Hostname: page-component-6766d58669-nf276 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-05-17T02:56:42.963Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Representation of second language phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 January 2015

ANNE CUTLER
ANNE CUTLER*
Affiliation:
University of Western Sydney, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, and Radboud University Nijmegen
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Anne Cutler, MARCS Institute, University of Western Sydney, Locked Bag 1797, Penrith South, NSW 2751, Australia. E-mail: a.cutler@uws.edu.au
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Orthographies encode phonological information only at the level of words (chiefly, the information encoded concerns phonetic segments; in some cases, tonal information or default stress may be encoded). Of primary interest to second language (L2) learners is whether orthography can assist in clarifying L2 phonological distinctions that are particularly difficult to perceive (e.g., where one native-language phonemic category captures two L2 categories). A review of spoken-word recognition evidence suggests that orthographic information can install knowledge of such a distinction in lexical representations but that this does not affect learners’ ability to perceive the phonemic distinction in speech. Words containing the difficult phonemes become even harder for L2 listeners to recognize, because perception maps less accurately to lexical content.

Information

Type
Discussion Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , January 2015 , pp. 115 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

REFERENCES

Archibald, J. (1997). The acquisition of English stress by speakers of nonaccentual languages: Lexical storage versus computation of stress. Linguistics, 35, 167–181.Google Scholar
Bassetti, B., & Atkinson, N. (2015). Effects of orthographic forms on pronunciation in experienced instructed second language learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36, 67–91.Google Scholar
Best, C. T., & Tyler, M. D. (2007). Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In Munro, M. & Bohn, O.-S. (Eds.), Second language speech learning (pp. 13–34). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Bird, S. (1999a). Strategies for representing tone in African writing: A critical review. Written Language and Literacy, 2, 1–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bird, S. (1999b). When marking tone reduces fluency: An orthography experiment in Cameroon. Language and Speech, 42, 83–115.Google Scholar
Braun, B., Lemhöfer, K., & Mani, N. (2011). Perceiving unstressed vowels in foreign-accented English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 129, 376–387.Google Scholar
Broersma, M. (2012). Increased lexical activation and reduced competition in second-language listening. Language and Cognitive Processes, 27, 1205–1224.Google Scholar
Broersma, M., & Cutler, A. (2008). Phantom word recognition in L2. System, 36, 22–34.Google Scholar
Broersma, M., & Cutler, A. (2011). Competition dynamics of second-language listening. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 64, 74–95.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cooper, N., Cutler, A., & Wales, R. (2002). Constraints of lexical stress on lexical access in English: Evidence from native and nonnative listeners. Language and Speech, 45, 207–228.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. (2005). The lexical statistics of word recognition problems caused by L2 phonetic confusion. Paper presented at Interspeech 2005, Lisbon, Portugal. Retrieved from http://www.isca-speech.org/archive/interspeech_2005/i05_0413.htmlGoogle Scholar
Cutler, A. (2009). Greater sensitivity to prosodic goodness in non-native than in native listeners. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 125, 3522–3525.Google Scholar
Cutler, A. (in press). Lexical stress in English pronunciation. In Reed, M. & Levis, J. (Eds.), The handbook of English pronunciation. New York: Wiley–Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cutler, A., Weber, A., & Otake, T. (2006). Asymmetric mapping from phonetic to lexical representations in second-language listening. Journal of Phonetics, 34, 269–284.Google Scholar
Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Sebastián-Gallés, N., & Mehler, J. (1997). A destressing “deafness” in French? Journal of Memory and Language, 36, 406–421.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erdener, V. D., & Burnham, D. K. (2005). The role of audiovisual speech and orthographic information in nonnative speech production. Language Learning, 55, 191–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escudero, P. (2015). Orthography plays a limited role when learning the phonological forms of new words: The case of Spanish and English learners of novel Dutch words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36, 7–22.Google Scholar
