Articulation and phonation in non-nativeEnglish: The example of Dutch-English

BRYAN R. A. JENNERDepartment of Language Studies, Christ Church College, Canterbury, Kent, CT1 1QU, U.K.

1. IntroductionAny attempt to define and describe a non-native pronunciation of English is besetwith a variety of difficulties. In the first place the researcher is dealing with somethingacquired, at least in part, by a conscious effort of the speaker. Although, as I haveargued elsewhere (Jenner, 1984), English has a special status in the Netherlands,approximating to that of a second language in other countries, it is nonetheless truethat the average Dutch learner has no opportunity for actual productive practice ofthe language until he is already 10 or 12 years old. His ears may be familiar with thesounds of native English, owing to the extensive use of English in Dutch televisionand cinema, but they are also conditioned by a much greater exposure to Dutch. Hisperceptual norms are Dutch. In the case of pronunciation this implies that the learnerwill initially perceive the phonological features of English with reference to thesystems of Dutch, and will tend to interpret them as deviant surface exponents ofunderlying Dutch norms.

Furthermore, the learner's articulatory muscles will have been preconditioned, byten or more years of practice, to operate in a manner which is appropriate for themother tongue, but which differs in certain important general respects from the motoractivity of native speakers of English. Much of the time devoted to pronunciationteaching will therefore of necessity be spent in seeking to make the learner aware ofthe habitual articulatory configurations both of his mother tongue and of English, andin inculcating the set of motor habits, or ARTICULATORY SETTING (cf. Honikman, 1964),used in English. This means that the non-native learner, unlike the native infant whoacquires without conscious effort what he is exposed to, must be set clear goals, andbe shown in precise physiological terms what those goals correspond to. He mustbe shown a model, but must also be told what that model consists of, since hisperception of it is inevitably coloured. Above all, however, he must be motivated tosucceed.

It is this setting of targets and models which creates the second major problem inthe description of a non-native accent. As has already been suggested, the Dutchlearner is exposed to native English in the informal circumstances of his everyday lifeas well as in the formal learning environment. Much of that exposure is to thestandard form of Southern British English generally known as ReceivedPronunciation (RP). (That is not to deny that in the informal environment there is alsosubstantial exposure to General American, but this does not have the reinforcementof being the model presented in the formal learning situation.) RP is also the varietyspecified as the target for students in universities and teacher-training institutes. Yetthe overwhelming majority of Dutch learners do not acquire this variety, but speakwith the accent which we shall henceforth refer to as Dutch-English. There is,

Journal of the International Phonetic Association (1987)17:2, 125-138

BRYAN R. A. JENNER

therefore, a clear mismatch between aims and models on the one hand, and actualresults on the other.

Dutch-English itself, however, is not a stable or uniform object. Within the speechof one speaker it may undergo a series of modifications in the course of the learningprocess. In some speakers it may approximate very closely to the target variety,particularly if they have spent long periods of residence in Britain. Other speakers,having also come close to the target, may regress to a marked form of Dutch-Englishif their contact with native speakers diminishes. (This is a well-documentedphenomenon in foreign language learning. The regression to a 'fossilized' level ofproductive ability is discussed in Selinker, 1972.) The majority of learners, however,who are in other senses 'fluent speakers' of English, pronounce the language in away which is clearly different from native English in certain recurrent, predictable andrecognisable ways.

The type of pronunciation we are concerned with, therefore, is similar to theregional varieties of native English in the sense that it may vary in degree andcharacter, both within the speech of a single speaker and also - more significantly -between different speakers of the variety.

2. Problems of phonemic analysisArticulatory phonetics for most of this century has been dominated by the PHONEME.The idea of representing the continuity of speech by means of a series of abstractconstructs, corresponding to hypothetical underlying perceptual norms, wasformulated by Daniel Jones in several early writings (e.g. Jones 1931, 1932), but hasmuch older antecedents, being already implicit in the work of Sweet (1878) andBaudouin de Courtenay (1895). It continues to predominate, as the latest edition ofGimson (1962) illustrates, and dissent has been rare.

