University of Ottawa.
Basque Center on Cognition, Brain and Language, Donostia, Spain.
J Cogn Neurosci. 2022 Aug 1;34(9):1650-1669. doi: 10.1162/jocn_a_01886.
In our continuously globalizing world, cross-cultural and cross-linguistic communications are far from exceptional. A wealth of research has indicated that the processing of nonnative-accented speech can be challenging for native listeners, both at the level of phonology. However, few online studies have examined the underpinnings of accented speech recognition from the perspective of the nonnative listener, even though behavioral studies indicate that accented input may be easier to process for such individuals (i.e., the interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit. The current EEG study first examined the phonological and syntactic analysis of nonnative-accented speech among nonnative listeners. As such, 30 English learners of Spanish listened to syntactically correct and incorrect Spanish sentences produced in native and nonnative-accented Spanish. The violation in the incorrect sentences was caused by errors that are typical (i.e., gender errors; *la color) or atypical (i.e., number errors; *los color) for English learners of Spanish. Results indicated that nonnative listeners elicit a phonological mismatch negativity (PMN) when attending to speech produced by a native Spanish speaker. Furthermore, the nonnative listeners showed a P600 for all grammatical violations, indicating that they repair all errors regardless of their typicality or the accent in which they are produced. Follow-up analyses compared our novel data to the data of native listeners from the methodologically identical precursor study. These analyses showed that native and nonnative listeners exhibit directionally opposite PMN effects; whereas natives exhibited a larger PMN for English-accented Spanish, nonnatives displayed a larger PMN in response to native Spanish utterances (a classic interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit). An additional difference was observed at the syntactic level: Whereas natives repaired only atypical number errors when they were English-accented, nonnative participants exhibited a P600 in response to all English-accented syntactic errors, regardless of their typicality (a syntactic interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit). Altogether, these results suggest that accented speech is not inherently difficult to process; in fact, nonnatives may benefit from the presence of a nonnative accent. Thus, our data provide some of the first electrophysiological evidence supporting the existence of the classic interlanguage speech intelligibility benefit and its novel syntactic counterpart.
在我们这个不断全球化的世界中，跨文化和跨语言的交流再平常不过。大量研究表明，对于以英语为母语的人来说，处理非母语口音的言语既有音系层面的挑战。然而，很少有在线研究从非母语说话者的角度来考察带口音的言语识别的基础，尽管行为研究表明，对于这些人来说，带口音的输入可能更容易处理（即中介语言语可懂度优势）。当前的 EEG 研究首先考察了非母语说话者对带口音的言语的音系和句法分析。为此，30 名以西班牙语为母语的英语学习者聆听了以母语和带口音的西班牙语说出的句法正确和错误的西班牙语句子。错误出现在对英语学习者来说典型（即性别错误；*la color）或非典型（即数词错误；*los color）的句子中。结果表明，当非母语说话者注意到以母语西班牙语说话者说出的言语时，他们会引发音系不匹配负波（PMN）。此外，非母语说话者对所有语法错误都表现出 P600，表明他们会修复所有错误，而不论其典型性或错误所在的口音如何。后续分析将我们的新数据与方法上相同的前身研究中母语说话者的数据集进行了比较。这些分析表明，母语说话者和非母语说话者表现出方向相反的 PMN 效应；而母语说话者对带有英语口音的西班牙语表现出更大的 PMN，而非母语说话者对母语西班牙语表现出更大的 PMN（经典的中介语言语可懂度优势）。在句法层面上还观察到了另一个差异：母语说话者仅在语法错误带有英语口音时才会修复非典型的数词错误，而非母语说话者则会对所有带有英语口音的句法错误做出反应，而不论其典型性如何（句法中介语言语可懂度优势）。总的来说，这些结果表明，带口音的言语并非本质上难以处理；实际上，非母语说话者可能会从非母语口音的存在中受益。因此，我们的数据提供了一些支持经典中介语言语可懂度优势及其新的句法对应物存在的首批电生理证据。
