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Article published In: Cognitive Approaches to Mind, Language, and Society: Theory and description
Edited by Mario Serrano-Losada and Daniela Pettersson-Traba
[Cognitive Linguistic Studies 11:1] 2024
► pp. 180–202

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Embodiment, categorization, and prototypicality

Foreign accent identification, prototypicality, and lectometric methods

ORCiD logo with link | EOI San Sebastián de los Reyes
Published online: 6 June 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cogls.00117.jur
Abstract
Lects constitute prototype categories (Kristiansen, G. (2003). How to do things with allophones: Linguistic stereotypes as cognitive reference points in social cognition. In R. Dirven, R. Frank & M. Pütz (Eds.), Cognitive models in language and thought: Ideologies, metaphors and meanings (pp. 69–120). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This implies that central/prototypical speakers are more easily identified as members of a specific lect (Kristiansen, G., Zenner, E., & Geeraerts, D. (2018). English as a lingua franca in Europe: The identification of L1 and L2 accents: A multifactorial analysis of pan-European experimental data. Review of Cognitive Linguistics, 16(2), 494–518. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The prototypicality of elements within natural categories have generally been measured through direct questions, indirect questions, or reaction time. Nonetheless, abstract categories (e.g., foreign accents) may be difficult to examine via questions. Following previous research that analyzed the use of the Levenshtein Distance (LD) (Levenshtein, V. I. (1965). Binary codes capable of correcting deletions, insertions and reversals. Soviet Physics Doklady, 101, 707–710.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) to predict foreign-accentedness (Wieling, M. B., Bloem, J., Mignella, K., Timmermeister, M., & Nerbonne, J. (2014). Measuring foreign accent strength in English: Validating Levenshtein Distance as a measure. Language Dynamics and Change, 4(2), 253–269. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) or the intelligibility of foreign accents ( (2021). Exploring the Use of Levenshtein Distances to Calculate the Intelligibility of Foreignaccented Speech. In G. Kristiansen, K. Franco, S. De Pascale, L. Rosseel & W. Zhang (Eds.), Cognitive sociolinguistics revisited (pp. 153–164). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), this study explores the use of LD as a predictor of prototypicality of Spanish-accented English. The LD between 50 Spanish speakers of English and different prototype benchmarks were calculated. These recordings were used as speech stimuli in an accent identification test. Reaction time measures were collected and correlated to the calculated LD. Results suggest that the LD to the stereotypical prototype can partly predict the prototypicality of Spanish-accented English.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Methods used to calculate the prototype
  • 3.The Levenshtein Distance as a tool to predict prototypicality
    • 3.1The Levenshtein Distance algorithm
    • 3.2The prototype as a benchmark for comparison
  • 4.Methodology
    • 4.1Speech stimuli and phonetic transcriptions
    • 4.2Participants
    • 4.3Identification task and procedure
    • 4.4Data treatment
  • 5.Results and discussion
    • 5.1Analysis of Levenshtein Distances to the prototype
    • 5.2Patterns of speaker’s identification rate
    • 5.3Patterns of speaker’s categorization based on reaction time
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • References
References (60)
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