Interactions among phonetic reduction and sociolinguistic variation in word recognition

Abstract

A number of linguistic factors influence the phonetic realization of segments within a word, especially vowels within the word. These factors include lexical frequency, lexical neighborhood density, semantic predictability, and mention within a discourse. Sociolinguistic factors, such as speaking style and regional dialect, are also known to influence the phonetic realization of vowels. This study investigates the ways in which phonetic reduction caused by the linguistic factors and sociolinguistic variation from speaking style and talker dialect affect lexical processing. Participants are asked to identify single word tokens in noise that vary in frequency, density, predictability, discourse mention, speaking style, and talker dialect in a fully crossed design. We expect participants to identify words containing vowels with less phonetic reduction, a clear speaking style, and a familiar regional dialect with greater accuracy than words with more reduced vowels, a plain speaking style, or a less familiar dialect. The experimental design allows us to explore the individual contributions to word intelligibility of each of the linguistic and sociolinguistic factors independently and in complex interactions.