Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English

Braun, Bettina; Lemhöfer, Kristin; Mani, Nivedita

Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English

Dateien

Braun_0-280964.pdfGröße: 333.18 KBDownloads: 289

Datum

2011

Autor:innen

Braun, Bettina

Lemhöfer, Kristin

Mani, Nivedita

Open Access-Veröffentlichung

Open Access Green

Sammlungen

Linguistik

Publikationstyp

Zeitschriftenartikel

Publikationsstatus

Published

Erschienen in

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2011, 129(1), pp. 376-387. ISSN 0001-4966. eISSN 1520-8524. Available under: doi: 10.1121/1.3500688

Zusammenfassung

This paper investigated how foreign-accented stress cues affect on-line speech comprehension in British speakers of English. While unstressed English vowels are usually reduced to /ə/, Dutch speakers of English only slightly centralize them. Speakers of both languages differentiate stress by suprasegmentals (duration and intensity). In a cross-modal priming experiment, English listeners heard sentences ending in monosyllabic prime fragments--produced by either an English or a Dutch speaker of English--and performed lexical decisions on visual targets. Primes were either stress-matching ("ab" excised from absurd), stress-mismatching ("ab" from absence), or unrelated ("pro" from profound) with respect to the target (e.g., ABSURD). Results showed a priming effect for stress-matching primes only when produced by the English speaker, suggesting that vowel quality is a more important cue to word stress than suprasegmental information. Furthermore, for visual targets with word-initial secondary stress that do not require vowel reduction (e.g., CAMPAIGN), resembling the Dutch way of realizing stress, there was a priming effect for both speakers. Hence, our data suggest that Dutch-accented English is not harder to understand in general, but it is in instances where the language-specific implementation of lexical stress differs across languages.

Fachgebiet (DDC)

400 Sprachwissenschaft, Linguistik

Zitieren

ISO 690

BRAUN, Bettina, Kristin LEMHÖFER, Nivedita MANI, 2011. Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English. In: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 2011, 129(1), pp. 376-387. ISSN 0001-4966. eISSN 1520-8524. Available under: doi: 10.1121/1.3500688

BibTex

@article{Braun2011Perce-29985,
  year={2011},
  doi={10.1121/1.3500688},
  title={Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English},
  number={1},
  volume={129},
  issn={0001-4966},
  journal={The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America},
  pages={376--387},
  author={Braun, Bettina and Lemhöfer, Kristin and Mani, Nivedita}
}

RDF

<rdf:RDF
    xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/"
    xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
    xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
    xmlns:bibo="http://purl.org/ontology/bibo/"
    xmlns:dspace="http://digital-repositories.org/ontologies/dspace/0.1.0#"
    xmlns:foaf="http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/"
    xmlns:void="http://rdfs.org/ns/void#"
    xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#" > 
  <rdf:Description rdf:about="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/server/rdf/resource/123456789/29985">
    <dcterms:issued>2011</dcterms:issued>
    <dc:contributor>Lemhöfer, Kristin</dc:contributor>
    <dcterms:abstract xml:lang="eng">This paper investigated how foreign-accented stress cues affect on-line speech comprehension in British speakers of English. While unstressed English vowels are usually reduced to /ə/, Dutch speakers of English only slightly centralize them. Speakers of both languages differentiate stress by suprasegmentals (duration and intensity). In a cross-modal priming experiment, English listeners heard sentences ending in monosyllabic prime fragments--produced by either an English or a Dutch speaker of English--and performed lexical decisions on visual targets. Primes were either stress-matching ("ab" excised from absurd), stress-mismatching ("ab" from absence), or unrelated ("pro" from profound) with respect to the target (e.g., ABSURD). Results showed a priming effect for stress-matching primes only when produced by the English speaker, suggesting that vowel quality is a more important cue to word stress than suprasegmental information. Furthermore, for visual targets with word-initial secondary stress that do not require vowel reduction (e.g., CAMPAIGN), resembling the Dutch way of realizing stress, there was a priming effect for both speakers. Hence, our data suggest that Dutch-accented English is not harder to understand in general, but it is in instances where the language-specific implementation of lexical stress differs across languages.</dcterms:abstract>
    <dspace:hasBitstream rdf:resource="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/123456789/29985/1/Braun_0-280964.pdf"/>
    <foaf:homepage rdf:resource="http://localhost:8080/"/>
    <dcterms:rights rdf:resource="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/"/>
    <dspace:isPartOfCollection rdf:resource="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/server/rdf/resource/123456789/45"/>
    <dcterms:hasPart rdf:resource="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/bitstream/123456789/29985/1/Braun_0-280964.pdf"/>
    <dcterms:available rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2015-02-24T09:15:57Z</dcterms:available>
    <void:sparqlEndpoint rdf:resource="http://localhost/fuseki/dspace/sparql"/>
    <dc:language>eng</dc:language>
    <bibo:uri rdf:resource="http://kops.uni-konstanz.de/handle/123456789/29985"/>
    <dcterms:isPartOf rdf:resource="https://kops.uni-konstanz.de/server/rdf/resource/123456789/45"/>
    <dc:contributor>Mani, Nivedita</dc:contributor>
    <dc:contributor>Braun, Bettina</dc:contributor>
    <dc:creator>Lemhöfer, Kristin</dc:creator>
    <dc:date rdf:datatype="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime">2015-02-24T09:15:57Z</dc:date>
    <dc:creator>Braun, Bettina</dc:creator>
    <dcterms:title>Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English</dcterms:title>
    <dc:rights>terms-of-use</dc:rights>
    <dc:creator>Mani, Nivedita</dc:creator>
  </rdf:Description>
</rdf:RDF>

Universitätsbibliographie

Ja