Abercrombie, however, referring to phonemic analysis as the 'building block' or'posture and glide' approach when it is applied to real data, claims that this obscuresthe true nature of articulatory activity. Abercrombie (1973:15) points out that:

'there are no held postures in speech. Nothing brings this home more effectivelythan a slow motion X-ray film of speech. The concept of the speech-sound as astable (even if only momentarily stable) posture of the vocal organs is a fiction,albeit for many purposes quite a useful one.'

Moreover, he continues, the phoneme:

'is apt to confuse people's thinking about speech if they are not aware of itsfictional nature ... it gives rise, for example, to mistaken ideas about theperception of speech, making people think that phoneme-representing segmentsare perceived separately and serially - which is most unlikely' (ibid: 16).

In fact the work of Laver (1970) would suggest that the syllable, rather than thephoneme, is the smallest perceptual unit in spoken language.

Abercrombie also claims that this type of analysis developed initially in responseto the demands of language teaching, as a means of supplying the language teacherwith teachable phonological entities. If this really was the motivation behind the

ARTICULATION AND PHONATION IN NON-NATIVE ENGLISH 1 „

development of phonemic theory, it is indeed unfortunate, since it now seems likelythat it has been more of a hindrance than a help to the language teacher, in that ithas prevented him from recognising the true nature of a foreign learner's problems,and from devising alternative strategies for teaching pronunciation, based uponproductive physical activities, rather than linguistic abstractions.

The phoneme-dominated approach has idealised phonetic data in a number ofways. Firstly it has categorised linguistic sound into a number of broad classesbased upon generalisations about the perceptions of the idealised native speaker.For instance, phonemic analysis makes a simple binary classification of laryngealactivity into VOICED and VOICELESS. This may be entirely justifiable theoretically, but isunhelpful to the foreign learner whose mother tongue makes the same physicaldistinction but in a manner which produces very different auditory results. A secondidealisation which is equally misleading to the foreign learner is the decision torestrict the attention of articulatory description to articulatory and phonatory activitieswhich are deemed to be of primary LINGUISTIC SIGNIFICANCE. This implies the relegationof all secondary and variable activities to the status of the paralinguistic oridiosyncratic. It also creates a barrier between phonetics and sociolinguistics despitemany areas of potential common interest.

Above all, the preoccupation with the phoneme has rendered contrastive work,both between varieties of a given language, and between languages, inordinatelydifficult. Its transcription conventions, however detailed or 'narrow', are incapable ofreproducing the authentic character of varieties of language. As Knowles (1978: 81)has argued:

'The shortcomings of impressionistic transcription can be illustrated in theastonishing virtuosity sometimes found in dialect surveys, giving details farbeyond what any phonetician could give with any confidence, accuracy orconsistency, EVEN SO [my emphasis] the detail still does not suggest the originalform, unless one happens to be familiar with the dialect in question. One has toimagine a 'Yorkshire VOICE' [my emphasis] in order to read a transcription ofYorkshire dialect, or a 'Texas voice' to read a Texan transcription, and so on. Thefieldworker will certainly be responding to sociolinguistic information, but he hasno way of representing it, and leaves the reader to reconstruct it for himself.

In a systematic transcription, what we will need to mark will not necessarilybe "states" of the traditional kind. For linguistic purposes, it is a convenient anduseful fiction to treat utterances as sequences of phonetic "states", because atsome level sentences really are linear sequences of vowels and consonants. Inthe case of sociolinguistic rules, on the other hand, "states" will sometimes onlyconfuse matters.'

Orthodox phonology postulates 44 discrete states or 'phonemes' for RP and wouldencourage us to assume that there are the same number in Dutch-English (or anyother non-native variety, for that matter) although the phonetic realisations might berather different, and might in some instances overlap. Certain 'phonemic contrasts'would then be lost or obscured.

