Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
2022-02-01T00:00:00Z
Much of the literature on heritage language phonology finds heritage speakers to show some influence from their dominant language compared to homeland speakers, but heritage speakers still perform...Show moreMuch of the literature on heritage language phonology finds heritage speakers to show some influence from their dominant language compared to homeland speakers, but heritage speakers still perform more accurately in their heritage language than do naïve speakers. Yet, research on heritage language phonology is limited compared to that on heritage language syntax and morphology. This is even more so the case for research on heritage speakers’ suprasegmental phonology: for instance, very little is known about heritage speakers’ perception of lexical tone. The present study used an ABX task to investigate perceptual segment-tone integration in heritage speakers of Vietnamese in the Netherlands, compared to monolingually raised Dutch and Vietnamese speakers in the homeland, respectively. Heritage speakers were found to have a stronger segment-tone integration than the monolingually raised Dutch, whereas the homeland Vietnamese showed a slightly stronger integration than the heritage speakers. Moreover, the groups’ integrations were asymmetrical: heritage speakers considered both tones and segments in word identification but had a clear preference for segments; the Dutch controls almost exclusively considered segments and the Vietnamese controls had a slight preference for tone-based word identification. The findings thus conform to previous literature on heritage language phonology: the heritage speakers performed intermediately between monolinguals of their heritage and dominant languages.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
closed access
The current study is an acoustic investigation of the three-way obstruent contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated and voiced stops in the medial position of tone sandhi domains...Show moreThe current study is an acoustic investigation of the three-way obstruent contrast between voiceless aspirated, voiceless unaspirated and voiced stops in the medial position of tone sandhi domains in Lili Wu Chinese, a language that has an aspiration-induced tonal split in lexical tones. The main focus of the thesis was to examine the acoustic realizations of the three-way stop contrast. By analyzing acoustic data from twenty old-generation Lili Wu native speakers, we found that f0 perturbation was employed by speakers to contrast phonological voicing: voiced stops introduced lower f0 contours to the following vowels than the voiceless ones. Durational data on consonant release (c/v ratio) and difference in phonation types (H1*-H2*) were adopted as two cues to contrast aspiration: voiceless aspirated stops tend to be associated with greater c/v ratio and H1*-H2* differences than voiceless unaspirated ones.Show less
Research master thesis | Linguistics (research) (MA)
open access
Different speech variants can exist of one word, but how much information of these variants is actually stored in the mental lexicon of the speaker? I hypothesise that dialect makes for different...Show moreDifferent speech variants can exist of one word, but how much information of these variants is actually stored in the mental lexicon of the speaker? I hypothesise that dialect makes for different reduction patterns in the consonant cluster /st/ and that consequently, phonetic detail of reduced word forms is stored in the mind of the speaker. This was tested by a production experiment in which spontaneous speech and read speech are compared and a perception experiment in which participants had to perform a lexical decision task. Results showed that different dialects indeed show different frequencies and patterns of cluster reduction. Specifically, the Ede dialect reduced and deleted /s/ more frequently than the dialect Roosendaal. Reaction times of the third experiment showed that reduced word forms are not stored next to the canonical form. However, response data revealed that phonetic detail was influential when recognising reduced forms. I propose a hybrid model of the episodic and abstract model of storage of word forms in that phonetic detail of variants is stored next to the canonical form.Show less
