LINGUIST List 21.4691 Mon Nov 22 2010 Diss: Psycholing: Dautricourt: 'French Liaison: Linguistic and ...' Editor for this issue: Mfon Udoinyang <mfonlinguistlist.org> To post to LINGUIST, use our convenient web form at http://linguistlist.org/LL/posttolinguist.cfm. Directory         1.     Robin Dautricourt , French Liaison: Linguistic and sociolinguistic influences on speech perception Message 1: French Liaison: Linguistic and sociolinguistic influences on speech perception Date: 22-Nov-2010 From: Robin Dautricourt <rdautrichotmail.com> Subject: French Liaison: Linguistic and sociolinguistic influences on speech perception E-mail this message to a friend Institution: Ohio State University Program: Department of Linguistics Dissertation Status: Completed Degree Date: 2010 Author: Robin Dautricourt Dissertation Title: French Liaison: Linguistic and sociolinguistic influences on speech perception Linguistic Field(s): Psycholinguistics Subject Language(s): French (fra) Dissertation Director: Mary Esther Beckman Mark Pitt Shari R. Speer Dissertation Abstract: French liaison is a phonological process that takes place when an otherwise silent word-final consonant is pronounced before a following vowel-initial word. It is a process that has been evolving for centuries, and whose patterns of realization are influenced by a wide range of interacting linguistic and social factors. French speakers therefore not only have to adapt their lexical identification processes to words ending in liaison consonants, but they also have to learn the rules which govern when they could pronounce the liaison consonants, and when they should expect them to be pronounced by other speakers. This dissertation begins by establishing a comprehensive understanding of liaison production with a focus on the linguistic and social factors that influence its present day usage. The challenges which liaison presents to theories of word segmentation and speech perception are then established, followed by the presentation of a series of psycholinguistic experiments that manipulate some of the most salient factors that are known to influence liaison production (e.g. syntactic context, liaison consonant identity, speaker age, and speaker social class). The first experiment investigates the effects of liaison in four different environments, and not only provides evidence that liaison consonants can facilitate word recognition of the following vowel-initial word, but that this effect is more likely to take place in contexts where liaison consonants are more likely to occur in production. A series of three experiments then use auditory stimuli from a corpus of radio interviews and visual stimuli consisting of photographed individuals in order to explore the influences of age and social class on the perception of liaison. Ultimately, the hypothesis that listeners' expectations of speakers' social identities can influence speech perception is put to the test using a cross-modal priming paradigm. Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue Page Updated: 22-Nov-2010       About LINGUIST    |   Contact Us       While the LINGUIST List makes every effort to ensure the linguistic relevance of sites listed on its pages, it cannot vouch for their contents.