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Cao GW. Phonetic Dissimilarity and L2 Category Formation in L2 Accommodation. LANGUAGE AND SPEECH 2024; 67:301-345. [PMID: 37528758 DOI: 10.1177/00238309231182967] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 08/03/2023]
Abstract
Many studies of speech accommodation focus on native speakers with different dialects, whereas only a limited number of studies work on L2 speakers' accommodation and discuss theories for second language (L2) accommodation. This paper aimed to fill the theoretical gap by integrating the revised speech learning model (SLM) with the exemplar-based models for L2 speech accommodation. A total of 19 Cantonese-English bilingual speakers completed map tasks with English speakers of Received Pronunciation and General American English in two separate experiments. Their pronunciations of THOUGHT and PATH vowels, and fricatives [z] and [θ] were examined before, during, and after the map tasks. The role of phonetic dissimilarity in L2 accommodation and L2 category formation in the revised SLM (SLM-r) were tested. First, the results suggested that global phonetic dissimilarity cannot predict Hong Kong English (HKE) speakers' accommodation patterns. Instead, the segment-specific phonetic dissimilarity between participants and interlocutors was found to be positively correlated with the participants' degree of accommodation. In addition, HKE speakers who did not form a new L2 category of [z] were found to significantly accommodate toward their interlocutor, suggesting that L2 accommodation might not be constrained by phonological category. An integrated exemplar model for L2 accommodation is proposed to explain these findings.
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Affiliation(s)
- Grace Wenling Cao
- Department of Linguistics and Modern Languages, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
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Georgiou GP, Dimitriou D. Perception of Dutch vowels by Cypriot Greek listeners: To what extent can listeners' patterns be predicted by acoustic and perceptual similarity? Atten Percept Psychophys 2023; 85:2459-2474. [PMID: 37740154 PMCID: PMC10584718 DOI: 10.3758/s13414-023-02781-7] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Accepted: 08/30/2023] [Indexed: 09/24/2023]
Abstract
There have been numerous studies investigating the perception of non-native sounds by listeners with different first language (L1) backgrounds. However, research needs to expand to under-researched languages and incorporate predictions conducted under the assumptions of new speech models. This study aimed to investigate the perception of Dutch vowels by Cypriot Greek adult listeners and test the predictions of cross-linguistic acoustic and perceptual similarity. The predictions of acoustic similarity were formed using a machine-learning algorithm. Listeners completed a classification test, which served as the baseline for developing the predictions of perceptual similarity by employing the framework of the Universal Perceptual Model (UPM), and an AXB discrimination test; the latter allowed the evaluation of both acoustic and perceptual predictions. The findings indicated that listeners classified each non-native vowel as one or more L1 vowels, while the discrimination accuracy over the non-native contrasts was moderate. In addition, cross-linguistic acoustic similarity predicted to a large extent the classification of non-native sounds in terms of L1 categories and both the acoustic and perceptual similarity predicted the discrimination accuracy of all contrasts. Being in line with prior findings, these findings demonstrate that acoustic and perceptual cues are reliable predictors of non-native contrast discrimination and that the UPM model can make accurate estimations for the discrimination patterns of non-native listeners.
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Affiliation(s)
- Georgios P. Georgiou
- Department of Languages and Literature, University of Nicosia, Nicosia, Cyprus
- University of Nicosia Phonetic Lab, Nicosia, Cyprus
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Munro MJ. Variability in L2 Vowel Production: Different Elicitation Methods Affect Individual Speakers Differently. Front Psychol 2022; 13:916736. [PMID: 35910947 PMCID: PMC9326214 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.916736] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/09/2022] [Accepted: 05/25/2022] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Elicitation methods are known to influence second language speech production. For teachers and language assessors, awareness of such effects is essential to accurate interpretations of testing outcomes. For speech researchers, understanding why one method gives better performance than another may yield insights into how second-language phonological knowledge is acquired, stored, and retrieved. Given these concerns, this investigation compared L2 vowel intelligibility on two elicitation tasks and determined the degree to which differences generalized across vowels, vowels in context, lexical items, and individual speakers. The dependent variable was the intelligibility of Cantonese speakers' productions of English /i I u ℧/ in varying phonetic environments. In a picture-naming task, the speakers produced responses without an auditory prompt. In a second task–interrupted repetition–they heard exemplars of the same targets without pictures, and repeated each one after counting aloud to 10, a step intended to disrupt their short-term auditory store and therefore prevent simple mimicry. For target words with scores below 80% on picture naming, mean intelligibility was more than 10 points higher on interrupted repetition. However, that difference did not generalize across conditions or across speakers. Thus, although it is technically accurate to say that, on average, interrupted repetition yielded better vowel intelligibility than did picture naming, that observation requires a great deal of qualification, particularly because of individual speaker differences. The outcomes are interpreted in terms of their relevance to language assessment and phonetic learning.
