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Contains fulltext : 90081.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) Japanese listeners detected Japanese words embedded at the end of nonsense sequences (e.g., kaba 'hippopotamus' in gyachikaba). When the final portion of the preceding context together with the initial portion of the word (e.g., here, the sequence chika) was compatible with many lexical competitors, recognition of the embedded word was more difficult than when such a sequence was compatible with few competitors. This clear effect of competition, established here for preceding context in Japanese, joins similar demonstrations, in other languages and for following contexts, to underline that the functional architecture of the human spoken-word recognition system is a universal one.

Item does not contain fulltext Language-specific procedures which are efficient for listening to the L1 may be applied to non-native spoken input, often to the detriment of successful listening. However, such misapplications of L1-based listening do not always happen. We propose, based on the results from two experiments in which Japanese listeners detected target sequences in spoken Korean, that an L1 procedure is only triggered if requisite L1 features are present in the input.

Contains fulltext : 64328.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Open Access) Pseudo-homophony may result when non-native listeners cannot distinguish phonemic contrasts. Thus Dutch listeners have difficulty distinguishing the vowels of English cattle versus kettle, because this contrast is subsumed by a single Dutch vowel category; in consequence, both words may be activated whenever either is heard. A lexical decision study in English explored this phenomenon by testing for repetition priming. The materials contained amoung 340 items 18 pairs such as cattle/kettle, i.e., contrasting only in those vowels, and 18 pairs contrasting only in r/l (e.g., right/light). These materials, spoken by a native American English speaker, were presented to fluent non-native speakers of English, 48 Dutch Nijmegen University students, and 48 Japanese Dokkyo University students; the listeners performed lexical decision on each spoken item, and response time was measured. Dutch listeners responded significantly faster to one member of a cattle/kettle pair after having heard the other member earlier in the list (compared with having heard a control word), suggesting that both word had been activated whichever had been heard. Japanese listeners, however, showed no such priming for cattle/kettle words, but did show repetition priming across r/l pairs such as right/light . Non-native listeners' phonemic discrimination difficulties thus generate pseudo-homophony.

Item does not contain fulltext Listeners rely on native-language rhythm in segmenting speech; in different languages, stress-, syllable- or mora-based rhythm is exploited. This language-specificity affects listening to non-native speech, if native procedures are applied even though inefficient for the non-native language. However, speakers of two languages with similar rhythmic interpretation should segment their own and the other language similarly. This was observed to date only for related languages (English-Dutch; French-Spanish). We now report experiments in which Japanese listeners heard Telugu, a Dravidian language unrelated to Japanese, and Telugu listeners heard Japanese. In both cases detection of target sequences in speech was harder when target boundaries mismatched mora boundaries, exactly the pattern that Japanese listeners earlier exhibited with Japanese and other languages. These results suggest that Telugu and Japanese listeners use similar procedures in segmenting speech, and support the idea that languages fall into rhythmic classes, with aspects of phonological structure affecting listeners' speech segmentation.

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Item does not contain fulltext Current models of spoken-word recognition assume automatic activation of multiple candidate words fully or partially compatible with the speech input. We propose that listeners make use of this concurrent activation in word play such as punning. Distortion in punning should ideally involve no more than a minimal contrastive deviation between two words, namely a phoneme. Moreover, we propose that this metric of similarity does not presuppose phonemic awareness on the part of the punster. We support these claims with an analysis of modern and traditional puns in Japanese (in which phonemic awareness in language users is not encouraged by alphabetic orthography). For both data sets, the results support the predictions. Punning draws on basic processes of spoken-word recognition, common across languages.

Item does not contain fulltext A summary is presented of a database of relative familiarity ratings for 48 sets of Japanese words, each set comprising words overlapping in the initial portions. These ratings are of use for the generation of sets of materials for research in the recognition of spoken words.

Item does not contain fulltext A complete database is presented of relative familiarity ratings for 48 sets of Japanese words, each set comprising words overlapping in the initial portions. These ratings are of use for the generation of sets of materials for research in the recognition of spoken words.

Item does not contain fulltext 0ntbrkt; 2 p.

Assimilation of place of articulation across a nasal and a following stop consonant is obligatory in Japanese, but not in Dutch. In four experiments the processing of assimilated forms by speakers of Japanese and Dutch was compared, using a task in which listeners blended pseudo-word pairs such as ranga-serupa. An assimilated blend of this pair would be rampa, an unassimilated blend rangpa. Japanese listeners produced significantly more assimilated than unassimilated forms, both with pseudo-Japanese and pseudo-Dutch materials, while Dutch listeners produced significantly more unassimilated than assimilated forms in each materials set. This suggests that Japanese listeners, whose native-language phonology involves obligatory assimilation constraints, represent the assimilated nasals in nasal-stop sequences as unmarked for place of articulation, while Dutch listeners, who are accustomed to hearing unassimilated forms, represent the same nasal segments as marked for place of articulation.