Keywords

Eye-Tracking, spoken-word, tonal variations

Abstract

The acoustics of speech sounds can vary dramatically depending on phonetic context, yet listeners can reliably process spoken language in a rapid and seemingly effortless manner. Previous research suggests that acoustic variations in speech can actually facilitate, rather than disrupt, the processing of spoken language, and sometimes listeners can even use fine-grained acoustic cues in the unfolding speech signal to predict the sound(s) of an upcoming word. For example, it has been reported that listeners fixate their eyes on target words faster when the pre-target word contains compatible vowel-to-vowel coarticulation cues [1, 2]. Similarly, pitch accents have been found to facilitate discourse comprehension such that listeners “anticipatorily” fixate their eyes on the correct referent when the preceding adjective was assigned the appropriate pitch accent [3]. However, little research has been done to investigate whether anticipatory tonal variations can also facilitate spoken-word recognition.

Original Publication Citation

Sun, Y., Green, J.J., & Shih, C. Anticipatory tonal variations can facilitate spoken-word recognition: A visual world eye-tracking study. 1st International Conference on Tone and Intonation (TAI), Sonderborg, Denmark, December 8. [virtual]

Document Type

Conference Paper

Publication Date

2021-12

Permanent URL

http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/8878

Publisher

International Conference on Tone and Intonation

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Linguistics

University Standing at Time of Publication

Assistant Professor

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