Spoken word recognition by English-speaking learners of Spanish (original) (raw)
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Introduction. Second language learners often find it difficult to parse a stream of speech into words. The speech signal is a continuous flow of sounds in which word boundaries may not be clearly defined. While native speakers are able to segment speech effortlessly, non-native speakers face a more difficult challenge. Finding where one word ends and another word begins is a demanding task for learners of a second language (Aljasser 2008; Hanulíková et al. 2011; Weber and Cutler 2006; Altenberg 2005; Ito and Strange 2009). This difficulty is possibly a result of having an established segmentation system that is specialized to their L1 and could interfere with L2 boundary detection. L1 transfer is found to play a crucial role in speech perception and segmentation (Flege and MacKay 2004; Brown 1998; Shoemaker and Rast 2013; Weber and Cutler 2005). For example, in a language with initial stress, L1 listeners are likely to use stress as a cue to signal a word boundary (Vroomen et al....
The effect of 'illusory vowels' in Spanish-speaking second language learners of English
Language and Linguistics, 2018
This paper shows that second-language (L2) spoken-word recognition is greatly influenced by differences between the native language (L1) and the second language (L2), possibly attributed to either L1-L2 syllable-structure or phonotactic differences. Spanish-speaking English learners (experimental group) and native English listeners (control group) completed an AXB task and a word-monitoring task in which they monitored /(ǝ)s+Consonant/-initial words in English. The results show a clear effect of L1 phonotactics, as the native speakers of English outperformed the Spanish group. These results indicate that L1-L2 syllable-structure differences or L1 phonotactics have pervasive consequences for spoken-word recognition, and effect that will be further explored in the discussion section of this paper.
Effects of first and second language on segmentation of non-native speech
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2011
Do Slovak–German bilinguals apply native Slovak phonological and lexical knowledge when segmenting German speech? When Slovaks listen to their native language, segmentation is impaired when fixed-stress cues are absent (Hanulíková, McQueen & Mitterer, 2010), and, following the Possible-Word Constraint (PWC; Norris, McQueen, Cutler & Butterfield, 1997), lexical candidates are disfavored if segmentation leads to vowelless residues, unless those residues are existing Slovak words. In the present study, fixed-stress cues on German target words were again absent. Nevertheless, in support of the PWC, both German and Slovak listeners recognized German words (e.g., Rose “rose”) faster in syllable contexts (suckrose) than in single-consonant contexts (krose, trose). But only the Slovak listeners recognized, for example, Rose faster in krose than in trose (k is a Slovak word, t is not). It appears that non-native listeners can suppress native stress segmentation procedures, but that they suff...
Cross-linguistic differences in the use of durational cues for the segmentation of a novel language
Memory & Cognition, 2017
It is widely accepted that duration can be exploited as phonological phrase final lengthening in the segmentation of a novel language, i.e., in extracting discrete constituents from continuous speech. The use of final lengthening for segmentation and its facilitatory effect has been claimed to be universal. However, lengthening in the world languages can also mark lexically stressed syllables. Stress-induced lengthening can potentially be in conflict with right edge phonological phrase boundary lengthening. Thus the processing of durational cues in segmentation can be dependent on the listener's linguistic background, e.g. on the specific correlates and unmarked location of lexical stress in the native language of the listener. We tested this prediction and found that segmentation by both German and Basque speakers is facilitated when lengthening is aligned with the word final syllable and is not affected by lengthening on either the penultimate or the antepenultimate syllables. Lengthening of the word final syllable, however, does not help Italian and Spanish speakers to segment continuous speech, and lengthening of the antepenultimate syllable impedes their performance. We have also found a facilitatory effect of penultimate lengthening on segmentation by Italians. These results confirm our hypothesis that processing of lengthening cues is not universal, and interpretation of lengthening as a phonological phrase final boundary marker in a novel language of exposure can be overridden by the phonology of lexical stress in the native language of the listener.
Experience with a second language affects the use of fundamental frequency in speech segmentation
PLOS ONE
This study investigates whether listeners' experience with a second language learned later in life affects their use of fundamental frequency (F0) as a cue to word boundaries in the segmentation of an artificial language (AL), particularly when the cues to word boundaries conflict between the first language (L1) and second language (L2). F0 signals phrase-final (and thus word-final) boundaries in French but word-initial boundaries in English. Participants were functionally monolingual French listeners, functionally monolingual English listeners, bilingual L1-English L2-French listeners, and bilingual L1-French L2-English listeners. They completed the AL-segmentation task with F0 signaling word-final boundaries or without prosodic cues to word boundaries (monolingual groups only). After listening to the AL, participants completed a forced-choice word-identification task in which the foils were either nonwords or part-words. The results show that the monolingual French listeners, but not the monolingual English listeners, performed better in the presence of F0 cues than in the absence of such cues. Moreover, bilingual status modulated listeners' use of F0 cues to word-final boundaries, with bilingual French listeners performing less accurately than monolingual French listeners on both word types but with bilingual English listeners performing more accurately than monolingual English listeners on non-words. These findings not only confirm that speech segmentation is modulated by the L1, but also newly demonstrate that listeners' experience with the L2 (French or English) affects their use of F0 cues in speech segmentation. This suggests that listeners' use of prosodic cues to word boundaries is adaptive and non-selective, and can change as a function of language experience.
