Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-5nwft Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-02T15:47:35.061Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Foreigner talk through word reduction in native/non-native spoken interactions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2017

SARA RODRIGUEZ-CUADRADO Open the ORCID record for SARA RODRIGUEZ-CUADRADO [Opens in a new window] ,
CRISTINA BAUS  and
ALBERT COSTA
SARA RODRIGUEZ-CUADRADO*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, United Kingdom
CRISTINA BAUS
Affiliation:
Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
ALBERT COSTA
Affiliation:
Departament de Tecnologies de la Informació i les Comunicacions Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain; Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats
*
Address for correspondence: Sara Rodriguez-Cuadrado, Department of Psychology, Edge Hill University, St Helens Road, Ormskirk, Lancashire, L39 4QProdrigus@edgehill.ac.uk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

We explore the properties of foreigner talk through word reduction. Word reduction signals that the speaker is referring to the same entity as previously and should be preserved for foreigner talk. However, it leads to intelligibility loss, which works against foreigner talk. Pairs of speakers engaged in a task where native speakers talked either to a native or non-native listener. Natives talking to non-natives performed foreigner talk for duration and intensity. Duration and intensity were reduced for native and non-native listeners equally. These results suggest that word reduction is insensitive to communicative adjustments in the context of foreign talk.

Keywords

word reductionforeigner talknon-native speakersword durationword intensity
Type
Research Notes
Information
Bilingualism: Language and Cognition , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , March 2018 , pp. 419 - 426
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*This work was supported by grants from the Spanish Government (PSI2011-23033, Consolider Ingenio 2010 CSD2007-00012) and the Catalan government (Consolidat SGR 2009-1521). Sara Rodríguez-Cuadrado was supported by a predoctoral fellowship from the Spanish Government (FPU 2008–2012). Cristina Baus was supported by the People Program (Marie Curie Actions, FP7-PEOPLE 2014–2016) under REA agreement n° 623845.We would like to thank Sumeer Chadha, Joanna Corey and Carlos Romero-Rivas for their assistance during data recruitment and manuscript elaboration.

Supplementary material can be found online at https://doi.org/10.1017/S1366728917000402

