Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Representation and Processing of Vowel Contrasts

博士论文研究：元音对比的表示和处理

• 批准号: 2314478
• 负责人: Jie Zhang
• 金额: $ 1.84万
• 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: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-07-15 至 2024-09-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314478&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Representation; Processing

This doctoral dissertation project uses a series of speech recognition experiments to investigate how the characteristics of vowel sounds are stored in the mind and the role they play in speech comprehension. In order for listeners to comprehend spoken language, the mind must successfully match acoustic information that the listener hears to specific words they know. For example, a native English speaker must be sensitive to the difference in vowel sounds between the words BED and BAD to hear and retrieve the right word in their mind. By comparing the results of experiments in American English with another language, the project analyzes to what extent these vowel characteristics may be stored and processed in a language-specific fashion. As well as making important contributions to the field of psycholinguistics, this research has implications for the teaching of challenging vowel distinctions in the classroom for second language learners, particularly non-native learners of English and native English learners of other languages.In American English, the importance of the distinction between so-called 'tense' versus 'lax' vowel sounds, such as in the words 'beat' versus 'bit', is well known. However, it is unclear how English vowel tenseness is represented in the mind and the consequence this has on spoken word recognition. As for other languages, there is disagreement about whether certain vowel sounds are distinguished by tenseness, as in English, or by other types of vowel characteristics. The project uses a combination of 'cross-modal priming' tasks, in which listeners must recognize one word right after hearing a different one, and 'discrimination' tasks, in which listeners must identify whether two consecutive sounds/words were the same or different. These experiments provide evidence for the way the mind categorizes the characteristics of vowel sounds, as well as how these characteristics lead to the activation of different types of mental representation during speech comprehension: phonological (sound structure), morphological (word structure), and semantic (meaning).This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

该博士学位论文项目使用一系列的语音识别实验来研究元音声音的特征如何存储在思维中，以及它们在语音理解中的作用。为了使听众理解口语，大脑必须成功地匹配听众听到的声学信息与他们知道的特定单词。例如，以英语为母语的人必须对床和坏单词之间的元音声音的差异敏感，以听到和检索他们脑海中正确的单词。通过将美国英语实验的结果与另一种语言进行比较，该项目分析这些元音特征可以在多大程度上以特定语言的方式存储和处理。除了对心理语言学领域做出重要贡献外，这项研究还对第二语言学习者的教学教学具有挑战性元音区分的教学，尤其是英语的非本地英语学习者和其他语言的本地英语学习者。在美国英语中的重要性，在所谓的“紧张'vers” lax'lax'vowel neve ins ins the vers vers vers vers vers vers vers vers'''但是，目前尚不清楚英语元音在思想中如何表示及其对口语识别的后果。至于其他语言，关于某些元音的声音是由英语，英语还是其他类型的元音特征来区分的，存在分歧。该项目结合了“跨模式启动”任务，其中听众在听到另一个单词后必须立即识别一个单词和“歧视”任务，在该任务中，听众必须确定两个连续的声音/单词是相同还是不同。这些实验提供了思维对元音声音特征的分类方式的证据，以及这些特征如何导致语音理解过程中不同类型的心理表示：语音（声音结构），形态（单词结构）和语义（含义）（含义）（含义）。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过评估了概念的范围，而这些奖项的支持者被视为众所周知的范围。