Global foreign accent and voice onset time among Japanese EFL speakers

This study follows R. C. Major (1987) and J. E. Flege and W. Eefting (1987a) in its investigation of the correlation between global foreign accent (GFA) and voice onset time (VOT). VOT values for /p/, /t/, and /k/ were measured at 2 times, separated by an interval of 42 months, produced by 11 Japanese speakers of English as a foreign language; 5 age-matched native speakers of English served as the control group. The GFA scores of the same 16 speakers are taken from T. J. Riney and J. E. Flege (1998). One finding, that VOT generally did not change over time, is attributed to phonological similarity between Japanese and English diaphones. A second finding, that of a GFA-VOT correlation, links global and discrete measures of accent and supports an earlier claim by R. C. Major (1987).