Outline

The dissertation is structured as follows: After these introductory sections, the main body of the dissertation is divided into four major parts (Chapters 2–5). The first one of these (Chapter 2) is devoted to foreign accent in general: it presents the components and key features of interlanguage (i.e., what language-independent attributes characterise L2 phonological systems) and in what way these contribute to a better understanding of how a non-native pronunciation variety of a given language works.

Chapter 3 is concerned with the most important phonological factor in pronunciation acquisition, namely the role of the L1 (i.e., what features of Hunglish are attributable to L1 transfer). In so doing, it provides a comprehensive account of contrastive English and Hungarian phonetics and phonology, thus listing the features of Hunglish (i.e., all the potential pronunciation errors a Hungarian learner’s accent of English might display based on the differences between the sound systems of the two languages).

Compiling such a collection from scratch is necessary because at the time of writing this text in 2020 I am not aware of any work that has set out to provide an (intendedly) exhaustive account of possible pronunciation problems encountered by Hungarian learners of English. The contributions made so far to the discussion of Hunglish have either touched upon a limited number of issues only or provided a description of Hunglish for purposes other than enumerating problem areas. For instance, although Nádasdy (2003), Nádasdy (2006) and Kovács & Siptár (2010) have discussed numerous difficulties faced by Hungarians, these works are concerned with the basics of English pronunciation, therefore the examples of Hunglish features and problems they provide are not part of a systematic comparison but are used mainly to help their readers (Hungarian learners and/or university students of English) better understand English pronunciation as well as improve their pronunciation skills. Another work containing descriptions of Hunglish is Nádasdy’s (2000) dictionary for Hungarian learners (accompanied by the principles behind the compilation of the dictionary described in Nádasdy

& Szigetvári 1996), but it focuses on segment substitutions as it was intended for pedagogical

use in that it prescribes “a decent wrong way of pronouncing English” (Nádasdy 2015) for those Hungarian learners who do not aim at a native-like accent, yet wish to avoid being unintelligible when speaking English.

What the framework of this dissertation requires is a complete list of the potential features of a Hunglish accent (i.e., a list of those features of English pronunciation that may cause the Hungarian learner difficulties), provided through a contrastive analysis of the phonetics and phonology of the two languages, and not (yet) that of empirical data. In the whole of Chapter 3, it is only some of the examples that are (partly) empirical, as the illustrations of the more peculiar type are not hypothetical examples, but ones I have actually heard several times during my five-year experience as a university lecturer in English pronunciation and an even longer genuine interest in Hunglish. Chapter 3 thus does not only serve as a basic unit in the framework to be presented, but it may be used independently of this work by future studies as a starting point in what areas of Hunglish may be worth researching (some directions will be given in Section 6.4).

After the phonological factor of L1 transfer has been discussed in Chapter 3,¹³ Chapter 4 sheds light on the most important language-external determinants affecting the success of pronunciation acquisition and the degree of foreign accent. Although these factors have been reviewed in a few existing studies (some of the most thorough and elaborate accounts can be found in Flege 1988 and Piske et al. 2001, but Major 2001’s overviews are not insignificant either), two decades have passed since the publication of even the more recent ones of those, so they inevitably need revising and updating in certain fields (especially concerning the effect of musical talent). Chapter 4 can basically be regarded as an updated summary of Piske et al.’s (2001) widely cited review. The chapter does not only summarise the most important findings so far concerning the language-external factors that play a role in non-native pronunciation acquisition, but it also gives an overview of the methods for data collection and data analysis that have been used to examine the role of the factors in question, with the greatest emphasis on those determinants which were examined in the empirical studies to be presented in Chapter 5. Some parts of the discussion will therefore be referred back to in certain subsections of Chapter 5, as the choice of what methods to adopt in the experiments was made based on an evaluation of the pros and cons of the methods described in Chapter 4.

13 Further phonological factors that are specific to the pronunciation feature examined will be discussed when presenting the results of the experiments in Chapter 5.

The last major chapter (Chapter 5) turns to the analysis of empirical data by presenting the design, the implementation and the findings of two larger research projects. The first one of these is a study on the acquisition of non-rhoticity (i.e., acquiring a pronunciation variety in which the consonant /r/ does not occur in non-prevocalic phonological positions) by speakers in whose L1 all orthographic R’s are pronounced. The second project is concerned with the acquisition of word stress patterns in an instance of language contact where the speakers’ L1 displays fixed stress (and thus stress is unable to express meaning contrasts), but the target language spoken has variable stress and the rules of stress placement are only partially predictable.

The presentation of each experiment has the following structure: First, the pronunciation problem (i.e., why the phenomenon in question is particularly problematic in the contact of English and Hungarian) is described in slightly more detail than the difference is touched upon in Chapter 3. This is followed by a review of empirical studies that have examined the pronunciation issue in question in the contact of languages other than English and Hungarian.

Then comes the presentation of the experiments, ending with interim conclusions and elaborating on the limitations of the studies.

Finally, the conclusions drawn from all the discussions and analyses are summed up in Chapter 6. Following a general summary, theoretical and practical considerations will be discussed in two separate sections, as the conclusions involve fundamental implications for both phonology and phonodidactics. The final section includes directions for further research, since the projects presented in Chapter 5 are two examples only that fit into the system introduced in Chapters 1–4, but this whole framework leaves numerous areas for continuation.