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Intelligibility of short sentences by Chinese speakers in Czech

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2022

Abstract

Non-native speech can be assessed from several points of view. Building on the research of Munro and Derwing, who work mainly with the aspects of intelligibility, accentedness, and comprehensibility (Munro-Derwing 1995 and later work), the experiment presented here on Czech samples of L1-Chinese speakers examines two of the aforementioned aspects - intelligibility and comprehensibility - as well as comprehension of the content.

Content comprehension, according to Munro and Derwing, must be distinguished from intelligibility, for which the criterion is "the extent to which a speaker's message is actually understood by a listener." (Munro-Derwing 1995: 76) The recordings were assessed by native Czech listeners using a test consisting of 40 sentences by four female Chinese speakers that were then analyzed perceptually and acoustically.