on grading phonic interference

ON GRADING PHONIC INTERFERENCE

Eugene Green San Diego State College

FOR ALL the attention given to identifying and classifying difficul- t ies of pronunciation in second language learning, there have been only a few accounts of how we can systematically grade these difficulties.’ These accounts, moreover, have apparently been re- stricted by a belief that the ranges in the quality of instruction and in the interest and ability of the adult student make the circumstances of language learning too variable to allow fo r a meaningful grading of phonic problems.

Yet these difficulties are more imagined than real. For, under unsatisfactory circumstances, when the re is neither su f f i - cient interest nor guidance, a concept of grading is irrelevant: the influence of the p r imary language will be everywhere present. But grading can be most useful in designing classroom lessons if we study and draw inferences from the achievement of an intelligent student, emotionally and intellectually committed to the learning of a second language, who has benefited from the guidance of native speakers.

T o determine a scale of difficulty, however, we need to do more than assume favorable learning conditions; we have to ex- amine the influence of the phonological systems involved. Since the relations between any sys t ems are unique, the principles of grading which this paper a i m s to define can s e r v e only as guidelines in determining the sca l e s of difficulty.

The illustrations will be limited to the English of a native German speaker. The informant, Miss Judy Turner , is in many ways the best one could ask for. She is intelligent, untrained in

‘The latest account by Andreas and Olympia Koutsoudas, “A Contrastive Analysis of the Segmental Phonemes of Greek and English,” Langrrnge Lenrtzing 12-211-230 (1962) predicts problems of pronunciation on a basis of relative difficulty and uses the concepts of positive and negative interference. Negative interference refers to those aspects of the primary sound system which hinder the learning process. Earlier accounts and notes include, especially, Hans Wolff, “Phonemic Structure and the Teaching of Pronunciation,” Language LearnOg 6.19-23 (1955), and Uriel Weinreich, Languages in Contncl 14-28 (New York, 1953). hly research has been supported in part by the San Diego State College Founda tion.

85

86 LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. XIII, NO. 2

linguistics, yet perceptive about differences between the pronunciation of Germanand English. Whenshe first began to learn English about four yea r s ago, she had the early but accurate impression that English sounds are ‘muffled,” whereas German sounds are ‘clear.” Her training in English, though informal until las t year, was advantaged by long conversations with an American soldier from North Arlington, New Je r sey , and by the fact that she became the adopted daughter of an American couple from Switzerland County, Indiana, at the age of twenty-eight. A native of Munich, where she grew up in an orphanage, Miss Turner’s pronunciation of German remains excellent.2 Her English pronunciation im- p r e s s e s some Americans as almost ‘perfect.”

Yet in studying a tape recording of Miss Turner’s English, I find that despite her very high accomplishment, the presence of the German sound system is clearly evident. Questions then arise about the nature of he r accomplishment, the factors which pro- moted her learning, the factors which deterred. The answers to these questions should tell u s something about how to s o r t out the degree of phonological difficulty of other students.

First, students do not generally so mas te r new sounds or sound patterns with exactness but ra ther they approximate them, The difference between approximating a sound and reproducing it exactly is that in the f i r s t instance, the speaker controls enough of the sound features--hopefully the distinctive features--to make an acceptable phonemic contrast. An exact replica, of course, would pass muster as the pronunciation of a native speaker. In other words, though a student like Miss Turner has learned to pronounce a highly satisfactory form of English, her pronunciation is not the same as one hea r s in native American dialects. F rom a different point of view, the informant’s native German habits have been re- organized to some extent on anunconscious level (she was unaware of having learned some sounds) t o achieve a satisfactory pronunciation. The analysis below considers more fully the reordering of speech hab i t s3

’Professor Richard Lewson of the German Department has kindly commented on the informant’s proficiency in High German.

