Prosodic aspects of Brazilian L2 English: A comparison of duration-based rhythm and F0 measures with American English, Indian English, and Brazilian Portuguese

Silva Jr., Leônidas; Silva, Jackciele; Meer, Philipp

Abstract

This study investigates prosodic aspects of rhythm and intonation in the production of Brazilian L2 English (BrazE) in comparison to American English (AmE), Indian English (IndE), and Brazilian Portuguese (BP) based on prosodic-acoustic features of speech. Previous research suggests that IndE is more syllable-timed in terms of the syllable/stress-timing continuum than L1 varieties of English, such as AmE. The present paper hypothesizes that BrazE – due to L1 cross-linguistic influence of BP, which has been suggested to be syllable-timed – has lower variability of duration-based rhythm and F0 measures compared to AmE – just like IndE. We analyze several duration-based rhythm and F0 measures – suggested by recent L2 speech studies – in only-male read speech of BrazE, AmE, IndE, and BP (with five speakers per variety) using linear mixed-effects modeling. Results show significant differences between both BrazE-AmE and IndE-AmE in duration-based rhythm measures (%C, nPVI-V, Δ-S, YARD-S, RR-S, z-scored syllable duration, speech, and articulation rates) and F0 measures (z-scored F0, F0 semi-amplitude interquartile, F0 skewness). Minor, primarily non-significant differences were observed between BrazE and IndE/BP. Overall, with a view to duration-based rhythm and F0 measures, the results provide preliminary evidence that confirms our hypothesis that BrazE leans toward the syllable-timed pole of the rhythm continuum, not unlike IndE and BP.