Phonological Influences Research Articles

Russian and Spanish listener’s perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast: Contributions of native language allophony and individual experience

We examined the influence of listeners native phonology on the perception of American English tense and lax front unrounded vowels ([i] and [■]). These vowels are distinguishable according to both spectral quality and duration. Nineteen Russian, 18 Spanish, and 16 American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat-bit continuum varying in nine spectral and nine duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectral quality when identifying these vowels, but also showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. Three additional tests examined listeners allophonic use of vowel duration in their native languages. Duration was found to be equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three language groups. However, the use of duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing differed due to phonotactic differences across the three languages. Group results suggest that non-native perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast is governed by language-independent psychoacoustic factors and/or individual experience. Individual results show large variability within all three language groups, supporting the hypothesis that individual differences in perceptual sensitivity as well as the more frequently cited factors of second language education and experience play an important role in cross-language perception.

Phonological Cues Influence Sex Decisions about Novel Names

Investigations of first names in English have found that male and female names are distinguished by different phonological characteristics. This paper reports on findings that suggest native speakers of English rely on those same cues when making judgments about the sex of names with which they are unfamiliar. When presented with 40 novel, i.e., "invented" names, 25 university undergraduates judged one-syllable names and consonant-final names as male names; however, they judged two-syllable names and vowel-final names as female names. These findings indicate that certain phonological features are strong enough predictors of sex that they can be used to designate sex even with names never before encountered.

Consonantal context and experience effects on American L2-learners’ perception of French vowels

According to Best’s [Best, C. T. (1994). ‘‘The emergence of native-language phonological influence in infants: A perceptual assimilation model,’’ in The Development of Speech Perception: The Transition from Speech Sounds to Spoken Words, edited by J. Goodman & H. C. Nusbaum (MIT Press, Cambridge, MA); Best, C. T. (1995) ‘‘A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception,’’ in Speech Perception and Linquistic Experience Issues in Cross-Language Research, edited by W. Strange (York Press, Baltimore, MD)] Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), listeners’ perceptual assimilation of unfamiliar speech sounds predicts their discrimination accuracy of these sounds. This study applied the PAM to second-language (L2) learners. Three groups of American English (AE) listeners performed a perceptual assimilation (PA) task involving Parisian French (PF) vowels /y-œ -u-o-i-ε-a/ and a categorial discrimination task involving French front versus back rounded pairs /y-u/, /y-o/, /œ -o/, /œ -u/, front rounded versus front unrounded /y-i/, /y-ε/, /œ -ε/, /œ -i/, and front rounded /y-œ /. Vowels were in bilabial /rabVp/ and alveolar /radVt/ contexts. PF front-rounded vowels were perceptually assimilated overwhelmingly to back AE vowels, resulting in more discrimination errors for front-versus back-rounded PF pairs than for front-unrounded versus rounded pairs. Listeners with formal French instruction fared similarly to listeners with no experience. Extensive immersion correlated with fewer errors than formal experience, although /u-y/ discrimination remained relatively poor for this group. More errors occurred in alveolar than bilabial context. Thus, native-language allophonic variation may explain context-specific L2 perception. Using a percent overlap method, a significant correlation was found between PA overlap and discrimination errors for all groups, suggesting that the PAM may be extended to L2-vowel learning. [Work supported by NIH.]

The phonological influence of English on Awing

Cameroon has been described as Africa in miniature not only with respect to the complex linguistic landscape it portrays, but also in respect of its population, landscape and its climate. Wolf repo...

The influence of Gujarati and Tamil L1s on Indian English: a preliminary study

Abstract: English as spoken as a second language in India has developed distinct sound patterns in terms of both segmental and prosodic characteristics. We investigate the differences between two groups varying in native language (Gujarati, Tamil) to evaluate to what extent Indian English (IE) accents are based on a single target phonological‐phonetic system (i.e., General Indian English), and/or vary due to transfer from the native language. Consonants, vowels and intonation patterns from five Gujarati English (GE) and five Tamil English (TE) speakers of IE were transcribed and, in a subset of cases, acoustically analyzed. The results showed transfer effects in GE back vowels, TE rhotics and the proportion of rising versus falling pitch accents in GE intonation. The effect of the General Indian English model was evident in the front vowels of both GE and TE and in the presence of initial voiced stops in TE. Thus, the data reveal both phonetic and phonological influences of IE speakers’ native language on their accent in IE, even in proficient speakers; these influences appear to supersede IE norms and can be found in both the segmental and suprasegmental properties of their speech.

