Abstract：Abstract: Pronunciation deviation refers to the speaker’s pronunciation deviated from the pronunciation norm and the degree of deviation is closely related to different pronunciation elements. Taking the natural speech materials from the English Speech Corpus of Chinese Learners (ESCCL) and the synthesized ones obtained by modifying the pitch parameter via Praat, this paper designed a speech perception experiment via E-Prime and explored the influences of segmental features (or articulation) and suprasegmental features (mainly intonation) on degrees of L2 English pronunciation deviation among 4 listener groups. Research results showed that articulation could significantly influence the degrees of pronunciation deviation, and intonation performed differently among the listener groups. For the English Teacher group, the English Student group and the Chinese Teacher group, intonation had an insignificant influence; for the Chinese Student group, its influence was significant when articulation conformed to the pronunciation norms of the target language. This study provides some enlightenment for pronunciation teaching and assessment.
Key words: articulation; intonation; L2 pronunciation; degrees of deviation; influences