Escudero, P., Hayes-Harb, R., & Mitterer, H. (2008). Novel L2 words and asymmetric lexical access. Journal of Phonetics, 36, 345–360.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Escudero, P., & Wanrooij, K. (2010). The effect of L1 orthography on non-native vowel perception. Language and Speech, 53, 343–365.Google Scholar
Fear, B. D., Cutler, A., & Butterfield, S. (1995). The strong/weak syllable distinction in English. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 97, 1893–1904.Google Scholar
GowD. W., Jr. D. W., Jr., & Im, A. M. (2004). A cross-linguistic examination of assimilation context effects. Journal of Memory and Language, 51, 279–296.Google Scholar
Grainger, J., Van Kang, M. N., & Seguí, J. (2001). Cross-modal repetition priming of heterographic homophones. Memory & Cognition, 29, 53–61.Google Scholar
Guion, S. G., Harada, T., & Clark, J. J. (2004). Early and late Spanish–English bilinguals’ acquisition of English word stress patterns. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 7, 207–226.Google Scholar
Hanson, V. L. (1982). Use of orthographic structure by deaf adults: Recognition of fingerspelled words. Applied Psycholinguistics, 3, 343–356.Google Scholar
Hanson, V. L., Shankweiler, D., & Fischer, F. W. (1983). Determinants of spelling ability in deaf and hearing adults: Access to linguistic structure. Cognition, 14, 323–344.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hayes-Harb, R., & Hacking, J. (2013). The influence of written stress marks on native English speakers’ acquisition of Russian lexical stress contrasts. Paper presented to 23rd EuroSLA, Amsterdam, August.Google Scholar
Hayes-Harb, R., Nicol, J., & Barker, J. (2010). Learning the phonological forms of new words: Effects of orthographic and auditory input. Language and Speech, 53, 367–381.Google Scholar
Iverson, P., Kuhl, P. K., Akahane-Yamada, R., Diesch, E., Tohkura, Y., Ketterman, A., et al. (2003). A perceptual interference account of acquisition difficulties for non-native phonemes. Cognition, 87, B47–B57.Google Scholar
Kuhl, P. K., Conboy, B. T., Coffey-Corina, S., Padden, D., Rivera-Gaxiola, M., & Nelson, T. (2008). Phonetic learning as a pathway to language. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 363, 979–1000.Google Scholar
Mitterer, H., Csépe, V., Honbolygo, F., & Blomert, L. (2006). The recognition of phonologically assimilated words does not depend on specific language experience. Cognitive Science, 30, 451–479.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Norris, D., McQueen, J. M., & Cutler, A. (1995). Competition and segmentation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 21, 1209–1228.Google Scholar
Peperkamp, S., Vendelin, I., & Dupoux, E. (2010). Perception of predictable stress: A cross-linguistic investigation. Journal of Phonetics, 38, 422–430.Google Scholar
Rastle, K., McCormick, S. F., Bayless, L., & Davis, C. J. (2011). Orthography influences the perception and production of speech. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 37, 1588–1594.Google Scholar
Roberts, D. (2009). Visual crowding and the tone orthography of African languages. Written Language and Literacy, 12, 140–155.Google Scholar
Roberts, D. (2011). A tone orthography typology. Written Language and Literacy, 14, 82–108.Google Scholar
Saffran, J. R., Werker, J., & Werner, L. (2006). The infant's auditory world: Hearing, speech, and the beginnings of language. In Siegler, R. & Kuhn, D. (Eds.), Handbook of child development (pp. 58–108). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.Google Scholar
Schmidt-Kassow, M., Rothermich, K., Schwartze, M., & Kotz, S. A. (2011). Did you get the beat? Late proficient French–German learners extract strong–weak patterns in tonal but not in linguistic sequences. NeuroImage, 54, 568–576.Google Scholar
Showalter, C. E., & Hayes-Harb, R. (2013). Unfamiliar orthographic information and second language word learning: A novel lexicon study. Second Language Research, 29, 185–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, E., & Escudero, P. (2013). Incongruent grapheme-to-phoneme correspondences hinder L2 word learning. Paper presented to EUROSLA 23, Amsterdam, August.Google Scholar
Suárez, L., & Goh, W. D. (2013). Recognition memory of foreign language lexical stress. Memory & Cognition, 41, 872–885.Google Scholar
Tremblay, A. (2008). Is second language lexical access prosodically constrained? Processing of word stress by French Canadian second language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 553–584.Google Scholar
Veivo, O., & Järvikivi, J. (2013). Proficiency modulates early orthographic and phonological processing in L2 spoken word recognition. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 16, 864–883.Google Scholar
Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2004). Lexical competition in non-native spoken-word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language, 50, 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weber, A., & Cutler, A. (2006). First-language phonotactics in second-language listening. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 119, 597–607.Google Scholar