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

Autor: Desmeules-Trudel F; University of Toronto Mississauga; University of Ottawa, Canada., Zamuner TS; University of Ottawa, Canada.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Second language research [Second Lang Res] 2023 Apr; Vol. 39 (2), pp. 333-362. Date of Electronic Publication: 2021 Jul 13.
DOI: 10.1177/02676583211030604
Abstrakt: 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.
Competing Interests: The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
(© The Author(s) 2021.)
Databáze: MEDLINE