When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon
In some languages (such as Dutch), speakers produce duration differences between vowels, but it is unclear whether they also encode short versus long speech sounds into different phonological categories. To examine whether they have abstract representations for ‘short’ versus ‘long’ contrasts, we as...
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Frontiers Media S.A.
2015-04-01
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| Series: | Frontiers in Psychology |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00438/full |
| _version_ | 1817968996926881792 |
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| author | Kateřina eChládková Paola eEscudero Silvia eLipski |
| author_facet | Kateřina eChládková Paola eEscudero Silvia eLipski |
| author_sort | Kateřina eChládková |
| collection | DOAJ |
| description | In some languages (such as Dutch), speakers produce duration differences between vowels, but it is unclear whether they also encode short versus long speech sounds into different phonological categories. To examine whether they have abstract representations for ‘short’ versus ‘long’ contrasts, we assessed Dutch listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to duration in two vowel qualities: [a] and [ɑ], as in the words maan ‘moon’ and man ‘man’, which are realized with long and short duration respectively. If Dutch represents this phonetic durational difference as a ‘short’-‘long’ contrast in its phonology, duration changes in [a] and [ɑ] should elicit similar neural responses (specifically, the mismatch negativity, MMN). However, we found that duration changes evoked larger MMN amplitude for [a] than for [ɑ]. This finding indicates that duration is phonemically relevant for the maan-vowel that is represented as ‘long’, while it is not phonemically specified for the man-vowel. We argue that speakers who in speech production distinguish a given vowel pair on the basis of duration may not necessarily encode this durational distinction as a binary ‘short’-‘long’ contrast in their phonological lexicon. |
| first_indexed | 2024-04-13T20:14:37Z |
| format | Article |
| id | doaj.art-a228710534814627ba744f9a66309b95 |
| institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
| issn | 1664-1078 |
| language | English |
| last_indexed | 2024-04-13T20:14:37Z |
| publishDate | 2015-04-01 |
| publisher | Frontiers Media S.A. |
| record_format | Article |
| series | Frontiers in Psychology |
| spelling | doaj.art-a228710534814627ba744f9a66309b952022-12-22T02:31:44ZengFrontiers Media S.A.Frontiers in Psychology1664-10782015-04-01610.3389/fpsyg.2015.00438121709When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexiconKateřina eChládková0Paola eEscudero1Silvia eLipski2University of AmsterdamUniversity of Western SydneyUniversity of CologneIn some languages (such as Dutch), speakers produce duration differences between vowels, but it is unclear whether they also encode short versus long speech sounds into different phonological categories. To examine whether they have abstract representations for ‘short’ versus ‘long’ contrasts, we assessed Dutch listeners’ perceptual sensitivity to duration in two vowel qualities: [a] and [ɑ], as in the words maan ‘moon’ and man ‘man’, which are realized with long and short duration respectively. If Dutch represents this phonetic durational difference as a ‘short’-‘long’ contrast in its phonology, duration changes in [a] and [ɑ] should elicit similar neural responses (specifically, the mismatch negativity, MMN). However, we found that duration changes evoked larger MMN amplitude for [a] than for [ɑ]. This finding indicates that duration is phonemically relevant for the maan-vowel that is represented as ‘long’, while it is not phonemically specified for the man-vowel. We argue that speakers who in speech production distinguish a given vowel pair on the basis of duration may not necessarily encode this durational distinction as a binary ‘short’-‘long’ contrast in their phonological lexicon.http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00438/fullmismatch negativityduration processingVowel lengthPhonological representationsshort-long contrast |
| spellingShingle | Kateřina eChládková Paola eEscudero Silvia eLipski When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon Frontiers in Psychology mismatch negativity duration processing Vowel length Phonological representations short-long contrast |
| title | When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon |
| title_full | When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon |
| title_fullStr | When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon |
| title_full_unstemmed | When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon |
| title_short | When AA is long but A is not short: speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short-long contrast in their phonological lexicon |
| title_sort | when aa is long but a is not short speakers who distinguish short and long vowels in production do not necessarily encode a short long contrast in their phonological lexicon |
| topic | mismatch negativity duration processing Vowel length Phonological representations short-long contrast |
| url | http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00438/full |
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