Perceptual Foreign Accent And Its Relevance For

psychologist alike. Psycholinguistic models meant to shed light on the complexity of the

process in question have been developed and refined by several scholars (Gerver, 1976,

Moser, 1978, Levelt, 1989, de Boot, 1995). This paper is a discussion of one of the

processes included in these current views of simultaneous interpretation, namely the

decoding process usually referred to as ”speech perception”. This process involves the

reception of speech sounds and their decoding into linguistic units. The discussion here is

based on experimental research concerned with the perceptual performance of second

language (L2) users during the perception of L2 speech.

The question immediately arises as to what extent simultaneous interpreters are similar to

second language users with respect to speech perception and, consequently, whether or

not evidence from the L2 users in the study presented here is of interest in the context of

simultaneous interpretation. This question ultimately revolves around the issue of the

definitions of ”second language”, ”bilingualism” and how degree of mastery of a

While only Guioras work has specifically addressed the question of speech learning the

little trouble recognizing the deviant phonetic realization of the language usually known

representations of these common, linguistically meaningful units (the words ”boy” and

Some topics in this essay:
L1 L2, Accent Simultaneous, Fant Halle, Hypothesis CAH, L2 Strange, McAllister Dufberg, Linguistics Phonetics, , Boy Dog”, Gibson Gibson, foreign accent, l2 users, comprehension test, perceptual foreign accent, perceptual foreign, global comprehension, global comprehension test, foreign language, signal noise, signal noise ratio, l2 phonology, production perception, noise ratio, learning l2 phonology, relationship production perception,