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Journal articles on the topic 'Speaker variation'
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1
Gnevsheva, Ksenia. "Within-speaker variation in passing for a native speaker." International Journal of Bilingualism 21, no. 2 (July 27, 2016): 213–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367006915616197.
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This study quantitatively explores variation in passing for a native speaker of English and also discusses speakers’ passing for a native speaker of the same dialect as the listeners, other dialects, or not passing at all and always being perceived as a non-native speaker. It also examines other factors that may influence variation in passing such as conversational setting (which has been suggested by participants’ self-reports in Piller, 2002). Thirty native-speaking listeners were presented with clips from 24 native and non-native speakers of English and were asked to guess the origin of the speaker. Passing is quantified through the number of times listeners in a perception task believed speakers to be from English-speaking countries. The results of this study suggest that passing for a native speaker of different varieties is quite common, and some speakers pass for a native speaker of another variety as an intermediate step between passing for a native speaker of the same variety and not passing at all. The speakers’ self-reports and quantitative analysis of their production also suggests that there is a considerable amount of intra-speaker variation across different conversational settings. Most studies that focus on passing have been qualitative and/or rely on self-reports (e.g. Piller, 2002), so any claims about variation in passing are not typically supported by actual linguistic production. One particular consideration that is usually omitted is the difference between passing for a native speaker of the same dialect as the listener and that of a different dialect. This study explores situational variability in passing quantitatively and also considers the trends in passing for a native speaker of different dialects. This study is an example of a fruitful combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, to explore the intersection between second language acquisition and sociolinguistics.
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Stecker, Amelia, and Annette D’Onofrio. "Variation in Evaluations of Gendered Voices: Individual Speakers Condition the Variant Frequency Effect." Journal of English Linguistics 50, no. 3 (August 27, 2022): 281–314. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00754242221109579.
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Listeners are sensitive to the frequency at which speakers produce sociolinguistic features in utterances, reflected in their social evaluations of those speakers. Previous work also illustrates that a speaker’s perceived gender can influence how their linguistic production is processed, perceived, and discussed. However, little is known about how speaker gender can shape the effect of variant frequency on social evaluations. Employing the sociolinguistic variable ING, a matched-guise task was conducted to compare listeners’ evaluations of ten speakers producing varying proportions ING’s variants, investigating whether listeners evaluate men and women differently for using - in at the same rates of production. Findings show that speakers’ greater usage of the - in variant yields more negative evaluations from listeners, but this trend did not differ between different speaker genders. Rather, differences in evaluations of individual speakers persist across and within gendered categories, bearing implications for notions of binary gender and single-speaker matched-guise paradigms.
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Gold, Erica, Christin Kirchhübel, Kate Earnshaw, and Sula Ross. "Regional variation in British English voice quality." English World-Wide 43, no. 1 (December 3, 2021): 96–123. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/eww.20007.gol.
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Abstract This study considers regional variation of voice quality in two varieties of British English – Southern Standard British English and West Yorkshire English. A comparison of voice quality profiles for three closely related but not identical northern varieties within West Yorkshire is also considered. Our findings do not contradict the small subset of previous research which explored regional and/or social variation in voice quality in British English insofar as regionality may play a small role in a speaker’s voice quality profile. However, factors such as social standing and identity could perhaps be even more relevant. Even when considering homogeneous groups of speakers, it is not the case that there is a cohesive voice quality profile that can be attached to every speaker within the group. The reason for this, we argue, is the speaker-specificity inherent in voice quality.
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Holmberg, Eva B., Robert E. Hillman, Joseph S. Perkell, and Carla Gress. "Relationships Between Intra-Speaker Variation in Aerodynamic Measures of Voice Production and Variation in SPL Across Repeated Recordings." Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research 37, no. 3 (June 1994): 484–95. http://dx.doi.org/10.1044/jshr.3703.484.
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Intra-speaker variation in aerodynamic and acoustic measures of voice production across repeated recordings was studied in relation to cross-recording variation in SPL for three normal female and three normal male speakers. Group data for 15 females and 15 males served as the statistical reference. The speech material consisted of syllable strings in soft, normal, and loud voice. Measures were made of (a) parameters characterizing the inverse filtered oral airflow waveform, (b) the inferred average transglottal air pressure and glottal airflow, and (c) SPL. The results showed that intra-speaker parameter variation across recordings was generally less than 2 standard deviations relative to group mean values. In terms of relation to variation in SPL, the measures could be divided into two main groups: (a) For air pressure, AC flow, and maximum flow declination rate, both intra-speaker variation across recordings and inter-speaker (group) variation was related systematically to variation of SPL. For these measures, it is suggested that variation across recordings was due in part to SPL differences, which can be adjusted for statistically, thus facilitating comparisons between absolute values. (b) For other measures, neither intra-speaker variation across recordings nor inter-speaker group variation was systematically related to SPL. However, some of these latter measures changed with SPL in an orderly fashion across soft, normal, and loud voice for individual speakers. The results are discussed in terms of the clinical use of these measures in studies of voice disorders.
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Gass, Susan M., and Evangeline Marlos Varonis. "Variation in Native Speaker Speech Modification to Non-Native Speakers." Studies in Second Language Acquisition 7, no. 1 (February 1985): 37–57. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0272263100005143.
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This study builds upon prior research dealing with the nature of discourse involving non-native speakers. In particular, we examine variables influencing native speaker foreigner talk and the form that speech modification takes. The data bases are (1) 80 taped telephone interviews between NNSs at two distinct proficiency levels, (interviewer) and NSs (interviewee), and (2) 20 NS-NS interviews. We consider five variables: 1) negotiation of meaning, 2) quantity of speech, 3) amount of repair (following a specific NNS request for repair), 4) elaborated responses, and 5) transparent responses. We find that the speech of NSs changes as a function of an NNS's ability to understand and be understood. We further suggest a general cognitive principle—transparency—underlying aspects of both foreigner talk and second language acquisition.
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Pejovic, Jovana, Eiling Yee, and Monika Molnar. "Speaker matters: Natural inter-speaker variation affects 4-month-olds’ perception of audio-visual speech." First Language 40, no. 2 (September 27, 2019): 113–27. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0142723719876382.