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Zou T, Caspers J, Chen Y. Perception of Different Tone Contrasts at Sub-Lexical and Lexical Levels by Dutch Learners of Mandarin Chinese. Front Psychol 2022; 13:891756. [PMID: 35734459 PMCID: PMC9207513 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2022.891756] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/08/2022] [Accepted: 05/02/2022] [Indexed: 11/16/2022] Open
Abstract
This study explores the difficulties in distinguishing different lexical tone contrasts at both sub-lexical and lexical levels for beginning and advanced Dutch learners of Mandarin, using a sequence-recall task and an auditory lexical decision task. In both tasks, the Tone 2-Tone 3 contrast is most prone to errors for both groups of learners. A significant improvement in the advanced group was found for this tone contrast in the sub-lexical sequence recall task, but not in the lexical decision task. This is taken as evidence that utilizing tones in on-line spoken word recognition is more complex and demanding for L2 learners than in a memory-based task. The results of the lexical decision task also revealed that advanced learners have developed a stronger sensitivity to Tone 1 compared to the other three tones, with Tone 4 showing the least sensitivity. These findings suggest different levels of robustness and distinctiveness for the representation of different lexical tones in L2 learners' lexicon and consequently different levels of proficiency in integrating tones for lexical processing. The observed patterns of difficulty are potentially related to the acoustic characteristics of different lexical tone contrasts as well as to the interference of the suprasegmental features of learner's native language (i.e., the tonal contrasts of Dutch intonation) on the acquisition of the Mandarin lexical tone contrasts.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ting Zou
- School of English and International Studies, Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China
| | - Johanneke Caspers
- Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden, Netherlands
- Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, Netherlands
| | - Yiya Chen
- Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, Leiden, Netherlands
- Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, Netherlands
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Llompart M, Eger NA, Reinisch E. Free Allophonic Variation in Native and Second Language Spoken Word Recognition: The Case of the German Rhotic. Front Psychol 2021; 12:711230. [PMID: 34867589 PMCID: PMC8637905 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.711230] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/18/2021] [Accepted: 10/22/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
The question of how listeners deal with different phonetic variant forms for the same words in perception has sparked great interest over the past few decades, especially with regard to lenited and regional forms. However, the perception of free variant forms of allophones within the same syllable position remains surprisingly understudied. Because of this, in the present study, we investigate how free allophonic variation in the realization of the German rhotic (/r/) impacts spoken word recognition for native German listeners and two groups of non-native listeners (French and Italian learners of German). By means of a visual-world eye-tracking task, we tested the recognition of spoken German words starting with /r/ when the rhotic was produced either as the more canonical variant, the uvular fricative [] which is considered the German standard, or as an alveolar trill [r], a common realization in the south of Germany. Results showed that German listeners were more efficient at recognizing /r/-initial words when these were produced with the uvular fricative than with the alveolar trill. French listeners did not differ from German listeners in that respect, but Italian listeners showed exactly the opposite pattern: they showed an advantage when words were produced with the alveolar trill. These findings suggest that, for native listeners, the canonicity of the variant form is an important determiner of ease of recognition, even in the absence of orthographic or perceptual motivations for the primacy of canonical variants for this particular example of variation. For non-native listeners, by contrast, results are better explained by the match of the different allophones to the canonical realization of /r/ in their native language than by the status or frequency of the allophones in the non-native language itself.
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Affiliation(s)
- Miquel Llompart
- Chair of Language and Cognition, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany
| | - Nikola Anna Eger
- Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig Maximilians University Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Eva Reinisch
- Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
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Zhou W, Broersma M, Cutler A. Asymmetric memory for birth language perception versus production in young international adoptees. Cognition 2021; 213:104788. [PMID: 34226063 DOI: 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104788] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/28/2020] [Revised: 05/18/2021] [Accepted: 05/20/2021] [Indexed: 10/21/2022]
Abstract
Adults who as children were adopted into a different linguistic community retain knowledge of their birth language. The possession (without awareness) of such knowledge is known to facilitate the (re)learning of birth-language speech patterns; this perceptual learning predicts such adults' production success as well, indicating that the retained linguistic knowledge is abstract in nature. Adoptees' acquisition of their adopted language is fast and complete; birth-language mastery disappears rapidly, although this latter process has been little studied. Here, 46 international adoptees from China aged four to 10 years, with Dutch as their new language, plus 47 matched non-adopted Dutch-native controls and 40 matched non-adopted Chinese controls, undertook across a two-week period 10 blocks of training in perceptually identifying Chinese speech contrasts (one segmental, one tonal) which were unlike any Dutch contrasts. Chinese controls easily accomplished all these tasks. The same participants also provided speech production data in an imitation task. In perception, adoptees and Dutch controls scored equivalently poorly at the outset of training; with training, the adoptees significantly improved while the Dutch controls did not. In production, adoptees' imitations both before and after training could be better identified, and received higher goodness ratings, than those of Dutch controls. The perception results confirm that birth-language knowledge is stored and can facilitate re-learning in post-adoption childhood; the production results suggest that although processing of phonological category detail appears to depend on access to the stored knowledge, general articulatory dimensions can at this age also still be remembered, and may facilitate spoken imitation.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wencui Zhou
- Tilburg University Language Center, Professor Cobbenhagenlaan 205, 5037 DB Tilburg, the Netherlands.
