Sources of variability in phonetic perception: The joint influence of listener and talker characteristics on perception of the Korean stop contrast

Jessamyn Schertz,Sungwoo Han,Yoonjung Kang

doi:10.5334/labphon.67

Abstract

Where there is dialectal variability in production of a sound contrast, listeners from the two dialects may show parallel differences in perception. At the same time, perception is not static and can be influenced by other factors, including listeners’ experience with, and expectations about, different talkers. This work examines perception of the Korean three-way stop phonation contrast by listeners of two dialects of Korean. We examine to what extent listeners’ perception reflects production norms in their local community and, via a reverse matched-guise task, test whether their knowledge of cross-dialectal variability plays an active role in the way they categorize the contrast. While perception appears to reflect production norms on a broad level, we found age-related differences in perception, even for listener groups who showed no sign of a parallel difference in production. Furthermore, listeners showed different response patterns depending on the apparent dialect of the talker. Our results suggest that exposure to dialectal variability and expectations about the talker influence perception.

Highlights

Dialectal differences in the realization of a phonetic contrast are generally expected to be mirrored in perception, presumably due to different phonetic representations that form the basis of both perception and production
Art. 13, page 3 of 32 to assume a merged system when listening to an older talker. These results indicate that listeners are sensitive to the social distribution of pronunciation variants and that they use this knowledge in speech perception
Another possibility is that younger listeners are more sensitive to dialectal variability. This finding stands in contrast to the one other study of which we are aware that examines the interaction of listener age and use of social information: Drager (2011) found that older, not younger, listeners were more sensitive to a community-level change in progress. These findings suggest that age-based differences in use of social information in speech perception may be an interesting avenue for future work to explore

Summary

Introduction

Dialectal differences in the realization of a phonetic contrast are generally expected to be mirrored in perception, presumably due to different phonetic representations that form the basis of both perception and production. The current work examines the joint influence of characteristics of the listener and expectations about the talker in perception of the Korean three-way stop contrast by listeners of different dialects and ages. We track how native Korean listeners from Hunchun and Dandong, China use various phonetic cues to the contrast (VOT, f0, and voice quality of the following vowel) when listening to talkers said to be from different dialects. We test the extent to which regional and age-based differences in production norms account for differences in perceptual patterns, and explore how listeners modify their categorization of the contrast based on the apparent dialect of the talker.

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion