Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford, OX1 2HG, United Kingdom; School of Education, Oxford Brookes University, Harcourt Hill Campus, Oxford, OX2 9AT, United Kingdom.
Faculty of Linguistics, Philology and Phonetics, University of Oxford, Walton Street, Oxford, OX1 2HG, United Kingdom.
Neuropsychologia. 2020 Jun;143:107474. doi: 10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2020.107474. Epub 2020 Apr 22.
This paper examines the processing of height and place contrasts in vowels in words and pseudowords, using mismatch negativity (MMN) to determine firstly whether asymmetries resulting from underlying representations found in the processing of vowels in isolation will remain in a word context and secondly whether there is any difference in the way these phonological differences manifest in pseudowords. The stimuli are two sets of English ablaut verbs and corresponding pseudowords (sit ~ sat/*sif*saf and get ~ got/*gef*gof) contrasting in vowel height ([high] vs. [low]) and place of articulation ([coronal] vs. [dorsal]). In line with previous research, the results show a processing asymmetry for place of articulation in both words and nonwords, while different vowel heights result in symmetrical MMN patterns. These findings confirm that an underspecification account provides the best explanation for featural processing and that phonological information is independent of lexical status.
本文考察了在单词和假词中元音的高度和位置对比的加工过程，使用失匹配负波（MMN）来确定：第一，是否源自孤立元音处理的基础表示的不对称性会在单词语境中保留下来；第二，这些语音差异在假词中表现的方式是否存在差异。刺激物是两组英语元音变音动词及其相应的假词（sitsat/*sif*saf 和 getgot/*gef*gof），在元音高度（[高]与[低]）和发音位置（[前位]与[后位]）上形成对比。与之前的研究一致，结果表明在单词和非单词中都存在发音位置的加工不对称性，而不同的元音高度则导致对称的 MMN 模式。这些发现证实了特征处理的非特定性解释是最好的解释，并且语音信息与词汇状态无关。