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In the language development literature, studies often make inferences about infants’ speech perception abilities based on their responses to a single speaker. However, there can be significant natural variability across speakers in how speech is produced (i.e., inter-speaker differences). The current study examined whether inter-speaker differences can affect infants’ ability to detect a mismatch between the auditory and visual components of vowels. Using an eye-tracker, 4.5-month-old infants were tested on auditory-visual (AV) matching for two vowels (/i/ and /u/). Critically, infants were tested with two speakers who naturally differed in how distinctively they articulated the two vowels within and across the categories. Only infants who watched and listened to the speaker whose visual articulations of the two vowels were most distinct from one another were sensitive to AV mismatch. This speaker also produced a visually more distinct /i/ as compared to the other speaker. This finding suggests that infants are sensitive to the distinctiveness of AV information across speakers, and that when making inferences about infants’ perceptual abilities, characteristics of the speaker should be taken into account.
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Ruch, Hanna. "Perception of speaker age and speaker origin in a sound change in progress: The case of /s/-aspiration in Andalusian Spanish." Journal of Linguistic Geography 6, no. 1 (April 2018): 40–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/jlg.2018.4.
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This paper addresses the question whether listeners possess sociolinguistic knowledge of regional variation in a sound change affecting /s/ + voiceless stop sequences in Andalusian Spanish. We tested whether speakers from Seville and Granada were perceived as more Sevillian-sounding and as younger when a stimulus contained the novel phonetic variant, a post-aspirated stop. Word-medial syllable-final /s/ was manipulated in such a way that two stimuli of the same speaker differed only in whether they contained pre-aspiration ([eh.ˈtaŋ.ko]) or post-aspiration ([e.ˈthaŋ.ko]). Andalusian listeners rated the same speaker as younger and as more Sevillian-sounding when the stimulus contained a post-aspirated stop. The recognition of a speaker’s actual dialect was particularly high when the innovative variant was embedded in a Seville speaker’s speech, confirming earlier work that indexicality is context-specific. The results suggest that Andalusian listeners possess knowledge of the regional variation and the sound change and use this variation in social perception.
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Moosmüller, Sylvia. "Phonological variation in speaker identification." International Journal of Speech Language and the Law 4, no. 1 (May 1, 2013): 29–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/ijsll.v4i1.29.
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Khalid Al Shboul, Othman. "The Socio-phonetics and Morphosyntax of Language Variation in Jordan." Journal for the Study of English Linguistics 9, no. 1 (June 28, 2021): 55. http://dx.doi.org/10.5296/jsel.v9i1.18817.
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This study investigates the linguistic choices made by the participants at the level of phonetics and morphosyntax in Irbid city. The study examines the way speakers reconstruct their new identity, as belonging to an upper social class rather than to their real middle class. The researcher assumed that he would find a lot of variation among the speakers in this city that is worth examining socio-linguistically, especially that Irbid is rich in linguistic variation and social contact. The data were extracted from the videos of ten field interviews. The researcher found that gender, age and education influence the way people speak. That is to say, the young people (both males and females) were more triggered to make linguistic changes than their aged counterparts. Besides, the females produced more vernacular variants than the males. This research attempts to investigate social class as an attraction, to which the speaker tries to reach, pushing him/her to make linguistic changes, rather than as a social factor affecting the speaker’s choices since this study assumes that the speaker makes linguistic changes as he/she reconstructs his/her identity in the new social class (the attraction or target). The study concludes that social class, in particular, serves as a motivation factor that pushes speakers to reformulate their identity.
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Paolillo, John C. "Individual effects in variation analysis: Model, software, and research design." Language Variation and Change 25, no. 1 (March 2013): 89–118. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394512000270.
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AbstractIndividual-level variation is a recurrent issue in variationist sociolinguistics. One current approach recommends addressing this via mixed-effects modeling. This paper shows that a closely related model with fixed effects for individual speakers can be directly estimated using Goldvarb. The consequences of employing different approaches to speaker variation are explored by using different model selection criteria. We conclude by discussing the relation of the statistical model to the assumptions of the research design, pointing out that nonrandom selection of speakers potentially violates the assumptions of models with random effects for speaker, and suggesting that a model with fixed effects for speakers may be a better alternative in these cases.
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Choi, Mihye, and Mohinish Shukla. "A New Proposal for Phoneme Acquisition: Computing Speaker-Specific Distribution." Brain Sciences 11, no. 2 (February 1, 2021): 177. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11020177.
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Speech is an acoustically variable signal, and one of the sources of this variation is the presence of multiple speakers. Empirical evidence has suggested that adult listeners possess remarkably sensitive (and systematic) abilities to process speech signals, despite speaker variability. It includes not only a sensitivity to speaker-specific variation, but also an ability to utilize speaker variation with other sources of information for further processing. Recently, many studies also showed that young children seem to possess a similar capacity. This suggests continuity in the processing of speaker-dependent speech variability, and suggests that this ability could also be important for infants learning their native language. In the present paper, we review evidence for speaker variability and speech processing in adults, and speaker variability and speech processing in young children, with an emphasis on how they make use of speaker-specific information in word learning situations. Finally, we will build on these findings to make a novel proposal for the use of speaker-specific information processing in phoneme learning in infancy.
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Asiaee, Maral, and Homa Asadi. "Bilingual acoustic voice variation: the case of Sorani Kurdish-Persian speakers." AUC PHILOLOGICA 2022, no. 1 (January 17, 2023): 23–33. http://dx.doi.org/10.14712/24646830.2022.26.
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Many individuals around the world speak two or more than two languages. This phenomenon adds a fascinating dimension of variability to speech, both in perception and production. But do bilinguals change their voice when they switch from one language to the other? It is typically assumed that while some aspects of the speech signal vary for linguistic reasons, some indexical features remain unchanged across languages. Yet little is known about the influence of language on within- and between-speaker vocal variability. The present study investigated how acoustic parameters of voice quality are structured in two languages of a bilingual speaker and to what extent such features may vary between bilingual speakers. For this purpose, speech samples of 10 simultaneous Sorani Kurdish-Persian bilingual speakers were acoustically analyzed. Following a psychoacoustic model proposed by Kreiman (2014) and using a series of principal component analyses, we found that Sorani Kurdish-Persian bilingual speakers followed a similar acoustic pattern in their two different languages, suggesting that each speaker has a unique voice but uses the same voice parameters when switching from one language to the other.
