’s ability to distinguish between NL and similar TL phonemes
decreases with age
– An individual’s production of a TL phoneme will be reflective of that phoneme’s
long-term memory representation
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Quantifying Second Language
Pronunciation Proficiency
• Segmental accuracy
– Transcription
• Global pronunciation proficiency
– Intelligibility: to what extent a listener can understand what was said
• Orthographic record
– Comprehensibility: Listener’s perception of how difficult it is to
understand the speaker
• Rating scales of amount of listening effort
– Accentedness: Listener’s impression of how different the speaker’s
productions were from those of native speakers
• Rating scales of accentedness
– Fluency: How smooth and free-flowing the speech is
• Rating scale of fluency
– These measures are not independent of each other
– Multiple measures should be taken to characterize a TL speaker’s
productions
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• Oral proficiency exams for the purpose of qualifying for
education programs or jobs
• Assess pronunciation, fluency, grammar,
comprehensibility
• Require answering open-ended questions,
conversational role-play
– Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI)
• Developed by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign
Languages
• Conducted over the phone or in-person
– Speaking Proficiency English Assessment Kit (SPEAK)
• Developed by the Test of English as a Foreign Language
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• Test scores on proficiency tests depend on
– Speaker’s true proficiency
– Evaluator’s familiarity with the speaker’s NL
(Carey, Mannell & Dunn, 2010)
– Type of language (Kim, 2001)
• SPEAK “Grammar” scale discriminated more effectively
discriminated among European NL speakers than the
“Pronunciation” scale
• SPEAK “Pronunciation” scale more effectively
discriminated among Asian NL speakers than the
“Grammar” scale
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Motivation as a Variable Affecting
Accentedness
• Instrumental (extrinsic) motivation: economic
and career goals
• Integrative (intrinsic) motivation: cultural,
social goals
• Other variables affecting accentedness
– Frequency of spoken interactions in the TL
– Length of residence where the TL is natively
spoken
– Number of years of formal instruction in the TL
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Accent Modification in Clinical Practice
• The role of the speech-language pathologist (SLP)
– Growing area of professional activity for SLPs and
English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers
– Clients are mostly adults
– Because there is no pure form of the TL, the term
“accent modification” is preferred over the term
“accent reduction”
– Goal: improving intelligibility
– An accent is a difference, not a disorder (ASHA Joint
Subcommittee of the Executive Board on English
Language Proficiency, 1998)
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Speech Sample Elicitation
• Different types of speech samples result in different accentedness ratings
(Munro & Mann, 2005)
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Single words (least accented)
Sentences (second-least accented)
Scripted paragraphs (most accented)
Spontaneous conversation (not assessed in this study; note that speakers can
avoid words that are difficult to pronounce, giving the impression of greater
mastery)
– Picture description task (second-most accented)
• This shows that ratings based on single words can over-estimate a
speaker’s proficiency
• Reading paragraphs can introduce disfluencies based on difficulties related
to reading, not speaking
• A careful speech pattern analysis should include a variety of elicitation
strategies to get the most complete view of the client’s accent
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Target Selection
• Intervention can be focused on different levels
– Segmental level (consonants, vowels)
– Suprasegmental level (e.g., intonation, stress patterns)
• Research study” Which is most effective? (Derwing, Munro, & Weibe,
1998)
• Segmental level alone
– Better accentedness ratings in a sentence reading task than clients working on
suprasegmental goals
• Suprasegmental level alone
– Improved comprehensibility and fluency ratings on a picture description task
• A comprehensive approach should include segmental as well as global
aspects of speech production
• Functional load
– Target sounds that affect intelligibility most should be prioritized, e.g. vowels
– Other factors influencing functional load:
• Position of the sound within a word
• Number and frequency of minimal pairs produced by a phoneme substitution
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Sociolinguistic and Sociocultural
Considerations
• Accent and identity
– Often, increased proficiency in the TL goes along with
adoption of cultural and social behaviors (Marx, 2002)
– Some loss of NL features
• Marx reported speaking native English with overlaid non-native
German prosodic patterns
– Self-perceptions by non-native English speakers (Gluszek &
Dovidio, 2010)
• Strong accentedness was correlated with perceived stimatization
• Speakers with Asian and Latino accents perceived greater
stigmatization than speakers with European accents
• Native speakers of English thought that non-native speakers of
English had greater difficulty than the non-native speakers
reported
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Accent Discrimination and Language
Rights
• Non-native speakers of English sometimes
face accent discrimination (Munro, 2003)
• Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects
individuals in the U.S. from any discrimination
based on national origin (Nguyen, 1993)
• The Equal Opportunities Employment
Commission declared that speech accent is
related to national origin and thereby falls
under the purview of Title VII
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8S1 Sample 1
8S2 Sample 2
8S3 Sample 3
8S4 Sample 4
8S5 Sample 5
8S6 Sample 6
8S7 Native speaker of Indonesian: Summary of experience with English
8S8 Native speaker of Indonesian: Rainbow Passage
8S9 Native speaker of Indonesian: Stella Passage
8S10 Native speaker of Indonesian: Rainbow narrative in Indonesian
8S11 Native speaker of Mandarin: Summary of experience with English
8S12 Native speaker of Mandarin: Rainbow Passage
8S13 Native speaker of Mandarin: Stella Passage
8S14 Native speaker of Mandarin: Rainbow narrative in Taiwanese
8S15 Native speaker of German: Summary of experience with English
8S116 Native speaker of German: Rainbow Passage
8S17 Native speaker of German: Stella Passage
8S18 Native speaker of German: Rainbow narrative in German
8S19 Native speaker of French: Summary of experience with English
8S20 Native speaker of French: Rainbow Passage
8S21 Native speaker of French: Stella Passage
8S22 Native speaker of French: Rainbow narrative in French
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Sidebar 8.1 Other Ingredients in Acquiring a Target Language as an Adult
The phonetic and phonologic repertoire of a TL is only one of many
components to be acquired by adult learners. Other components include the
vocabulary, morphology, syntax, and even the written form of the language.
An example of a person who expertly mastered all aspects except the
phonetic and phonological systems of English is Henry Kissinger, who, despite
having lived in the United States for most of his long adult life, never quite
lost his German accent. Is the phonology different? Why would an adult
acquiring a TL experience greater difficulty achieving native-like proficiency in
phonology compared to grammar and vocabulary? The critical period has
been more closely tied to phonology than to other areas of language such as
morphology, syntax and pragmatics. However, in an article published in 2000
entitled “A critical review of the critical period research,” Scovel state the
following: “Despite the fact that foreign accents emerge in early adulthood
and, with rare exception, remain indelible after puberty, adult learners can,
should and do improve their pronunciation and intelligibility in a second
language.” (Scovel, 2000 page 17).
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Connections
• This chapter discusses how individuals acquire
the phonological system of English long after
another phonological system has been
established
• Chapter 9 reviews crosslinguistic trends in the
childhood acquisition of other languages in
general
• Chapters 13 and 14 address aspects of
childhood acquisition of multiple languages
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Concluding Remarks
• Adults are capable of learning a new phonological
system
• Insights from studying this process has helped to drive
theoretical frameworks and models of target language
learning
• Motivation related to professional development and
social acculturation are strong predictors of proficiency
• As the cultural diversity in North America increases,
speech-language pathologists are more likely to
provide intervention targeting intelligibility and nativelike production
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