References

Ariel, M. (1990). Accessing noun-phrase antecedents. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Arthur, B., Weiner, R., Culver, M., Lee, Y. J., & Thomas, D. (1980). The register of impersonal discourse to foreigners: Verbal adjustments to foreign accent. Discourse analysis in second language research, 111–124.Google Scholar
Aylett, M., & Turk, A. (2004). The smooth signal redundancy hypothesis: A functional explanation for relationships between redundancy, prosodic prominence, and duration in spontaneous speech. Language and Speech, 47, 31–56.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Baayen, R. H., Davidson, D. J., & Bates, D. M. (2008). Mixed-effects modeling with crossed random effects for subjects and items. Journal of Memory and Language, 59, 390–412.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baker, R.E., & Bradlow, A.R. (2009). Variability in word duration as a function of probability, speech style, and prosody. Language and Speech, 52, 391–413.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bard, E. G., Anderson, A., Sotillo, C., Aylett, M. Doherty-Sneddon, G., & Newlands, A. (2000). Controlling the intelligibility of referring expressions in dialogue. Journal of Memory and Language, 42, 1–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bard, E. G., & Aylett, M. P. (1999). The disassociation of deaccenting, givenness, and syntactic role in spontaneous speech. In Proceedings of the 1999 international conference on spoken language processing (pp. 1753–1756).Google Scholar
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J. (2013). Random effects structure for confirmatory hypothesis testing: Keep it maximal. Journal of Memory and Language, 68, 255–278.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bates, D., Maechler, M., & Dai, B. (2008). lme4: Linear Mixed-Effects Models Using S4 Classes, Version 0.999375-28. R package.Google Scholar
Bell, A., Gregory, M. L., Brenier, J. M., Jurafsky, D., Ikeno, A., & Girand, C. (2002). Which predictability measures affect content word durations? In ISCA Tutorial and Research Workshop (ITRW) on Pronunciation Modeling and Lexicon Adaptation for Spoken Language Technology.Google Scholar
Bell, A., Jurafsky, D., Fosler-Lussier, E., Girand, C., Gregory, M., & Gildea, D. (2003). Effects of disfluencies, predictability, and utterance position on word form variation in English conversation. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 113, 1001.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birch, S., & Clifton, C. (1995). Focus, accent, and argument structure: Effects on language comprehension. Language and speech, 38, 365–391.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D. (2008). Praat: doing phonetics by computer,. Computer program available at< http://www.praat.org.Google Scholar
Bradlow, A. R., & Alexander, J. A. (2007). Semantic and phonetic enhancements for speech-in-noise recognition by native and nonnative listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121, 2339.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, P. M., & Dell, G. S. (1987). Adapting production to comprehension: The explicit mention of instruments. Cognitive Psychology, 19 (4), 441472 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, C., Gaskill, W., & Vander Brook, S. (1977). Some aspects of Foreigner Talk. In Henning, C.A. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Los Angeles Second Language Forum (pp. 94–106). Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles.Google Scholar
Chaudron, C. (1979, February). Complexity of teacher speech and vocabulary explanation/elaboration. In 13th Annual TESOL Convention, Boston, Massachusetts.Google Scholar
Clark, H. H., & Haviland, S. E. (1977). Comprehension and the given-new contract. In Freedle, R. O. (Ed.), Discourse production and comprehension. Discourse Processes: Advances in Research and Theory, 1, (pp. 1–40). Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing.Google Scholar
Chafe, W. (1994). Discourse, consciousness, and time. Discourse, 2 (1).Google Scholar
Dahan, D., Tanenhaus, M. K., & Chambers, C. G. (2002). Accent and reference resolution in spoken-language comprehension. Journal of Memory and Language, 47, 292–314.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1971). Absence of copula and the notion of simplicity. Pidginization and creolization of languages, 141–150.Google Scholar
Forster, K.I., & Forster, J.C. (2003). DMDX: A Windows display program with millisecond accuracy (2003). Behavior Research Methods Instruments and Computers, Vol. 35, No. 1. pp. 116–124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, C., & Housum, J. (1987). Talkers’ signaling of ‘new’ and ‘old’ words in speech and listeners’ perception and use of the distinction. Journal of Memory and Language, 26, 489–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraundorf, S.H., Watson, D.G., & Benjamin, A.S. (2015). Reduction in prosodic prominence predicts speakers' recall: Implications for theories of prosody. Language, Cognition, and Neuroscience, 30, 606–619.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Galati, A., & Brennan, S. E. (2010). Attenuating information in spoken communication: For the speaker, or for the addressee? Journal of Memory and Language, 62 (1), 35–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregory, M. L., Raymond, W. D., Bell, A., Fosler-Lussier, E., & Jurafsky, D. (1999). The effects of collocational strength and contextual predictability in lexical production. In Chicago Linguistic Society (35), pp. 151–166.Google Scholar
