15th ICPhS Barcelona
Retention of Sounds at Phrase and Sentential Boundaries
June-ko Matsui†
† Meikai University, Urayasu, Chiba, Japan
E-mail: [email protected]
flapping of the “t’s” in “let” and “cat”.
ABSTRACT
This study analyzes the accuracy of perception and
retention of reduced, assimilated, deleted, and
re-syllabified words before and after boundaries for
Japanese English learners. The relative position of the
boundary – whether sentence initial, sentence terminal, or
sentence medially was checked to determine if perception
and retention depends on distance from the boundary. The
relative importance of the various factors are then
considered and analyzed.
1.
INTRODUCTION
The level of perception in a foreign language is not
expected to be uniform over the course of an utterance, but
will vary depending on a variety of factors, including the
position of a word within a phrase or sentence, familiarity
with a language, and the degree of difficulty of a sound
change such as an overlapping gesture. Traditional theory
has held that perception requires the ability to abstract –
that is, listeners must learn to extract the essential elements
of an utterance, and discard unneeded substance (Lachs, et.
al., 2000). Pallier et. al. (2001) state that word recognition
uses language-specific phonological representations. Gupta
et. al. (1997) state that memory span for nonwords is
inferior to that for words. This implies that words in a
foreign language will be less recognizable than words in a
familiar first language.
Modifications in speech rate in English result in
accompanying changes in coarticulation as the anticipatory
and carryover gestures are extended, shortened, or at times
deleted. This study looks at the retention of words by
second language English learners in relation to phrase and
sentential boundaries for sentences with numerous counts
of reduction, deletion, assimilation, linking, and
re-syllabification. The accuracy of perception decreases
with accelerated speech rate, as motor movements are
reduced to economize. For instance, a sentence such as
“Did you let her cat in?” could contain an unexpectedly
high incidence of sound changes at an accelerated speed,
including: 1. a decrease from six to five syllables, as “did”
and “you” assimilate, and the first two-thirds of the word
“did” are deleted 2. re-syllabification between “did” and
“you”; “let” and “her”; and “cat” and “in”, where the coda
of the first words are re-syllabified, becoming the onset of
the preceding words 3. deletion of the “h” in “her”, and 4.
The position of a word in a sentence is crucial in the
perception process. Words which are near the boundary are
expected to be retained more accurately and longer than
words far away from a boundary. It is well known that not
all positions in a sentence are equal. For instance, Patel et.
al. (1998) note that boundaries between groups of words are
marked by local slowing in both speech and music. Items
which are close to a major boundary such as a sentential or
phrase boundary are expected to be retained more often
than words far away from a boundary. Gupta et. al. (1997)
observe that serial recall declines with list length, with
nearly perfect performance up to five items, and a dramatic
decline to nearly zero for 10 items. They also mention that
items occupying the middle positions in a list are the least
reliably recalled.
This study deals with the reduction in perception with
increased speech rate and increased distance from major
boundaries. The implications of such changes are believed
to be far-reaching in the fields of education and second
language acquisition, as well as all other area dealing with
some form of second or non-native language usage.
2.
METHOD
Each informant was asked to write down sentences
containing sound changes which occur with fast speech,
read by an English-Japanese bilingual speaker. The number
of
deletions,
reductions,
assimilations,
and
re-syllabification were maximized to the greatest degree
possible without compromising natural speech.
Advanced
intermediate,
mid-intermediate,
lower-to-mid-intermediate, and lower intermediate subjects
were tested for the following sentences:
Advanced intermediate:
1. That will let him go to
her.
Deletion of: the “wi” in “will”, and the “h” in “him”.
Flapping of the “t” in “that”, “let”, and “to”
Reduction of the “i” in “him” and the “o” in “to”
Mid-intermediate:
1. What will get her to go
to him?
Deletion of the “wi” in “will”, and the “h” in “her”
Flapping of the “t” in the two “to’s”
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15th ICPhS Barcelona
Reduction of the vowels in “her” and “to”
Lower intermediate
1. What will get her to go
to him?
