|
|
 E-mail this message to a friend
|
|
Title:
|
Assimilation phonologique et reconnaissance des mots
|
|
Author:
|
Isabelle Darcy
|
|
Email:
|
click here to access email
|
|
Homepage:
|
http://www.ling.uni-potsdam.de/~darcy
|
|
Degree Awarded:
|
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, EHESS
, PhD in Linguistics
|
|
Degree Date:
|
2003
|
|
Linguistic Subfield(s):
|
Phonology
|
|
Director(s):
|
Stig Eliasson
Emmanuel Dupoux
|
|
|
Abstract:
|
|
|
The word recognition system copes easily with the great variability which characterizes spoken language. One particular source of variation comes from adjustments of certain articulatory properties of sounds to surrounding sounds, as in the case of consonantal assimilation. We asked whether listeners access phonological knowledge when assessing assimilations, and whether this stored knowledge is language specific. Native speakers provided judgements in a word-detection task. We found that, when presented with an assimilation process which exists in their native language, subjects discriminated legal vs. non-legal assimilations, demonstrating prior conditioning by phonological knowledge. That this mechanism is language-specific is shown by the fact that subjects did not perform this discrimination when faced with a non-native assimilation process. We then asked at which level of processing this knowledge operates: is it linked to the lexical representation of each word, or does it work independently of the lexical level ? We tested the different predictions made by several models of lexical access concerning compensation for assimilation, and showed that this knowledge intervenes pre-lexically, independently of the activation of a lexical form. In a third part, we examined the plasticity of these compensation mechanisms during second language learning in bilingual French and English native speakers. We observed that beginners use the phonological system of L1 to compensate for assimilations that exist in L2, but that more advanced learners developed a specific system dedicated to L2 within a few years of exposure. We conclude that the word recognition system is able to compensate for phonological variation at a pre-lexical processing level. This system involves an abstract language-specific phonological knowledge which can be adapted to a new language, and does so by creating a new phonological database, independent from that of L1.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Page Updated: 28-Nov-2009
Please report any bad links or misclassified data
LINGUIST Homepage | Read
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.
|
|
