Current Projects

Building on our previous research examining how second-language (L2) learners of English from different first-language (L1) backgrounds (Spanish, Korean, Mandarin) weight segmental and suprasegmental cues to English lexical stress, the present study investigates how specific training manipulations can alter cue reliance in perception, phonological short-term memory, and spoken word recognition. Our earlier work showed that both single-talker training (STT) and high-variability phonetic training (HVPT) enhance perception of English lexical stress, though HVPT does not consistently yield greater benefits—possibly because the STT stimuli contained sufficient phonetic variability. Training generally increased learners’ sensitivity to vowel-quality cues but did not reduce their reliance on pitch, which may reflect the predominance of the H* pitch accent in English input and training materials. However, this pitch reliance can be problematic in less typical prosodic contexts, particularly for L1s that heavily weight pitch (e.g., Mandarin). Moreover, neither training type improved learners’ use of prosodic cues during online spoken word recognition, suggesting that perceptual gains do not automatically transfer to implicit processing. The present study therefore examines whether training with acoustically variable stimuli in which pitch does not predict lexical stress reduces L2 learners’ reliance on pitch cues, and whether implicit perceptual training—a game-based training designed to promote rapid, automatic cue use (e.g., Gabay et al., 2015)—enhances learners’ exploitation of lexical stress in spoken word recognition. We predict that exposure to non-predictive pitch variability will reduce pitch reliance and strengthen the use of vowel-quality cues in both cue-weighting and phonological short-term memory tasks, while implicit training will facilitate more efficient use of stress cues in real-time word recognition, as reflected in increased target activation and reduced competitor activation in eye-tracking measures.

Reference

• Gabay Y., Dick, F. K., Zevin, J. D., & Holt, L. L. (2015). Incidental auditory category learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception & Performance, 41, 1124-1138. 

This study investigates how second-language (L2) listeners from five first-language (L1) backgrounds—English, Dutch, Mandarin, Spanish, and Korean—perceive English lexical stress, focusing on their use of vowel quality, pitch, and duration cues. Participants completed a cue-weighting perception task (Tremblay et al., 2021) in which two acoustic dimensions were manipulated orthogonally while the third was neutralized. Data for Dutch listeners come from the original study. Predictions about cross-linguistic transfer were based on the functional weight of each cue in the L1. The following L1 effects were predicted: For vowel quality: English, Mandarin > Dutch > Spanish, Korean; for pitch: Mandarin > Korean > Dutch, Spanish > English; for duration: English, Mandarin > Dutch, Spanish > Korean. Bayesian mixed-effects models tested the effects of cues and L1 with L2 proficiency (Lemhöfer & Broersma, 2012) as a covariate. The results aligned broadly with our predictions: for vowel quality, English > Mandarin > Dutch > Korean > Spanish; for pitch: Mandarin > Korean, Dutch > Spanish > English; for duration: English, Mandarin, Dutch > Spanish > Korean. These findings support a cue-weighting typology shaped by L1-specific cue prominence, with implications for theories of transfer and perceptual learning in L2 acquisition.

References

• Lemhöfer, K., & Broersma, M. (2012) Introducing LexTALE: a quick and valid Lexical Test for Advanced Learners of English. Behavioral Research Methods, 44, 325-343.

• Tremblay, A., Broersma, M., Zeng, Y., Kim, H., Lee, J., & Shin, S. (2021). Dutch listeners’ perception of English lexical stress: A cue-weighting approach. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149, 3703–3714.

Second-language (L2) learners’ perception of lexical stress is shaped by the functional weight of acoustic cues in the first language (L1): The more important a cue is for recognizing L1 spoken words, the more listeners rely on it for perceiving L2 lexical stress (Tremblay et al., 2021), even if the same cue does not signal lexical stress in the L1 (Qin et al., 2017) or the L1 lacks lexical stress (Kim & Tremblay, 2021; Qin et al., 2017). What is less clear is how a highly weighted acoustic cue in the L1 impacts the perception of lexical stress in the L2 when the directionality of the cue differs between the two languages, and whether High-Variability Phonetic Training (HVPT) can help listeners adjust this directional effect.

