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(Non-)Influence of nationality labels on the perception of final devoicing

(Non-)Influence of nationality labels on the perception of final devoicing. 6th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe. 01.07.2011 Marten Juskan. of fish and kangaroos. variable: short high front vowels ('fish and chips' stereotype)

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(Non-)Influence of nationality labels on the perception of final devoicing

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  1. (Non-)Influence of nationality labels on the perception of final devoicing 6th International Conference on Language Variation in Europe 01.07.2011 Marten Juskan

  2. of fish and kangaroos variable: short high front vowels ('fish and chips' stereotype) task: matching natural vowels to resynthesised ones (continuum from Au-like to NZ-like) conditions: label at top of answer sheet (either 'New Zealand' or 'Australian') presence of a stuffed toy in the room (either 'kiwi' or 'kangaroo') results: subjects in 'Australian'/'kangaroo' condition chose more Australian-like vowels subjects in 'NZ' condition chose more NZ-like vowels (cf. Hay et al. 2006 and Hay and Drager 2010) 2

  3. cognitiveprocess INDEXING long-termmemory L2[Rɪtn]female... GA[ɻɪɾn]male... RP[ɹɪtn]female... framework:exemplar theory L2[Rɪtn] RP[ɹɪtn] GA[ɻɪɾn] acousticsignal 3

  4. primary research question Will subjects perceive a German accent when they expect one, regardless of the acoustic material? 4

  5. test design variable: final devoicing (considered a salient feature of a German accent in English) task: forced decision task (minimal pairs) Conditions: 1. English- or German-speaking subject 2. label at the top of the screen (either 'English' or 'German') 5

  6. hypotheses • English-speaking subjects will make very few mistakes • participants in the 'German speaker' condition will have a higher error rate than those in the 'English speaker' condition • German-speaking subjects will make more mistakes overall • error rates in the 'German' or 'English' speaker condition will not differ significantly 6

  7. test stimuli • minimal pair list, recorded by a native speaker of RP • words differentiated by /b/-/p/, /d/-/t/, or /g/-/k/ respectively • 72 items, 36 test tokens, 36 dummy tokens • dummy tokens: opposition at beginning or in the middle of a wordmedal-metal, gum-come, bin-pin... • test tokens: opposition at the end of a wordnod-not, league-leak, robe-rope... 7

  8. artificial final devoicing editing of test tokens using Praat • cut off final plosive • mix final plosives to get an ambiguous sound • reattach this sound to each of the two bases individual mixture for every word pair fairly natural sounding test items no other part of the word was altered (cf. Kraljic et al. 2008) 8

  9. test layout GERMAN robe rope 9

  10. participants • 33 in total (20 females, 13 males) • 18 native speakers of English (9 in 'English speaker' and 9 in 'German speaker' condition) • 15 native speakers of German (8 in 'English speaker' and 7 in 'German speaker' condition) → 2291 data points in total 10

  11. results reaction times • native speakers of English have more exemplars indexed to 'English' • native speakers of German have more exemplars indexed to 'German' → more variation to work through? 11

  12. 1.8% 12.9% 3.3% 23.9% 31.4% 13.9% results regression tree for error rates 12

  13. results error rates (only test tokens) • no significant difference between the different speaker conditions • no gender effect → no exemplar priming effect? --------------------------------------------- abstract submission deadline 13

  14. results • G-E group:no linear development • G-G group:no linear development • E-E group:no linear development • E-G group:training effect!(cor = 0.17, p < 0.01) 14

  15. conclusion • English-speaking subjects will make very few mistakes → confirmed • participants in the 'German speaker' condition will have a higher error rate than those in the 'English speaker' condition → confirmed? • German-speaking subjects will make more mistakes overall → confirmed • error rates in the 'German' or 'English' speaker condition will not differ significantly → confirmed 15

  16. conclusion • subjects were more ready to perceive final devoicing when they expected it → an exemplar priming effect could be identified BUT: • the effect was small(difference of 8% [p < 0.01] in the first half of the test– problem of salience/conscious awareness?) • the effect disappeared in the course of the test → expectations create an initial perceptual bias wrong expectations can be corrected by 'objective' acoustic material 16

  17. bibliography Hay, Jennifer, Aaron Nolan and Katie Drager (2006) “From Fush to Feesh: Exemplar Priming in Speech Perception“. The Linguistic Review 23: 351-379. Hay, Jennifer and Katie Drager (2010) “Stuffed Toys and Speech Perception”. Linguistics 48: 865–892. Kraljic, Tanya, Susan E. Brennan and Arthur G. Samuel (2008) “Accommodating Variation: Dialects, Idiolects, and Speech Processing“. Cognition 107: 54-81. Niedzielski, Nancy (1999) “The Effect of Social Information on the Perception of Sociolinguistic Variables“. Journal of Language and Social Psychology 18: 62-85. Pierrehumbert, Janet (2006) “The next toolkit”. Journal of Phonetics 34: 516-530. 17

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