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Nandan, Durgesh, Mahesh Kumar Singh, Sanjeev Kumar, and Harendra Kumar Yadav. "Speaker Identification Based on Physical Variation of Speech Signal." Traitement du Signal 39, no. 2 (April 30, 2022): 711–16. http://dx.doi.org/10.18280/ts.390235.
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Speaker identification for the speech signal processing request, determining the speaker is a challenge due to physical variation. This paper emphasizes a new algorithm based on acoustic feature analysis of text-dependent speech. In this proposed method text-dependent speech changed by ten physical variation methods. Acoustic feature of all types of voice is calculated by its arithmetical correlation coefficients and mean value. The audio characteristic is calculated with Mel-frequency cepstrum coefficient (MFCC), its derivatives and double derivatives. An acoustic characteristic is analysed by using normal voice and changed voice by different speakers, the mixed data used for test and training purpose. Passing all the training and test data through the various classifiers based on identification system. Speaker identification efficiency results are calculated from the different classifier.
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HOWARD, MARTIN, ISABELLE LEMÉE, and VERA REGAN. "The L2 acquisition of a phonological variable: the case of /l/ deletion in French." Journal of French Language Studies 16, no. 1 (March 2006): 1–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0959269506002298.
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This article is situated within the recent strand of SLA research which applies variationist sociolinguistic methods to the study of the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation by the L2 speaker. Whilst that research has tended to focus on the study of morphological and morphosyntactic variables, this article aims to investigate a number of acquisitional trends identified in previous research in relation to phonological variation, namely the variable deletion of /l/ by Irish advanced L2 speakers of French in both an instructed and study abroad environment. Based on quantitative results using GoldVarb 2001, the study further illuminates the difficulty that the acquisition of sociolinguistic variation poses to the instructed L2 speaker, who is found to make minimal use of informal sociolinguistic variants. In contrast, contact with native speakers in the native speech community is seen to allow the L2 speaker to make considerable sociolinguistic gains, not only in relation to the acquisition of the informal variant in itself, but also in relation to the underlying native speaker grammatical system as indicated by the constraint ordering at work behind use of the variable.
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윤태진. "Speaker variation in English prosodic boundary." Linguistic Research 31, no. 1 (April 2014): 1–23. http://dx.doi.org/10.17250/khisli.31.1.201404.001.
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Navadze, Mariam. "Investigating Speech Characteristics of Georgian Native and Non-Native Speakers: A Forensic Phonetics Study." International Journal of Multilingual Education XI, no. 2 (December 28, 2022): 19–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.22333/ijme.2022.21003.
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Forensic Phonetics aims to identify speakers through various speech characteristics that may differentiate them from others. This paper discusses the importance of selecting appropriate parameters that are independent and have high inter-speaker and low intra-speaker variation. Speech rate and fundamental frequency are analyzed to collect statistical information on the Georgian language for both native and non-native speakers. The study recorded oral speeches of 60 Georgian native speakers from three different age categories, and 20 high-competence Azerbaijani-speaking Tbilisi State University students. Results show the normal articulation tempo of the Georgian language to be between 5.1 to 6.3 syllables/second. Additionally, fundamental frequency differences were observed in the non-native speaker group compared to the native speaker group.
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Celata, Chiara, Chiara Meluzzi, and Irene Ricci. "The sociophonetics of rhotic variation in Sicilian dialects and Sicilian Italian: corpus, methodology and first results." Loquens 3, no. 1 (September 29, 2016): 025. http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2016.025.
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SoPhISM (The SocioPhonetics of verbal Interaction: Sicilian Multimodal corpus) is an acoustic and articulatory sociophonetic corpus focused on whithin-speaker variation as a function of stylistic/communicative factors. The corpus is particularly intended for the study of rhotics as a sociolinguistic variable in the production of Sicilian speakers. Rhotics are analyzed according to the distinction between single-phase and multiple-phase rhotics along with the presence of constriction and aperture articulatory phases. Based on these parameters, the annotation protocol seeks to classify rhotic variants within a sufficiently granular, but internally consistent, phonetic perspective. The proposed descriptive parameters allow for the discussion of atypical realizations in terms of phonetic derivations (or simplifications) of typical closure–aperture sequences. The distribution of fricative variants in the speech repertoire of one speaker and his interlocutors shows the potential provided by SoPhISM for sociophonetic variation to be studied at the ‘micro’ level of individual speaker’s idiolects.
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Gnevsheva, Ksenia. "Style-shifting and intra-speaker variation in the vowel production of nonnative speakers of New Zealand English." Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 1, no. 2 (September 14, 2015): 135–56. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jslp.1.2.01gne.
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When compared to native-speaker language ‘targets’, second language (L2) speakers are known to exhibit within-speaker variation in their L2 language performance according to the identity of their interlocutor (Beebe & Zuengler, 1983), the topic that is being discussed (Dolgova Jacobsen, 2008), or both (Rampton, 2011). However, previous studies have rarely applied the same methodology to different first language (L1) groups and have rarely used data from a range of speakers, so they have been unable to explore differences between speaker groups. This paper examines situational style-shifting in L2 speakers of New Zealand English in two groups of speakers, one with Korean as their L1 and the other with German as their L1. Participants were recorded in three different settings: discussing family, discussing work, and in an authentic service encounter. Male and female speakers showed similar patterns, and all were found to exhibit stylistic variation in their production of English vowels such that tokens were most nativelike in service encounters, followed by discussion of work and then family. This pattern was more robust for the Korean L1 speakers than for the German L1 speakers, which is explained by different social and linguistic histories of the two groups in New Zealand. This paper adds to our current understanding of sociolinguistic variation in L2 speakers by applying audience design (Bell, 1984) and identity construction (Eckert, 2000) accounts to L2 speakers’ production of vowels.
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Daidone, Danielle, and Sara Zahler. "A Variationist Analysis of Second Language Spanish Trill Production." Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14, no. 1 (May 1, 2021): 1–37. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/shll-2021-2038.
