ERIC Number: EJ970261
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2012-May
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0749-596X
EISSN: N/A
Resolving Ambiguity in Familiar and Unfamiliar Casual Speech
Tuinman, Annelie; Mitterer, Holger; Cutler, Anne
Journal of Memory and Language, v66 n4 p530-544 May 2012
In British English, the phrase "Canada aided" can sound like "Canada raided" if the speaker links the two vowels at the word boundary with an intrusive /r/. There are subtle phonetic differences between an onset /r/ and an intrusive /r/, however. With cross-modal priming and eye-tracking, we examine how native British English listeners and non-native (Dutch) listeners deal with the lexical ambiguity arising from this language-specific connected speech process. Together the results indicate that the presence of /r/ initially activates competing words for both listener groups; however, the native listeners rapidly exploit the phonetic cues and achieve correct lexical selection. In contrast, The Dutch-native advanced L2 listeners to English failed to recover from the /r/-induced competition, and failed to match native performance in either task. The /r/-intrusion process, which adds a phoneme to speech input, thus causes greater difficulty for L2 listeners than connected-speech processes which alter or delete phonemes. (Contains 2 tables and 4 figures.)
Descriptors: Priming, Language Patterns, Cues, Phonetics, Phonemes, Figurative Language, Indo European Languages, Speech, Familiarity, Vowels, Eye Movements, Second Languages, Second Language Learning, English (Second Language), Native Speakers
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
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