Processing Relationships Between Language-Being-Spoken and Other Speech Dimensions in Monolingual and Bilingual Listeners

Abstract

While indexical information is implicated in many levels of language processing, little is known about the internal structure of the system of indexical dimensions, particularly in bilinguals. A series of three experiments using the speeded classification paradigm investigated the relationship between various indexical and non-linguistic dimensions of speech in processing. Namely, we compared the relationship between a lesser-studied indexical dimension relevant to bilinguals, which language is being spoken (in these experiments, either Mandarin Chinese or English), with: talker identity (Experiment 1), talker gender (Experiment 2), and amplitude of speech (Experiment 3). Results demonstrate that language-being-spoken is integrated in processing with each of the other dimensions tested, and that these processing dependencies seem to be independent of listeners' bilingual status or experience with the languages tested. Moreover, the data reveal processing interference asymmetries, suggesting a processing hierarchy for indexical, non-linguistic speech features.

Crosslinguistic perceptions of /s/ among English, French, and German listeners

“…Previous work has considered the judgments listeners can make when listening to languages they do not know. For example, Eisenstein (1982) found that English learners at different levels of proficiency had the same relative status ranking of English varieties as native English listeners ("Standard English" as higher than both "black English" and "New York English"), but that more proficient listeners more closely resembled native listeners' ratings (cf., Major, 2007;Vaughn & Bradlow, 2017). As these studies did not control for the specific linguistic variables driving the responses, it might be the case that listeners of nonfamiliar languages use different strategies than native speakers despite similar judgments of social meaning.…”

Information encoding and transmission profiles of first-language (L1) and second-language (L2) speech

“…This experience-dependent L1-L2 imbalance is evident in L1 versus L2 speech patterns. Just as listeners can identify individual talkers (e.g., Schweinberger & Zaske, 2018 ) and languages (e.g., Vaughn & Bradlow, 2017 ) from short speech samples, listeners can also determine whether an utterance was produced in L1 or L2 speech (i.e., sounds “unaccented” or “foreign-accented”) from short snippets of speech in a known language ( Flege, 1984 ; Munro, Derwing & Burgess, 2003 , 2010 ) and even in an unknown language ( Bond, Stockmal & Markus, 2003 , 2008 ; Major, 2007 ). These observations suggest patterns of speech production associated with an L1 or L2 speech “mode” regardless of the language being spoken or of language-specific L1-L2 interactions.…”