27.2061, Diss: English, Spanish, Lang Acq, Phonetics, Phonology, Psycholinguistics: Cynthia Blanco: 'Cross-language speech perception in context'

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LINGUIST List: Vol-27-2061. Thu May 05 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.2061, Diss: English, Spanish, Lang Acq, Phonetics, Phonology, Psycholinguistics: Cynthia Blanco: 'Cross-language speech perception in context'

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Date: Thu, 05 May 2016 10:44:08
From: Cynthia Blanco [cynthiapblanco at gmail.com]
Subject: Cross-language speech perception in context: Advantages for recent language learners and variation across language-specific acoustic cues

 
Institution: University of Texas at Austin 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2016 

Author: Cynthia Blanco

Dissertation Title: Cross-language speech perception in context: Advantages for 
recent language learners and variation across
language-specific acoustic cues 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Phonetics
                     Phonology
                     Psycholinguistics

Subject Language(s): English (eng)
                     Spanish (spa)


Dissertation Director(s):
Rajka Smiljanic
Colin Bannard

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation explores the relationship between language experience and
sensitivity to language-specific segmental cues by comparing cross-language
speech perception in monolingual English listeners and Spanish-English
bilinguals. The three studies in this project use a novel language
categorization task to test language-segment associations in listeners’ first
and second languages. Listener sensitivity is compared at two stages of
development and across a variety of language backgrounds. These studies
provide a more complete analysis of listeners’ language-specific phonological
categories than offered in previous work by using word-length stimuli to
evaluate segments in phonological contexts and by testing speech perception in
listeners’ first language as well as their second language. The inclusion of
bilingual children also allows connections to be drawn between previous work
on infants’ perception of segments and the sensitivities of bilingual adults.

In three experiments, participants categorized nonce words containing
different classes of English- and Spanish-specific sounds as sounding more
English-like or Spanish-like; target segments were either a phonemic cue, a
cue for which there is no analogous sound in the other language, or a phonetic
cue, a cue for which English and Spanish share the category but for which each
language varies in its phonetic implementation. The results reveal a largely
consistent categorization pattern across target segments. Listeners from all
groups succeeded and struggled with the same subsets of language-specific
segments. The same pattern of results held in a task where more time was given
to make categorization decisions. Interestingly, for some segments the late
bilinguals were significantly more accurate than monolingual and early
bilingual listeners, and this was the case for the English phonemic cues.
There were few differences in the sensitivity of monolinguals and early
bilinguals to language-specific cues, suggesting that the early bilinguals’
exposure to Spanish did not fundamentally change their representations of
English phonology, but neither did their proficiency in Spanish give them an
advantage over monolinguals. The comparison of adult listeners with children
indicates that the Spanish-speaking children who grow to be early bilingual
adults categorize segments more accurately than monolinguals – a pattern that
is neutralized in the adult results. These findings suggest that variation in
listener sensitivity to language-specific cues is largely driven by inherent
differences in the salience of the segments themselves. Listener language
experience modulates the salience of some of these sounds, and these
differences in cross-language speech perception may reflect how recently a
language was learned and under what circumstances.




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