Doctoral Dissertation Research: Factors Affecting Incidental Formation of Novel Suprasegmental Categories

用第二语言听和发新音的困难会导致对目标语言的理解力降低，也会导致用母语人士容易理解的方式说话的困难。这可能导致痛苦的交互和潜在的放弃获取工作。研究和轶事证据强调了说非声调语言的人在试图在其他语言中形成新的声调类别时遇到的困难。本研究的结果将有助于我们更好地理解影响新声调类别习得过程的因素，对学习者和教师都有好处。在提出的实验中测试的因素是具体的教学考虑时，引入新的超片段类别。有了更多关于这些问题的基础知识，语言教师将有更广泛的工具，他们将能够开发最佳的方法来帮助学生更好地掌握音调类别。第二语言习得与第一语言习得的不同之处在于，学习者的注意力有可能外生地引导到目标语音类别上。然而，即使在第二语言习得中，大多数接触自然世界中新声音类别的机会也是通过与母语人士和媒体的互动偶然发生的，而不是通过实验室或课堂上的明确指导。因此，了解影响自然语音中新语音类别偶然形成的因素是很重要的。本研究通过让学习者专注于一个简单的视觉匹配任务来研究影响偶然习得新音调类别的因素，该任务由目标听觉类别的标记提供关于视觉目标位置的预测线索。这种附带学习范式允许在明确的、定向的训练中检查已知的影响新声音类别学习的因素。在附带学习过程中对影响新音调类别形成的因素的更多了解，将为我们在明确指导下的训练过程中对新声音类别形成的知识提供对比评估，从而更全面地了解人类如何处理语音并形成新的声音类别。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Difficulty hearing and producing new sounds in a second language leads to lowered comprehension of the target language and difficulty speaking in a way that can be easily understood by native speakers. This can lead to painful interactions and potential abandonment of the acquisition effort. Research and anecdotal evidence highlight the difficulty that speakers of non-tonal languages have when attempting to form novel tone categories in other languages. Results from the proposed research will provide a greater understanding of the factors that affect the process of acquisition of novel tone categories, benefitting both learners and teachers. Factors tested in the proposed experiments are specific to pedagogical considerations when introducing novel suprasegmental categories. With greater foundational knowledge regarding these issues, language teachers will have a wider range of tools with which they will be able to develop optimal methodologies for helping their students better acquire tone categories.Second language acquisition differs from first language acquisition in that it is possible to exogenously direct the learner’s attention to the target sound categories. However, even in second language acquisition, the majority of exposure to novel sound categories in the natural world occurs incidentally through interactions with native speakers and media, rather than through explicit instruction in a lab or in the classroom. Therefore, it is important to understand factors that affect the incidental formation of novel sound categories in natural speech. The proposed studies investigate factors affecting the incidental acquisition of novel tone categories by having learners focus on a simple visual matching task with tokens from the target auditory categories providing predictive clues about the location of the visual targets. This incidental learning paradigm permits the examination of factors known to affect novel sound category learning during explicit, directed training. A greater knowledge of factors impacting novel tone category formation during incidental learning will provide a contrastive evaluation of our knowledge of novel sound category formation during training with explicit instructions, leading to a more comprehensive understanding of how humans process speech sounds and form new sound categories.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.