Is the target of imitation directly acoustic or a pattern within a speaker’s phonetic system?

Abstract

Speakers may converge phonetically with another talker to whose speech they are exposed, resulting in reduced acoustic distance between interlocutors. However, it is unclear whether the target of imitation is raw acoustics or a linguistic pattern. Zellou et al. (2016) present a case that distinguishes these possibilities: after listening to a model talker whose speech was manipulated to reduce coarticulatory vowel nasality (measured acoustically in A1-P0), participants’ nasality also decreased in post-test productions, relative to their baseline. However, the model speaker had naturally low A1-P0 (correlated with high nasality), and even after the manipulation to raise A1-P0, it was lower than all participants’. If the target of imitation is acoustic, participants diverged from the model (raised A1-P0). But if the target of imitation is a linguistic pattern (decreased coarticulatory nasality), participants converged. The current study uses an AXB perceptual task to determine whether it is acoustically more similar items (more nasal; speakers’ baseline) or linguistically more similar items (less nasal; post-test) that listeners judge as “more similar” to the model talker’s production. A generalized linear mixed model showed a significant preference for post-test items (55.4%, z = 5.19), indicating that linguistic similarity is the basis for listeners’ similarity judgments.