Effects of Native Language and Linguistic Exposure on Non-Native Listeners' Use of Prosodic Cues in Speech Segmentation

母语和语言接触对非母语听众在语音分段中使用韵律提示的影响

• 批准号: 1423905
• 负责人: Annie Tremblay
• 金额: $ 25.9万
• 依托单位: University of Kansas Center for Research Inc
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2014
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2014-08-15 至 2019-01-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1423905&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Effects; Native; Language; Linguistic; Exposure

Speech is a continuous flow of sounds where no single device explicitly marks word boundaries. A crucial challenge for language learners is that the cues that signal word boundaries differ across languages; thus, a speaker's experience with her native language may be misleading when attempting to segment a second language into words. Specifying how adult language learners recognize words in continuous speech is very important, first because it can help resolve key theoretical debates about how language learning and language comprehension take place in adults. More precisely, it can shed light on whether (and if so, the extent to which) the adult brain is sufficiently plastic to develop sensitivity to new segmentation cues and the factors that modulate whether or not this learning is possible. This research can therefore have important implications for cognitive and linguistic sciences. Furthermore, speech segmentation is essential to successful communication among multilingual speakers. As our society is becoming increasingly multilingual, languages have become intrinsic components of K-12 and college curricula, and computational linguists and computer scientists have striven to develop technologies that could afford efficient communication among multilingual speakers. Investigating the factors that influence how adult language learners segment a second language into words can thus have important implications for the teaching of languages and for the development of communication technologies (e.g., automatic speech recognition).This research focuses on the influence of the native language and of recent linguistic exposure on adult language learners' use of prosodic cues, specifically pitch, in speech segmentation. Its primary aim is to determine how the similarities and differences between the native language and second language affect adult language learners' ability to use prosodic cues in speech segmentation. Two hypotheses are tested: (i) the Prosodic Assimilation Hypothesis: Second-language prosodic systems that are similar to, yet different from, native-language prosodic systems are assimilated and thus more difficult to learn in speech segmentation than second-language prosodic systems that are very different from native-language prosodic systems; and (ii) the Cue-Weighting Transfer Hypothesis: The functional load of segmentation cues in the native language is carried over to the second language. A secondary aim of this research is to assess the effect of recent linguistic exposure on speech segmentation. A third hypothesis is tested: (iii) Probabilistic Speech Segmentation Hypothesis: The speech processing system uses a single set of speech segmentation strategies that reflect the probabilities of cues to word boundaries across the native language and second language. To test these hypotheses, this research focuses on native French, Korean, English, and Dutch listeners with or without knowledge of French or Korean as second languages. Listeners will complete visual-world eye-tracking and artificial-language segmentation experiments.

语音是连续的声音流，没有任何单一设备明确标记单词边界。语言学习者面临的一个关键挑战是，不同语言之间表示单词边界的线索是不同的。因此，当说话者试图将第二语言分割成单词时，其母语的经验可能会产生误导。明确成人语言学习者如何识别连续言语中的单词非常重要，首先因为它可以帮助解决有关成人如何进行语言学习和语言理解的关键理论争论。更准确地说，它可以揭示成人大脑是否具有足够的可塑性（如果是的话，其程度）能够对新的分割线索以及调节这种学习是否可能的因素产生敏感性。因此，这项研究对认知和语言科学具有重要意义。此外，语音分割对于多语言使用者之间的成功沟通至关重要。随着我们的社会变得越来越多语言，语言已经成为 K-12 和大学课程的内在组成部分，计算语言学家和计算机科学家一直在努力开发能够在多语言使用者之间进行有效沟通的技术。因此，研究影响成人语言学习者如何将第二语言分割成单词的因素对于语言教学和通信技术（例如自动语音识别）的发展具有重要意义。本研究重点关注母语和最近的语言接触对成人语言学习者在语音分割中使用韵律线索（特别是音调）的影响。其主要目的是确定母语和第二语言之间的异同如何影响成人语言学习者在语音分段中使用韵律线索的能力。测试了两个假设：（i）韵律同化假设：与母语韵律系统相似但又不同的第二语言韵律系统被同化，因此在语音分段中比与母语韵律系统非常不同的第二语言韵律系统更难学习； (ii) 线索加权转移假设：母语中分段线索的功能负载转移到第二语言。这项研究的第二个目的是评估最近的语言接触对语音分割的影响。测试第三个假设： (iii) 概率语音分割假设：语音处理系统使用一组语音分割策略，反映跨母语和第二语言的单词边界线索的概率。为了检验这些假设，本研究重点关注母语为法语、韩语、英语和荷兰语的听众，无论是否了解法语或韩语作为第二语言。听众将完成视觉世界的眼球追踪和人工语言分割实验。