TY - GEN
T1 - Recognizing words across regional accents : the role of perceptual assimilation in lexical competition
AU - Best, Catherine T.
AU - Shaw, Jason A.
AU - Clancy, Elizabeth
PY - 2013
Y1 - 2013
N2 - Unfamiliar regional accents disrupt spoken word recognition by L2 and L1 learners and L1 adults, and confuse ASR and smart systems. Little is known, however, about which aspects of non-native accents hinder word recognition, or what processes are involved. We assessed how Australian English (AusE) listeners' recognition of words in unfamiliar accents is affected by two types of cross-accent perceptual assimilation: I) other-accent phones that constitute 'deviant' versions of the matching AusE phonemes (Category Goodness assimilation: CG); 2) phones that cross a native phonological boundary, i.e., assimilate to mismatching AusE phonemes (Category Shift: CS). Eyetracking ("visual world") revealed the timecourse of lexical competition during online identification of words spoken in Jamaican (JaME: vowel differences from AusE) and Cockney English (CknE: consonant differences), while choosing among four printed choice words: target, onset and offset competitors, unrelated distracter. Recognition was slower, and both competitor types were considered more and longer for JaME and CknE than AusE pronunciations; these effects were stronger for CS than CG differences. We conclude that: I) perceptual assimilation plays a key role in cross-accent word recognition; 2) lexical competition involves not only onsets but also later aspects of words; 3) vowel and consonant variations affect lexical competition similarly.
AB - Unfamiliar regional accents disrupt spoken word recognition by L2 and L1 learners and L1 adults, and confuse ASR and smart systems. Little is known, however, about which aspects of non-native accents hinder word recognition, or what processes are involved. We assessed how Australian English (AusE) listeners' recognition of words in unfamiliar accents is affected by two types of cross-accent perceptual assimilation: I) other-accent phones that constitute 'deviant' versions of the matching AusE phonemes (Category Goodness assimilation: CG); 2) phones that cross a native phonological boundary, i.e., assimilate to mismatching AusE phonemes (Category Shift: CS). Eyetracking ("visual world") revealed the timecourse of lexical competition during online identification of words spoken in Jamaican (JaME: vowel differences from AusE) and Cockney English (CknE: consonant differences), while choosing among four printed choice words: target, onset and offset competitors, unrelated distracter. Recognition was slower, and both competitor types were considered more and longer for JaME and CknE than AusE pronunciations; these effects were stronger for CS than CG differences. We conclude that: I) perceptual assimilation plays a key role in cross-accent word recognition; 2) lexical competition involves not only onsets but also later aspects of words; 3) vowel and consonant variations affect lexical competition similarly.
UR - http://handle.uws.edu.au:8081/1959.7/533238
UR - http://www.interspeech2013.org/
M3 - Conference Paper
SP - 2128
EP - 2132
BT - Proceedings of the 14th Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association (Interspeech 2013), 25-29 August 2013, Lyon, France
PB - International Speech Communication Association
T2 - International Speech Communication Association. Conference
Y2 - 25 August 2013
ER -