Selection of speakers from the corpus

From the speech corpus described above, a selection was made for the present investigation. It was decided to use one Norwegian speaker which would serve as an N1 template as well as two N2 speakers from each of 7 L1s.

2.1.4.1 Selection of N1 template

One of the recorded N1 speakers was selected for the present investigation. This was a male speaker from the Southeast area. This N1 speaker was used as a native Norwegian template (as will be explained in section 2.2 on speech manipulation). It was decided to use an N1 speaker from the Southeast area for the following reasons. Although there is no officially recognized spoken norm in Norwegian, the Southeast dialect has traditionally represented the

“unmarked” version of Norwegian pronunciation (Kristoffersen, 2000). It is likely that N2 learners aspire to attain this type of pronunciation both because their Norwegian language

teachers tend to approximate this type of pronunciation in their teaching and interaction with students, and because many foreigners do not share Norwegians’ exceptionally positive view of dialectal variation. Also, a study investigating which variety American immigrants choose as their phonetic goal shows that they tend to choose a standard variety rather than the dialect of the region in which they live (Fox & McGory, 2005). An additional reason to choose an N1 speaker with a Southeast dialect was that it is the author’s dialect. In the process of digitally manipulating the recordings of the N2 speakers’ utterances to make them were more similar to the N1 speaker’s utterance (described in section 2.2), it was an advantage to be able to judge the degree of success of these adjustments.

2.1.4.2 Selection of N2 speakers

Vanishingly few investigations have investigated foreign-accented speech with Norwegian as the target language (the literature is dominated by investigations of foreign-accented English).

Consequently, very little is known about foreign-accented Norwegian. The aim of the present investigation is therefore to provide a first broad overview of foreign-accented Norwegian as spoken by speakers from many different L1s, so that later investigations may have the possibility to build on the results from the present investigation when exploring a particular L1 group more in depth. The broad approach of the present investigation makes it possible to discover similarities that can be generalized across L1s, and also makes it possible to discover differences between L1 groups.

It was decided to use two speakers from each of 7 L1 groups. There were purely pragmatic reasons for selecting few speakers from each of the 7 L1s. There would simply not have been enough time, within the frames of this project, to both investigate many L1 groups and investigate many speakers from each L1.

It was decided to use recordings without disturbances that could annoy or distract listeners.

For this reason, recordings where speakers read very hesitantly, re-read words or syllables within a sentence, paused very long, mumbled, breathed heavily into the microphone, made noise (e.g. scratched their face or touched the paper from which they read) and so on, were not selected. Some speakers were not included because their voice qualities were too breathy, creaky or otherwise deviant. These speakers’ recordings were deemed unsuitable for the present investigation because their deviant voice qualities could interfere with analyses and manipulations. For instance, a breathy voice could be a problem for reliable F0 analysis.

Because only those speakers were selected who met the criteria defined above, two of the L1s (Persian and German) were represented by speakers from just one gender, whereas the remaining L1 groups were represented by one male and one female speaker each. Because it had been decided to use two speakers from each L1, speakers were selected from the L1 groups from which at least two speakers had been recorded. For instance, only one Urdu speaker had been recorded, and therefore Urdu was not possible to select as an L1 group.

Apart from the criteria described in this paragraph, the selection of L1 groups and speakers was random.

The 14 N2 speakers had the 7 following L1s: English, French, German, Chinese (Mandarin), Russian, Persian and Tamil. In the large speech corpus, each speaker has been given a label.

For instance, the five French speakers were labelled Fr1, Fr2, Fr3, Fr4 and Fr5. In the selection of speakers for the present investigation, the labels for each speaker have been preserved so that it will be possible for other researchers to relate the results from this investigation to the individual speakers in the speech corpus. This explains the otherwise peculiar labels used for the speakers throughout the present investigation. For instance, the labels Fr2 and Fr3 were used for the two French speakers instead of the more intuitive Fr1 and Fr2.

All speakers were adults between 21 and 61 years of age. Almost everyone had a high level of education (many were PhD students or researchers). The amount of N2 use varied greatly.

Most of the speakers had been recruited from the Norwegian as a second language courses at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. These courses have four levels. Most of the speakers recorded in the large speech corpus were on levels 2 and 3. The selection of speakers that was made for the investigation includes speakers from course levels 1, 2 and 3.

Table 2.1 provides background information about each of the selected speakers.

Table 2.1: Background information about each of the speakers.

The table shows that three speakers were on or had finished level 1, eight were on/had finished level 2, and three were on/had finished level 3. There was variation both regarding length of residence in Norway and amount of N2 use. Learners who were on a higher course level, or who had lived for a long time in Norway, did not necessarily use Norwegian extensively. For instance, the oldest speaker, En3, who had lived in Norway for as long as 22 years, reported using Norwegian only to a moderate degree. Then again, this speaker had only completed a level 1 course. In contrast, Ru4, who had also completed level 1, but had lived in Norway for only one year, used Norwegian extensively. Later in this thesis (section 3.7, Chapter 3 and section 4.6, Chapter 4), the degree of similarity between the two individuals who represent the same L1 will be investigated.

Table 2.2 summarizes the number of speakers and their L1s.

Table 2.2: The speakers selected for the present investigation.

L1 Men Women Sum

Chinese 1 1 2

English 1 1 2

French 1 1 2

Persian - 2 2

Russian 1 1 2

German 2 - 2

Tamil 1 1 2

Sum 7 7 14

The table shows the 7 L1 groups from which the speakers have been selected. There were two speakers from each of these L1 groups, yielding a total of 14 N2 speakers.