The descriptive presuppositions which lead the phonetician to arrive at thephonemes of RP are not necessarily relevant, however, for the description of thenon-native variety. Linguistic phonetics classifies consonants, for example, only in

BRYAN R. A. JENNER

terms of the PLACE and MANNER of their primary articulation and presence or absenceof voicing, since these are deemed to be the only parameters necessary tocharacterise the sets of oppositions exploited within a single code or variety. It makesno reference to the proportionate length of consonantal articulations (nor to relativelength in different varieties), and it ignores semi-continuous secondary articulations(with the possible exception of voicing) which might have sociolinguistic relevance.Similarly, it handles vowels purely in terms of their relative position in the articulatoryspace: i.e., open - close, front - back, and, in describing RP, concentrates on the mainlinguistic resource of QUALITATIVE (or positional) opposition. Such a preoccupation,concentrating as it does on differences between vowels, cannot offer any veryenlightening analysis of what the vowels of a given variety have in common witheach other in terms of muscular tension or laxity, tendencies to nasalisation orpalatalisation, and so on. In other words, it renders the task of characterising andcontrasting varieties extremely difficult. Above all, it cannot handle the problem ofvariation in vowel length between different languages and varieties.

The study undertaken here is concerned with isolating the defining articulatorycharacteristics of Dutch-English, which consist not only of trivial differences inphonetic realisations, but of systematic differences in vowel quality and quantity, andin the general and particular features of consonantal articulations. These will beseen to depend upon differences in certain generalised aspects of articulatorysetting and types of phonation. In addition the 'principle of least effort' (Wells, 1982)will be seen to apply differentially to RP, Dutch, and Dutch-English.

3. ArticulationThe description of the articulation of linguistic sound in a non-native variety of alanguage entails first and foremost a study of the general articulatory configurationsand phonatory habits of speakers of that variety, and a comparison with those ofnative speakers of the language. The recognition of these general configurationsrenders it possible to account for all perceived qualitative differences between thephonological postures of the native and non-native varieties, and, by combiningelements of previous linguistic and paralinguistic analysis, to give a formal accountof all the articulatory aspects of a 'foreign accent'.

3.1 Articulatory settings. The notion of a language-specific articulatory setting wasfirst outlined by Honikman (1964) in a short pedagogically-orientated comparison ofthe pronunciation of English and French. A setting is described as a 'gross oralposture', characteristic of a particular language, which may be thought of as theaverage of all the separate articulatory configurations of that language. Honikman(ibid: 74) claims that:

s'where two languages are disparate in articulatory setting, it is not possiblecompletely to master the pronunciation of one whilst maintaining the articulatorysetting of the other.'

Attempts to do so result in the kind of pronunciation normally characterised as'foreign accent1.

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The phonetic description of settings has been further refined by Abercrombie(1967), Laver (1968, 1980) and Ladefoged (1980), so that a setting may now beviewed as the result of the simultaneous manipulation of a set of interrelatedarticulatory parameters. Laver (1968) outlines two main subcomponents:

a) settings of the larynx,b) settings of the supralaryngeal vocal tract,

both of which may be further subdivided into discrete parameters, such as theseventeen outlined in Ladefoged (1980).

The application of this notion to the description of varieties was first undertakenby Trudgill (1974) in an attempt to characterise the 'Norwich voice1. After a lengthydiscussion of the Norwich diasystem, in which he adopts an essentially generativeapproach with alternative phonetic realisation rules to account for stylistic 'switching',Trudgill notes (ibid: 185):

'It is a striking fact that the speech of many Norwich informants whose INDIVIDUALSEGMENTS ARE OTHERWISE QUITE OR PERHAPS VERY SIMILAR ACTUALLY SOUNDS VERY DIFFERENT[my emphasis]. This difference is due to the use by very many W[orking] C[lass]speakers of what several informants referred to during the course of theinterviews as a 'Norwich voice'. In those cases where there are slight DIFFERENCES[my emphasis] in the pronunciation of individual segments, these often seem tobe due to the same overall difference in the mode of articulation. Both thesetypes of difference can be described as differences of setting, (v. Honikman1964)'.