3 M i s s Turner learned to pronounce English by imitating the speech of the American soldier, a speaker of the Hudson Valley and Metropolitan New York Dialects. The soldier was a college graduate, having received a degree in engineering. She has been influenced to a lesser degree by the South Midland speech of her parents. M i s s Turner’s pronunciation differs from the speech of the New York Metropolitan Area in that she frequently uses a post-vocalic r; she most generally omits it in unstressed position (as in “papers,” “Ox- ford,” and “hindered.” The statement of English phonemes follows the analysis of Hans Kurath and Raven I. McDavid, The Pronumiat ion of E n g l i s h in the Atlant ic S ta l e s 6,14-15,

GRADING PHONIC INTERFERENCE 87

HIGH GERMAN CONSONANTS

Labial Labiodental Gingival Palatal Velar Glottal

stops P b t d k g Spirants f v c h

Sibilants s z s i Nasals m n

Other F j 1

ENGLISH CONSONANTS

Labio- Apico- dental dental Alveolar Palatal Velar Glottal

stops P b t d c j k g Spirants e6 h

Sibilants B i Nasals m n

Other r W j 1

HIGH GERMAN VOWELS

Front-unrounded Front-rounded High I ij

Lower-high ‘r ii Mid f! ?

Lower -mid e Q

Low

Low

Diphthongs: ai a u Qi Unstressed a

Central Back

v u

9 Q

a ?

Special: e

(Ann Arbor, 1961); /U/ h a s been omitted from the Type I1 statement of vowels, because its incidence varies so considerably with /a/; a consistent use of /a/ may be unusual in the dialect , but for contrastive purposes /D/ i s unessential . The ana lys i s of High German follows the presentation i n William G. Moulton, The Souirds o/ E n g l i s h mid German (Chicago, 1962). The symbols i n the paper a l s o follow Moulton’s plan, though I have substi tuted “gingival” for “dental” and introduced “labio-dental” as points of articulation.

88

High Lower-high Mid Lower -mid

Low

LANGUAGE LEARNING, VOL. XIII, NO. 2

ENGLISH VOWELS

Front Cent r a1

i

i

e 3

a? a

e

Diphthongs: ai au 3i Unstressed a

Back

U

u 0

A

3

The following problems of phonic interference are arranged according to a scale of difficulty, first, for paradigmatic cases of interference, secondly, for syntagmatic instances,

1. PARADIGMATIC PROBLEMS4

1.1. Underdifferentiated Sounds. Among the easiest of the underdifferentiated sounds to learn are those which fill a hole in the phonological system of the primary language. But this ad- vantage may be counteracted, if the new sounds lead to a distortion of the normal arrangement which the series and o rde r s in the pr i - mary sound system have.5 Such a distortion, for example, can re- sult from the overburdening of an order with too many series of sounds. Also, sounds with limited distributions, especially i f they mainly occur at the beginning o r end of words, often receive careful attention from the language learner; sticking out like a land- mark, they are heeded and pronounced satisfactorily after some practice. Sometimes the very attention given these sounds leads to hypercorrectness.e Finally, t h e m o s t d i f f i c u 1 t of the

4The definitions of terms describing the kinds of phonic interference is in accord with Weinreich 18-19. The scales themselves are based on performance, hut a lso on the relationships between the sound systems in contact.

5The concepts of empty holes, series, and orders are defined by Andri Martinet, Economie D e s Changemetits Pho?ietiques 63-93, (Berne, 1955). The scale of “easier to more difficult” is a relative measure; the easiest new sound on the scale can be quite hard to approximate.

‘Koutsoudas and Koutsoudas say that “although the occurrence of consonants, singly or in clusters, in word-final position is common in English but not in Greek, we do not con- sider learning to produce consonants in this position a problem,” (p. 228). Weinreich says, “Ofall thepalatals, /r/ i s in practice mastered most easily- perhaps because it i s frequent in work-final position.. . 0’ (p. 17). On a case of hypercorrectness owing to the occurrence of English / g / in word-final position. see Albert H. hlarckwardt, “Phonemic Structure and Aural Perception,” Att terLan Speech 21.106-11 (1946).


underdifferentiated sounds to learn are those which do not easily f i t into the learner’s primary system.

Using Martinet’s concepts of series and orders, we can characterize the German vowel system as having six orders (six degrees of opening) and four series of retraction (front-unrounded, front-rounded, central, and back).? However unsymmetrical this arrangement is, with only two phonemes in the third series, it is still instructive in understanding why German speakers have little difficulty with English /a /. On the fifth and sixth levels of order, we find holes in the front-unrounded series (see chart of High German vowels above), and it is in the fifth order that /& / often occurs. Thus, of thirty-four words on the tape, some repeated more than once, only occasionally does Miss Turner confuse /e / with /e/. The principal instances of interference occur with func- tion words: [kgndu.] “can do”; [ent] “and”; [det] and [get] “that”; [em] “am.” The only other instance of confusion occurs in [lendid] “landed.” That this last pronunciation is morea lapse than a regu- lar thing is shown by her use of the / B / in similar environments as in “language,” ‘laugh,” “candy,” and ‘stand.” As a rule Miss Turner’s /a / is about as tense as the vowel which speakers in the Hudson Valley and the Metropolitan New York Area use, though it tends to be somewhat more fronted.8

A glance at a chart showing the ser ies and orders of German consonants also indicates that /O/ and /a/ fill holes. (The distinctive difference between spirants and sibilants is based on the opposition in the palatal order.)