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Abstract The current study examines the production of the Spanish trill by advanced second language (L2) learners using a variationist approach. Findings indicate that learners produced less multiple occlusion trills than native speakers and their variation was not constrained by the same factors as native speakers. Phonetic context conditioned the use of the multiple occlusion variant for native speakers, whereas frequency and speaker sex conditioned this variation for learners, and in the opposite direction of effect as expected from previous native speaker research. Nevertheless, the majority of tokens produced by learners were other variants also produced by native speakers, and when the variation between native and non-native variants was examined, learners’ variation was conditioned not only by frequency, but also phonetic context. Some of the phonetic contexts in which learners produced non-native variants were comparable to those in which native speakers were least likely to produce the multiple occlusion trill, indicating that articulatory constraints governed variation in trill production similarly for both groups. Thus, although L2 learners do not exhibit native-like trill variation, they appear to be developing toward a more native-like norm. These insights provide support for adopting a multifaceted variationist approach to the study of L2 phonological variable structures.
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Jacewicz, Ewa, Robert Allen Fox, and Lai Wei. "Between-speaker and within-speaker variation in speech tempo of American English." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128, no. 2 (August 2010): 839–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.3459842.
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DUFOUR, SOPHIE, YU-YING CHUANG, and NOËL NGUYEN. "The processing of dialectal variants: Further insight from French." Applied Psycholinguistics 40, no. 2 (November 14, 2018): 351–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0142716418000607.
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ABSTRACTIn two semantic priming experiments, this study examined how southern French speakers process the standard French [o] variant in closed syllables in comparison to their own variant [ɔ]. In Experiment 1, southern French speakers showed facilitation in the processing of the associated target word VIOLET whether the word prime mauve was pronounced by a standard French speaker ([mov]) or a southern French speaker ([mɔv]). More importantly, Experiment 1 has also revealed that words of type mauve, which are subject to dialectal variation, behave exactly in the same way as words of type gomme, which are pronounced with [ɔ] by both southern and standard French speakers, and for which we also found no modulation in the magnitude of the priming effect as a function of the dialect of the speaker. Experiment 2 replicated the priming effect found with the standard French variant [mov], and failed to show a priming effect with nonwords such as [mœv] that also differ from the southern French variant [mɔv] by only one phonetic feature. Our study thus provides further evidence for efficient processing of dialectal variants during spoken word recognition, even if these variants are not part of the speaker’s own productions.
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Hernández-Campoy, Juan M., and Tamara García-Vidal. "Style-shifting and accommodative competence in Late Middle English written correspondence: Putting Audience Design to the test of time." Folia Linguistica 39, no. 2 (October 25, 2018): 383–420. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/flih-2018-0014.
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Abstract Style constitutes an essential component for the non-referential indexicality of speakers’ sociolinguistic behaviour in interpersonal communication. Historical Sociolinguistics applies tenets and findings of present-day research to the interpretation of linguistic material from the past, but without giving intra-speaker variation the same relevance as to inter-speaker variation. The aim of this paper is to show results obtained from the investigation of style-shifting processes in late medieval England by applying contemporary models of Audience Design to diaphasic variation from historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the use of the orthographic variable (TH) by male members of the Paston family from the Paston Letters corpus when addressing recipients from different social ranks. The data show both addressee and referee-based accommodation patterns in the communicative practice of medieval individuals. In addition to tracing language variation and change in speech communities, private letters may also shed light onto the motivations and mechanisms for intra-speaker variation in individuals and their stylistic choices in past societies.
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Afshan, Amber, Jody Kreiman, and Abeer Alwan. "Speaker discrimination performance for “easy” versus “hard” voices in style-matched and -mismatched speech." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 151, no. 2 (February 2022): 1393–403. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0009585.
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This study compares human speaker discrimination performance for read speech versus casual conversations and explores differences between unfamiliar voices that are “easy” versus “hard” to “tell together” versus “tell apart.” Thirty listeners were asked whether pairs of short style-matched or -mismatched, text-independent utterances represented the same or different speakers. Listeners performed better when stimuli were style-matched, particularly in read speech−read speech trials (equal error rate, EER, of 6.96% versus 15.12% in conversation–conversation trials). In contrast, the EER was 20.68% for the style-mismatched condition. When styles were matched, listeners' confidence was higher when speakers were the same versus different; however, style variation caused decreases in listeners' confidence for the “same speaker” trials, suggesting a higher dependency of this task on within-speaker variability. The speakers who were “easy” or “hard” to “tell together” were not the same as those who were “easy” or “hard” to “tell apart.” Analysis of speaker acoustic spaces suggested that the difference observed in human approaches to “same speaker” and “different speaker” tasks depends primarily on listeners' different perceptual strategies when dealing with within- versus between-speaker acoustic variability.
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Calude, Andreea S. "Sociolinguistic variation at the grammatical/discourse level." International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22, no. 3 (November 23, 2017): 429–55. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.06cal.
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Abstract This paper brings together the study of sociolinguistic variation and the area of grammatical analysis by investigating demonstrative cleft constructions in spoken British English such as That’s what I wanted to talk about and This is where I saw him. Using the Spoken BNC2014S, I ask whether speaker characteristics, including gender, age, education and occupation, might be correlated with the use of demonstrative clefts and with various aspects of their structure (preference for the distal or proximal demonstrative pronoun, use of negative polarity, and use of stance adverbs). Findings suggest that in British English, demonstrative cleft use is more likely to be present in the speech of male compared to female speakers, working adults in higher-skilled occupations compared to semi-skilled adults, and in adults of middle age compared to younger adults. This work shows that even highly abstract grammatical constructions can be sensitive to speaker preferences and linguistic communicative style.
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Ulrich, Natalja, François Pellegrino, and Marc Allassonnière-Tang. "Intra- and inter-speaker variation in eight Russian fricatives." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 153, no. 4 (April 2023): 2285–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0017827.
