The development of regional accent discrimination in children: evidence from Spanish / El desarrollo de la discriminación de acentos regionales en niños: evidencia desde el español

This study explores children’s ability to discriminate between regional accents in Spanish. One hundred and seven Chilean children aged three to seven years old were asked to differentiate whether two sentences were spoken with the same accent or not. Results indicate that the ability to differentiate between regional accents emerges around age five, a result which contradicts previous studies. The discussion analyses possible explanations for this difference, particularly regarding the differences between languages according to how transparent or opaque they are, and the possible impact of those characteristics in the development of regional accent discrimination abilities.     

Working memory and second language accent acquisition

We explored the proposal that overt repetition of verbal information improves the acquisition of a native accent in a second language. Mandarin‐speaking Chinese learners of English were recorded while repeating and reading out English sentences before and after one of three treatments: (a) repeating native English sentences subvocally, “covert repetition,” (b) repeating sentences out loud, “overt repetition,” and (c) unfilled time of comparable duration. The sentences were rated by English speakers for their nativeness, fluency, and intelligibility. Overt repetition improved accent rating for readout sentences. Covert repetition did not. Neither condition improved accent rating for repeated sentences, suggesting that immediate repetition depends on temporary rather than long‐term representations. Our results provide some support for the use of overt repetition in accent learning. From a theoretical perspective, an interpretation is proposed in terms of a separation between phonological and articulatory coding within the phonological loop component of working memory.     

对比焦点的认知加工及其与重读的关系

信息结构作为语言学的一个重要概念,在语言学、心理学和神经科学等领域进行了广泛的研究。其中,从焦点和背景这一维度对信息结构的研究最多。通常情况下,人们会重读焦点信息。本研究使用ERP技术,通过对话语篇考察了不同位置对比焦点和重读的一致性对口语语篇理解的影响。研究发现,对比焦点不受位置影响,稳定诱发中后部分布正波,且小句末尾焦点诱发的正效应早于小句内部。此外,重读相对于不重读在小句内部和末尾都诱发了正效应,并且出现在较晚的时间窗口。尽管焦点不重读相对于一致性重读没有诱发任何脑电效应,但背景重读相对背景不重读在小句末尾诱发了一个早期负效应。本研究表明,听者按照不同的方式、即时使用不同位置的对比焦点和重读信息建构语篇表征。     

Tic Tac Toe: effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production

Importance and predictability each have been argued to contribute to acoustic prominence. To investigate whether these factors are independent or two aspects of the same phenomenon, na?ve participants played a verbal variant of Tic Tac Toe. Both importance and predictability contributed independently to the acoustic prominence of a word, but in different ways. Predictable game moves were shorter in duration and had less pitch excursion than less predictable game moves, whereas intensity was higher for important game moves. These data also suggest that acoustic prominence is affected by both speaker-centered processes (speaker effort) and listener-centered processes (intent to signal important information to the listener).     

‘You were not born here,so you are classless,you are free!’ Social class and cultural complex in analysis

The unconscious impact of differences in culture and social class is discussed from the perspective of an analyst practising in London whose ‘foreign accent’ prevents patients from placing her within the social stratifications by which they feel confined. Because she is seen by them as an analyst from both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ the British psycho‐social fabric and cultural complex, this opens a space in the transference that enables fuller exploration of the impact of the British social class system on patients’ experience of themselves and their world. The paper considers this impact as a trans‐generational trauma of living in a society of sharp socio‐economic divisions based on material property. This is illustrated with the example of a patient who, at the point of moving towards the career to which he aspired, was unable to separate a sense of personal identity from the social class he so desperately wanted to leave behind and walk the long avenue of individuation. The dearth of literature on the subject of class is considered, and the paper concludes that not enough attention is given to class identification in training.     

重读与信息结构对语篇理解加工的影响

该研究利用口语动窗技术和双重任务范式,探索了重读与信息结构的匹配关系对语篇理解加工的影响、以及其发挥作用的内部机制。结果表明：与控制条件相比,不一致性重读阻碍语篇的理解加工,而一致性重读对语篇理解的促进作用相对不明显;重读促进焦点词汇的加工,而不重读促进非焦点词汇的加工,从而说明重读影响语篇理解不仅仅是由于它能调控听者的注意力分配,更重要的是重读的有无传达着不同的信息加工方式。     

修饰语的焦点和重音对话语理解的影响

本研究分别采用韵律合适度判断和理解任务,通过两个实验探讨修饰语的焦点和重音之间的关系对话语理解的影响。实验通过操纵答句中的论元是否出现在问句中,变化问句的信息状态;通过操纵答句的不同句子成份重读,变化答句的重读位置。实验结果发现：新的修饰语重读,旧的修饰语不重读;修饰语不投射焦点,即修饰语重读不将焦点投射到修饰语的中心语上。     

Is it or isn’t it: Listeners make rapid use of prosody to infer speaker meanings

A visual world experiment examined the time course for pragmatic inferences derived from visual context and contrastive intonation contours. We used the construction It looks like an X pronounced with either (a) a H^* pitch accent on the final noun and a low boundary tone, or (b) a contrastive L + H^* pitch accent and a rising boundary tone, a contour that can support contrastive inference (e.g., It LOOKS_L+H*like a zebra_L-H%… (but it is not)). When the visual display contained a single related set of contrasting pictures (e.g. a zebra vs. a zebra-like animal), effects of LOOKS_L+H* emerged prior to the processing of phonemic information from the target noun. The results indicate that the prosodic processing is incremental and guided by contextually-supported expectations. Additional analyses ruled out explanations based on context-independent heuristics that might substitute for online computation of contrast.     

论元结构的焦点和重音关系对话语理解的影响

本研究采用韵律合适度判断和理解任务,通过两个实验探讨论元结构的焦点和重音之间的关系对话语理解的影响。实验通过操纵答句中的论元是否出现在问句中,变化问句的信息状态;通过操纵答句不同句子成份重读,变化答句的重读位置。实验结果发现:新论元负载焦点必须重读;重读论元将焦点投射到句子的高一级单元上,但动词必须重读;旧论元不负载焦点不必重读,但负载焦点的动词必须重读。     

Dialectal differences in hemispheric specialization for Japanese lexical pitch accent

Language experience can alter perceptual abilities and the neural specialization for phonological contrasts. Here we investigated whether dialectal differences in the lexical use of pitch information lead to differences in functional lateralization for pitch processing. We measured cortical hemodynamic responses to pitch pattern changes in native speakers of Standard (Tokyo) Japanese, which has a lexical pitch accent system, and native speakers of ‘accentless’ dialects, which do not have any lexical tonal phenomena. While the Standard Japanese speakers showed left-dominant responses in temporal regions to pitch pattern changes within words, the accentless dialects speakers did not show such left-dominance. Pitch pattern changes within harmonic-complex tones also elicited different brain activation patterns between the two groups. These results indicate that the neural processing of pitch information differs depending on the listener’s native dialect, and that listeners’ linguistic experiences may further affect the processing of pitch changes even for non-linguistic sounds.