The Effect of Dialect Experience on the Perception of Regional American Vowel Variation: Identification, Discrimination and Sociolinguistic Norms

在美国国家科学基金会的支持下，瓦莱丽·弗里德兰博士将进行为期18个月的语言学研究，调查元音感知如何受到方言体验的影响。在过去的十年里，社会语言学家对影响美国不同地区说话者元音系统的低水平语音变化进行了描述。其中一些变化在地区元音发音上产生了更大的趋同，但许多变化实际上导致了更大的差异。美国的非裔美国人群体似乎对这些转变的参与有限，这些转变主要与欧洲裔美国人的语言有关。虽然这些研究阐明了元音是如何在全国范围内产生的，但人们对不同地区和种族群体内的说话者如何感知这些变化却知之甚少。此外，这种变化对跨方言可理解性的影响尚未得到探讨。在先前支持的研究和实验语音感知研究奠定的基础上，本项目探讨了语音感知如何受到社会和语言经验的影响，解决了整个生命周期的变化问题以及社会和区域差异对感知的影响。为了更好地了解这种生产性变化对我们如何听和理解语音的影响，本研究将调查元音产生的变化如何影响说话者对语音和音位边界的认识，以及这种跨越方言和种族群体的差异趋势是否会导致更大的跨方言混淆。通过仪器合成感知测试、生产数据和跨方言比较的结合，本研究希望深入了解一些关于声音变化的起源和扩散以及感知和生产在整个生命周期中的流动性的流行说法。在这些领域的研究应该有理论和应用上的好处，从促进关于声音变化本质的基本理论，到围绕国家教育课程和测试标准的发展的讨论，成人语言学习者调整其语音系统方面的能力，以及在教材开发中的跨方言理解问题。在教育领域之外，对受不同地区和民族方言经验影响的说话者的生产和感知范围进行比较研究，可以帮助开发基于计算机的语音技术。如果研究能够校准美国主要地区和社会群体之间的生产和感知差异，那么语音生成和语音识别软件广泛应用所面临的困难就不是不可克服的

With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Valerie Fridland will conduct eighteen months of linguistic research investigating how vowel perception is affected by dialect experience. In the past decade, sociolinguists have provided descriptive accounts of low level phonetic changes that are affecting the vowel systems of speakers in various regions of the U.S. Some of these changes are creating greater convergence in regional vowel production, but many are actually contributing to greater divergence. African-American groups in the U.S. appear to have only limited participation in many of these shifts, which are predominately associated with European-American speech. While such research illuminates how vowel sounds are produced across the country, little is known about how such changes are perceived by speakers within and among regions and ethnic groups. In addition, the impact of such changes on cross-dialectal intelligibility has not been explored. Building on previously supported research and groundwork laid by experimental speech perception research, this project examines how speech perception is shaped by both social and linguistic experience, addressing questions of change across the lifespan and the impact of social and regional variation on perception. To gain a better understanding of the impact such productive changes have on how we hear and understand speech, this research will investigate how shifts in vowel production shape speakers' recognition of phonetic and phonemic boundaries and whether such divergent trends across dialects and ethnic groups lead to greater cross-dialect confusion. Through the combination of instrumentally-synthesized perception tests, production data and cross-dialect comparison, the study hopes to gain insight into some of the prevailing claims about the origins and diffusion of sound change and the fluidity of perception and production across the lifespan.Research in these areas should have both theoretical and applied benefits, from contributing to basic theories about the nature of sound change to the discussion surrounding the growth of national education standards for curricula and testing, the ability of adult language learners to adjust aspects of their phonological system, and issues of cross-dialectal comprehension in the development of educational materials. Beyond the educational sphere, comparative examination of both the productive and perceptual range of speakers affected by different regional and ethnic dialect experience can assist in the development of computer-based voice technology. Difficulties faced in the wide application of speech production and voice recognition software need not be insurmountable if research can calibrate productive and perceptual differences among major regional and social groups across the U.S.