This echoes the reservations expressed in Knowles (1978) quoted aboveconcerning the inadequacy of narrow phonetic transcriptions in representing themost salient characteristics of linguistic varieties. Since our main concern here is tocharacterise the Dutch-English VOICE, as an area which has been almost totallyneglected in both descriptive and pedagogic terms, it is axiomatic that we deal firstwith the description of the general features of settings. Individual segmentalarticulations, in both Dutch-English and RP, may then be treated as excursions froman articulatory setting specific to each of the varieties. Phonemically they may attimes appear to be similar or even identical. Perceptually, however, they retain ageneral QUALITATIVE difference which derives from their different points of departure.

It is appropriate to proceed, therefore, by describing the most typical settings of(a) the larynx and (b) the supralaryngeal tract found in the two varieties, whichunderlie any superficial differences in the segmental repertoires and which are theprincipal correlates of perceived differences in 'accent'.

3.1.1 Settings of the larynx.There are two main aspects to the use of the larynx which merit discussion andcomparison: (i) the location of the larynx within the vocal tract during phonation, and(ii) the types of phonation used.

Both of these are the result of extremely complex and subtle muscular activities,which become habitual in the course of mother tongue acquisition. Once the set ofhabits which characterise the type of voice used in the mother tongue has beenestablished, it becomes entirely subconscious and resistant to attempts atsubsequent modification. Any pedagogic strategy which seeks to substitute a

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fundamentally 'English' or 'RP voice' for a pre-existing 'Dutch voice' in a maturelearner must, therefore, be prepared to cultivate conscious awareness of the natureof these subconscious activities, and must be informed by sound and reliablephysiological knowledge.

(i) Location of the larynx. The physiology of the larynx and its associated muscles isextremely complex and the range of possible modifications very large. In simpleterms the larynx consists of a set of cartilages (of which the THYROID and CRICOID arerelevant here) attached by a system of muscles at the upper end to the HYOID BONE.This in turn is attached to the jaw and skull by a network of muscles which allow it tobe raised and/or displaced forward or backward. The entire mechanism is discussedin detail in Laver (1980) and in Butenschan and Borchgrevink (1982). What isrelevant here is the one fact that in speech the human larynx may either be kept in aneutral position; or it may be raised or lowered from that neutral position. Raising orlowering alone brings about changes in the quality of the sound produced, evenwhen the perceived pitch remains constant. Thus a sound uttered with a loweredlarynx will sound warmer and more resonant than a sound with the larynx in aneutral position. With a raised larynx, on the other hand, a sound with the samefundamental frequency (i.e., perceived pitch) will sound thinner and less resonant.The main reason for this perceptual effect is that larynx-raising causes a rise in thefrequency of the first and other formants; larynx-lowering, conversely, brings about afall in their frequency. It is these formants, rather than the fundamental frequency,which give a sound its different colouring or 'quality1.

As Trudgill (1974) and Knowles (1974) have shown, 'raised-larynx voice' is notunknown in native varieties of English. These are, in the main, urban varieties of lowprestige. RP, however, is characterised by a neutral larynx or slight but gentledownward displacement. The result of this is a characteristically relaxed tonalquality, with a slight breathiness which seems to be associated with larynx-lowering(cf. Laver, 1980:31).

Dutch, and in most cases Dutch-English, however, is normally spoken with araised larynx, or at least with greater laryngeal tension than is found in RP. Thisproduces a hard and tense vocal quality which contrasts sharply with the quality ofRP.

