LINGUIST List 17.2410
Mon Aug 28 2006
Diss: Lang Acquisition/Phonetics: Narayan: 'Acoustic-Perceptual Sal...'
Editor for this issue: Hannah Morales
<hannahlinguistlist.org>
Directory
1. Chandan
Narayan,
Dissertation AbstractAcoustic-Perceptual Salience and Developmental Speech Perception
Message 1: Dissertation AbstractAcoustic-Perceptual Salience and Developmental Speech Perception
Date: 27-Aug-2006
From: Chandan Narayan <cnarayanumich.edu>
Subject: Dissertation AbstractAcoustic-Perceptual Salience and Developmental Speech Perception
Institution: University of Michigan
Program: Department of Linguistics
Dissertation Status: Completed
Degree Date: 2006
Author: Chandan Narayan
Dissertation Title: Acoustic-Perceptual Salience and Developmental Speech Perception
Linguistic Field(s):
Language Acquisition
Phonetics
Subject Language(s): Filipino (fil)
Dissertation Director:
Patrice Speeter Beddor
Susan Gelman
Marilyn Shatz
Janet F. Werker
Dissertation Abstract:
Inspired by the notion that some typologically less common contrasts may beperceptually less salient than ubiquitous contrasts, this dissertationinvestigates the perception, by infants and adults, of a relativelyuncommon nasal place contrast (onset /na-ŋa/) against a more common nasalcontrast (/ma-na/) in order to assess the role of acoustic-perceptualsalience in the development of speech perception. Do perceptually lesssalient contrasts show a pattern of development different from thewell-known tendency for infants to successfully discriminate native andnon-native contrasts in young infancy? It is argued that phoneticcontrasts that are perceptually less salient than others may requirelanguage experience to be discriminated in infancy.
An acoustic analysis (Experiment 1) of onset /m n ŋ/ in Filipino showedthat, in the perceptually relevant F2xF3 space, [na] was closer to [ŋa]than to [ma]. When presented with these same stimuli in a discriminationtask (Experiment 2), English- and Filipino-speaking adults accuratelydiscriminated [ma]-[na], native to both language groups. The [na]-[ŋa]contrast, native to Filipino but not English speakers, was discriminated atchance level by the English listeners and was well discriminated by theFilipino listeners, although slightly but significantly less accuratelythan [ma]-[na]. When Filipino listeners were presented with the samecontrasts in two noisy listening conditions (Experiment 7), discriminationof [na]-[ŋa] fell to near chance levels in the noisier condition (-5dBSNR), while accuracy on [ma]-[na] remained above 90% in both noisyconditions. These findings suggest that the [ma]-[na] contrast isperceptually more salient than [na]-[ŋa] for adult listeners regardless oflanguage experience.
When English-hearing infants, aged 4-12 months, were presented with the twoFilipino contrasts (Experiments 3-5), they successfully discriminated the[ma]-[na] contrast but not [na]-[ŋa]. In Experiment 6, Filipino-hearinginfants successfully discriminated native [na]-[ŋa] at 10-12 months, butnot at 6-8 months. Taken together, the results suggest thatacoustic-perceptual salience affects the discrimination of nasal placecontrasts in infancy, with the less salient [na]-[ŋa] contrast being moredifficult to discriminate in infancy than more salient [ma]-[na]. Nativelanguage experience is required for the infant to perceptually segregateacoustically similar categories.
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