Labial Labio-dental Gingival Palatal Velar Glottal

stops P b t d k g Spirants f v F X h

Sibilants s z s z ’ Nasals m n b

’Moulton’s charts (1962), pp. 61-62, suggest a binary opposition between “central- ized” and “decentralized” vowels; one could use his arrangement to show that the fifth level of order with /a/ has no “decentralized” opposite, thus leaving a hole for /=/. But this arrangement cannot explain (see below) how German speakers readily learn to use an accented central, unrounded vowel.

‘The Bavarian dialect includes an /=/ phoneme, so that the problem for Miss Turner might be considered merely a simple phonic difference. But a check of another German student from Magdeburg, who is older than M i s s Turner and does not speak English nearly so well, indicates that he, too, has no trouble with the vowels. Borrowings from English containing /=/ may be pronounced by German speakers of all dialects with the same vowel; this fact would seem to validate the “empty hole” argument.


As Miss Turner’s recording demonstrates, she is quite cap- able of pronouncing / O / and /&/. In fifteen words, some repeated several t imes, s h e occasionally substitutes [t] for [ O ] : “three” oc- c u r s once with [t] but a l so with [ O ] , and the s a m e alternation occurs in “something” and “mouth.” And once a following [s] seems responsible for the substitution of [s] in place of [el.

The voiced fricative /d/ occurs, of course, mostly in func- tion words. Since these words are generally unaccented, it is li t t le wonder that Miss Turner’s pronunciation va r i e s frequently between /d/ and /&/. In isolation or at a slow pace, she never con- fuses the sounds, but during the taped conversation she pronounced “there” under pr imary s t r e s s sometimes with [d] and sometimes with [a]. Again, under pr imary stress “that” is [&T t] but in unaccented positions i t is [get] , [dqt], and [ded].

These examples of interference, though they alternate with acceptable pronunciations, underscore three complicating factors in the learning of the / 0 / and /a/ phonemes. In the f i rs t place, it is v e r y difficult always to be at pains with one’s pronunciation, t o be careful not to let the sound system of the pr imary make itself felt even in unstressed positions. Secondly, Miss Turner was re- luctant to put her “tongue between her teeth,” as she had once been instructed to do. Finally, no order of German consonants has more than three series, as, for example, in the gingival order: stops, sibilants, nasal. And so we speculate that the introduction of a fourth series in the s a m e order resul ts in a crowding of consonants which cannot always be kept apart. Miss Turner, as we have seen, substitutes the gingival stops for the slit fricatives; other German speakers substitute the sibilants. In this connection, English keeps the fricatives and sibilants apar t by putting them in different orders , / 0 / and / a / being apico-dental, / s / and /z/ alveolar. But Miss Turner’s pronunciation of the fricatives in the gingival order , a very close approximation to the English sounds, resul ts in interference.

The informant r emembers putting in hours of practice to distinguish /w/ and /v/. So well has s h e succeeded that of about nineteen different words on the tape, she underdifferentiates /w/ only once, pronouncing /v/ in “otherwise,” though later on in the recording she uses a [w] fo r the same word. Miss Turner does not use the /hw/ cluster; she has no difficulty, however, with the clusters in “sweet,” “twenty,” and “quiet.”