| | - Mirjam Broersma
- Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University, 6500 HD Nijmegen, the Netherlands.
| | - Anne Cutler
- MARCS Institute and ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Western Sydney University, NSW 2751, Australia.
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Llompart M. Lexical and Phonetic Influences on the Phonolexical Encoding of Difficult Second-Language Contrasts: Insights From Nonword Rejection. Front Psychol 2021; 12:659852. [PMID: 34135819 PMCID: PMC8200638 DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.659852] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/28/2021] [Accepted: 04/27/2021] [Indexed: 11/13/2022] Open
Abstract
Establishing phonologically robust lexical representations in a second language (L2) is challenging, and even more so for words containing phones in phonological contrasts that are not part of the native language. This study presents a series of additional analyses of lexical decision data assessing the phonolexical encoding of English /ε/ and /æ/ by German learners of English (/æ/ does not exist in German) in order to examine the influence of lexical frequency, phonological neighborhood density and the acoustics of the particular vowels on learners’ ability to reject nonwords differing from real words in the confusable L2 phones only (e.g., *l[æ]mon, *dr[ε]gon). Results showed that both the lexical properties of the target items and the acoustics of the critical vowels affected nonword rejection, albeit differently for items with /æ/ → [ε] and /ε/ → [æ] mispronunciations: For the former, lower lexical frequencies and higher neighborhood densities led to more accurate performance. For the latter, it was only the acoustics of the vowel (i.e., how distinctly [æ]-like the mispronunciation was) that had a significant impact on learners’ accuracy. This suggests that the encoding of /ε/ and /æ/ may not only be asymmetric in that /ε/ is generally more robustly represented in the lexicon than /æ/, as previously reported, but also in the way in which this encoding takes place. Mainly, the encoding of /æ/ appears to be more dependent on the characteristics of the L2 vocabulary and on one’s experience with the L2 than that of its more dominant counterpart (/ε/).
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Affiliation(s)
- Miquel Llompart
- Chair of Language and Cognition, Department of English and American Studies, Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany
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Michelas A, Dufour S. When native contrasts are perceived as non-native: the role of the ear of presentation in the discrimination of accentual contrasts. JOURNAL OF COGNITIVE PSYCHOLOGY 2021. [DOI: 10.1080/20445911.2021.1889569] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 10/22/2022]
Affiliation(s)
- Amandine Michelas
- Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
| | - Sophie Dufour
- Laboratoire Parole et Langage, Aix-Marseille Université, CNRS, Aix-en-Provence, France
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Mitterer H, Eger NA, Reinisch E. My English sounds better than yours: Second-language learners perceive their own accent as better than that of their peers. PLoS One 2020; 15:e0227643. [PMID: 32032377 PMCID: PMC7006902 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0227643] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/16/2019] [Accepted: 12/23/2019] [Indexed: 11/19/2022] Open
Abstract
Second language (L2) learners are often aware of the typical pronunciation errors that speakers of their native language make, yet often persist in making these errors themselves. We hypothesised that L2 learners may perceive their own accent as closer to the target language than the accent of other learners, due to frequent exposure to their own productions. This was tested by recording 24 female native speakers of German producing 60 sentences. The same participants later rated these recordings for accentedness. Importantly, the recordings had been altered to sound male so that participants were unaware of their own productions in the to-be-rated samples. We found evidence supporting our hypothesis: participants rated their own altered voice, which they did not recognize as their own, as being closer to a native speaker than that of other learners. This finding suggests that objective feedback may be crucial in fostering L2 acquisition and reduce fossilization of erroneous patterns.
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Affiliation(s)
- Holger Mitterer
- Department of Cognitive Science, Faculty of Media and Knowledge Sciences, University of Malta, Msida, Malta
- * E-mail:
| | - Nikola Anna Eger
- Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Munich, Germany
| | - Eva Reinisch
- Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Munich, Germany
- Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
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