No lexically-driven perceptual adjustments of the [x]-[h] boundary

Stevens, M. A., McQueen, J. M., & Hartsuiker, R. J. (2007). No lexically-driven perceptual adjustments of the [x]-[h] boundary. In J. Trouvain, & W. J. Barry (Eds.), Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2007) (pp. 1897-1900). Dudweiler: Pirrot.
Listeners can make perceptual adjustments to phoneme categories in response to a talker who consistently produces a specific phoneme ambiguously. We investigate here whether this type of perceptual learning is also used to adapt to regional accent differences. Listeners were exposed to words produced by a Flemish talker whose realization of [x℄or [h℄ was ambiguous (producing [x℄like [h℄is a property of the West-Flanders regional accent). Before and after exposure they categorized a [x℄-[h℄continuum. For both Dutch and Flemish listeners there was no shift of the categorization boundary after exposure to ambiguous sounds in [x℄- or [h℄-biasing contexts. The absence of a lexically-driven learning effect for this contrast may be because [h℄is strongly influenced by coarticulation. As is not stable across contexts, it may be futile to adapt its representation when new realizations are heard
Publication type
Proceedings paper
Publication date
2007

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