Of all the English phonemes which German speakers under- differentiate, fj/ is the hardest to approximate; the confusion with the German cluster /tS/ is quite frequent. One reason for the difficulty is that the German clusters which might be constructed as


affricated stops--/pf/ and / ts/--are voiceless; a second reason is that the voiced obstruents of German do not form clusters with each other--a characterist ic quite different from English. Since there is no consonantal pattern in German which might help the speaker learn English /j/ by way of analogy, the phoneme presents a serious difficulty. In Miss Turner’s recording, there a r e about sixteen different examples, again some occurring more than once, where we could expect to hear the voiced affricated stop. On occa- sion, Miss Turner alternates between an acceptable and underdifferentiated pronunciation: “G.I.” and “German” have either [tS] or [j]. In some examples, the voiced affricated stop is marked by as- piration, a feature carr ied over into English from the German cluster; what we have, then, is a combination of characterist ics unknown in either language--in short, a new thing.g In the word “jokingly,” for example, the affricated stop has a fortis quality, not at all like the normal English sound.

Another variation--the use of /Z/ for / j /--occurs in un- s t ressed or lightly s t ressed syllables: “individual” has either [-Z!] or [-jwll]. “Language” shows both [-tS] and [-i] aswell as [-j]. On the whole, the informant is not likely to be misunderstood, but we see that even when she produces the voiced affricated stop, she approximates ra ther than duplicates the English sound.

1.2. Overdifferentiated and Reinterpreted Sounds and Sounds with Simple Phonic Variation. The matching phonemes of each language listed under this heading a r e approximately equivalent, so that i f a German speaker never altered his mode of pronunciation, he would still be understood. Trying to duplicate rather than to approximate the sounds of a second language does not have the same motivations as trying to avoid underdifferentiation. In the second case, the speaker t r ies to avoid confusion; in the first case, though there may be occasional confusion, one would need to find value in achieving flawless pronunciation or in identifying himself closely with the mannerisms and “accent” of native speakers.” To

9 P a u l L. Garvin, “Dis t inc t ive F e a t u r e s in Zoque Phonemic Accul turat ion,” Y t f ~ d i v s in / . i t igriisfirs 5.13-20, n o t e s tha t merged Zoque a n d Zoque ized Span i sh s y s t e m s involve new k inds of d i s t i n c t i v e f ea tu res . not found in e i the r l anguage . In o the r words, d i s t i n c t i v e f ea tu res a r e recombined i n new u a y s .

1OFor example , \loulton (1362), p. 32, in d i s c u s s i n g the American s tuden t ’ s need t o use t he German var ie ty of / I / and ,‘I,’ s a y s that “i t is much l e s s e a s y t o conv ince a s t u - den t t ha t h e must not carry o v e r E n g l i s h phone t i c h a b i t s i n to German. If h e s a y s German ~ e l b u,ith a ve la r i zed American 113. or German T O / with a cons t r i c t ed American [r]. h e h a s not s u b s t i t u t e d o n e phoneme for a n o t h e r . . . T h e s e a r e no t phonemic m i s t a k e s which must l ead inev i t ab ly to misunderstanding. T h e y a r e phone t i c m i s t a k e s , which somet imes l ead to incomprehensibi l i ty but more of ten merely sound very foreign a n d r id i cu lous . ”


achieve this proficiency requires the fullest commitment of an adult student, the kind which Liza Doolittle gives to RP.

Turning to Miss Turner's pronunciation, we find that she has not noticeably altered her pronunciation for sounds which seem very much like those in German. She rounds her lips more fully, for example, than American speakers when she reinterprets English / E / as the cluster /tS/. We count the affricated release of the stop as a secondary feature in English, but in German, though the transition from stop to sibilant is quite as fast, the feature is distinctive. Also, she reinterprets the secondary constriction of / 3 / as the apical flap /f/, thus producing a sequence [3 f ] for the single English vowel. As for the source of the vowel itself, see below under syntagmatic problems.

In other positions, too, she uses the same flap for the English /r/, and in all truth, the German sound i s only slightly more "thick" than the English one. Also, she regularly uses the clear German /1/ in all positions, never the velarized lateral [f]. Except for those discussed separately, the vowels are simple phonic variants of each other--defined as they are in both languages on the basis of jaw height, and the degree of retardation, lip rounding, and tenseness." (The vowels which are matched here do not, Of course, include the German front-rounded variety.) The other consonants--the stops, the spirants, the sibilants, the nasals, and the glide--which obtain in both languages are either inseparable in quality or have only slight variations.

All told, the grading of paradigmatic problems can be di- vided into two scales. The first, related to underdifferentiated phonemes, extends from the new sounds which fill a hole to the sounds which, having no immediate analog in the primary language, cause great difficulty. Though we have touched upon some of the conditions or factors which a r e important in designing the scale, we have byno means discussed all. For example, i f a phoneme has a high functional yield, it may so force itself on the learner's attention that he will come to use it." Moreover, there a r e no doubt other factors that we are not aware of that might be discovered in the grading of difficulties; these, perhaps, might be useful in other linguistic studies- -in historical phonology o r in dialect study.