Sociolinguistically it is important to note that a raised-larynx voice may be takenas the norm for speakers of Dutch: it has no connotations of low prestige, or ofworking-class urban speech. The same laryngeal setting when used in Dutch-English, however, may carry precisely those connotations to an RP-speakinglistener.

(ii) Phonation types. Laryngeal setting alone, as has been shown, may bring aboutmodifications in the types of phonation a speaker uses, in that the kind of tensionneeded to raise the larynx is also transmitted to the vocal folds by a system ofinterdependence. It also seems likely, as Laver (1980) has argued, that tension, orhardening, of muscle has in itself important acoustic results. In addition to this type ofeffect, however, it is important to examine other aspects of the phonatory mechanismwhich may vary irrespective of laryngeal displacement.

The mechanism by which the vocal folds vibrate is also subject to considerablevariations which may be broadly categorised under two main headings. Firstly there

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are anatomical differences between human beings, which are not changeable orlanguage-specific, and are therefore not relevant here; and secondly there aredifferences in the mode of use of the mechanism, which may be either idiosyncraticor sociolinguistically determined for reasons of group conformity. Both of these latterare of interest pedagogically, since both are potentially susceptible to modification.

As was the case with laryngeal setting, it is useful to think of a normal or neutraltype of phonation, with the vocal folds short and thick, under slight passivelongitudinal tension, resulting in simple and relatively efficient periodic vibration ofthe entire glottal area. The perceptual result of this type of phonation is normal or'modal' voice, with a fundamental frequency in the average adult male of between 94and 287 Hz (cf. Hollien and Michel, 1968).

Other modes of vocal fold vibration are:

a) FALSETTO, where only the extreme edges of the vocal folds are used, toproduce simple periodic vibration. Falsetto in the average male has an Fo rangeof 275-634 Hz.b) CREAK, (or VOCAL FRY) where the vocal folds become unusually thick andcompressed, and vibrate or 'tap' together very slowly under reduced sub-glottalpressure. Creak has an Fo range of 30-90 Hz in the average adult male.c) WHISPER, where the vocal folds have a triangular opening, allowing rapidescape of air, and there is no vibration of the glottal area.

These simple modes of phonation may be combined in various ways, to give, forinstance, WHISPERY VOICE or CREAKY FALSETTO. They may also be associated withreduced or increased TENSION elsewhere in the vocal tract, with varying degrees ofBREATHINESS and with raised or lowered larynx. A very large number of discretedescriptive categories can thereby be set up to permit the classification of allidiosyncratic and sociolinguistically determined types of phonation.

For our purposes it will suffice to outline the most common features associatedwith RP and to contrast them with those most typically found in Dutch and Dutch-English. By no means all RP speakers have all of these features, but they may betaken as characteristic of an RP stereotype which distinguishes RP phonation fromthe completely neutral type:

1) the larynx is slightly lowered;2) laryngeal tension is low;3) the 'modal' voice is slightly breathy or relaxed;4) frequent use is made of creak in utterance-final positions where there is lowfalling pitch;5) there are occasional excursions into falsetto, to mark excitement associatedwith high rising pitch.

The Dutch modal voice differs from this in almost every respect:

1) the larynx is raised;2) laryngeal tension is high;

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3) the 'modal' voice is hard or tense;4) creak is rare in the way it is used in RP, although some (southern) speakersappear to use creaky voice consistently;5) use of falsetto is extremely rare.

These differences have, in addition to their sociolinguistic implications, a number ofother consequences which should be noted in passing:

a) the laryngeal tension found in Dutch means that many vowels in word-initialposition have glottal onset;b) the same tension, with its associated reduction in elasticity, means that glottalreinforcement (INCREASE in tension) of final fortis stops, is not available in the wayit is in RP;c) in RP the relaxed glottal setting permits late onset of voicing in initial lenisstops, and aspiration of initial fortis stops. Dutch and Dutch-English, with theirfirm glottal tension, show voicing of lenis stops BEFORE their release (heard as pre-voicing), and lack aspiration of initial fortis stops, with very early onset of voicingwhich makes them perceptually very similar to RP lenis.