Deletion of the “wi” in “will”, and the “h” in “her”
Flapping of the “t” in the two “to’s”
Reduction of the vowels in “her” and “to”
the combination “that-will”, compared with only nine
percent for “let him”. The sentence final terminal, “to-her”,
falls somewhere in-between at 34 percent.
2. That will get him to go
to her.
Deletion of: the “wi” in “will”, and the “h” in “him”.
Flapping of the “t” in “that”, “get”, and “to”
Reduction of the “i” in “him” and the “o” in “to”
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The accuracy of perception for the various sounds and the
various positions in each sentence was checked. A
spectrographic analysis of the sentences was carried out to
investigate the cause of apparent weaknesses in listening
capabilities potentially stemming from differences in
language.
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RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
All The perception of difficult sentences is similar to the
mechanisms reported for memory, with high retention of
initial and terminal items, and low retention of items in the
center. Mid initials were perceived better than
mid-terminals.
For example, respondents had a high percentage of
correct responses at the beginning and the end of the first
sentence (Fig.1a, “that”, “will”, “her”), and lower retention
for the middle of the sentence (“let”, “him”).
When sub-dividing the sentence further into two large
phrases: “That will let him”, and “go to her”. The first word
and last word in each phrase (“that”, “go”, and “her”) was
accurately perceived by a majority of the respondents, with
exception of “him”, which is a sentence medial terminal.
A different take of the same sentence was then input by the
same speaker on a spectrograph to determine what led to
the high retention of the first word of the second phrase,
mid-sentence “go”, and the low retention of the last word in
the first phrase, mid-sentence “him”.
The slight pause between “him” and “go” and the
re-setting of the pitch at the beginning of the second phrase,
“go”, coupled with the reduction of the vowel in “him” is
believed to have led to the increased perception. Which
factor, duration, pitch, or reduction played a more central
role is undetermined, but it is believed that reduction was a
major source of the low perception rates for “him”.
The sentence was then analyzed to determine if the type of
sound change played a role in the listening process. Figure
1b shows that 60% of the advanced intermediate
respondents correctly identified both “that” and “will” in
ISBN 1-876346-48-5 © 2003 UAB
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3.
80 74
62
70
60
55
60
43
50
40 35 28
29
26
30
20
15
13
20
7 6
10
0
that w ill let him go to her
Figure 1a
80
60
40
20
0
60
28
511
49
38 34
18
16
613
th w ill- let- him - go- toat- let him go
to her
w ill
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Figure 1b
The high perception for the sentence initial combination,
compared with the low retention for the mid-sentence
terminal indicates that the position of the sound plays a
vital role in the listening process. A similar trend is seen for
mid-intermediate English learners in Figure 2a, with 29
percent perception for the sentence initial “what-will”
combination, compared with only six percent for the
sentence medial terminal “get-her”, and 10 percent for the
sentence final terminal, “to him”. Although both the “her”
and “him” are reduced in the sentence, “What will get her
to go to him”, the perception of the mid-sentence “her” was
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15th ICPhS Barcelona
only 19 percent, compared with the sentence-terminal
“him” at 65 percent (Figure 2a). The reverse words were
perceived in the sentence “That will let him go to her”,
where there was high retention for the sentence terminal
“her”, and low retention for the sentence medial “him”
(Figure 1a).
Similar results were obtained for lower intermediate
learners in Figures 3a-4b. Both the “him” and “her” are
reduced in the two sentences: “What will get her to go to
him” and “That will get him to go to her”. In the first
sentence, the “him” is terminal, whereas in the second
sentence, it is sentence medial. The reduced “her”, on the
other hand, is sentence medial in the first sentence (Figure
3a,b), while it is sentence terminal in the second sentence
(Figure 4a,b). Perception of the sentence medial “him” and
“her” were three percent and zero percent, respectively in
Figures 3a and 4a, whereas sentence terminal “him”
(Figure 3b) and “her” (Figure 4b) were significantly higher
at 58 percent and 60 percent, respectively. The consistently
low perception for sentence medial items indicates that
memory is not uniform across the spectrum, but high
sentence initially and sentence terminally, but low sentence
medially.
