28.2955, Diss: (Dis)Connecting perception and production: Training native speakers of Spanish on the English /i/ - /ɪ/ distinction

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-28-2955. Thu Jul 06 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 28.2955, Diss: (Dis)Connecting perception and production: Training native speakers of Spanish on the English /i/ - /ɪ/ distinction

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Date: Thu, 06 Jul 2017 15:21:50
From: Mari Sakai [ms2335 at georgetown.edu]
Subject: (Dis)Connecting perception and production: Training native speakers of Spanish on the English /i/ - /ɪ/ distinction

 
Institution: Georgetown University 
Program: Department of Linguistics 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2016 

Author: Mari Sakai

Dissertation Title: (Dis)Connecting perception and production: Training native
speakers of Spanish on the English /i/ - /ɪ/ distinction 

Linguistic Field(s): Language Acquisition
                     Phonology
                     Psycholinguistics


Dissertation Director(s):
Lourdes Ortega
Tracey Derwing
Jennifer Nycz

Dissertation Abstract:

This dissertation features three experiments that investigated how perception
and production are connected in the acquisition of second language (L2) phones
by comparing the effectiveness of two modality-specific trainings and their
respective potential for cross-modality gains. Participants were native
speakers of Spanish with advanced English proficiency, and the targets were
the English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/.

In Experiment 1, participants (n=15) received perception-only training; they
heard auditory exemplars of the target phonemes but never produced the sounds.
In Experiment 2, two variations of a production-only training were compared
that either allowed or denied access to the auditory feedback loop. A first
group (n=14) underwent training using a computer program that provided
real-time visual representations of spoken vowels. They never heard any other-
produced auditory tokens of the target sounds, although they could hear the
sound of their own voices. A second group (n=15) underwent the same training,
but wore noise-cancelling headphones and listened to white noise. This ensured
that they never heard other- or self- generated tokens of the target phonemes,
for the first time in the literature truly isolating production from all
auditory influence. All participants in both experiments completed a battery
of pre- and post-tests in perception and production, and they were also
compared against a control group (n=15) and two baselines: a group of native
speakers of English (n=20), and a bilingual group (n=16) who was deemed to
have acquired /i/ and /ɪ/. In Experiment 3, the two baselines were directly
compared in order to test their efficacy as benchmarks for phonetic training
experiments.

Results revealed that: (1) perception-only training led to large gains in
perception and no sizeable improvements in production; (2) production-only
training led to variable results for production, and medium-sized improvements
in perception; (3) access to the auditory feedback loop provided a benefit to
production; (4) access to or denial of the auditory feedback loop did not
affect cross-modal learning in perception; and (5) bilinguals are a fitting,
and for many purposes likely sufficient, comparison baseline group in L2
speech training experiments.

The dissertation contributes novel theoretical, methodological, and
educational insights to the L2 speech training literature.




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