3.1.2 Supralaryngeal settings.As was the case with laryngeal settings, the supralaryngeal tract may be consideredto have a neutral configuration, which Laver (1980) has defined as follows:

1) the tract is most nearly in equal cross-section along its entire length;2) the larynx is neither raised nor lowered;3) the lips are not protruded, nor rounded, nor spread;4) front oral articulations are performed by the blade of the tongue;5) the jaw is neither closed nor unduly open;6) the velopharyngeal system produces audible nasality only where necessaryfor purposes of linguistic contrast;7) the vibration of the true vocal folds is regularly periodic, efficient, and withoutaudible friction;8) the root of the tongue is neither advanced nor retracted;9) the pharynx is not constricted either by the faucal pillars or the pharyngealconstrictor muscles;10) overall muscular tension is neither high nor low.

(Adapted from Laver, (ibid: 23) and accompanying cassette)

This configuration provides a set of norms with which any setting, whetheridiosyncratic or characteristic of a particular language or variety, may then becontrasted. This will permit the description of deviations from the neutralconfiguration, and will enable the investigator to highlight precisely those pointswhere two settings differ most markedly from each other. In this way we mayconveniently summarise the features of RP and Dutch under the same ten headings,as shown in Figure 1.

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FIGURE 1: Articulatory configurations for RP and Dutch

1. CROSS-SECTION:2. LARYNX:3. LIPS:

4. FRONT ARTICULATIONS:5. JAW:6. VELUM:

7. VOCAL FOLDS:

8. TONGUE ROOT:9. PHARYNX:

10. OVERALL TENSION:

RP

neutralneutral or loweredneutral; lax spreading;open rounding with slightprotrusiontip (and blade)closed but loosefirm closure; strong oral/nasal contrast; somesecondary nasalisationperiodic vibration; lax;frequent use of creakyvoice and breathinessneutral or slightly advancedneutrallax

DUTCH

pharynx narrowedraisedfirmly held; drawn back atcorners; tight inner roundingwithout protrusionblade (and front); tip loweredslightly open; tenseweak closure; frequentsemi-continuoussecondary nasalisationperiodic vibration; tense;creak is idiosyncratic

retracted and bunchedconstrictedtense

The significant features of the supralaryngeal setting for RP may therefore besummarised as laxity in almost all parts of the tract, from pharynx to lips, with littledeviation from the neutral configuration. The main deviation is at the tongue tipwhich is highly active in articulations with the palato-alveoiar region and with theteeth. The articulatory setting for RP could thus be described as fairly stronglyALVEOLARISED, which implies that segments whose primary articulations occurelsewhere in the vocal tract (e.g. back vowels /u:/ and h-.l, and velar stopconsonants /k/ and /g/) have a secondary 'precise' or 'frontal' quality.

Larynx lowering suggests that the tract is slightly elongated compared to Dutch.The absence of pharyngeal constriction implies that the volume of the resonators('phonetic space') is also larger than in Dutch. These two features, together withglottal laxity, also account for the lower average pitch, but also for the wider averagepitch span, used by RP speakers.

The setting for Dutch, which in very many cases is transferred to Dutch-English,may be seen as marked by tension throughout the tract, except at the tongue-tip,which is almost entirely inactive. Larynx-raising and lip-retraction cause a shorteningof the tract. Pharyngeal constriction, retraction of the tongue, and weak velic closure,all combine to give a 'dark', frequently nasalised quality to Dutch speech. The Dutcharticulatory setting could therefore be characterised as VELARISED or UVULARISED,which implies that frontal articulations (e.g. front vowels l\:l and /e:/ and alveolarconsonants) have a secondary 'throaty' or 'back' quality.