Speech Prosody 2016
An extensive body of research on word segmentation across languages has shown that different languages rely on different cues and strategies to segment meaningful units from the speech stream. These cross-language differences make segmentation difficult for L2 learners, and some previous work showed that bilingual speakers tend to keep applying their L1 segmentation cues to the L2. But bilingual experience varies a great deal, even within a bilingual community, so one might ask if such a pattern applies across all bilinguals regardless of language proficiency, dominance, or everyday use. To investigate this, we designed a cross-modal priming task in which a wide range of English-French bilinguals listened to English and French sentences with ambiguous syllable strings containing either two monosyllabic words (e.g. key we) or one bisyllabic word (e.g. kiwi), produced with context-specific natural prosody. A picture prompt representing either the first monosyllabic word (e.g. a key), or the bisyllabic word (e.g. a kiwi) was presented at the offset of the first syllable of the ambiguous region. Each sentence was presented paired with each picture. Preliminary analyses of a subgroup of English-dominant participants show that they process French and English ambiguous strings differently, and that their segmentation schemes seem to vary with L2 proficiency.
The role of stress and word size in Spanish speech segmentation
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2016
In English, the predominance of stressed syllables as word onsets aids lexical segmentation in degraded listening conditions. Yet it is unlikely that these findings would readily transfer to languages with differing rhythmic structure. In the current study, the authors seek to examine whether listeners exploit both common word size (syllable number) and stress cues to aid lexical segmentation in Spanish. Forty-seven Spanish-speaking listeners transcribed two-word Spanish phrases in noise. As predicted by the statistical probabilities of Spanish, error analysis revealed that listeners preferred two- and three-syllable words with penultimate stress in their attempts to parse the degraded speech signal. These findings provide insight into the importance of stress in tandem with word size in the segmentation of Spanish words and suggest testable hypotheses for cross-linguistic studies that examine the effects of degraded acoustic cues on lexical segmentation.
Cues to speech segmentation: Evidence from juncture misperceptions and word spotting
1996
Understanding spoken language requires that listeners segment a spoken utterance into words or into some smaller unit from which the lexicon can be accessed. A major difficulty in speech segmentation is the fact that speakers do not provide stable acoustic cues to indicate boundaries between words or segments. At present, it is therefore unclear as to how to start a lexical access attempt in the absence of a reliable cue about where to start. Several decades of speech research have not yet led to a widely accepted solution for the speech segmentation problem. So far, three proposals have appeared in the literature that are of direct relevance here. One is that the continuous speech stream is categorized into discrete segments which then mediate between the acoustic signal and the lexicon. The second proposal is that there is an explicit mechanism that targets locations in the speech stream where word boundaries are likely to occur. The third is that word segmentation is a by-product of lexical competition. In the present study, these alternatives are considered.
Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 2002
Varying degrees of plasticity in different subsystems of language have been demonstrated by studies showing that some aspects of language are processed similarly by native speakers and late-learners whereas other aspects are processed differently by the two groups. The study of speech segmentation provides a means by which the ability to process different types of linguistic information can be measured within the same task, because lexical, syntactic, and stress-pattern information can all indicate where one word ends and the next begins in continuous speech. In this study, native Japanese and native Spanish late-learners of English (as well as near-monolingual Japanese and Spanish speakers) were asked to determine whether specific sounds fell at the beginning or in the middle of words in English sentences. Similar to native English speakers, late-learners employed lexical information to perform the segmentation task. However, nonnative speakers did not use syntactic information to ...
L2 perception of Spanish palatal variants across different tasks
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 2014
While considerable dialectal variation exists, almost all varieties of Spanish exhibit some sort of alternation in terms of the palatal obstruent segments. Typically, the palatal affricate [ ] tends to occur in word onset following a pause and in specific linear phonotactic environments. The palatal fricative [ ] tends to occur in syllable onset in other contexts. We show that listeners' perceptual sensitivity to the palatal alternation depends upon the task and exposure to Spanish input. For native Spanish listeners, the palatal alternation boosts segmentation accuracy on an artificial speech segmentation task and also reduces latencies on a phonotactically-conditioned elision task. L2 Spanish listeners, on the other hand, only benefit from the palatal alternation in the second task. These results suggest that while Spanish L2 learners benefit from the presence of the alternation in linear phonotactic terms, this benefit does not carry over to a more abstract segmentation task.