The direct and indirect effects of the phonotactic constraints in the 
listener's native language on the comprehension of reduced and unreduced word 
pronunciation variants in a foreign language

Ernestus, Mirjam; Kouwenhoven, Huib; Van Mulken, Margot

doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2017.02.003

Item

ITEM ACTIONSEXPORT

Add to Basket

Local TagsRelease HistoryDetailsSummary

Released

Journal Article

The direct and indirect effects of the phonotactic constraints in the listener's native language on the comprehension of reduced and unreduced word pronunciation variants in a foreign language

MPS-Authors

/persons/resource/persons1469

Ernestus, Mirjam
Research Associates, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;
Centre for Language Studies , Radboud University Nijmegen;

/persons/resource/persons71693

Kouwenhoven, Huib
Centre for Language Studies , Radboud University Nijmegen;
International Max Planck Research School for Language Sciences, MPI for Psycholinguistics, Max Planck Society;

External Resource

No external resources are shared

Fulltext (restricted access)

There are currently no full texts shared for your IP range.

Fulltext (public)

paper_ErnestusKouwenhovenVanMulken_JPHON15-57_revision3.pdf
(Preprint), 665KB

Supplementary Material (public)

There is no public supplementary material available

Citation

Ernestus, M., Kouwenhoven, H., & Van Mulken, M. (2017). The direct and indirect effects of the phonotactic constraints in the listener's native language on the comprehension of reduced and unreduced word pronunciation variants in a foreign language. Journal of Phonetics, 62, 50-64. doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2017.02.003.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-001M-0000-002C-8319-3

Abstract

This study investigates how the comprehension of casual speech in foreign languages is affected by the phonotactic constraints in the listener’s native language. Non-native listeners of English with different native languages heard short English phrases produced by native speakers of English or Spanish and they indicated whether these phrases included can or can’t. Native Mandarin listeners especially tended to interpret can’t as can. We interpret this result as a direct effect of the ban on word-final /nt/ in Mandarin. Both the native Mandarin and the native Spanish listeners did not take full advantage of the subsegmental information in the speech signal cueing reduced can’t. This finding is probably an indirect effect of the phonotactic constraints in their native languages: these listeners have difficulties interpreting the subsegmental cues because these cues do not occur or have different functions in their native languages. Dutch resembles English in the phonotactic constraints relevant to the comprehension of can’t, and native Dutch listeners showed similar patterns in their comprehension of native and non-native English to native English listeners. This result supports our conclusion that the major patterns in the comprehension results are driven by the phonotactic constraints in the listeners’ native languages.