Grosz, B. J., Joshi, A. K., & Weinstein, S. (1995). Centering: A framework for modelling the local discourse. Computational Linguistics, 21, 203–225.Google Scholar
Gundel, J. K., Hedberg, N., & Zacharski, R. (1993). Cognitive status and the form of referring expressions. Language, 69 (2), 274–307.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henzl, V. (1979). ‘Foreigner Talk in the Classroom’, International Review of Applied Linguistics 17 (2): 159–67.Google Scholar
Isaacs, A. M., & Watson, D. G. (2010). Accent detection is a slippery slope: Direction and rate of F0 change drives listeners' comprehension. Language and cognitive processes, 25, 1178–1200.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
James, C. (1986). Welsh foreigner talk: breaking new ground. Journal of Multilingual & Multicultural Development, 7, 41–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jurafsky, D., Bell, A., Gregory, M., & Raymond, W. (2001). Evidence from reduction in lexical production. Frequency and the emergence of linguistic structure, 45, 229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lam, T. Q., & Watson, D. G. (2010). Repetition is easy: Why repeated referents have reduced prominence. Memory & cognition, 38, 1137–1146.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lattey, E. (1981). Foreigner Talk in the US and Germany: Contrast and Comparison. Paper presented at the meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, New York. (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED 221 064).Google Scholar
Lieberman, P. (1963). Some effects of context on the intelligibility of hearing and deaf children's speech. Language and Speech, 24, 255–264.Google Scholar
Mayo, L. H., Florentine, M., & Buus, S. (1997). Age of second-language acquisition and perception of speech in noise. Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 40, 686–693.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Meador, D., Flege, J. E., & MacKay, I. R. (2000). Factors affecting the recognition of words in a second language. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 3, 55–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nábělek, A. K., & Donohue, A. M. (1984). Perception of consonants in reverberation by native and non-native listeners. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 75, 632–634.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, D.K. (1992) ‘The Foreigner Talk of a Family Physician: An Observational Study’, ERIC Documents ED 3553826.Google Scholar
Ramamurti, R. (1980). Strategies involved in talking to a foreigner. PENN Review of Linguistics, 4, 84–93.Google Scholar
Rogers, C. L., Lister, J. J., Febo, D. M., Besing, J. M., & Abrams, H. B. (2006). Effects of bilingualism, noise, and reverberation on speech perception by listeners with normal hearing. Applied Psycholinguistics, 27, 465–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuel, S. G., & Troicki, M. (1998). Articulation quality is inversely related to redundancy when children or adults have verbal control. Journal of Memory and Language, 39, 175–194.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scarborough, R., Dmitrieva, O., Hall-Lew, L., Zhao, Y., & Brenier, J. (2007). An acoustic study of real and imagined foreigner-directed speech. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121, 3044.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Snodgrass, J. G., & Vanderwart, M. (1980). A standardized set of 260 pictures: norms for name agreement, image agreement, familiarity, and visual complexity. Journal of experimental psychology: Human learning and memory, 6, 174.Google ScholarPubMed
Szekely, A., Jacobsen, T., D'Amico, S., Devescovi, A., Andonova, E., Herron, D., Lu, C. C., Pechmann, T., Pleh, C., Wicha, N., Federmeier, K., Gerdjikova, I., Gutierrez, G., Hung, D., Hsu, J., Iyer, G., Kohnert, K., Mehotcheva, T., Orozco-Figueroa, A., Tzeng, A., Tzeng, O., Arevalo, A., Vargha, A., Butler, A. C., Buffington, R., & Bates, E. (2004). A new on-line resource for psycholinguistic studies. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 247–250.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Takata, Y., & Nábělek, A. K. (1990). English consonant recognition in noise and in reverberation by Japanese and American listeners. Journal of the Acoustic Society of America, 88, 663–666.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tarone, E. (1980). Communication strategies, foreigner talk and repair in interlanguage. Language Learning, 30, 417–431.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Terken, J., & Nooteboom, S. G. (1987). Opposite effects of accentuation and deaccentuation on verification latencies for given and new information. Language and Cognitive Processes, 2, 145–163.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, D. G., Arnold, J. E., & Tanenhaus, M. K. (2008). Tic Tac TOE: Effects of predictability and importance on acoustic prominence in language production. Cognition, 106, 1548–1557.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wooldridge, B. (2001). Foreigner Talk: An important element in cross-cultural management education and training. International Review of Administrative Sciences, 67, 621–634.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: File

Rodriguez Cuadrado et al. supplementary material

Figure S1

Download Rodriguez Cuadrado et al. supplementary material(File)
File 11.6 KB