Miller J L, Grosjean F
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA.
Lang Speech. 1997 Jul-Sep;40 ( Pt 3):277-88. doi: 10.1177/002383099704000304.
The importance of vowel duration for specifying vowel contrasts differs across languages. In English, for example, a number of vowel pairs are acoustically differentiated by both temporal and spectral information, whereas in standard French temporal information plays a much more minor role. Gottfried and Beddor (1988) reported that the effectiveness of vowel duration in perception varies accordingly: For native speakers of English, but not native speakers of standard French, a change in vowel duration affected the perceptual identity of a vowel contrast. We tested the hypothesis that the relative prominence of vowel duration within different dialects of a given language also has perceptual consequences. Vowel duration plays a much more important role in the phonological system of Swiss French than standard French. Given this, we predicted that native speakers of Swiss French, unlike native speakers of standard French, would use temporal information when identifying vowels. Our prediction was confirmed. These findings indicate that just as there are cross-language differences in fundamental aspects of speech perception, so too are there cross-dialect differences, and they support the view that the perceptual mapping between acoustic signal and vowel category is sensitive to global aspects of the listener's phonological system.
元音时长对于区分元音对立的重要性在不同语言中存在差异。例如，在英语中，许多元音对在声学上通过时间和频谱信息得以区分，而在标准法语中，时间信息所起的作用要小得多。戈特弗里德和贝多尔（1988年）报告称，元音时长在感知中的有效性也相应地有所不同：对于以英语为母语的人来说，元音时长的变化会影响元音对立的感知特性，但对于标准法语的母语使用者来说则不然。我们检验了这样一个假设，即给定语言的不同方言中元音时长的相对突出性也会产生感知上的结果。在瑞士法语的语音系统中，元音时长比标准法语中起着更为重要的作用。鉴于此，我们预测，与标准法语的母语使用者不同，瑞士法语的母语使用者在识别元音时会利用时间信息。我们的预测得到了证实。这些发现表明，正如在语音感知的基本方面存在跨语言差异一样，也存在跨方言差异，并且它们支持这样一种观点，即声学信号与元音类别之间的感知映射对听者语音系统的整体方面很敏感。
