University:
Boston University
Course:
QST AC 431 | Sustainability Reporting
Academic year:

2024
Views:

90

Pages:

13
Author:

InterstellarInnovator

Mergers in Produc.on and Percep.on Mergers-‐in-‐progress • Produc.on vs. Iden.ﬁca.on vs. Discrimina.on – a glimpse into how sounds are stored and accessed in the mind • Social informa.on – its role in produc.on and percep.on – priming with the concept of social informa.on (e.g., concept of a region) • Word-‐based varia.on – lexical diﬀusion – real vs. nonsense words • Phonological context – condi.onally merged The NEAR-‐SQUARE merger in NZE • Merger on [iəә] • Most evidence suggests that this is a female-‐led merger • Led by members of lower socioeconomic groups • The merger is s.ll in progress: older NZers are more likely to maintain the dis.nc.on than younger NZers NEAR/SQUARE Experiments Hay et al. (2010) • Iden.ﬁca.on: played dis.nct tokens one at a .me -‐ par.cipants iden.ﬁed which word they heard in a binary, forced-‐choice task – US & NZ experimenter • Produc.on: read words in minimal pairs – US & NZ experimenter • Odd One Out task: beer bear bare – auditory instruc.ons (UK & NZ) – wri_en task (US & NZ) Summary of results • In produc.on, par.cipants who met with the US experimenter were more likely to maintain a dis.nc.on than those who met with the NZ experimenter (Hay et al. 2009). • In iden.ﬁca.on, experimenter iden.ty ma_ers (Hay et al. 2006) – merged par.cipants make more errors if they met with the US experimenter – but par.cipants who met with the US experimenter were more likely to report that the word pairs were dis.nct. • Exposure to instruc.ons/pre-‐task (Hay et al. 2010) – dis.nct par.cipants were more accurate when exposed to UK instruc.ons/US task – merged par.cipants were more accurate when exposed to NZ instruc.ons/NZ task Our interpreta.on • Levels of representa.on that we assume: – phone.cally-‐detailed words/u_erances – phonological abstrac.on – lexical abstrac.on • All levels are indexed to every other level. • The phone.cally-‐rich level is indexed to social informa.on. • The other levels are indexed to social informa.on when the rela.onship is above the level of consciousness. • Diﬀerent tasks cause individuals to ac.vate diﬀerent levels of representa.on iəә US biəә bɪɹ biəә biəә biəә beəә biəә beəә bɪəә biəә bɛɹ bɛɹ beəә beer bare Sketch of exemplar model with word-‐level distribu.ons of remembered exemplars, and labeling for phonemic category and dialect area, for someone who is merged on NEAR. (Hay et al 2010: 465) Resonance (see Johnson 2006: 495) Phoneme level Merged Dis*nct One distribu.on. Two distribu.ons. ‘Dis.nct’ speech/concept introduces noise ‘Dis.nct’ speech/concept  makes distribu.ons overlap even more increases dis.nc.on between distribu.ons Phone.cally-‐ detailed word level Two distribu.ons. Two distribu.ons. ‘Dis.nct’ speech/concept makes more dis.nct. ‘Dis.nct’ speech/concept makes more dis.nct. (adapted from Hay et al. 2010: 467) Tes.ng our interpreta.on: real vs. nonsense words • In exemplar theory, real words would have representa.ons that are phone.cally detailed, while nonsense words would not because they have not previously been encountered. • This means that individuals rely on word-‐ based exemplars for real words but must rely on phoneme-‐based representa.ons for nonsense words. For condi.onal mergers, this means that: • In produc.on – subjects will be more merged when producing real words because they are relying on phone.cally-‐detailed word-‐based representa.ons – subjects will be less merged when producing nonsense words because they are relying on phoneme-‐based representa.ons and the merger is only in some phonological contexts • In percep.on – provided that there are some people in the community who maintain a dis.nc.on in all contexts, subjects should be more accurate when iden.fying real words because they have stored representa.ons of them The Ellen/Allan merger in NZE • Prelateral merger of DRESS and TRAP – shell/shall – celery/salary – melody/malady • Condi.oned merger, nearly complete. • Vowels are merged near the non-‐prelateral TRAP token Ellen/Allan Experiment (Thomas 2004; Thomas & Hay 2005) 16 Par.cipants: 1) real word produc.on 2) nonce word produc.on 3) real word percep.on 4) nonce word percep.on Results • In produc.on, many speakers maintained more separa.on between the vowels when producing nonsense words