The second scale does not present a measure of difficulty;

"There are several different ways of analyzing English and German vowels; different analyses would lead to different statements about the relations between the two systems. The analysis used here seems to f i t the facts of bilingual pronunciation best. In equating the distinctive features of German and English vowels a s being the same, I have replaced the Kurath-McDavid "checked-free" alternation with "tense-lax."

12Weinreich (1953), p. 23 d iscusses the influence of functional yield.


instead, it marks off areas of phonic differences which require some linguistic training, a keen ear, and most of all, an unusual zeal tomaster . Wewould suppose that a student possessed of these qualities would have a good grasp of the second language before trying to control the subtleties of pronunciation.

2. SYNTAGMATIC PROBLEMS

Syntagmatic problems in phonic interference concern unit sounds and clusters common to both English and German, which differ significantly in distribution. Generally speaking, the grading of syntagmatic problems is similar to the grading of underdifferentiation problems in the paradigmatic category; the easier it is to extend the patterns of the pr imary language to meet the needs of the secondary language, the easier it is to a r r ive at an acceptable pronunciation.

2.1. The Distribution of Unit Sounds. Although German /a/ occurs in unstressed position only, Miss Turner never has difficulty using forms of it in the s t ressed syllables of Eng1i~h . l~ Be- fore the apical flap /?/, i t is as high and fronted as English /3/; elsewhere, it is more fronted than English /A/. To explain the ab- sence of underdifferentiation, we need to see that almost all Ger- man vowels occur in unstressed position (Moulton, pp. 62-64). Thus, the very fact that / a / has a pattern s imilar to other German vowels, that it occupies the third order of opening and the third ser ies of retraction in a scheme designed for vowels occurring in unstressed position, suggests that i t would serve without difficulty under primary stress in a bilingual’s pronunciation of English. In other words, there is a hole in the German vowel scheme for phonemes occurring under primary s t ress , which /a / can fill. Thus the pronunciation of English / A / and / 3 / is not a serious problem.

In initial position--to take a unit phoneme and i ts c lusters together--only / s / of the German voiceless consonants has a l im- ited occurrence ( /$/ and /x/ do not figure here). Oddly enough, however, there is nothing in the overall consonantal pattern of

13Hans Wolff, 20 (1955). believes that German speakers use the “mid-central /?V” in place of English ,’A;. Perhaps some do, but having heard hliss Turner and anorher German student clearly distinguish the ‘A/’ of “gutter” and “fun.” I cannot agree w i t h his explanation. Another reason why , A/ and 3: may presenr no prohlems i s that they occur in so many accehted syllables chat they

have a high functional yield.

‘%,‘of “S&ne.” the ,‘o’ of “gonnt,” and the


German to prevent its occurrence: voiced andvoiceless homorganic consonants like / 8 / and /g/ a r e used in initial position. Thus it is not difficult to understand why one hears very few instances of interference in Miss Turner’s recording. Once, Miss Turner pro- nounces the word “sound” as [zagnd], later as [saunt’]; the substitution of /z/ for / s / resul ts in the usua l initial cluster in [ s d ~ ? l z ] “stories,” (though she also says this word with /st-/). These a r e the only two instances of interference in some forty-five different words beginning with /s/.

Miss Turner has slightly more difficulty with voiced obstruents in final position. Of ten words whose plural forms a r e /-iz/, she substitutes / s / for /z/ twice (in “oranges” and “cookies”). The past tense marker /-id/, a frequent form in the recording, is once pronounced with final /t/ in “hardheaded” (though she has the same word also with the normal voiced stop). The word ”decided” loses its inflection, and the final voiced consonant is made voiceless in [disait ]. The infinitive “read” ends with /t/ (but with /d/ in the past tense). Considering the number of words normally ending in a voiced consonant after a vowel in English, about seventy-five in the recording, we find the examples of interference indeed few. The interference is due, of course, to the uniform pattern in German which does not permit voiced obstruents at the end of words.

