Doctoral Dissertation Research: The perception and production of prominence in Spanish by heritage speakers and L2 learners

博士论文研究：传统语言使用者和第二语言学习者对西班牙语重要性的认知和产生

• 批准号: 1424329
• 负责人: Jose Hualde
• 金额: $ 1.28万
• 依托单位: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
• 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: 2014-08-01 至 2016-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1424329&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; perception; production

Spanish is the second most-spoken language in the U.S., after English, and 17% of the country's population self-identify as Hispanic or Latino/a. A significant percentage of U.S.-Latinos are bilingual to different degrees. Most U.S.-born Latinos have Spanish as their heritage language, but are dominant in English. Given the demographic importance of this population and an increased awareness in the research community of the benefits of bilingualism, determining the linguistic competence of these heritage speakers of Spanish in their two languages is a socially-relevant topic of research.Although heritage language acquisition is recently gaining more attention, research in this area is still very scarce. This dissertation will contribute to a better understanding of heritage speakers' linguistic system by examining their phonology, more specifically, the use of word- and sentence-level stress cues in the perception and production of Spanish by US Spanish heritage speakers. Although word stress is contrastive in both Spanish and English, it is realized differently in the two languages. Unlike English in which segmental cues (i.e., individual sounds like consonants and vowels) play a critical role in the distinction between stressed and unstressed syllables, in Spanish the distinction occurs more on the suprasegmental level (i.e., pitch, amplitude, and duration). Therefore, studies have shown that English listeners experience great difficulty in perceiving stress in Spanish. Using a set of psycholinguistic experiments, this dissertation examines whether Spanish heritage speakers successfully attend to suprasegmental cues when they perceive Spanish stress. Moreover, Spanish heritage speakers' production will be acoustically analyzed to investigate whether they effectively use suprasegmental cues when they produce Spanish stress. Results between their perception and production will be compared to see whether different patterns are found in these two domains. Since it has been reported that heritage speakers grow up hearing the heritage language more frequently than speaking it, asymmetrical acquisition of perception and production is likely to occur. Spanish heritage speakers' performance will be compared to that of Spanish monolinguals and English second language learners of Spanish, in order to see whether Spanish heritage speakers differ from these two groups, and, if so, in which aspects and to what extent. Analyzing the ways in which heritage speakers may differ from monolingual speakers and second language learners will help determine the best methodologies to achieve balanced competence in two languages.

西班牙语是美国第二大语言，仅次于英语，该国 17% 的人口自认为是西班牙裔或拉丁裔。很大比例的美国拉丁裔人都不同程度地使用双语。大多数在美国出生的拉丁裔人都以西班牙语为传统语言，但以英语为主。考虑到这一人群的人口重要性以及研究界对双语好处的认识不断提高，确定这些说西班牙语的传统语言使用者的两种语言的语言能力是一个与社会相关的研究课题。尽管传统语言习得最近受到越来越多的关注，但该领域的研究仍然非常缺乏。本论文将通过研究他们的音韵学，更具体地说，美国西班牙语传统使用者在感知和生产西班牙语时使用单词和句子级重音线索，有助于更好地理解传统使用者的语言系统。尽管西班牙语和英语中的单词重音是对比的，但两种语言的实现方式不同。英语中，音段线索（即辅音和元音等单个声音）在区分重读音节和非重音音节中发挥着关键作用，而西班牙语则不同，西班牙语中的区别更多地发生在超音段层面（即音高、幅度和持续时间）。因此，研究表明英语听众很难感知西班牙语的重音。本文通过一系列心理语言学实验，研究了说西班牙语的人在感知西班牙语压力时是否成功地注意到了超语段线索。此外，将对西班牙语传统使用者的发音进行声学分析，以调查他们在发出西班牙语重音时是否有效地使用了超音段线索。将比较他们的感知和生产之间的结果，看看在这两个领域是否发现不同的模式。据报道，传统语言使用者在成长过程中听到传统语言的频率比说传统语言的频率更高，因此很可能会出现感知和生产的不对称习得。西班牙语传统使用者的表现将与西班牙语单一语言者和西班牙语的英语第二语言学习者的表现进行比较，以了解西班牙语传统使用者与这两个群体是否存在差异，如果有的话，在哪些方面以及程度如何。分析传统使用者与单语使用者和第二语言学习者可能存在的差异，将有助于确定实现两种语言能力平衡的最佳方法。