1. No category

An orthographic influence on phonologically driven variability?
The case of determiners
Audrey Bürki1,2, Ulrich. H. Frauenfelder¹, & F.-X. Alario2
¹ Laboratoire de Psycholinguistique Expérimentale, FAPSE, Université de Genève, Switzerland
2 Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, CNRS & Aix-Marseille Université, Centre St Charles, 3 place Victor Hugo (Bâtiment 9, Case D), 13331 Marseille CEDEX 3 – France
AIMS
1. Understand the cognitive representations and processes underlying pronunciation variability driven by phonological context
2. Test whether these representations/processes are influenced by the systematicity and/or the orthographic manifestation of the phonological variation
BACKGROUND
EXPERIMENTS
Determiner form is constrained by phonological context in several languages => Two
pronunciation variants for a given determiner (e.g., English a/an, the/thee; Table 1)
Representation(s) and processes underlying the production of these determiners?
a) Two representation account: Underlying lexical-phonological representation for each
pronunciation, these representations are actively selected during production (e.g.,
Method
Four groups of participants named pictures using determiner+adjective+noun sequences, with
five different determiners (see Table 1) and in two conditions:
2. Phonologically inconsistent: adjective and
1. Phonologically consistent: adjective and
noun call for different forms:
noun call for same determiner form:
Alario & Caramazza, 2002),
b) Single representation account: Underlying phonological representation for one
variant, the other variant is generated during later phonological or phonetic processes
L’immense
accordéon
Le demi
accordéon
(e.g., Foucart et al., 2010; Spalek et al., 2010)
Contextual constraints are of different types
Predictions
•
Systematicity of phonological constraints (i.e., same pronunciation invariably
used in a given phonological context) ?
•
Orthographic manifestation of the phonological variation (i.e., different
phonological forms associated with different spellings, e.g., Rastle et al., 2011)?
Table 1: Determiners used in Experiments and their properties
Feminine possessive (exp. 1)
Systematicity of
phonological
constraints
Yes
Orthographic
manifestation of
variation
Yes
Ma (valise)
Mon (armoire)
Feminine definite (exp. 2&3)
Yes
Yes
La (valise)
L’(armoire)
Masculine definite (exp. 3)
Yes
Yes
Le (chien)
L’(âne)
Masculine indefinite (exp. 4)
Yes
No
Un (chien)
Un ‘n’ (âne)
Possessive 1st pl. (exp. 5)
No
No
Notre/Not’ (chien) Notre (âne)
Determiners
Determiner form
With consonants
With vowels
Two-representation account: shorter latencies for consistent than for inconsistent sequences.
Single-representation account: no difference between conditions.
Results
Production latencies (ms)
Different representations/processes depending on:
*
1000
Consistent
Inconsistent
900
800
700
*
*
ma
la
le-la
un
Determiner type
Advantage for consistent sequences
restricted to determiners whose form
variation also manifests itself in the
orthography
Regardless of the systematicity of the
contextual phonological constraints
600
500
notre
Fig. 1: Mean production latencies as a function of the phonological
consistency between the adjective and the noun in Experiments 1 to 5
These findings….
Suggest varying underlying representations and processes for pronunciation variability driven by phonological context
Can be accounted for by assuming two underlying lexical-phonological representations for determiners whose variation manifests itself in spelling and a single
underlying representation for determiners whose variation does not manifest itself in spelling
Reveal the role of orthographic knowledge in determining how phonological constraints can be accommodated to generate phonological variation during
speech production
References
Alario, F.-X. & Caramazza (2002). The production of determiners: Evidence
from French. Cognition, 82, 179-223.
Rastle et al. (2011). Orthography influences the perception and production of
speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 37, 1588-1594.
Foucart et al. (2010). Determiner selection in romance languages : Evidence
from French. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and
Cognition, 36, 1414-1421.
Miozzo, M. & Caramazza, A. (1999). The selection of determiners in noun
phrase production. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory,
and Cognition, 25, 907-922.
Spalek et al., H. (2010). A purple giraffe is faster than a purple elephant:
Inconsistent phonology affects determiner selection in English. Cognition,
114, 123-128.