Roadrunners and Eagles

Abstract

<jats:p>Our previous research on perception of gated casual English by university students suggests that ceteris paribus, Polish students are much more accurate than Greeks. A recent pilot study of casually-spoken Polish leads us to the conclusion that many shortcuts found in English are also common in Polish, so that similar perceptual strategies can be used in both languages, though differing in detail. Based on these preliminary results, it seems likely that perceptual strategies across languages tend towards the “eagle” approach - where a birds-eye view of the acoustic terrain without too much emphasis on detail is found - or the “roadrunner” approach, where phonetic detail is followed closely. In the former case, perceivers adjust easily to alternation caused by casual speech phonology while in the latter, perceivers expect little variation and possibly even find it confusing. Native speakers of Greek are “roadrunners”, since there is little phonological reduction in their language there is little difference, for example, between stressed and unstressed syllables. We suggest that native speakers of Polish join English speakers as “eagles”, which gives them a natural perceptual advantage in English. There is a conceptual similarity between this idea and that of the stress- or syllable-timed language, and we hypothesise that as in this case, there is a cline rather than a sharp division between eagles and roadrunners. As usual, more research is called for.</jats:p>

Perception of reduced forms in English by non-native users of English

“…Apart from undermining the role of lexical context for learners assumed in previous studies (its effects were observed for native users), the outcomes of the study throw certain doubts on the importance of typological differences. Its results are not in line with the findings of Shockey and Bond (2012) and Shockey and Ćavar (2013) . They found that Polish learners recognized reduction processes very well and that they were well equipped to identify reduced forms in English, thanks to the high frequency of reduction processes in Polish.…”

“…Shockey and Bond (2012) concluded that “[a] possible reason is that Poles have similar syllabic patterns in their own language, while Greek syllable structure is entirely different and, on the whole, simpler” ( Shockey and Bond, 2012 , p. 208). Shockey and Ćavar (2013) explained this finding further with language-specific differences, claiming that Greek learners of English are not accustomed to recognizing reduced forms affecting, e.g., consonant clusters, as Greek has few of them.…”

“…Polish learners of English, on the other hand, encounter fewer difficulties in recognizing English CCR processes. In a similar vein, a study by Shockey and Ćavar (2013) makes a number of phonotactics-related predictions, including those of Spanish, Latvian, and Greek learners of English.…”

“…Previous studies on native perception have typically addressed vowel reduction from the following angles: segmental context ( Mitterer and Ernestus, 2006 ; Mitterer et al, 2008 ; Zimmerer and Reetz, 2014 ), word context (e.g., Van De Ven et al, 2011 ), word probability ( van de Ven et al, 2012 ), speech rate ( Dilley and Pitt, 2010 ), phonotactics ( Spinelli and Gros-Balthazard, 2007 ), and syntax (e.g., Viebahn et al, 2015 ). As for the perception of vowel reduction by non-native listeners, the variables were as follows: high proficiency learners ( Nouveau, 2012 ; ten Bosch et al, 2016 ; Wong et al, 2017 ), phonotactics ( Shockey and Ćavar, 2013 ; Ernestus et al, 2017 ), speech styles ( Smiljanic and Bradlow, 2011 ), voice onset time ( Sumner, 2011 ), vowel formants and duration ( Van Dommelen and Hazan, 2012 ), frequency of occurrence and exposure to a word ( Brand and Ernestus, 2018 ), and word exemplars effects ( Morano et al, 2019 ). Regarding the non-native perception of consonantal reduction, the following factors have been considered so far: the proficiency level of learners ( Pearman, 2004 ), linguistic typological differences ( Shockey and Bond, 2012 ; Shockey and Ćavar, 2013 ), and a stay abroad in an English-speaking country ( Shockey and Bond, 2012 ).…”

“…As for the perception of vowel reduction by non-native listeners, the variables were as follows: high proficiency learners ( Nouveau, 2012 ; ten Bosch et al, 2016 ; Wong et al, 2017 ), phonotactics ( Shockey and Ćavar, 2013 ; Ernestus et al, 2017 ), speech styles ( Smiljanic and Bradlow, 2011 ), voice onset time ( Sumner, 2011 ), vowel formants and duration ( Van Dommelen and Hazan, 2012 ), frequency of occurrence and exposure to a word ( Brand and Ernestus, 2018 ), and word exemplars effects ( Morano et al, 2019 ). Regarding the non-native perception of consonantal reduction, the following factors have been considered so far: the proficiency level of learners ( Pearman, 2004 ), linguistic typological differences ( Shockey and Bond, 2012 ; Shockey and Ćavar, 2013 ), and a stay abroad in an English-speaking country ( Shockey and Bond, 2012 ).…”