This type of setting is found in certain varieties of native English, but they tend, aswas the case with larynx-raising, to be those of low prestige from large industrialconurbations, such as Glasgow or Merseyside. If this stigmatised setting is retainedin Dutch-English, as it certainly is in the absence of appropriate pedagogic

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strategies, it places the Dutch speaker of English at a considerable sociolinguisticdisadvantage. It would be useful, therefore, to consider why the setting of the L, isretained by a learner when, as is certainly the case in the Netherlands, there is suchgreat exposure to the very different setting of RP.

3.2 The principle of least effort and the question of norms. The PRINCIPLE OF LEASTEFFORT, as outlined in Wells (1982), is a strategy for accounting for innovations anddivergence in native varieties of a language. Wells {ibid: 94) claims that speakers:

'tend to pronounce words and sentences in a way which involves the minimum ofarticulatory effort consistent with the need to maintain intelligibility. If a SIMPLE [myemphasis] articulatory gesture works just as well as a more complex one, there isa natural tendency to prefer it, thus rendering the articulatory movements inspeech simpler'.

Stated in this form it provides a plausible explanation of how change occurswithin a variety: for instance, how intervocalic /t/ becomes voiced in AmericanEnglish (which requires no interruption in glottal activity); or how it is replaced by aglottal stop in Cockney or Glaswegian (which concentrates the cessation of voicingat the glottis, and abandons the more effortful, and redundant, alveolar closure).

It does not, however, explain how what is effortless in one variety may beextremely effortful in another. In order to account for differences of this sort,reference must be made to the notion of articulatory setting and to the fundamentaldifferences in setting which occur between varieties.

In other words, if the emphasized SIMPLE in Wells' definition is glossed as'involving least divergence from an established articulatory setting', it becomespossible to use the principle of least effort to explain such fundamental differencesbetween RP and Dutch-English as the presence or absence of aspiration; or theearly or late onset of voicing; or the particular sets of vowel shapes which areselected from the inifinite set available. The Dutch-English speaker selects a set ofarticulatory gestures because he finds them less effortful, or more NATURAL (cf. Wells,1982: 95), given his established articulatory setting. More important, he will tend toselect these gestures, irrespective of how he perceives RP, since he is, at this level,operating in a subconscious, mechanical fashion.

If, however, he has received explicit perceptual (auditory) training, as isundoubtedly the case with most Dutch university students and teachers in training,one is forced to look for a different type of explanation for any fundamentaldifferences in articulation. It is here that one must give attention to the question ofperceptual pre-conditioning effected on a speaker by the acquistion of his mothertongue.

This may be conveniently illustrated by a simple comparison of the sets of frontunrounded vowels in Dutch and RP. A native speaker of Dutch will have acquired avowel system which includes five such vowels, normally specified as /i(:)/, hi, /e-J,Itl, I a.: I. They form a progression from close to open, and are almost equidistantfrom each other in terms of phonetic space, or changes in tongue height. Moreover,each vowel is distinguished from adjacent vowels not only in quality but also inlength, since they are alternately long and short. {l\:l is, admittedly, a special case,since it is only long before l-rl, but it is undoubtedly best classified as long since it

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can occur in open, syllable-final positions, which hi cannot.) The differencesbetween long and short vowels in Dutch, however, are comparatively small, withmean values for long and short vowels in comparable phonetic contexts of 210 msand 125 ms respectively, and all are relatively short compared to RP long vowelsbefore final lenis consonants, which have a mean value of 355 ms (cf. Nooteboom1972).

It should, therefore, be borne in mind that all the Dutch vowels will be articulatedwith the relatively high muscular tension, raised larynx, constricted pharynx andretracted tongue which were described above (3.1.2). This means that they retain aconstant quality, and that they have relatively high F, values compared to vowelswith similar tongue height in languages with a laxer articulatory setting.