The influence of native language phonology on auditory and visual word recognition in Russian–English bilinguals

Visual and auditory recognition of English monosyllabic words was examined in 21 native Russian bilinguals and 12 monolingual speakers of American English. Stimuli comprised 40 CVC minimal pairs distinguishable by four vowel contrasts. Experiment 1 tested visual word recognition following a semantic categorization task. Sixty of the tested words were previously shown in the categorization task, and 60 were new words, 40 of which represented minimal pair alternatives to previously shown words. In experiment 2 participants listened to all words from each minimal pair spoken by one male and one female speaker, and selected one word from each pair. No significant differences were found in the number of errors made by the bilingual and monolingual participants during visual word recognition. In auditory word recognition, bilingual listeners made significantly more errors on the two vowel contrasts that cannot be differentiated based on their native phonological categories. Auditory errors on these categories strongly and significantly correlated with participant’s age of arrival to the U.S.A. These results demonstrate the influence of native language phonology on auditory, but not visual word recognition by Russian–English bilinguals.

Determinants of Grammatical Variation in English

What factors influence the choice between alternative grammatical structures such as the following: a lit / a lighted cigarette, more full / fuller of convincing arguments, the main thesis of the book / the book's main thesis, take hostage a group of 15 holiday makers / take a group of 15 holidaymakers hostage, conceding that the argument is convincing / conceding the argument to be convincing? This is the central issue explored in this volume, which contains a unique selection of innovative in-depth empirical studies written in a broadly functional framework. The factors investigated include the following: phonological influences (such as the principle of rhythmic alternation and optimal syllable structure), frequency, pervasive semantic and pragmatic aspects (including iconicity, markedness, grammaticalization and typological tendencies), information structure, processing complexity and horror aequi (the avoidance of identity effects).

Semantic, lexical, and phonological influences on the production of verb inflections in agrammatic aphasia

Verb inflection errors, often seen in agrammatic aphasic speech, have been attributed to either impaired encoding of diacritical features that specify tense and aspect, or to impaired affixation during phonological encoding. In this study we examined the effect of semantic markedness, word form frequency and affix frequency, as well as accuracy and error patterns, in an attempt to evaluate whether diacritical or affixation operations are impaired. Verb inflections ( V+ ing, V+ ed, V+ s, and V stem in present progressive, past, present 3rd person singular, and future tense contexts, respectively) were elicited in eight mild-moderate agrammatic aphasic individuals in a sentence context using a picture description task. Results revealed that the majority of verbs produced were affixed (75%) although accuracy was low (36%). Word form frequency was found to be a significant predictor of the accuracy with which verb inflections were produced; while affix frequency and semantic markedness were not found to influence accuracy. These results suggest that a diacritical deficit is more likely to undermine the production of verb inflections than a affixation deficit, and indicate that when diacritical processes are compromised, word form frequency is likely to influence production of verb inflections in agrammatic aphasia.

Neural correlates of letter-string length and lexicality during reading in a regular orthography.

Behavioral studies have shown that short letter strings are read faster than long letter-strings and words are read faster than nonwords. Here, we describe the dynamics of letter-string length and lexicality effects at the cortical level, using magnetoencephalography, during a reading task in Finnish with long (eight-letter) and short (four-letter) word/nonword stimuli. Length effects were observed in two spatially and temporally distinct cortical activations: (1) in the occipital cortex at about 100 msec by the strength of activation, regardless of the lexical status of the stimuli, and (2) in the left superior temporal cortex between 200 and 600 msec by the duration of activation, with words showing a smaller effect than nonwords. A significant lexicality effect was also evident in this later activation, with stronger activation and longer duration for nonwords than words. There seem to be no distinct cortical areas for reading words and nonwords. The early length effect is likely to be due to the low-level visual analysis common to all stimulus letter-strings. The later lexicality and length effects apparently reflect converging lexico-semantic and phonological influences, and are discussed in terms of dual-route and single-route connectionist models of reading.

Semantic and phonological influences on the processing of words and pseudohomophones.

In two experiments, we investigated the relationship between semantics and phonology in the lexical decision task. In the first experiment, lexical decisions to words with large semantic neighborhoods were faster than those to words with sparse semantic neighborhoods. Conversely, this effect of semantic neighborhood was reversed for pseudohomophones (e.g., nale). That is, pseudohomophones based on words with large semantic neighborhoods took longer to reject than did those based on words with sparse semantic neighborhoods. In the second experiment, we found the magnitude of the semantic neighborhood effect for words to be a function of nonword foil type. Taken together, these results indicate that semantic neighborhood size affects processing of both words and pseudohomophones, and that the effect of semantic neighborhood size for words is more pronounced when pseudohomophone foils are employed. These effects are discussed in terms of a model in which the orthographic, phonological, and semantic systems are fully interactive.