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Acoustic variation is central to the study of speaker characterization. In this respect, specific phonemic classes such as vowels have been particularly studied, compared to fricatives. Fricatives exhibit important aperiodic energy, which can extend over a high-frequency range beyond that conventionally considered in phonetic analyses, often limited up to 12 kHz. We adopt here an extended frequency range up to 20.05 kHz to study a corpus of 15 812 fricatives produced by 59 speakers in Russian, a language offering a rich inventory of fricatives. We extracted two sets of parameters: the first is composed of 11 parameters derived from the frequency spectrum and duration (acoustic set) while the second is composed of 13 mel frequency cepstral coefficients (MFCCs). As a first step, we implemented machine learning methods to evaluate the potential of each set to predict gender and speaker identity. We show that gender can be predicted with a good performance by the acoustic set and even more so by MFCCs (accuracy of 0.72 and 0.88, respectively). MFCCs also predict individuals to some extent (accuracy = 0.64) unlike the acoustic set. In a second step, we provide a detailed analysis of the observed intra- and inter-speaker acoustic variation.
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Smith, Bruce L., Eric Johnson, and Rachel Hayes-Harb. "ESL learners’ intra-speaker variability in producing American English tense and lax vowels." Journal of Second Language Pronunciation 5, no. 1 (March 13, 2019): 139–64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/jslp.15050.smi.
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Abstract Nonnative (L2) English learners are often assumed to exhibit greater speech production variability than native (L1) speakers; however, support for this assumption is primarily limited to secondary observations rather than having been the specific focus of empirical investigations. The present study examined intra-speaker variability associated with L2 English learners’ tense and lax vowel productions to determine whether they showed comparable or greater intra-speaker variability than native English speakers. First and second formants of three tense/lax vowel pairs were measured, and Coefficient of Variation was calculated for 10 native speakers of American English and 30 nonnative speakers. The L2 speakers’ vowel formants were found to be native-like approximately half of the time. Whether their formants were native-like or not, however, they seldom showed greater intra-speaker variability than the L1 speakers.
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Torres, Deborah, Jeung-Yoon Choi, and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel. "Development of an algorithm for characterizing speech production patterns as context-based Cue Production Profiles." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 153, no. 3_supplement (March 1, 2023): A290. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/10.0018884.
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A given word or sound can take on a wide range of acoustic forms in conversational speech, and these patterns of variation are systematic with context. This substantial variability poses a problem for modeling human speech perception, but it can also be highly informative if it can be measured quantitatively; surface phonetic patterns can be used to characterize different speakers, dialects, speaking styles and speech disorders, as well as context-driven variation within a speaker. Adopting the view that individual acoustic cues provide a useful vocabulary for describing these variation patterns, we are developing an algorithm for tabulating the range of acoustic cue production patterns for each phoneme, in a corpus of recorded speech, with the potential for extension to words and phrases. This algorithm will enable the determination of key factors that govern systematic speech variation, including segmental, prosodic and lexical contexts, which can be used to create a profile for a speaker or defined population of speakers, i.e., a Cue Production Profile.
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Lee, Yoonjeong, Louis Goldstein, Benjamin Parrell, and Dani Byrd. "Who converges? Variation reveals individual speaker adaptability." Speech Communication 131 (July 2021): 23–34. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.specom.2021.05.001.
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윤태진. "Speaker Variation in Rendering English Prosodic Prominence." Jungang Journal of English Language and Literature 55, no. 4 (December 2013): 465–81. http://dx.doi.org/10.18853/jjell.2013.55.4.021.
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Hernández-Campoy, Juan M., and Tamara García-Vidal. "Persona management and identity projection in English Medieval society: Evidence from John Paston II." Journal of Historical Sociolinguistics 4, no. 1 (March 26, 2018): 33–63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/jhsl-2016-0027.
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AbstractHistorical sociolinguistics has favoured the interest in tracing heterogeneity and vernacularity in the history of language, reconstructing the sociolinguistic contexts and directions of language change as well as socially based variation patterns in remote speech communities. But this treatment of language variation and change macroscopically, longitudinally, unidimensionally and focused on the speech community as a macro-cosmos can be revealingly complemented with other views microscopically, cross-sectionally, multidimensionally and privileging individuals and their community of practice as a micro-cosmos. This conveys a shift from the study of collectivity and inter-speaker variation to that of individuality, intra-speaker variation and authenticity. The aim of this paper is to show results of the microscopic investigation of intra-speaker variation and the use of stylistic choices as linguistic resources for persona management within the micro-cosmos of late Medieval England, through the application of current multidimensional socio-constructionist models to historical corpora of written correspondence. The study is carried out through the analysis of the behaviour of the orthographic variable (TH) in the letters written by members of the Paston family. In addition to tracing language change, the data obtained from private letters provide us with the possibility of reconstructing the sociolinguistic values in medieval times. Ultimately, this study’s contribution is to account for the social meaning of inter- and intra-speaker variation in the sociolinguistic behaviour of speakers at the individual level as a linguistic resource for identity construction, representation, and even social positioning in interpersonal communication.
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YIU, K. K., M. W. MAK, and S. Y. KUNG. "A COMPARATIVE STUDY ON KERNEL-BASED PROBABILISTIC NEURAL NETWORKS FOR SPEAKER VERIFICATION." International Journal of Neural Systems 12, no. 05 (October 2002): 381–97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/s0129065702001278.
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This paper compares kernel-based probabilistic neural networks for speaker verification based on 138 speakers of the YOHO corpus. Experimental evaluations using probabilistic decision-based neural networks (PDBNNs), Gaussian mixture models (GMMs) and elliptical basis function networks (EBFNs) as speaker models were conducted. The original training algorithm of PDBNNs was also modified to make PDBNNs appropriate for speaker verification. Results show that the equal error rate obtained by PDBNNs and GMMs is less than that of EBFNs (0.33% vs. 0.48%), suggesting that GMM- and PDBNN-based speaker models outperform the EBFN ones. This work also finds that the globally supervised learning of PDBNNs is able to find decision thresholds that not only maintain the false acceptance rates to a low level but also reduce their variation, whereas the ad-hoc threshold-determination approach used by the EBFNs and GMMs causes a large variation in the error rates. This property makes the performance of PDBNN-based systems more predictable.
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Quené, Hugo. "Multilevel modeling of between-speaker and within-speaker variation in spontaneous speech tempo." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123, no. 2 (February 2008): 1104–13. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.2821762.
