Understanding accentedness in heritage language English speakers: Key predictors

Abstract

Adult heritage language (HL) speakers often exhibit subtle phonetic-phonological variations (“accentedness”) that diverge from the patterns of the language spoken at home. Perception of accentedness may also be influenced by the listener’s linguistic background. This study investigated perceived accentedness in 80 English speech samples from four groups of monolingual English and bilingual English-Hebrew speakers for whom English was either L1 or HL. These samples were evaluated by three rater groups: monolinguals, English-dominant bilinguals, and Hebrew-dominant bilinguals. Our findings confirmed the presence of slight accentedness in HL-English speakers and, to a lesser extent, in immigrants who acquired Hebrew as a second language. While rater background generally had minimal impact, English- and Hebrew-dominant bilinguals differed in their evaluations of the less-accented groups. Individual factors such as lexical proficiency and early language input influenced the HL-English speakers’ accentedness levels. The results are discussed in relation to the Critical Period Hypothesis and its implications.