en
Scientific article
English

Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: evidence from novel schwa words

Published inThe quarterly journal of experimental psychology, vol. 65, no. 4, p. 796-824
Publication date2012
Abstract

This study examined the lexical representations and psycholinguistic mechanisms underlying the production and recognition of novel words with two pronunciation variants in French. Participants first learned novel schwa words (e.g., /ʃənyk/), which varied in their alternating status (i.e., whether these words were learned with one or two variants) and, for alternating words, in the frequency of their variants. They were then tested in picture-naming (free or induced) and recognition memory tasks (i.e., deciding whether spoken items were learned during the experiment or not). Results for free naming show an influence of variant frequency on responses, more frequent variants being produced more often. Moreover, our data show an effect of the alternating status of the novel words on naming latencies, with longer latencies for alternating than for nonalternating novel words. These induced naming results suggest that both variants are stored as lexical entries and compete during the lexeme selection process. Results for recognition show an effect of variant frequency on reaction times and no effect of variant type (i.e., schwa versus reduced variant). Taken together, our findings suggest that participants both comprehend and produce novel French schwa words using two lexical representations, one for each variant.

Keywords
  • Acoustic Stimulation
  • Adolescent
  • Adult
  • Female
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Names
  • Phonetics
  • Photic Stimulation
  • Psychoacoustics
  • Reaction Time/physiology
  • Recognition (Psychology)/physiology
  • Regression Analysis
  • Semantics
  • Speech Perception
  • Vocabulary
  • Young Adult
Research group
Citation (ISO format)
BUERKI FOSCHINI, Audrey Damaris, FRAUENFELDER, Ulrich Hans. Producing and recognizing words with two pronunciation variants: evidence from novel schwa words. In: The quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 2012, vol. 65, n° 4, p. 796–824. doi: 10.1080/17470218.2011.634915
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Article (Published version)
accessLevelRestricted
Identifiers
ISSN of the journal1747-0218
646views
7downloads

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