Resilience of English vowel perception across regional accent variation

Laboratory Phonology

Catherine T. Best¹  Bronwen G. Evans²  Paul Foulkes³  Jennifer Hay⁴  Karen E. Mulak⁵  Jason A. Shaw⁶  Gerard Docherty⁷ 

[1] Department of Linguistics, Yale University, New Haven CT 06510;Arts, Education and Law, Griffith University, Brisbane QLD 4111;Department of Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, University College London, London WC1E 6BT;Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD;New Zealand Institute of Language, Brain and Behaviour, University of Canterbury, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch 8140;The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Penrith NSW 2751, AU;The MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University, Penrith NSW 2751;

关键词: vowel perception;    sociophonetic variation;    English accents;    perceptual learning;    Perceptual Assimilation Model;   

DOI  :  10.5334/labphon.87

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In two categorization experiments using phonotactically legal nonce words, we tested Australian English listeners’ perception of all vowels in their own accent as well as in four less familiar regional varieties of English which differ in how their vowel realizations diverge from Australian English: London, Yorkshire, Newcastle (UK), and New Zealand. Results of Experiment 1 indicated that amongst the vowel differences described in sociophonetic studies and attested in our stimulus materials, only a small subset caused greater perceptual difficulty for Australian listeners than for the corresponding Australian English vowels. We discuss this perceptual tolerance for vowel variation in terms of how perceptual assimilation of phonetic details into abstract vowel categories may contribute to recognizing words across variable pronunciations. Experiment 2 determined whether short-term multi-talker exposure would facilitate accent adaptation, particularly for those vowels that proved more difficult to categorize in Experiment 1. For each accent separately, participants listened to a pre-test passage in the nonce word accent but told by novel talkers before completing the same task as in Experiment 1. In contrast to previous studies showing rapid adaptation to talker-specific variation, our listeners’ subsequent vowel assimilations were largely unaffected by exposure to other talkers’ accent-specific variation.

【 授权许可】

Unknown