Evaluating non-native perception tasks
Ryan Lidster, Franzi Kruger, and I are working on a number of studies in which we examine the relationship between various non-native perception tasks: free classification, perceptual assimilation, AXB, and oddity (and likely similarity judgment in the future). Our next steps are to test the perception of Finnish vowels and Finnish length by Japanese and American English listeners and the perception of Arabic consonants by American English listeners. Here are some highlights from our findings so far on the perception of German vowels by American English listeners:
L2 lexical representations: Alternate or fuzzy?
In previous research (Daidone & Darcy, 2014; Darcy, Daidone, & Kojima, 2013) we've found that learners have difficulty rejecting incorrect pronunciations of words with new phonemes, regardless of whether they can accurately perceive these new sounds. For example, English-speaking learners of German often will accept a non-word with a back vowel as a real word when the real word actually contains a front-rounded vowel, e.g. they will accept [konɪç] as a word when the word is actually könig [kønɪç] 'king.' However, from this research it was unclear if learners' lexical representations were fuzzy or alternate. By fuzzy, we assume that a difficult novel phoneme is underspecified such that the learner would accept many different possible realizations of a word, e.g. könig as [kønɪç], [konɪç], [kunɪç], or even [kenɪç]? If a learner has alternate lexical representations, then we hypothesize that they would only have a limited number of possible realizations that they will accept, e.g. könig only as [kønɪç] or [konɪç]. The current project with Isabelle Darcy, Franzi Kruger, and Ryan Lidster tries to determine which of these two possibilities is true for learners' lexical representations of words containing front-rounded vowels in German.
Lexical competition from cross-linguistic phonetic and phonological overlap
Studies on spoken word recognition have found that bilinguals typically activate words in both their languages when listening to speech, even during a monolingual task. Most of this research has focused on competition due to phonological overlap between words in the bilinguals' languages, for example, the activation of pollitos ‘chicks’ in Spanish when hearing pony in English. However, phonological overlap between segments across languages doesn't necessarily imply that these segments have the same phonetic properties. In my dissertation, I plan to investigate whether cross-linguistic phonetic overlap can also cause lexical competition. Although both English and Spanish have the phonological categories of voiced stops /b d g/ and voiceless stops /p t k/, the Spanish voiceless stops /p t k/ actually overlap in their phonetic properties with the voiced English stops /b d g/. This entails distinct possibilities for the activation of lexical items during word recognition if both languages are accessed: 1) words may be activated due to phonological overlap, e.g. Spanish peso activates English pace, 2) words may be activated due to phonetic overlap, e.g. Spanish peso activates English base, or 3) both phonologically and phonetically overlapping words may be activated. If the final possibility is the case, this could entail even more lexical competition than previously considered during word recognition by bilinguals.
Ryan Lidster, Franzi Kruger, and I are working on a number of studies in which we examine the relationship between various non-native perception tasks: free classification, perceptual assimilation, AXB, and oddity (and likely similarity judgment in the future). Our next steps are to test the perception of Finnish vowels and Finnish length by Japanese and American English listeners and the perception of Arabic consonants by American English listeners. Here are some highlights from our findings so far on the perception of German vowels by American English listeners:
- Free classification, which had previously been used to examine the perceptual similarity of dialects, languages, or non-native accents, is also useful for looking at the similarity of segments. Some nice properties of free classification are that there are no category labels or number of categories imposed by the researcher, and it's possible to analyze which dimensions (e.g. F1, roundedness) listeners are using to categorize the stimuli. Check out our ICPhS 2015 paper on this method.
- Training in linguistics (particularly phonetics/phonology) and knowledge of other languages can affect performance in a free classification task, and even more so in a perceptual assimilation task. Get our slides from New Sounds 2016 here. Email me if you'd like a copy of the manuscript under review.
- In a study together with Meg Cychosz at UC Berkeley, we found that overlap scores from free classification (how often stimuli were grouped together) and overlap scores from perceptual assimilation (how often stimuli were assimilated to the same L1 category) were both good predictors of discrimination in oddity and AXB tasks. However, perceptual assimilation category types (e.g. "two-category," "category-goodness") were not. Results from AXB and oddity tasks were highly correlated with each other (r = .974 for accuracy scores and r = .979 for d'). Get our slides from PSLLT 2017 here.
L2 lexical representations: Alternate or fuzzy?
In previous research (Daidone & Darcy, 2014; Darcy, Daidone, & Kojima, 2013) we've found that learners have difficulty rejecting incorrect pronunciations of words with new phonemes, regardless of whether they can accurately perceive these new sounds. For example, English-speaking learners of German often will accept a non-word with a back vowel as a real word when the real word actually contains a front-rounded vowel, e.g. they will accept [konɪç] as a word when the word is actually könig [kønɪç] 'king.' However, from this research it was unclear if learners' lexical representations were fuzzy or alternate. By fuzzy, we assume that a difficult novel phoneme is underspecified such that the learner would accept many different possible realizations of a word, e.g. könig as [kønɪç], [konɪç], [kunɪç], or even [kenɪç]? If a learner has alternate lexical representations, then we hypothesize that they would only have a limited number of possible realizations that they will accept, e.g. könig only as [kønɪç] or [konɪç]. The current project with Isabelle Darcy, Franzi Kruger, and Ryan Lidster tries to determine which of these two possibilities is true for learners' lexical representations of words containing front-rounded vowels in German.
Lexical competition from cross-linguistic phonetic and phonological overlap
Studies on spoken word recognition have found that bilinguals typically activate words in both their languages when listening to speech, even during a monolingual task. Most of this research has focused on competition due to phonological overlap between words in the bilinguals' languages, for example, the activation of pollitos ‘chicks’ in Spanish when hearing pony in English. However, phonological overlap between segments across languages doesn't necessarily imply that these segments have the same phonetic properties. In my dissertation, I plan to investigate whether cross-linguistic phonetic overlap can also cause lexical competition. Although both English and Spanish have the phonological categories of voiced stops /b d g/ and voiceless stops /p t k/, the Spanish voiceless stops /p t k/ actually overlap in their phonetic properties with the voiced English stops /b d g/. This entails distinct possibilities for the activation of lexical items during word recognition if both languages are accessed: 1) words may be activated due to phonological overlap, e.g. Spanish peso activates English pace, 2) words may be activated due to phonetic overlap, e.g. Spanish peso activates English base, or 3) both phonologically and phonetically overlapping words may be activated. If the final possibility is the case, this could entail even more lexical competition than previously considered during word recognition by bilinguals.