The role of prosodic and verbal aspects of speech in the perceived divergence of Dutch and English language varieties

Abstract

Varieties of a language may differ at the same linguistic levels as languages. In the present study we make a distinction between the prosodic level and the verbal level. Prosody we define as all features which are not linked to specific segments, i.e., intonation, tempo variation, and loudness variation; verbal aspects of speech include syntax, lexicon, morphology, and segmental phonetics/phonology. We investigated the role of these two levels in the perception of language varieties, and in particular their relative contribution to the perceived divergence of six Dutch and six English language varieties from the respective standard languages.