Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: Evidence from novel schwa words

Abstract

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /ʃənyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.

Unstressed Vowel Reduction Across Majorcan Catalan Dialects: Production and Spoken Word Recognition

“…For Sóller listeners, the representation of these same words includes [u], their own dialectal form, and [o], the form characteristic of the dialects that surround their own. The multiplicity of phonetic forms linked to a single lexical representation displayed by the Sóller listeners in our study does not need to be different in nature from that which has been revealed by prior studies on the processing of reduced or lenited speech (Bürki et al, 2011(Bürki et al, , 2010Bürki & Frauenfelder, 2012;Connine et al, 2008;Deelman & Connine, 2001;LoCasto & Connine, 2002;McLennan et al, 2003;Pitt, 2009;Ranbom & Connine, 2007;Sumner & Samuel, 2005) .…”

“…Several studies have tried to assess the impact of this type of variation on lexical processing. The focus so far has been on a small set of processes including word-final /t/ and /d/ glottalization (Deelman & Connine, 2001; Sumner & Samuel, 2005), /t/ and /d/ tapping (McLennan, Luce, & Charles-Luce, 2003), nasal flapping (Pitt, 2009; Ranbom & Connine, 2007) and schwa elision in American English (Connine, Ranbom, & Patterson, 2008; LoCasto & Connine, 2002) and French (Bürki, Alario, & Frauenfelder, 2011; Bürki, Ernestus, & Frauenfelder, 2010; Bürki & Frauenfelder, 2012). One of the main questions touched upon by this body of literature is whether all word variants, including the reduced or lenited forms, are equally effective at tapping into lexical representations in on-line spoken-word recognition.…”

Phonemes: Lexical access and beyond

“…Participants gave more looks to the picture of a pear as the VOT of the initial consonant approached the categorical boundary, which was taken as evidence that fine-grained phonetic differences within a phonemic category impact on word identification. (For similar conclusions based on other typicality effects, including vowel typicality, see Bürki & Frauenfelder, 2012 ; McMurray, Aslin, Tanenhaus, Spivey, & Subik, 2008 ; Trude & Brown-Schmidt, 2012 . See also Andruski, Blumstein, & Burton, 1994, for prototypicality effects in semantic priming).…”

How much does orthography influence the processing of reduced word forms? Evidence from novel-word learning about French schwa deletion

“…In these experiments, we combined three experimental methodologies: a novel-word learning paradigm, a picture-naming task, and visual-world eye-tracking. As discussed above, the novel-word learning paradigm has previously been employed in combination with a picture naming task in order to study the production of reduced pronunciation variants (e.g., Bürki & Frauenfelder, 2012; Bürki et al, 2012). Other studies (e.g., Magnuson, Tanenhaus, Aslin, & Dahan, 2003; Sulpizio & McQueen, 2012) have combined novel-word learning with the visual-world paradigm in order to investigate the time course of the recognition of spoken words that have just been learnt.…”