The Role of Secondary-Stressed and Unstressed-Unreduced Syllables in Word Recognition: Acoustic and Perceptual Studies with Russian Learners of English
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THE ROLE OF SECONDARY-STRESSED AND UNSTRESSED-UNREDUCED SYLLABLES IN WORD RECOGNITION: ACOUSTIC AND PERCEPTUAL STUDIES WITH RUSSIAN LEARNERS OF ENGLISH Elina Banzina A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate College of Bowling Green State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY August 2012 Committee: Laura Dilley, Advisor Lynne Hewitt, Chair Sheri Wells-Jensen, Graduate Faculty Representative Alexander Goberman John Folkins © 2012 Elina Banzina All Rights Reserved iii ABSTRACT Laura Dilley, Advisor Identifying those phonological factors that native listeners rely on most when perceiving non-native speech is critical for setting priorities in pronunciation instruction. The importance of accurate lexical stress production, particularly primary stress, has been explored. However, little is known about the role of Secondary-stressed (SS) syllables and Unstressed-unreduced (UU) syllables, and the importance of their accuracy for speech perception. These questions are of relevance for Russian learners of English, who often reduce English SS and UU vowels—a phenomenon which is arguably due to the fact that only one stressed syllable per word is allowed in Russian phonology. Moreover, second language research has not addressed the issue of vowel over-reduction, which is a pattern typical of Russian learners. Low-accuracy productions of SS and UU syllables are generally not expected to lead to unintelligibility; however, they might interfere with the ease and accuracy with which speech is perceived. An acoustic study first compared realization of SS and UU syllables in words produced in isolation by six Russian learners of English and six native English speakers. Words were selected to contain low vowels and specific UU and SS syllable positions to optimally reflect vowel reduction by Russian speakers. Acoustic analyses revealed significant vowel quality and duration reductions in Russian-spoken SS and UU vowels, which were only half the duration of native English productions and significantly centralized. A subsequent psycholinguistic perceptual study investigated the degree of interference that inaccurate productions of SS and UU syllables have on native listeners’ speech processing. A cross-modal phonological priming technique combined iv with a lexical decision task assessed speech processing of 28 native English speakers as they listened to (1) native English speech, (2) unmodified Russian speech, and (3) modified Russian speech with SS and UU syllables altered to match native productions. Unmodified UU vowels led to significant inhibition of lexical access, while unmodified SS vowels revealed less of such interference. Acoustically “improving” vowel quality and duration in UU and SS syllables greatly facilitated word recognition only for UU-syllable-containing words. A recommendation is made that UU syllables are incorporated into pronunciation instruction for Russian learners of English. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Dr. Laura Dilley for her valuable guidance throughout my dissertation writing process, and chair and co-advisor Dr. Lynne Hewitt for all the professional support I received. I am also grateful to my committee members, Dr. Sheri Wells- Jensen, Dr. Alexander Goberman and Dr. John Folkins, whose help and constructive input helped shape this research. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION ………… .....................................................................………………. 1 Significance of the Study ........................................................................................... 1 Dissertation Outline ................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1. LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................ 10 Theoretical Accounts of Speech Rhythm and Lexical Stress Degrees ...................... 11 Rhythm Classes and Rhythmic Classification of English and Russian ......... 11 Lexical Stress in English Phonology ............................................................. 16 Lexical Stress in Russian Phonology ............................................................. 23 Research on Lexical Stress in Native-speaker Perception/Production ...................... 30 Production of Lexical Stress Degrees by Native Speakers of English .......... 30 Perception of Lexical Stress Degrees by Native Speakers of English ........... 35 Second Language Phonological Acquisition ............................................................. 40 Theories of L2 Phonological Acquisition ...................................................... 41 Perceptual Assimilation Model ................................................................ 41 Speech Learning Model and Feature Hypothesis .................................... 44 Markedness Differential Hypothesis........................................................ 47 Application of Theoretical Models to the Current Study......................... 49 Research on Non-native Production and Perception of Suprasegmentals ..... 55 Stress Correlates....................................................................................... 56 Vowel Reduction ..................................................................................... 58 Lexical Stress Degrees ............................................................................. 59 vii Suprasegmentals and Perception of Non-native Speech ............................................ 60 Dimensions of Non-native Speech Processing .............................................. 61 Suprasegmentals and Non-native Speech Processing .................................... 65 CHAPTER 2. ACOUSTIC STUDY….. ................................................................................ 72 Methods ………..…………..................................................................................... 72 Design ..................................................................................................... 73 Participants ................................................................................................. 73 Materials .................................................................................................... 74 Procedure ................................................................................................... 77 Acoustic Analysis ...................................................................................... 79 Results and Discussion ........................................................................................... 86 Duration ..................................................................................................... 86 Raw Duration ....................................................................................... 86 Rate-normalized Duration .................................................................... 90 Intensity ..................................................................................................... 92 Raw Intensity ....................................................................................... 93 Normalized Intensity .............................................................................. 95 Fundamental Frequency ............................................................................. 98 Raw Fundamental Frequency ................................................................ 98 Normalized Fundamental Frequency ..................................................... 100 F1 and F2 Frequencies .................................................................................. 102 First Formant (F1) ................................................................................ 103 Second Formant (F1) ........................................................................... 106 viii General Discussion and Conclusions ........................................................................ 109 CHAPTER 3. PERCEPTUAL STUDY ................................................................................. 116 Methods ……......................................................................................................... 117 Design ..................................................................................................... 117 Participants ................................................................................................. 119 Stimulus Materials ..................................................................................... 120 Procedure ................................................................................................... 126 Results and Discussion ........................................................................................... 127 Secondary-stressed Syllables ..................................................................... 128 Unstressed-unreduced Syllables ................................................................ 131 General Discussion and Conclusions ......................................................................... 134 CHAPTER 4. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS ............................................................ 140 REFERENCES …….... ...................................................................................................... 152 APPENDIX A. PRIMING STUDY STIMULI …….... ..................................................... 165 APPENDIX B. RUSSIAN SPEAKER DEMOGRAPHIC FORM …….... .......................... 167 APPENDIX C. NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER DEMOGRAPHIC FORM …….... ........... 168 APPENDIX