Local Sociophonetic Knowledge in Speech Perception

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dc.contributor.advisorNiedzielski, Nancyen_US
dc.creatorKoops, Christianen_US
dc.date.accessioned2013-03-08T00:35:16Zen_US
dc.date.available2013-03-08T00:35:16Zen_US
dc.date.issued2011en_US
dc.description.abstractSociophonetic studies of speech perception have demonstrated that the social identity which listeners attribute to a speaker can lead to predictable biases in the way speech sounds produced by that speaker are linguistically categorized (e.g., Strand & Johnson 1996; Niedzielski 1999; Hay, Warren & Drager 2006). This has been observed where listeners use available social information about a speaker to resolve lexical ambiguity. However, less is known about the role of sociophonetic knowledge in speech perception when listeners are not faced with global linguistic ambiguity. Drawing on Strand's (2000) study of the processing effects of gender typicality, this dissertation investigates whether sociophonetic knowledge can facilitate or inhibit unambiguous spoken word recognition. Based on a survey of sociophonetic variation in the Houston metropolitan area, predictions are formulated for the processing of words containing four vowels: /ei/ and /[varepsilon]/ in the speech of older and younger Anglos, and /α/ and /Λ/ in the speech of young Anglos and young African-Americans. Houston listeners identified words containing variants of these vowels in a congruent condition and in an incongruent condition. In the congruent condition the combination of speaker identity and vowel variant was designed to match the listener's knowledge of local language variation. In the incongruent condition, it was designed to contradict it. A congruency effect was found for some but not all vowels. The results indicate that social information about a speaker can also affect speech perception in the absence of lexical ambiguity, but only where words are at least temporarily ambiguous. Where there is no linguistic ambiguity at all, perception can be unaffected by sociophonetic knowledge. These results are discussed in the context of Luce, McLennan & Charles-Luce's (2003) time course hypothesis and in the context of exemplar-based models of sociophonetic knowledge (Johnson 1997, Pierrehumbert 2001).en_US
dc.format.extent226 p.en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.callnoTHESIS LING. 2011 KOOPSen_US
dc.identifier.citationKoops, Christian. "Local Sociophonetic Knowledge in Speech Perception." (2011) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/70300">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/70300</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.digitalKoopsCen_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/70300en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectLanguageen_US
dc.subjectLiteratureen_US
dc.subjectLinguisticsen_US
dc.subjectSociophoneticsen_US
dc.subjectSpeech perceptionen_US
dc.subjectWord recognitionen_US
dc.subjectVowelsen_US
dc.titleLocal Sociophonetic Knowledge in Speech Perceptionen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentLinguisticsen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineSocial Sciencesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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