Phonological influences on lexical (mis)selection.

Speakers produce words to convey meaning, but does meaning alone determine which words they say? We report three experiments that show independent semantic and phonological influences converging to determine word selection. Speakers named pictures (e.g., of a priest) following visually presented cloze sentences that primed either semantic competitors of the target object name ("The woman went to the convent to become a..."), homophones of the competitors ("I thought that there would still be some cookies left, but there were..."), or matched unrelated control object names. Primed semantic competitors (nun) were produced instead of picture names more often than primed unrelated control object names, showing the well-documented influence of semantic similarity on lexical selection. Surprisingly, primed homophone competitors (none) also substituted for picture names more often than control object names even though they only sounded like competitors. Thus, independent semantic and phonological influences can converge to affect word selection.

Semantic and phonological influences on picture naming by children and teenagers

We investigated the stages of picture naming with a new children's picture–word task. In Experiment 1, 24 normal children between 5 and 7 years named pictures while attempting to ignore auditory distractors. The relation between the onsets of the distractors and the pictures varied. Naming performance for semantic distractors showed interference when the distractor's onset was before the picture's onset. Naming performance for phonological nonsense-syllable distractors showed facilitation (congruent distractors) or interference (conflicting distractors) at all onset asymmetries. Overall results resembled findings in teenagers (Experiment 2) and previous findings in adults. The nature of linguistic knowledge and the time course of lexical access, as indexed by performance on a picture–word task, is remarkably similar in children, teenagers, and adults.

Evidence for a cascade model of lexical access in speech production.

How word production unfolds remains controversial. Serial models posit that phonological encoding begins only after lexical node selection, whereas cascade models hold that it can occur before selection. Both models were evaluated by testing whether unselected lexical nodes influence phonological encoding in the picture-picture interference paradigm. English speakers were shown pairs of superimposed pictures and were instructed to name one picture and ignore another. Naming was faster when target pictures were paired with phonologically related (bed-bell) than with unrelated (bed-pin) distractors. This suggests that the unspoken distractors exerted a phonological influence on production. This finding is inconsistent with serial models but in line with cascade ones. The facilitation effect was not replicated in Italian with the same pictures, supporting the view that the effect found in English was caused by the phonological properties of the stimuli.

Dissociable lexical and phonological influences on serial recognition and serial recall.

The impact of the lexicality of memory items on memory performance was compared in two paradigms, serial recall and serial recognition. Experiments 1 to 3 tested 7- and 8-year-old children. Memory accuracy was only mildly impaired in lists containing nonwords compared with words in a serial recognition task involving judgments of whether the items in two sequences were in the same order (Experiment 1), although a substantial advantage for word over nonword items from the same stimulus pool was found in serial recall (Experiment 2). A stronger influence of lexicality on serial recall than serial recognition was further demonstrated in Experiments 3A and 3B, and in 4A and 4B using adult participants. These experiments also established comparable degrees of sensitivity to the phonological similarity of the memory sequences in the two paradigms. The phonological similarity effect in serial recall was found to arise from increased phoneme order errors, whereas the lexicality effect was due principally to the greater frequency of phoneme identity errors for nonwords. It is proposed that the lexicality effect originates in the redintegration of item information just prior to recall, and that this process is largely bypassed in serial recognition.

The role of sound and spelling in auditory word recognition: Further evidence from brain-damaged patients

This follow - up investigation explored the effects of phonological and orthographic relatedness on auditory lexical access in left - and right - hemisphere - damaged individuals. Participants listened to prime–target pairs that shared word - initial phonology (e.g., definite–deaf), initial orthography (e.g., logic–log), both initial phonology and orthography (e.g., message–mess), or were unrelated (e.g., castle– green), presented at two different inter - stimulus intervals. All groups of subjects demonstrated facilitation of lexical decision latencies due to the combined influence of both orthography and phonology, confirming earlier findings concerning rime relations. The findings are briefly discussed in relation to the neural representation of formal lexical codes.