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7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
to
him
6
5
3 3 3
1 1 1
00
3 2.5 2
1
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wh
at
w i w ill
llge get
th
he er
rt
to o
-g
go o
to to
-h
im
at
-w
w i ill
llge get
the
he r
rto
to
-g
o
go
-t
to o
-h
im
N um ber of
R espondents
P ercentage C orrect
wh
C orrect R esponses
29
13
10
6
4
3
13 2 13 13
go
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M id-Interm ediate
9
N um ber of
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Figure 3a
Figure 2a
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
to
her
get
w hat
w ill
C orrect R esponses
N um ber of
R espondents
P ercentage
C orrect
70
58
60 55
48
50
40
23
30 22
19
20
8 5 5
10
13
13 3 2 2
0
him
to
go
to
her
w ill
get
100
77
80
65
60
42
35
29
40 24
19
20
11 13 6 10 9 516
20
3
0
w hat
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M id-Interm ediate
Figure 3b
Figure 2b
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60
60
31
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REFERENCES
her
to
to
10
00 25 13 4
go
13
w ill
0
12.5
get
25
20 10
him
40
that
C orrect R esponses
Low er Interm ediate
[1] P. Gupta and B. MacWhinney, “Vocabulary
Acquisition and Verbal Short-Term Memory:
Computational and Neural Bases,” Brain and
Languages, vol. 59, pp. 267–333, 1997.
Figure 4a
[2] L. Lachs, K. McMichael and D.B. Pisoni, “Speech
Perception and Implicit Memory: Evidence for
Detailed Episodic Encoding of Phonetic Events,”
Research on Spoken Language Processing Progress
Report No. 24, pp. 149-168. Indiana University, 2000.
C orrect R esponses
Low er Interm ediate
8
6
4
2
0
8
3
1
3
00
00
00
00
headers were accurately identified. Although some types of
sound changes (reduction of “will”)
“appeared to be more difficult than others (reduction of
“him” or “her”), the difference in perception based on the
position of the word in the sentence was so strong, that it
tended to erase any differences which emerged from types
of sound changes for higher level learners, and was muted
somewhat for lower level learners. Acoustic evidence
indicates that difficulty in perception is compounded with
an increase in coarticulaion as the speech rate is
accelerated, especially word-medially.
3
1
N um ber of
R espondents
P ercentage
C orrect
th w ill- get- him - to- go- toat- get him to go to her
w ill
Figure 4b
[3] C. Palllier, A. Colome, and N. Sebastian-Galles, “The
Influence of Native-Language Phonology on Lexical
Access: Exemplar-based vs. Abstract Lexical Entries”
penultimate draft of a paper in press in Psychological
Science (as of March 2001).
[4] A. Patel, I. Peretz, M. Tramo, and R. Labreque,
“Processing Prosodic and Musical Patterns: A
Neuropsychological Investigation,” Brain and
Language, vol. 61, pp. 123–144, 1998.
The perception of “that will” (60%) and “what will” (29%)
was significantly higher for advanced intermediate (Figure
1b) and mid-intermediate learners (Figure 2b) than for
lower intermediate learners (3%, Figure 3b, 3%, Figure 4b).
This indicates that advanced learners are more capable of
mentally re-constructing codas which are missing than
lower level learners. It is believed that higher level learners
have internalized the empty onset templates which need to
be filled more adequately than lower level learners, and are
able to retain longer phrases. The memory span and the
existence of the templates are synergetic, with higher level
learners successfully meeting both criterion, thereby
resulting in high retention of the sentence initial reductions,
with lower level learners meeting neither criterion, thereby
resulting in lower retention sentence initially.
4.
CONCLUSIONS
Results indicate that the position of a word is crucial in the
perception process, with accurate perception of sentence
final terminals and low perception of sentence medial
terminals. Both sentence initial and sentence medial phrase
ISBN 1-876346-48-5 © 2003 UAB
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