The intelligibility of English verbs in the simple past tense

native and non-native speakers and Brazilian listeners

Resumo

This study investigated the intelligibility of English verbs in the simple past inserted in sentences. The verbs were produced by two adult native speakers of English and six adult nonnative speakers, and they were transcribedby 13 adult Brazilian listeners. Results indicated that the intelligibility rate of regular verbs was similar to the irregular ones, and that the intelligibility of verbs produced by BP talkers was similar to the Spanish talkers. The intelligibility rate of German talkers, on the other hand, was lower than the intelligibility of BP and Spanish talkers but higher than the intelligibility of verbs produced by native speakers.