Durations of phonologically long segments in native and foreign accented Swedish

Abstract

Phonological features in a specific language could be expected to be reflected in realizations of second language speech. Swedish is known to have a quantity distinction involving duration in vowels, postvocalic consonants and vowel spectrum in stressed syllables.
Three speakers with respectively Swedish, Spanish and Estonian as their first language were recorded when telling a short story in Swedish. Durations in phonologically long segments were measured. The native Estonian speaker showed mostly longer durations than the other two, and the native Spanish speaker showed mostly shorter durations than the other two. The shorter durations of the Spanish speaker were expected, since Spanish does not have a quantity distinction, and it seems as though the Estonian speaker exaggerated the duration feature in her Swedish.