Kondaurova Maria V, Francis Alexander L
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA.
J Acoust Soc Am. 2008 Dec;124(6):3959. doi: 10.1121/1.2999341.
Two studies explored the role of native language use of an acoustic cue, vowel duration, in both native and non-native contexts in order to test the hypothesis that non-native listeners' reliance on vowel duration instead of vowel quality to distinguish the English tense/lax vowel contrast could be explained by the role of duration as a cue in native phonological contrasts. In the first experiment, native Russian, Spanish, and American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat/bit continuum varying in nine perceptually equal spectral and duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectrum, but showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. In the second experiment, three tests examined listeners' use of vowel duration in native contrasts. Duration was equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three groups. However, English listeners relied more on duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing than did native Spanish or Russian listeners, and Spanish listeners relied on duration more than did Russian listeners. Results suggest that, although allophonic experience may contribute to cross-language perceptual patterns, other factors such as the application of statistical learning mechanisms and the influence of language-independent psychoacoustic proclivities cannot be ruled out.
两项研究探讨了在母语和非母语环境中，母语对声学线索——元音时长的运用所起的作用，以检验这样一个假设：非母语听众依靠元音时长而非元音质量来区分英语中的松紧元音对立，这一现象可以通过时长作为母语音位对立线索的作用来解释。在第一个实验中，请以俄语、西班牙语为母语的听众以及以美式英语为母语的听众，从一个由/biːt/到/bɪt/的连续体中识别刺激音，该连续体在九个感知上相等的频谱和时长步长上变化。以英语为母语的听众主要依靠频谱，但也表现出对时长的一定依赖。说俄语和西班牙语者则完全依靠时长。在第二个实验中，则通过三项测试来考察听众在母语对立中对元音时长的运用情况。时长对于所有三个群体感知词汇重音同样重要，但以英语为母语者在将时长作为元音后辅音浊音的线索方面，比以西班牙语或俄语为母语者更依赖时长，且说西班牙语者比说俄语者更依赖时长。结果表明，虽然音位变体经验可能会促成跨语言的感知模式，但其他因素，如统计学习机制的应用以及与语言无关的心理声学倾向的影响，也不能排除。