Two languages, two borders, one island: some linguistic and political borders in Ireland

The Irish language and English have been in contact in Ireland, under varying conditions and in varying relations,for over 800 years. The resulting Systems of cross-linguistic phonological influence have yet to be studied in detail, but it is gener ally assumed that some kind oftransfer has taken place. Looking at studies of traditional dialectfrom the mid-twentieth Century, it becomes possible to test a hypothesis that cross-linguistic convergence has taken place through local, cross-dialectal convergence, with the assumption that thepatterns of Irish dialect geography wouldbe reflectedin the dialectal patterns of Irish English. On this assumption, though the historical province of Ulster plays a distinct role in Irish dialectology, the state border that separates the Republic of Ireland from the six counties of Northern Ireland would have little relevance for dialect distribution, since this border postdates the establishment of Irish dialectal patterns and does not follow any natural border that coincides with a dialect border. Examination of phonological variables in Irish and English shows relatively little direct transfer of Irish dialect patterns into English, and still less of a role for the political border. It is suggested, however, that the difference in Status of the Irish language on bot h sides ofthe border may in time have a divergent effect at the level of Standard language and second-language learning.

Phonological and Orthographic Influences on Children's Vowel Spelling

Vowel representations are particularly difficult for children to learn because most vowel phonemes can be spelled in several different ways. Children in Grades 1, 2, and 3 spelled nonwords with an ambiguous vowel and reported their spelling strategies. Analysis of the children's spellings and strategy reports revealed a shift in relying solely on phonological information to considering orthographic information for making vowel letter choices. Implications for vowel spelling development are discussed.

Phonological and Morphological Influences in the Syllabification of Spoken Words

Words appear to be stored in memory in syllabic units that adhere to the phonology and morphology of the language (e.g., Marslen-Wilson, Tyler, Waksler, & Older, 1994; Treiman & Danis, 1988a). Three experiments investigated the formation of the syllabic representation of words using the structural induction phoneme monitoring paradigm in which stimulus lists are disproportionately weighted with words of one syllabic structure. In Experiment 1, two phonological principles of syllabification were compared to determine if one (maximum onset principle) might take precedence over the other (phonotactic illegality) during the formation of the initial structural representation of a word. Results suggest that phonotactic legality overrides the maximum onset principle. In Experiments 2 and 3, phonological and morphological parsings were pitted against each other to determine whether morphological influences in syllabification could be found as early as phonological influences. Results demonstrated that phonology, not morphology, guided syllabification. Experiment 4 demonstrated that the null effects of morphology were likely due to the stage of processing being tapped by the induction paradigm. Findings suggest that the formation of syllabic structure is guided by phonology prior to morphology.

Phonetic vs. phonological influences on French listeners' perception of American English approximants

The perception of American English (AE) approximant contrasts, /r/-/l/ in particular but also /w/-/r/ and /w/-/j/, has been extensively compared between AE speakers and speakers of Japanese or other languages lacking an /r/-/l/ contrast. The difficulty such listeners encounter with the AE /r/-/l/ contrast, especially those who have had little exposure to spoken English, has most often been explained by reference to the abstract functional contrasts of their native phonological systems, which lack distinctions between rhotic (/r/) and lateral (/l/) consonants. According to that reasoning, speakers of languages who do possess an /r/-/l/ distinction, such as French, should encounter little or no perceptual difficulty with AE /r/-/l/. However, French and AE /r/s differ markedly in their articulatory-phonetic characteristics, which suggests the possibility that French listeners might have some difficulty categorizing AE /r/. The present study therefore examined identification and discrimination of the AE continua /r/-/l/, /w/-/r/, and /w/-/j/ by French participants. As anticipated on the basis of the phonetic differences between the /r/s of the two languages, the French listeners had some perceptual difficulties with AE /r/, which they tended to assimilate as /w/-like. We conclude that the detailed articulatory-phonetic properties of the native versus non-native consonant categories, rather than solely the abstract phonological contrasts of the two languages, account for this perceptual pattern.

Orthographic and Phonological Facilitation from Unattended Words: Evidence for Bilateral Processing

This study investigated hemisphere differences in sensitivity to orthographic and phonological similarity using a task that did not require deliberate metalinguistic comparisons between words. Two experiments investigated the influence of an unattended distractor item on the pronunciation of target words in the right visual field (RVF) and left visual field (LVF) in neurologically intact persons. Word and pseudoword distractors that were both orthographically and phonologically similar to the target word produced equivalent facilitation across visual fields (Exp. 1). When orthographic and phonological influences were separated in Exp. 2, each dimension produced reliable facilitation, and to the same extent in each visual field. These results, and others in the literature, are difficult to reconcile with the view that the intact right hemisphere is completely unable to access phonology from print. If subsequent research confirms these findings, it would suggest that passive activation of phonology in reading can be dissociated from articulatory mechanisms, and that left hemisphere superiority in some phonological judgements may depend more on the availability of articulatory rehearsal than on privileged access to phonological codes.