The Attainment of an English Accent

This book investigates inconsistencies in the British and American accents of advanced German learners of English. It takes a variationist approach based on extra- and intra-linguistic factors as potential explanations for variability and contributes to understanding the status of L1 transfer in language learners at «ultimate attainment».

This book investigates inconsistencies in the accent adopted by advanced German learners of English with respect to differences between standard American and British English (rhoticity, t-voicing, the vowels in the lexical sets «bath», «lot» and «thought»). From a theoretical point of view, the volume contributes to understanding the status of L1 transfer in language learners at «ultimate attainment», a stabilized, late stage in language acquisition. Unlike in many studies in second language acquisition, the approach taken here is variationist, taking into account extra- and intra-linguistic factors as potential explanations for variability. The findings suggest that in addition to the target accent the strongest external factor is time spent abroad, while L1 accent and proficiency level seem to have minor impact only.

Autorentext

Alexander Kautzsch is a linguist in the Department of English and American Studies at the University of Regensburg. His main research interests include phonological second language acquisition, English in Namibia, and the historical evolution of African American English.

Inhalt

Variation, transfer and ultimate attainment - Cross-linguistic comparison (British and American English, German) and transfer opportunities for German learners - Methodology (acoustic and auditory analyses; statistics; Rbrul; pairwise t-tests) - Persisting L1 transfer at a late stage of acquisition - Free variation