Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-2lccl Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T23:14:35.129Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

THE EXPLOITATION OF SUBPHONEMIC ACOUSTIC DETAIL IN L2 SPEECH SEGMENTATION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 May 2014

Ellenor Shoemaker
Ellenor Shoemaker*
Affiliation:
Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3
*
*Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Ellenor Shoemaker, Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie (UMR 7018/ CNRS), Université Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris 3, 13, rue de Santeuil, 75005 Paris, France. E-mail: ellenor.shoemaker@univ-paris3.fr
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The current study addresses an aspect of second language (L2) phonological acquisition that has received little attention to date—namely, the acquisition of allophonic variation as a word boundary cue. The role of subphonemic variation in the segmentation of speech by native speakers has been indisputably demonstrated; however, the acquisition of allophonic cues in L2 phonology remains underexplored. We examine here L2 learners’ acquisition and perception of noncontrastive acoustic differentiation at word boundaries in English. Fifty French-speaking students of English were tested on their ability to differentiate potentially ambiguous phrases in which word boundaries are marked by the word-initial aspiration of plosives (e.g., Lou stops vs. loose tops) or prevocalic glottal stops (e.g., tea mat vs. team at). Participants showed greater sensitivity to the presence of glottal stops than aspiration, suggesting that glottal stops may represent a more perceptually salient segmentation cue for learners than aspiration. We discuss the implications of these results regarding the role of first language transfer versus the universality of some segmentation cues.

Type
Articles
Information
Studies in Second Language Acquisition , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , December 2014 , pp. 709 - 731
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Altenberg, E. (2005). The perception of word boundaries in a second language. Second Language Research, 21, 325–358.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, C. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception: New directions in research and theory. In Strange, W. (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 171–204). Baltimore, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Best, C., McRoberts, G., & Goodell, E. (2001). Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to the listener’s native phonological system. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 775–794.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Best, C., & Tyler, M. (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In Munro, M. J. & Bohn, O.-S. (Eds.), Second language speech learning: The role of language experience in speech perception and production (pp. 13–34). Amsterdam: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Côté, M. H. (2005). Le statut lexical des consonnes de liaison [The lexical status of liaison consonants]. Languages, 158, 66–78.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. (1990). Exploiting prosodic probabilities in speech segmentation. In Altmann, G. (Ed.), Cognitive models of speech processing: Psycholinguists and computational perspectives (pp. 105–121). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. (2001). Listening to a second language through the ears of a first. Interpreting, 5, 1–23.Google Scholar
Cutler, A., & Carter, D. (1987). The predominance of strong initial syllables in the English vocabulary. Computer Speech and Language, 2, 133–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cutler, A., Mehler, J., Norris, D., & Segui, J. (1989). Limits of bilingualism. Nature, 340, 229–230.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 113–121.Google Scholar
Cutler, A., & Otake, T. (1994). Mora or phoneme? Further evidence for language-specific listening. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 824–844.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dell, F. (1995). Consonant clusters and phonological syllables in French. Lingua, 95, 5–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durand, J., & Lyche, C. (2008). French liaison in the light of corpus data. Journal of French Language Studies, 18, 33–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flege, J. (1995). Second-language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In Strange, W. (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 233–273). Timonium, MD: York Press.Google Scholar
Flege, J. (2002). Interactions between the native and second-language phonetic systems. In Burmeister, P., Piske, T., & Rohde, A. (Eds.), An integrated view of language development: Papers in honor of Henning Wode (pp. 217–244). Trier, Germany: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag.Google Scholar
Fônagy, I. (1979). Gamme sémantique des coups de glotte dans le français moderne [Semantic range of glottal stops in modern French]. Le Français dans le Monde, 143, 43–46.Google Scholar
Fougeron, C. (2001). Articulatory properties of initial segments in several prosodic constituents in French. Journal of Phonetics, 29, 109–135.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golato, P. (2002). Word parsing by late-learning French-English bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 417–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gow, D., & Gordon, P. (1995). Lexical and prelexical influences on word segmentation: Evidence from priming. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 21, 344–359.Google ScholarPubMed
Grosjean, F. (1988). Exploring the recognition of guest words in bilingual speech. Language and Cognitive Processes, 3, 233–274.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ito, K., & Strange, W. (2009). Perception of allophonic cues to English word boundaries by Japanese second language learners of English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 2348–2360.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kucera, H., & Francis, W. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.Google Scholar
Lehiste, I. (1960). An acoustic-phonetic study of internal open juncture. Phonetica, Supplementum, 5, 1–54.Google Scholar
Li, P. (1996). Spoken word recognition of code-switched words by Chinese–English bilinguals. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 757–774.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lombardi, L. (2002). Coronal epenthesis and markedness. Phonology, 19, 219–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marian, V., Blumenfeld, H., & Kaushanskaya, M. (2007). The Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire (LEAP-Q): Assessing language profiles in bilinguals and multilinguals. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 50, 940–967.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Maye, J., Weiss, D. J., & Aslin, R. N. (2008). Statistical phonetic learning in infants: Facilitation and feature generalization. Developmental Science, 11, 122–134.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McQueen, J. (1998). Segmentation of continuous speech using phonotactics. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 21–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McQueen, J., & Cutler, A. (1992). Words within words: Lexical statistics and lexical access. In Ohala, J., Neary, T., & Derwing, B. (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Spoken Language Processing (Vol. 1, pp. 221–224). Edmonton, Canada: University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Mehler, J., Dommergues, J. Y., Frauenfelder, U., & Segui, J. (1981). The syllable’s role in speech segmentation. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 20, 298–305.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nakatani, L., & Dukes, K. (1977). Locus of segmental cues to word juncture. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 62, 714–719.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Peperkamp, S., Le Calvez, R., Nadal, J.-P., & Dupoux, E. (2006). The acquisition of allophonic rules: Statistical learning with linguistic constraints. Cognition, 101, B31–B41.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Quené, H. (1992). Durational cues for word segmentation in Dutch. Journal of Phonetics, 20, 331–350.Google Scholar
Riney, T., Takagi, N., Ota, K., & Uchida, Y. (2007). The intermediate degree of VOT in Japanese initial voiceless stops. Journal of Phonetics, 35, 439–443.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Newport, E. L., & Aslin, R. N. (1996). Word segmentation: The role of distributional cues. Journal of Memory and Language, 35, 606–621.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shatzman, K., & McQueen, J. (2006). Segment duration as a cue to word boundaries in spoken-word recognition. Perception and Psychophysics, 68, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Shoemaker, E. (2010). The exploitation of fine phonetic detail in the processing of L2 French. In VanPatten, B. & Jegerski, J. (Eds.), Research in second language processing and parsing. Amsterdam, the Netherlands: Benjamins.Google Scholar
Shoemaker, E. (2014). Durational cues to word recognition in spoken French. Applied Psycholinguistics, 35, 243–273.Google Scholar
Tyler, M., & Cutler, A. (2009). Cross-language differences in cue use for speech segmentation. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 126, 367–376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2006). First-language phonotactics in second-language listening. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 597–607.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Welby, P. (2007). The role of early fundamental frequency rises and elbows in French word segmentation. Speech Communication, 49, 28–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Williams, L. (1977). The voicing contrast in Spanish. Journal of Phonetics, 5, 169–184.CrossRefGoogle Scholar