The timing of English words by non-native speakers

Difficulties with rhythm may be a major cause of lack of intelligibility or naturalness of non-native speakers of English. Inappropriate timing of syllables contributes to the perceived rhythmic deficiencies of non-native English. There is some evidence that non-native speakers do not follow the system of the base work compressions which Lehiste (1972) reports for native English speakers. Preliminary data from Nelson (1982) indicates that native Indian speakers of English do not shorten base words when suffixes are added. The purpose of this study was to investigate the timing of base words and their derivations by non-native speakers of English. The subjects were seven university students from four different language backgrounds, Thai, Malayasian, Japanese, and Yoruba. Subjects were recorded saying four base words in isolation and with three different monosyllabic suffixes and two disyllabic suffixes added. The durations of the base words and their suffixes were measured from duplex oscillograms. For all speakers the base work was longer in isolation than with suffixes although there was considerable variability in their treatment of individual base words. In general, the base word received about the same amount of compression regardless of the number of syllables of the suffix.