Doctoral Dissertation Research: Individual-level Knowledge of an Incoming Phonemic Contrast

本论文的研究目标是帮助我们理解说话人如何处理声音变化的过程。它将结合联合收割机社会和心理语言学的方法，以比较个人的生产和感知的声音，这是新的语言品种，他们说。语言随时间变化的主要方式之一是声音类别（音素）的丢失和获得。如果改变声音会改变意义，那么声音就是语言中的音素范畴。例如，TH是英语中的一个音素，将TH更改为S会将单词THINK更改为SINK。如果一个人的语言中没有特定的语音，那么他在识别或使用该语音的任务中的表现会比一个人的语言中有特定语音的人差。学习一门新语言的人通常很难发出不熟悉的语音，或者区分两个语音。但是，如果一个说话者正处于这种语言变化的中间呢？这个扬声器在新的声音下会有怎样的表现，我们能对他们的声音系统中的音素数量说些什么？通过放大现在发生在西班牙塞维利亚市的声音变化，这个项目将挑战关于拥有一个声音类别意味着什么的假设。它将增加关于音素合并的知识，加入一个新的研究领域，扩展到日耳曼元音之外。在进行该项目时，研究人员将培训一名当地学生的语言研究技能。最后，本研究的重点是低声望的各种大陆西班牙语将支持的想法，社会和心理语言学研究的非标准品种，有助于我们的科学理解人类语言。S和TH是不同的声音类别在西班牙的大部分。在西班牙讲西班牙语的标准（“正确”）方式和英语一样使用这两种发音，因此用TH代替S可以改变例如，从“房子”到“狩猎”这项研究将在塞维利亚市进行，那里的说话者现在开始同时使用S和TH，而不仅仅是S（一种被称为“seseo”的模式）。有些说话者在只用S音和用两种音之间来回切换。这个项目通过观察这些说话者通常如何说话（他们使用TH的程度和时间）以及他们在使用这种声音的任务中的表现来检查他们的语言系统。社会语言学的采访将与一个年轻的成年人发言的样本进行。观察到的行为将与心理语言学实验中收集的数据进行比较。从这些研究中，研究者将评估扬声器的低和高层次的感知的声音S和TH，和心理表征的标准和非标准形式包含这些声音。社会语言学和心理语言学的研究结果将结合起来，形成一个整体的图片的个别语音系统之间的接触所产生的合并和未合并的品种。

The goal of this dissertation research is to contribute to our understanding of how speakers deal with sound change in progress. It will combine socio- and psycholinguistic approaches in order to compare individuals' production and perception of a sound that is new in the language variety that they speak. One of the major ways that languages change through time is by the loss and gain of sound categories (phonemes). A sound is a phoneme category in a language if changing the sound changes meaning. For example, TH is a phoneme in English, and changing TH to S changes the word THINK to SINK. A speaker whose language does not have a particular sound will perform worse on tasks that ask him to recognize or use that sound than a speaker whose language does have it. Individuals learning a new language typically struggle to produce unfamiliar sounds, or to tell two sounds apart. But what about a speaker who is in the middle of this kind of language change? How will this speaker perform with the new sound, and what can we say about the number of phonemes in their sound system? By zooming in on a sound change happening right now in the city of Seville, Spain, this project will challenge assumptions about what it means to have a sound category. It will add to knowledge about phoneme mergers, joining a new line of research expanding beyond Germanic vowels. In conducting the project, the researcher will train a local student in linguistic research skills. Finally, the focus of this study on a low-prestige variety of continental Spanish will support the idea that socio- and psycholinguistic studies of nonstandard varieties can contribute to our scientific understanding of human language.S and TH are different sound categories in most of Spain. The standard ("correct") way to speak Spanish in Spain uses both sounds as English does, so that replacing S with TH can change e.g., casa 'house' to caza 'hunt'. The research will be conducted in the city of Seville, where speakers are now beginning to use both S and TH, rather than just S (a pattern known as "seseo"). Some speakers go back and forth between using only S and using both sounds. This project examines these speakers' language systems by looking both at how they normally speak (how much they use TH, and when), and how well they perform on tasks with this sound. Sociolinguistic interviews will be conducted with a sample of young adult speakers. The behavior observed will be compared to data collected in a battery of psycholinguistic experiments. From these the researcher will evaluate the speakers' low and high-level perception of the sounds S and TH, and mental representations of standard and nonstandard forms containing these sounds. The results of the sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic studies will be combined to form a holistic picture of the individual phonological systems resulting from contact between merged and unmerged varieties.