A Native-Reference Coordinate Geometry for L2 Pronunciation Deviation Using Self-Supervised Speech Models

Abstract:Self-supervised speech models encode rich phonetic information, but it remains unclear how to transform this information into interpretable metrics for second-language (L2) pronunciation assessment in spontaneous speech. We propose a native-reference coordinate geometry in which phone-class averages from native speech define a low-dimensional reference subspace, and L2 speech is evaluated by its distance to matching native phone-class coordinates. Unlike prior distance-based approaches, our method does not require parallel recordings with matched linguistic content or dedicated pronunciation labels. Across different self-supervised encoders and modeling choices, the resulting native-reference distances show negative Spearman correlations up to -0.5 with speaking proficiency, indicating that higher-proficiency speakers tend to lie closer to the native-reference space.

Computation and Language (cs.CL)

arXiv:2609.28060 [cs.CL]

(or arXiv:2609.28060v1 [cs.CL] for this version)

https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2609.28060 Focus to learn more arXiv-issued DOI via DataCite (pending registration)

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