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Iskandar, Denni, Mhd Pujiono, and Iskandar Abdul Samad. "The Profile of Acehnese Variation: Sociolinguistic Analysis." International Journal of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies 6, no. 3 (July 31, 2018): 12. http://dx.doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijclts.v.6n.3p.12.
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This descriptive study identifies the variation of Acehnese in sociolinguistic reviews by identifying the variations in terms of language spoken, usage, formality as well as a mean of communication. To understand the Acehnese variations in sociolinguistic reviews, a series of techniques were applied such as understanding the language spoken, reading the text, and speaking to the speaker of Acehnese. The results indicate that there are seven variations of the language in the perspective of speakers and six variations were identified in the Acehnese language, i.e. idiolect, dialect, sociolect, acrolect, basilect, and slang. While the crolect variation was not identified. In the perspective of language use, there are four variations with three identified; the variety of literature, journalism (non-productive), and a variety of scientific (non-productive). While the military variety is not identified. In the perspective of language formality, there are five variations i.e. frozen (non- productive) variety, official (unproductive) variety, consultative variety, casual variety, and familiar variety are all identified. In the perspective of means of communication, there are two variations, namely wide variety of oral and writing are both identified. The existence of identified and unidentified variations of language indicates that the language of Aceh has been abandoned by speakers.
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Méndez Kline, Tyler. "Sociolinguistic perception of lexical and syntactic variation among Persian-English bilinguals." Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 8, no. 1 (April 27, 2023): 5515. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v8i1.5515.
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This study examines the relationship between sociolinguistic perception and Persian language variation. Prior work has shown that preconceived notions about how speakers use language and what kind of language they produce can affect listeners’ perceptions (D’Onofrio 2016; Hansen Edwards et al. 2019; Mack & Munson 2012; Niedzielski 1999). However, many questions remain unanswered regarding how social meaning is applied in contact situations, especially among self-identified native and heritage speakers. Within Persian language studies, some work has observed linguistic practices among both native and non-native speakers, finding that both vary significantly in their production patterns of certain syntactic and lexical features (Megerdoomian 2020). I ask whether Persian-English bilinguals associate non-standard forms with certain social personae categorized by linguistic background. Sixteen bilingual Persian-English speakers participated in an online survey with the task of matching standard and non-standard written productions to a pre-defined linguistic persona. Results so far suggest that Persian-English bilinguals actively construct associations between language use and speaker personae, with specific grammatical categories appearing more likely to index a non-native speaking identity. This brings up further questions about how bilinguals navigate sociolinguistic ideologies tied to speaker identity, and how heritage speakers and learners approach these notions. This study adds to the growing literature on bilingualism and sociolinguistic perception, with implications for critical discussions surrounding the various ideologies that place communities of multilingual speakers into strict social categories.
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Walker, Abby, Christina García, Yomi Cortés, and Kathryn Campbell-Kibler. "Comparing social meanings across listener and speaker groups: The indexical field of Spanish /s/." Language Variation and Change 26, no. 2 (June 16, 2014): 169–89. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394514000088.
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AbstractRecent research has suggested that the contribution of individual sociolinguistic variables to the social perception of a speaker is influenced by other available information about the speaker (Campbell-Kibler, 2007; Pharao, Maegaard, Spindler Møller, & Kristiansen, 2014). Here we investigate the impact of listener awareness of regional sociolinguistic variation on sociolinguistic perception. Specifically, we compare how the social meanings attributed to word-internal, preconsonantal /s/ differ based on whether the listeners and speakers use predominantly /s/-weakening Puerto Rican Spanish or predominantly non–/s/-weakening Mexican Spanish. We find that for measures of status, Puerto Rican and Mexican listeners both show a smaller effect of /s/ when rating Puerto Rican as opposed to Mexican speakers. However, we see no effect of speaker nationality on heteronormativity, and Puerto Rican listeners and male Mexican listeners rate strong /s/ as less heteronormative across the board. Mexican female listeners, however, rate strong /s/ as more heteronormative. These results suggest that listeners integrate their own local ideologies with their understanding of regional differences when socially evaluating language variation.
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Muehlbauer, Jeffrey. "Vowel spaces in Plains Cree." Journal of the International Phonetic Association 42, no. 1 (March 12, 2012): 91–105. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0025100311000302.
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This paper presents a pilot study of the acoustic correlates of the Plains Cree vowel system. Naturalistic recordings of speakers of mid-20th-century Plains Cree, including one monolingual speaker, provide an empirical test for the general expectations from phonological descriptions. The results demonstrate that, while the hypothesized short/long vowel pairs do indeed have a strong durational contrast, the majority of vowel pairs are also distinguished by their formants. In all cases, the long vowel occupies a more extreme position in the vowel space. Plains Cree thus appears to show both a quantity and a quality contrast in its vowel pairs. The individual speaker data are then normalized to test whether there is intra-speaker variation in these results, with the results showing variation in the relation between vowels in all three parts of the vowel space.
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Brown, Amanda, and Marianne Gullberg. "Multicompetence and native speaker variation in clausal packaging in Japanese." Second Language Research 28, no. 4 (October 2012): 415–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0267658312455822.
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Native speakers show systematic variation in a range of linguistic domains as a function of a variety of sociolinguistic variables. This article addresses native language variation in the context of multicompetence, i.e. knowledge of two languages in one mind (Cook, 1991). Descriptions of motion were elicited from functionally monolingual and non-monolingual speakers of Japanese, with analyses focusing on clausal packaging of Manner and Path. Results revealed that (1) acquisition of a second language (L2) appears to affect how speakers distribute information about motion in and across clauses in their first language (L1); (2) these effects can be seen with rather less knowledge of a second language than the advanced bilingual proficiency level typically studied; and (3) there appears to be little effect of L2 immersion in this domain since Japanese users of English as a second language (ESL) did not differ from Japanese users of English as a foreign language (EFL). We discuss the findings with respect to characterizations of emerging multicompetent grammars, and to implications for the construct of ‘the native speaker’, for language pedagogy and language assessment.
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Chen, Yiran, and Kathryn Schuler. "Adults regularize variation when linguistic cues suggest low input reliability." Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America 7, no. 1 (May 5, 2022): 5293. http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v7i1.5293.
