Shi Lu-Feng
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders, Long Island University, Brooklyn Campus, Brooklyn, NY.
J Am Acad Audiol. 2017 Apr;28(4):352-365. doi: 10.3766/jaaa.16094.
Heritage speakers acquire their native language from home use in their early childhood. As the native language is typically a minority language in the society, these individuals receive their formal education in the majority language and eventually develop greater competency with the majority than their native language. To date, there have not been specific research attempts to understand word recognition by heritage speakers. It is not clear if and to what degree we may infer from evidence based on bilingual listeners in general.
This preliminary study investigated how heritage speakers of Spanish perform on an English word recognition test and analyzed their phoneme errors.
A prospective, cross-sectional, observational design was employed.
Twelve normal-hearing adult Spanish heritage speakers (four men, eight women, 20-38 yr old) participated in the study. Their language background was obtained through the Language Experience and Proficiency Questionnaire. Nine English monolingual listeners (three men, six women, 20-41 yr old) were also included for comparison purposes.
Listeners were presented with 200 Northwestern University Auditory Test No. 6 words in quiet. They repeated each word orally and in writing. Their responses were scored by word, word-initial consonant, vowel, and word-final consonant. Performance was compared between groups with Student's t test or analysis of variance. Group-specific error patterns were primarily descriptive, but intergroup comparisons were made using 95% or 99% confidence intervals for proportional data.
The two groups of listeners yielded comparable scores when their responses were examined by word, vowel, and final consonant. However, heritage speakers of Spanish misidentified significantly more word-initial consonants and had significantly more difficulty with initial /p, b, h/ than their monolingual peers. The two groups yielded similar patterns for vowel and word-final consonants, but heritage speakers made significantly fewer errors with /e/ and more errors with word-final /p, k/.
Data reported in the present study lead to a twofold conclusion. On the one hand, normal-hearing heritage speakers of Spanish may misidentify English phonemes in patterns different from those of English monolingual listeners. Not all phoneme errors can be readily understood by comparing Spanish and English phonology, suggesting that Spanish heritage speakers differ in performance from other Spanish-English bilingual listeners. On the other hand, the absolute number of errors and the error pattern of most phonemes were comparable between English monolingual listeners and Spanish heritage speakers, suggesting that audiologists may assess word recognition in quiet in the same way for these two groups of listeners, if diagnosis is based on words, not phonemes.
传承语者在幼儿期通过家庭使用习得母语。由于母语在社会中通常是少数群体语言，这些个体接受的正规教育使用的是多数群体语言，最终他们对多数群体语言的掌握程度超过了母语。迄今为止，尚未有专门的研究尝试去了解传承语者的单词识别情况。目前尚不清楚我们是否能够以及在多大程度上可以从基于一般双语听众的证据中进行推断。
这项初步研究调查了西班牙语传承语者在英语单词识别测试中的表现，并分析了他们的音素错误。
采用前瞻性、横断面、观察性设计。
12名听力正常的成年西班牙语传承语者（4名男性，8名女性，年龄在20 - 38岁之间）参与了该研究。他们的语言背景通过语言经验和能力问卷获得。还纳入了9名英语单语听众（3名男性，6名女性，年龄在20 - 41岁之间）用于比较。
在安静环境中向听众呈现200个西北大学听觉测试第6号单词。他们口头和书面重复每个单词。他们的回答按照单词、单词首辅音、元音和单词尾辅音进行评分。使用学生t检验或方差分析比较组间表现。特定组的错误模式主要是描述性的，但对于比例数据，使用95%或99%置信区间进行组间比较。
当按单词、元音和尾辅音检查回答时，两组听众的得分相当。然而，西班牙语传承语者误认的单词首辅音明显更多，并且在识别首音/p、b、h/时比他们的单语同龄人困难得多。两组在元音和单词尾辅音方面呈现出相似的模式，但传承语者在/e/上的错误明显更少，而在单词尾/p、k/上的错误更多。
本研究报告的数据得出了双重结论。一方面，听力正常的西班牙语传承语者可能以与英语单语听众不同的模式误认英语音素。并非所有音素错误都能通过比较西班牙语和英语音系轻易理解，这表明西班牙语传承语者在表现上与其他西班牙 - 英语双语听众不同。另一方面，英语单语听众和西班牙语传承语者在大多数音素的错误绝对数量和错误模式上相当，这表明如果诊断基于单词而非音素，听力学家可以以相同的方式评估这两组听众在安静环境中的单词识别情况。
