The role of lexical representation in the recognition of phonologically reduced and unreduced variants by non-native listeners

TitleThe role of lexical representation in the recognition of phonologically reduced and unreduced variants by non-native listeners
Publication TypePresentation
Year of Publication2013
Conference NameDag van de Fonetiek 2013
AuthorsCoridun, Sascha, Mirjam Ernestus, and Louis ten Bosch
PublisherNederlandse Vereniging voor Fonetische Wetenschappen
Conference LocationUtrecht, The Netherlands
Abstract

In casual speech, words are often pronounced with fewer segments than in their citation forms. For instance, the French word renard ’fox’ may sound like rnard. Previous research has shown that non-native listeners have problems understanding these reduced pronunciation variants. The reason for this difficulty might be that during classes they mainly hear words pronounced in their citation forms and therefore lack lexical representations for reduced variants. We conducted a lexical decision experiment preceded by a learning phase in order to investigate whether Dutch listeners with a low proficiency level in French have problems understanding reduced variants (rnard) if they only learnt the unreduced variants (renard). In addition, we investigated the reverse: whether they have problems understanding the unreduced variants (renard) if they only learnt the reduced variants (rnard). We found that both reduced and unreduced variants were recognized faster and more accurately when these variants matched the variants that had been learnt. Surprisingly, unreduced variants were recognized faster than reduced variants in this match condition. In the mismatch condition, there was no significant difference. These findings suggest that factors independent of lexical representation contribute to the difficulties of non-native listeners to recognize reduced variants.