In terms of actual quality, there is of course some variation between speakers,and this affects particularly the short vowels hi and Id, which may be considerablymore open than the phonemic norms suggested in Figure 2. This is especially trueof speakers from the south eastern part of the country who provided the bulk of thedata examined.

Dutch Vowels:i: i e: E a:

English Vowels:/: i e ae

FIGURE 2

A Dutch learner will therefore approach the vowel system of RP with a set ofPERCEPTUAL NORMS based on the kinds of contrast indicated above, which may besummarised as follows:

1) full use will be made of the phonetic space available;2) distinctions between adjacent vowels will be quantitative as well asqualitative;3) quality will remain pure throughout a vowel articulation;4) vowels of similar tongue height in other languages will have similar lengthvalues.

., „„ BRYAN R. A. JENNERl ob

RP, however, has a very different set of front vowels, even though there appearsto be phonemic identity in part of the system. Only four simple front vowels are foundin RP: Id, N, lei, and /»/,• and of these only l\-.l is genuinely a long vowel, although/ » / occupies a medial position between long and short, with a mean duration of 235ms before final lenis consonants. (This, incidentally, is longer than the mean forDutch LONG vowels, which creates additional perceptual difficulties.)

The l\-.l - lil distinction creates little difficulty in terms of quality, since the system inRP works in much the same way as in Dutch, although the length contrast is moremarked and the laxer setting means that RP speakers tend to diphthongise both tosome extent.

The Id - lei - las/ distinction, however, can cause considerable difficulty, for anumber of reasons:

1) Dutch hi is often considerably more open and centralised than RP hi,approaching RP lei.2) Dutch /e:/ is a long vowel and therefore perceptually in a different categoryfrom RP Id, which is also slightly more open.3) Dutch Id, particularly in the south eastern part of the Netherlands, may bealmost as open as RP / « / , but is unmistakably short, and therefore not strictlycomparable. Both RP Id and /eel may be equated with it, since it is equidistantbetween them.4) An additional complication is brought about by RP /ei/ which has nocomparable diphthong in Dutch. It may therefore be perceived as equivalent toDutch It-.l which does, indeed, diphthongise in certain dialects.

The end result of this is that although RP appears to have one less simple frontvowel than Dutch, the Dutch learner tends to perceive equivalences which do notexist, and to find that there is, in fact, one vowel too many. The RP vowel system istherefore perceived according to the set of equivalences shown in Figure 3.

RP

(a: )

FIGURE 3: Vowel equivalences in Dutch and RP.

ARTICULATION AND PHONATION IN NON-NATIVE ENGLISH .. „ - ,

Similar kinds of perceptual difficulty are also to be found in the remainder of thevowel system, in the systems of stop consonants and in the systems of labio-dentalfricatives. In all these cases a native speaker of Dutch will perceive RP sounds asbeing within the range of articulatory possibilities which his preconditioning willaccept, and will process them as alternative realisations of Dutch segments.

4. ConclusionIn the past, studies of non-native varieties of English have been largely concernedwith matters of syntax and lexis. The different levels of analysis implicit in the studyof non-native pronunciation have been largely ignored. There are, therefore, noestablished modes of description which are demonstrably adequate for thecharacterisation of non-native phonology. The traditional approach of dialectologistsof concentrating on segmental phonology is not sufficient, however great the level ofphonetic detail, since such an approach is unable to represent the generalisedfeatures of VOICE which underlie the segmental repertoires and which have been ourmain concern here.

The contentions of this study have been:

1) that a non-native variety cannot be described with reference only todifferences in phonetic realisation from the target variety;2) that it cannot be adequately characterised in terms of its segmentalphonology alone;3) that a representation of the generalised articulatory and phonatory settingsmust precede and inform any merely taxonomic study.

Without this the essential nature of 'foreign accent' cannot be captured andphonetics will not be able to offer the language teacher any basis for animprovement in strategies for the teaching of pronunciation.

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