Intelligibility of non-natively produced Dutch words: interaction between segmental and suprasegmental errors

In the field of second language research many adhere to the idea that prosodic errors are more detrimental to the intelligibility of non-native speakers than segmental errors. The current study reports on a series of experiments testing the influence of stress errors and segmental errors, and a combination of these, on native processing of words produced by intermediate speakers of Dutch as a second language with either Mandarin Chinese or French as mother tongue. The results suggest that both stress and segmental errors influence processing, but suprasegmental errors do not outweigh segmental errors. It seems that a more 'foreign' generic pronunciation leads to a greater impact of (supra)segmental errors, suggesting that segmental and prosodic deviations should not be viewed as independent factors in processing non-native speech.