scholarly journals Unstressed Vowel Reduction Across Majorcan Catalan Dialects: Production and Spoken Word Recognition

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 430-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Miquel Llompart ◽  
Miquel Simonet
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Lexical Processing ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Vowel Duration ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Production Study ◽  
Speech Performance

This study investigates the production and auditory lexical processing of words involved in a patterned phonological alternation in two dialects of Catalan spoken on the island of Majorca, Spain. One of these dialects, that of Palma, merges /ɔ/ and /o/ as [o] in unstressed position, and it maintains /u/ as an independent category, [u]. In the dialect of Sóller, a small village, speakers merge unstressed /ɔ/, /o/, and /u/ to [u]. First, a production study asks whether the discrete, rule-based descriptions of the vowel alternations provided in the dialectological literature are able to account adequately for these processes: are mergers complete? Results show that mergers are complete with regards to the main acoustic cue to these vowel contrasts, that is, F1. However, minor differences are maintained for F2 and vowel duration. Second, a lexical decision task using cross-modal priming investigates the strength with which words produced in the phonetic form of the neighboring (versus one’s own) dialect activate the listeners’ lexical representations during spoken word recognition: are words within and across dialects accessed efficiently? The study finds that listeners from one of these dialects, Sóller, process their own and the neighboring forms equally efficiently, while listeners from the other one, Palma, process their own forms more efficiently than those of the neighboring dialect. This study has implications for our understanding of the role of lifelong linguistic experience on speech performance.

Individual differences in the size of orthographic effects in spoken word recognition: The role of listeners' orthographic skills

2010 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
NADYA DICH
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Auditory Task ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Decision Task ◽  
Spelling Test ◽  
Auditory Lexical Decision ◽  
Orthographic Consistency

ABSTRACTThe goal of this study was to test the hypothesis that the extent to which orthography affects spoken word recognition in literate adults is related to their spelling proficiency. The study included two components: an auditory lexical decision task manipulating orthographic consistency of the stimuli and a spelling test. The results replicated previously found effects of orthographic consistency on the accuracy and latency of lexical decisions. The size of the orthographic effect in the auditory task was estimated for each participant. The variability in the orthographic effect size among participants was partially explained by their spelling skills. Possible interpretations of this finding and methodological implications for future research are discussed.

Re-reconsidering the role of temporal order in spoken word recognition

2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (11) ◽  
pp. 2574-2583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Gregg ◽  
Albrecht W Inhoff ◽  
Cynthia M Connine
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Representation ◽  
Coarse Grain ◽  
Visual World ◽  
Visual World Paradigm ◽  
Lexical Activation ◽  
Stimulus Materials

Spoken word recognition models incorporate the temporal unfolding of word information by assuming that positional match constrains lexical activation. Recent findings challenge the linearity constraint. In the visual world paradigm, Toscano, Anderson, and McMurray observed that listeners preferentially viewed a picture of a target word’s anadrome competitor (e.g., competitor bus for target sub) compared with phonologically unrelated distractors (e.g., well) or competitors sharing an overlapping vowel (e.g., sun). Toscano et al. concluded that spoken word recognition relies on coarse grain spectral similarity for mapping spoken input to a lexical representation. Our experiments aimed to replicate the anadrome effect and to test the coarse grain similarity account using competitors without vowel position overlap (e.g., competitor leaf for target flea). The results confirmed the original effect: anadrome competitor fixation curves diverged from unrelated distractors approximately 275 ms after the onset of the target word. In contrast, the no vowel position overlap competitor did not show an increase in fixations compared with the unrelated distractors. The contrasting results for the anadrome and no vowel position overlap items are discussed in terms of theoretical implications of sequential match versus coarse grain similarity accounts of spoken word recognition. We also discuss design issues (repetition of stimulus materials and display parameters) concerning the use of the visual world paradigm in making inferences about online spoken word recognition.

Continuous and discontinuous access in spoken word-recognition: The role of derivational prefixes

1988 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 368-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorraine Komisarjevsky Tyler ◽  
William Marslen-Wilson ◽  
James Rentoul ◽  
Peter Hanney
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word

scholarly journals Processing variant forms in spoken word recognition: The role of variant frequency

2008 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 403-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. M. CONNINE ◽  
L. J. RANBOM ◽  
D. J. PATTERSON
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Variant Frequency

scholarly journals Exploring the Role of Lexical stress in Lexical Recognition

2005 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-273 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wilma van Donselaar ◽  
Mariëtte Koster ◽  
Anne Cutler
Keyword(s):  
Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Stress ◽  
Auditory Presentation ◽  
Phonological Representations ◽  
Conceptual Representations ◽  
No Inhibition ◽  
Spoken Words

Three cross-modal priming experiments examined the role of suprasegmental information in the processing of spoken words. All primes consisted of truncated spoken Dutch words. Recognition of visually presented word targets was facilitated by prior auditory presentation of the first two syllables of the same words as primes, but only if they were appropriately stressed (e.g., OKTOBER preceded by okTO-); inappropriate stress, compatible with another word (e.g., OKTOBER preceded by OCto-, the beginning of octopus), produced inhibition. Monosyllabic fragments (e.g., OC-) also produced facilitation when appropriately stressed; if inappropriately stressed, they produced neither facilitation nor inhibition. The bisyllabic fragments that were compatible with only one word produced facilitation to semantically associated words, but inappropriate stress caused no inhibition of associates. The results are explained within a model of spoken-word recognition involving competition between simultaneously activated phonological representations followed by activation of separate conceptual representations for strongly supported lexical candidates; at the level of the phonological representations, activation is modulated by both segmental and suprasegmental information.

scholarly journals Spoken word recognition in a second language: The importance of phonetic details

2021 ◽  
pp. 026765832110306
Author(s):  
Félix Desmeules-Trudel ◽  
Tania S. Zamuner
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Recognition ◽  
Native Speakers ◽  
Spoken Word Recognition ◽  
Spoken Word ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
Canadian French ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Minimal Word ◽  
Vowel Nasalization

Spoken word recognition depends on variations in fine-grained phonetics as listeners decode speech. However, many models of second language (L2) speech perception focus on units such as isolated syllables, and not on words. In two eye-tracking experiments, we investigated how fine-grained phonetic details (i.e. duration of nasalization on contrastive and coarticulatory nasalized vowels in Canadian French) influenced spoken word recognition in an L2, as compared to a group of native (L1) listeners. Results from L2 listeners (English-native speakers) indicated that fine-grained phonetics impacted the recognition of words, i.e. they were able to use nasalization duration variability in a way similar to L1-French listeners, providing evidence that lexical representations can be highly specified in an L2. Specifically, L2 listeners were able to distinguish minimal word pairs (differentiated by the presence of phonological vowel nasalization in French) and were able to use variability in a way approximating L1-French listeners. Furthermore, the robustness of the French “nasal vowel” category in L2 listeners depended on age of exposure. Early bilinguals displayed greater sensitivity to some ambiguity in the stimuli than late bilinguals, suggesting that early bilinguals had greater sensitivity to small variations in the signal and thus better knowledge of the phonetic cue associated with phonological vowel nasalization in French, similarly to L1 listeners.

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