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Children regularize inconsistent probabilistic patterns in linguistic input, yet they also acquire and match probabilistic sociolinguistic variation. What factors in the language input contribute to whether children will regularize or match the probabilistic patterns they are exposed to? Here, we test the hypothesis that low input reliability facilitates regularization. As a first step, we asked adult participants to acquire a variable plural marking pattern from a written (Exp 1) and a spoken (Exp 2) artificial language under different conditions, where they were led to believe input was more, or less, reliable. In both experiments, input reliability was manipulated through both information about the speaker (e.g., whether the speaker was likely to make mistakes) and linguistic cues (e.g., typos or pronunciation errors). Results showed that adults regularized the written language more only when they were told the speaker would make mistakes and the plural variants resembled typos (Exp 1), whereas they regularized the spoken language more when the plural variants resembled pronunciation errors regardless of the speaker’s said reliability in the spoken language. We conclude that input reliability is an important factor that can modulate learners’ regularization of probabilistic linguistic input, and that linguistic cues may play a more critical role than top-down knowledge about the speaker. The current study lays down an important foundation for future work exploring whether children are able to incorporate input reliability cues when learning probabilistic linguistic variation.
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Yin, Shuqi, Lang Xie, Yunxiao Ma, Keke Yu, and Ruiming Wang. "Distinct Neural Resource Involvements but Similar Hemispheric Lateralization Patterns in Pre-Attentive Processing of Speaker’s Identity and Linguistic Information." Brain Sciences 13, no. 2 (January 23, 2023): 192. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/brainsci13020192.
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The speaker’s identity (who the speaker is) and linguistic information (what the speaker is saying) are essential to daily communication. However, it is unclear whether and how listeners process the two types of information differently in speech perception. The present study adopted a passive oddball paradigm to compare the identity and linguistic information processing concerning neural resource involvements and hemispheric lateralization patterns. We used two female native Mandarin speakers’ real and pseudo-Mandarin words to differentiate the identity from linguistic (phonological and lexical) information. The results showed that, in real words, the phonological-lexical variation elicited larger MMN amplitudes than the identity variation. In contrast, there were no significant MMN amplitude differences between the identity and phonological variation in pseudo words. Regardless of real or pseudo words, the identity and linguistic variation did not elicit MMN amplitudes differences between the left and right hemispheres. Taken together, findings from the present study indicated that the identity information recruited similar neural resources to the phonological information but different neural resources from the lexical information. However, the identity and linguistic information processing did not show a particular hemispheric lateralization pattern at an early pre-attentive speech perception stage. The findings revealed similarities and differences between linguistic and non-linguistic information processing, contributing to a better understanding of speech perception and spoken word recognition.
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Gafter, Roey J. "Stylistic variation in Hebrew reading tasks." Language Ecology 4, no. 1 (December 31, 2020): 39–54. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/le.00008.gaf.
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Abstract One of the core assumptions of the sociolinguistic interview methodology is that read speech tasks may be used to elicit more standard variants from a speaker. This link between reading and standardness, however, is a socially constructed relationship that may differ across cultures. Standard language ideologies in Israel differ from those in well-studied English speaking communities, and exhibit a complex tension between the notions of standardness and correctness. Drawing on a corpus of sociolinguistic interviews of 21 Hebrew speakers, this paper analyzes the variation in two Hebrew morpho-phonological variables. The results show a pattern of use that differs from the cline typically observed, which suggests that Hebrew speakers have a specialized reading register that recruits distinctive stylistic resources. These findings highlight the nature of reading as a stylistic performance that may manifest differently according to local language ideologies.
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Javkin, Hector R., Carol Christie, Gaston R. Cangiano, Elaine Drom, and Katia McClain. "Systematic speaker variation and within‐speaker center of gravity correlations in the TIMIT database." Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 116, no. 4 (October 2004): 2482. http://dx.doi.org/10.1121/1.4784913.
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Huang, Houjun, Ruohua Zhou, and Yonghong Yan. "Cross‐domain variation compensation for robust speaker verification." Electronics Letters 51, no. 21 (October 2015): 1706–7. http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/el.2015.1701.
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Traill, Anthony, and Michel Jackson. "Speaker variation and phonation type in Tsonga nasals." Journal of Phonetics 16, no. 4 (October 1988): 385–400. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0095-4470(19)30517-0.
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Hellmuth, Sam. "Sentence Prosody and Register Variation in Arabic." Languages 7, no. 2 (May 24, 2022): 129. http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/languages7020129.
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Diglossia in Arabic differs from bilingualism in functional differentiation and mode of acquisition of the two registers used by all speakers raised in an Arabic-speaking environment. The ‘low’ (L) regional spoken dialect is acquired naturally and used in daily life, but the ‘high’ (H) variety, Modern Standard Arabic, is learned and used in formal settings. Register variation between the two ends of this H–L continuum is ubiquitous in everyday interaction, such that authors have proposed distinct intermediate register levels, despite evidence of mixing of H and L features, within and between utterances, at all linguistic levels. The role of sentence prosody in register variation in Arabic is uninvestigated to date. The present study examines three variables (F0 variation, intonational choices and post-lexical utterance-final laryngealization) in 400+ turns at talk produced by one speaker of San’ani Arabic in a 20 min sociolinguistic interview, coded for register on three levels: formal (fusħa), ‘middle’ (wusṭaː) and dialect (ʕaːmijja). The results reveal a picture of key shared features across all register levels, alongside distinct properties which serve to differentiate the registers at each end of the continuum, at least some of which appear to be under the speaker’s control.
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Lee, Hyunjung, and Allard Jongman. "Effects of Sound Change on the Weighting of Acoustic Cues to the Three-Way Laryngeal Stop Contrast in Korean: Diachronic and Dialectal Comparisons." Language and Speech 62, no. 3 (July 17, 2018): 509–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0023830918786305.
