Acquisition of Similar versus Different Speech Rhythmic Class

Does shared rhythmic class in L1 (English and German, vs French) facilitate L2 speech learning? The rhythmic patterns of native and German-accented English and French, and native, English- and French-accented German utterances from the Bonne Tempo corpus were analyzed using three rhythm metrics based on duration variability, amplitude envelope modulation frequency, and intensity variability. Results of stepwise discriminant function analyses revealed that the intensity-based approach yielded the highest classification accuracy followed by the frequency-based and the duration-based approach, respectively. More importantly, German- accented English utterances were more frequently classified as native English utterances than German-accented French as native French utterances were. In addition, a higher percentage of English-accented German utterances were classified as native German utterances than French-accented German by the duration- and the frequency-based metrics, but not by the intensity-based metrics. Overall, the results suggested facilitative effects of shared rhythmic class in L2 speech learning.