English Listeners' Use of Distributional and Acoustic-Phonetic Cues to Liaison in French: Evidence from Eye Movements
In: Language and speech, Jg. 57 (2014), Heft 3, S. 310-337
Online
academicJournal
- print, 2 p.3/4
Zugriff:
This study investigates English listeners' use of distributional and acoustic-phonetic cues to liaison in French. Liaison creates a misalignment of the syllable and word boundaries, but is signaled by distributional cues (/z/ is a frequent liaison but not a frequent word onset; /t/ is a frequent word onset but a less frequent liaison) and acoustic-phonetic cues (liaison consonants are 15 per cent shorter than word-initial consonants). English-speaking French learners completed a visual-world eye-tracking experiment in which they heard adjective-noun sequences where the pivotal consonant was /t/ (expected advantage for consonant-initial words) or /z/ (expected advantage for liaison-initial words). Their results were compared to those of native French speakers. Both groups showed an advantage for consonant-initial targets with /t/ but no advantage for consonant- or liaison-initial targets with /z/. Both groups' competitor fixations were modulated by the duration of the pivotal consonant, but only the learners' fixations to liaison-initial targets were modulated by the duration of the pivotal consonant. This suggests that English listeners use both top-down (distributional) and bottom-up (acoustic-phonetic) cues to liaison in French. Their greater reliance on acoustic-phonetic cues is hypothesized to stem in part from English, where such cues play an important role for locating word boundaries.
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English Listeners' Use of Distributional and Acoustic-Phonetic Cues to Liaison in French: Evidence from Eye Movements
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | TREMBLAY, Annie ; SPINELLI, Elsa |
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Zeitschrift: | Language and speech, Jg. 57 (2014), Heft 3, S. 310-337 |
Veröffentlichung: | London: Kingston Press Services, 2014 |
Medientyp: | academicJournal |
Umfang: | print, 2 p.3/4 |
ISSN: | 0023-8309 (print) |
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