The Attainment of an English Accent

British and American Features in Advanced German Learners

Alexander Kautzsch author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Peter Lang AG

Published:24th May '17

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Attainment of an English Accent cover

This book investigates inconsistencies in the accent adopted by advanced German learners of English with respect to differences between standard American and British English (rhoticity, t-voicing, the vowels in the lexical sets «bath», «lot» and «thought»). From a theoretical point of view, the volume contributes to understanding the status of L1 transfer in language learners at «ultimate attainment», a stabilized, late stage in language acquisition. Unlike in many studies in second language acquisition, the approach taken here is variationist, taking into account extra- and intra-linguistic factors as potential explanations for variability. The findings suggest that in addition to the target accent the strongest external factor is time spent abroad, while L1 accent and proficiency level seem to have minor impact only.

ISBN: 9783631720998

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 510g

296 pages

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