McCullough Elizabeth A, Clopper Cynthia G, Wagner Laura
University of Washington, USA.
Ohio State University, USA.
Lang Speech. 2019 Mar;62(1):115-136. doi: 10.1177/0023830917743277. Epub 2017 Nov 30.
Although adult listeners can often identify a talker's region of origin based on his or her speech, young children typically fail in dialect perception tasks, and little is known about the development of regional dialect representations from childhood into adulthood. This study explored listeners' understanding of the indexical importance of American English regional dialects across the lifespan. Listeners between 4 and 79 years old in the Midwestern United States heard talkers from the Midland, Northern, Southern, and New England regions in two regional dialect perception tasks: identification and discrimination. The results showed that listeners as young as 4-5 years old understand the identity-marking significance of some regional dialects, although adult-like performance was not achieved until adolescence. Further, the findings suggest that regional dialect perception is simultaneously impacted by the specific dialects involved and the cognitive difficulty of the task.
尽管成年听众通常能够根据说话者的语音识别其原籍地区，但幼儿在方言感知任务中通常表现不佳，而且对于从童年到成年的地区方言表征的发展了解甚少。本研究探讨了听众在整个生命周期中对美国英语地区方言索引重要性的理解。美国中西部地区4至79岁的听众在两项地区方言感知任务（识别和辨别）中听取了来自中部、北部、南部和新英格兰地区的说话者的声音。结果表明，年仅4至5岁的听众理解一些地区方言的身份标记意义，尽管直到青春期才达到类似成人的表现。此外，研究结果表明，地区方言感知同时受到所涉及的特定方言和任务的认知难度的影响。
