Devil or angel in the details?
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Catherine T. Best
Abstract
Perceptual attunement to native speech begins early in life, becoming the foundation for efficient native word recognition, yet simultaneously constraining perception of non-native segmental contrasts. It is less well understood how these two sides of native listening handle natural phonetic variations. To recognize a given uttered token as a particular word, listeners must recognize its specific phonetic details as relevant either linguistically or indexically (e.g., talker identity, mood, accent). Perceivers cannot recognize varying tokens of a word by filtering or normalizing phonetic variation. Rather, they must exploit both types of variability to differentiate the words being said from who is saying them. This requires a grasp of two complementary principles: phonological distinctiveness, i.e., phonetic differences that are critical to lexical distinctions, and phonological constancy, which keeps word identity intact across lexically irrelevant variations. Perceptual attunement supports discovery of those principles, fostering word recognition and the ensuing acquisition of morphology, syntax and literacy.
Abstract
Perceptual attunement to native speech begins early in life, becoming the foundation for efficient native word recognition, yet simultaneously constraining perception of non-native segmental contrasts. It is less well understood how these two sides of native listening handle natural phonetic variations. To recognize a given uttered token as a particular word, listeners must recognize its specific phonetic details as relevant either linguistically or indexically (e.g., talker identity, mood, accent). Perceivers cannot recognize varying tokens of a word by filtering or normalizing phonetic variation. Rather, they must exploit both types of variability to differentiate the words being said from who is saying them. This requires a grasp of two complementary principles: phonological distinctiveness, i.e., phonetic differences that are critical to lexical distinctions, and phonological constancy, which keeps word identity intact across lexically irrelevant variations. Perceptual attunement supports discovery of those principles, fostering word recognition and the ensuing acquisition of morphology, syntax and literacy.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
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Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
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Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
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Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
-
Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
-
Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
-
Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
