The perception of phonemic contrasts in a non-native dialect.
This study examined the impact on speech processing of regional phonetic/phonological variation in the listener's native language. The perception of the /e/-/epsilon/ and /o/-/upside down c/ contrasts, produced by standard but not southern French native speakers, was investigated in these two populations. A repetition priming experiment showed that the latter but not the former perceived words such as /epe/ and /epepsilon/ as homophones. In contrast, both groups perceived the two words of /o/-/upside down c/ minimal pairs (/pom/-/p(uspide down c)m/) as being distinct. Thus, standard-French words can be perceived differently depending on the listener's regional accent.
Dufour
Sophie
S
Laboratoire de Psycholinguistique Expérimentale, University of Geneva, Switzerland. Sophie.Dufour@pse.unige.ch
Nguyen
Noël
N
Frauenfelder
Ulrich Hans
UH
D004192:Discrimination, Psychological; D005602:France; D006801:Humans; D010700:Phonetics; D011930:Reaction Time; D013061:Speech Acoustics; D013067:Speech Perception; D013068:Speech Production Measurement