title: The influence of semantic context on the perception of Spanish-accented American English.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  In this article, the authors examine (a) the effect of semantic context on accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of Spanish-accented American English (AE) as judged by monolingual AE listeners and (b) the interaction of semantic context and accentedness on comprehensibility and intelligibility.
  
  
  METHODS
  Twenty adult native (L1) Spanish speakers proficient in AE and 4 L1 AE speakers (controls) read 48 statements consisting of true-false, semantically meaningful, and semantically anomalous sentences. Eighty monolingual AE listeners assessed accentedness, comprehensibility, and intelligibility of the statements.
  
  
  RESULTS
  A significant main effect was found for semantic category on all 3 dependent variables. Accents were perceived to be stronger, and both comprehensibility and intelligibility were worse, in semantically anomalous contexts. Speaker data were grouped into strong, mid-level, and mild accents. The interaction between semantic category and accent was significant for both comprehensibility and intelligibility. The effect of semantic context was strongest for strong accents. Intelligibility was excellent for speakers with mid-level accents in true-false and semantically meaningful contexts, and it was excellent for mild accents in all contexts.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Listeners access semantic information, in addition to phonetic and phonotactic features, in the perception of nonnative speech. Both accent level and semantic context are important in research on foreign-accented speech.
authors.affiliation: Correspondence to Alison Behrman: abehrman@iona.edu.
authors.forename: Alison
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Behrman
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Akhund
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007802:Language; D007807:Language Tests; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D019303:Multilingualism; D015588:Observer Variation; D010699:Phonation; D010700:Phonetics; D012660:Semantics; D013065:Speech Intelligibility; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: accent management; accent modification; bilingualism; comprehensibility; cultural and linguistic diversity; intelligibility; nonnative; semantics; speech perception