2.2. The Distribution of Clusters. The signs of interference in clusters a r e as few as among the single sounds. They display themselves in three categories: the final voiced member of a clus- te r gives way to its voiceless counterpart; the consonant may not be pronounced; the clusters a r e either simplified or amplified. To exemplify the first category, there a r e occurrences of final voice- l e s s consonants in “and,” “friend,” “muffled,” and “hours.” In the last example, an apical flap [F] prominently displaces the constriction of an unstressed shwa; the shwa itself is considerably re - duced. The dropping of a final consonant (in words like “back- ground,” “depend,” “intermingled,” “understand, ” and “changed”) as much the influence of American speech habits as of faulty pronunciation. The simplification of c lusters includes “backwards” [bae kw3Fs] with a final voiceless sibilant and a deleted stop, and Ywords” as [ w ~ ? s ] as well as [w~fdz] . The reduction of the second syllable in “figure out” leaves [figagt] and [figaagt]. A final / s / for /z/ is responsible for intrusive /k/ in [st?i-!, ks] “strings”; the use of /t/ in [kanektsp] is ambiguous--it is either intrusive or held over from the stem in the derivational form.

There a r e a number of lapses like the use of /b/ for /p/ in


Yapproach.” If this pronunciation is due to the l e s s strongly as- pirated English stop before /r/, the source of interference is not serious. For Yapproach” is elsewhere sounded with /p/ and so also a r e a number of other words containing the same cluster. We simply have to expect lapses in language learning; they occur often enough in anyone’s native speech.

The scales of grading can help u s measure the emphasis to give to the several problems of pronunciation. If the ability to communicate is the student’s first goal, he can be speeded there with the aid of explanations and dr i l ls on those sounds which a r e responsible for underdifferentiation. It seems pointless to t r y to teach sounds for which the student has a serviceable replacement in his own language. If he uses a uvular tr i l l , there is no need, especially in a beginning course, to worry him with the retroflex consonant. For not only do new sounds demand considerable practice; a new grammar and vocabulary also tax his resources. It is unrealistic to thrust precise phonetic discriminations on him.

One argument against this view is that the student will form bad habits; the truth is that he car r ies the established ones into new contexts. Essentially, the student is not learning a new sound pattern--he is extending the one he already has. A s Miss Turner’s alternate pronunciations indicate, the extension is a gradual one with the presence of the original, unmodified pattern ready to cause interference. To beable to extend one’s habits of pronunciation, to discriminate and pronounce new sounds with ease, is a measure of phonetic talent. Yet phonetic talent is a relative thing; depending on the relations between sound systems, one speaker may have a greater talent for Albanian than for Arabic.

I do not wish to rule out the possibility of making the subtler discriminations, but i t would seem the special interest of the instructor rather than that of the German student to spend as much time on learning how to glide English /e/ as on controlling /j/. And i t is precisely in the parceling out of t ime that grading can be most helpful. So i f a German student were to enroll in an English pronunciation class, he would be best served by learning those sounds and clusters which a r e necessary to prevent confusion. Also, though we have not touched upon it here, he ought to practice the intonation. The rhythm of learning a second language, of course, is first to master those elements necessary for communi- cation in everyday life. And j u s t as we defer the vocabulary of specialization and the rhetoric of the paragraph to appropriate courses and situations, so we need to defer the pronunciation of, say, the glide in the vowel In other words, i f we must count on a full commitment by the student

to courses in English phonetics.


to master the complex allophones of English, we must see that only a small percentage of language l ea rne r s are willing t o expend the effort.

Finally, the classroom is in some ways a peculiar and un- fortunate place to learn pronunciation. Fo r achievement in pronunciation is like achievement in dancing--one must perform so that the “muscles ply instinctively to the dictates of habit.” Yet if the practical goal in the classroom is to achieve good grades, the student may fail out of anxiety. Also, i f a student hears one good example from the instructor, how many more poor ones must he hear f rom those about him. The main point, therefore, is that we ought to emphasize the underdifferentiated sounds--they are difficult enough.

In a broader context, beyond the classroom, the grading of phonic interference can help u s measure how fully identified an adult speaker is with a second language. The scales of difficulty can readily be determined; the speaker’s performance can as readily be graded. And furthermore, we know that a high sco re implies a deep interest in the society of the second language, because excellence in pronunciation demands not only a serious in- tellectual and emotional commitment, but a lso an unrestricted opportunity to converse with and imitate native speakers.

on grading phonic interference

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