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Both segmental and suprasegmental properties of the South Kyungsang dialect of Korean have changed under the influence of standard Seoul Korean. This study examines how such sound change affects acoustic cues to the three-way laryngeal contrast among Korean stops across Kyungsang generations through a comparison with Seoul Korean. Thirty-nine female Korean speakers differing in dialect (Kyungsang, Seoul) and age (older, younger) produced words varying in initial stops and lexical accent patterns, for which voice onset time and fundamental frequency (F0) at vowel onset were measured. This study first confirms previous findings regarding age and dialectal variation in distinguishing the three Korean stops. In addition, we report age variation in the use of voice onset time and F0 for the stops in Kyungsang Korean, with younger speakers using F0 more than older speakers as a cue to the stop distinction. This age variation is accounted for by the reduced lexical tonal properties of Kyungsang Korean and the increased influence of Seoul Korean. A comparison of the specific cue weighting across speaker groups also reveals that younger Kyungsang speakers pattern with Seoul speakers who arguably follow the enhancing F0 role of the innovative younger Seoul speakers. The shared cue weighting pattern across generations and dialects suggests that each speaker group changes the acoustic cue weighting in a similar direction.
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Michnowicz, Jim. "Final nasal variation in Merida, Yucatan." Spanish in Context 5, no. 2 (November 3, 2008): 278–303. http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/sic.5.2.13mic.
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This article investigates the linguistic and social constraints on final nasal variation in Yucatan Spanish (YS), based on data collected in Merida, Yucatan. Absolute final nasals in YS may surface variably as: [n], [ŋ], ø or [m] (e.g. pan → [pám], ‘bread’). The results reveal a distribution of final nasal realization unique to YS, as well as detail its patterning throughout the community. Unlike some previous findings, the data under investigation here demonstrate [n] to be the preferred nasal variant, accounting for 60% of tokens. Regional variant [m] accounts for 25%, while [ŋ] and ø were infrequent variants, arising 8% and 5% of the time, respectively. Standard [n] occurs mostly among older speakers and Spanish monolinguals. Bilabial [m], however, is a recent innovation, led by younger speakers, women, and Mayan-Spanish bilinguals. The realization [m] may serve as a marker of regional identity for some speakers. For others, though, this variant is becoming a linguistic stereotype, as suggested by qualitative data from speaker comments and instances of [m] in the popular culture, including on internet websites.
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Gross, Johan, Sally Boyd, Therese Leinonen, and James A. Walker. "A tale of two cities (and one vowel): Sociolinguistic variation in Swedish." Language Variation and Change 28, no. 2 (June 17, 2016): 225–47. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0954394516000065.
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AbstractPrevious studies of language contact in multilingual urban neighborhoods in Europe claim the emergence of new varieties spoken by immigrant-background youth. This paper examines the sociolinguistic conditioning of variation in allophones of Swedish /ε:/ of young people of immigrant and nonimmigrant background in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Although speaker background and sex condition the variation, their effects differ in each city. In Stockholm there are no significant social differences and the allophonic difference appears to have been neutralized. Gothenburg speakers are divided into three groups, based on speaker origin and sex, each of which orients toward different norms. Our conclusions appeal to dialectal diffusion and the desire to mark ethnic identity in a diverse sociolinguistic context. These results demonstrate that not only language contact but also dialect change should be considered together when investigating language variation in modern-day cities.
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Sleeper, Morgan. "Place-name Mutation Variation in Wales and Patagonia." Journal of Celtic Linguistics 21, no. 1 (January 1, 2020): 143–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.16922/jcl.21.5.
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This study uses corpus data of modern conversational speech to examine variation in the mutation of place-names in Welsh as spoken in both Wales and Patagonia. Specifically, it considers how speakers from both areas mutate (or do not mutate) place-names following the nasal mutation trigger yn 'in', through a two-step statistical approach of conditional inference trees and random forests. Results show no significant difference in how speakers from Wales and Patagonia mutate place-names in this environment, but that the radical initial consonant, speaker age, and place-name type – including the geographical, linguistic, and cultural 'Welshness' of the place-name – all significantly affect mutation behaviour. Furthermore, while nasal mutation is present in the data, the results also illustrate the growing use of soft mutation as an alternate mutation strategy following yn.
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Sukaton, Ounu Zakiy. "WELL, WELL, WELL: VARIATION IN DRESS VOWEL REALISATIONS BEFORE LATERAL /L/ IN AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH." Lire Journal (Journal of Linguistics and Literature) 4, no. 2 (October 12, 2020): 225–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.33019/lire.v4i2.90.
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The ongoing el-æl merger in Australian English has been informally recognized by Australians especially those who have experience of contact with Victorians. This study aims to investigate the correlation of speakers’ sex and origin with their /el/ production and how speech styles influence their production. Two male speakers of Australian English from Victoria and South Australia were recorded while reading texts, doing interviews, and having casual conversations. The recordings were then transcribed and analyzed by using various software to describe their /el/ productions. The result of this study was both male subjects are able to produce considerable variations in their /el/ productions. The production of the Victorian male speaker confirmed the findings of previous studies while the SA male speaker showed variations of /el/ similar to back vowels. Speech styles do not significantly affect the variations of /el/ production. The ongoing merger of el-æl in Australian English might be spreading from Victoria through diffusion to its neighboring states. However, more studies should be conducted in order to confirm this suspicion. Other suggestions include customized reading passages and better semi-structured interviews.
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Grondelaers, Stefan, Roeland van Hout, and Paul van Gent. "Re-evaluating the Prestige of Regional Accents in Netherlandic Standard Dutch: The Role of Accent Strength and Speaker Gender." Journal of Language and Social Psychology 38, no. 2 (November 30, 2018): 215–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0261927x18810730.
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This article investigates three neglected determinants of native speakers’ attitudes toward regional accent variation in Netherlandic Standard Dutch, namely, accent strength, speaker gender, and the evaluation dimension dynamism. Nineteen participants first rated 126 speech clips representing three regional accents (Randstad, Groningen, Limburg) in terms of the expected regional origin of the speakers and their accent strength. In a subsequent speaker evaluation study, 148 participants rated the 16 clips that emanated from Study 1 as the mildest and broadest accented male and female Randstad and Limburg speech. Crucially, accent strength variation reduced the alleged status asymmetry between the high-prestige Randstad and the low-prestige Limburg accent, since mild versions of the Limburg accent were significantly upgraded on superiority and dynamism. And broadly accented Randstad females were downgraded on superiority but not on dynamism. All in all, our findings necessitate a thorough revision of current thinking about accent-triggered impression formation in Dutch.