To answer these questions, we investigate the perception of English lexical stress by highly proficient Mexican Spanish L2 learners of English. English lexical stress is signaled primarily by vowel quality and secondarily by pitch and duration (Tremblay et al., 2021; Zhang & Francis, 2010). In contrast, Spanish lexical stress is not signaled by vowel quality cues, and pitch accents in Mexican Spanish are often post-tonic, leading to lower pitch on stressed syllables compared to unstressed syllables (contrary to English; Hualde & Prieto, 2015).

Participants completed Tremblay et al.’s (2021) cue-weighting stress perception experiment (e.g., desert-dessert) as pre- and post-tests, and HVPT on stress contrasts (e.g., record [n.] vs. record [v.]) over 8–10 days (eight 30-minute sessions) with explicit accuracy feedback. The results suggest that Spanish listeners rely less on vowel quality than English listeners and use pitch in an L1-like manner (low-high as desert, high-low as dessert). Use of vowel quality improves with English proficiency and training, but use of pitch does not, suggesting that learning new cues is easier than unlearning established ones.

References

• Hualde, J. I., & Prieto, P. (2015). Intonational variation in Spanish. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonation in Romance (pp. 350-391). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Kim, H. & Tremblay, A. (2021). Korean listeners’ processing of suprasegmental lexical contrasts in Korean and English: A cue-based transfer approach. Journal of Phonetics, 87, 1–15.

• Qin, Z., Chien, Y.-F., & Tremblay, A. (2017). Processing of word-level stress by Mandarin-Speaking second-language learners of English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38, 541–570.

• Tremblay, A., Broersma, M., Zeng, Y., Kim, H., Lee, J., & Shin, S. (2021). Dutch listeners’ perception of English lexical stress: A cue-weighting approach. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149, 3703–3714.

• Zhang, Y., & Francis, A. (2010). The weighting of vowel quality in native and non-native listeners’ perception of English lexical stress. Journal of Phonetics, 38, 260–271.

This study investigates the factors that influence U.S.-based Spanish speakers’ production of [v]: its corresponding orthography (<b> vs. <v>), its phonetic context (VCV vs. NCV, where V = vowel, C = consonant, N = /n/), and participants’ language dominance (Spanish vs. English). More specifically, this study seeks to determine whether [v] is orthographically induced and whether it contrasts with /b/ (hence, /v/) or is an allophone of /b/. Standard Spanish does not have /v/ but it has <v>—an orthographic form of /b/, which in turn has (at least) two allophonic realizations: [b] after nasals and pauses, and [β] elsewhere; [v] has been reported in some Spanish dialects in contact with languages that have /v/ (e.g., English; Hualde & Colina, 2014), especially in Spanish-English cognates (Davidson, 2019). However, the linguistic status of [v] in these Spanish speakers’ productions remains unclear. 

Forty native U.S.-based Spanish speakers varying in their English dominance (Gertken, Amengual, & Birdsong, 2014) completed a picture-naming task, a spelling task (to ensure they knew how to spell the Spanish words tested), and a read-aloud task. The target words (nouns) started with an orthographic <v> or <b> and were preceded by a feminine determiner (VCV, where [β] is expected)) or masculine determiner (NCV, where [b] is expected) (e.g., un bote, una bota, un velo, una vela). All words were disyllabic and stressed on the penultimate syllable. 

Participants were videorecorded while producing speech, and the nouns were coded for whether a [v] was produced based on the articulatory information from the videorecordings (Vergara, 2013). Correctly produced nouns for which participants knew the orthography were analyzed separately depending on whether or not the noun was preceded by a pause. Fixed and random effects were estimated using Bayesian mixed-effects models.

For nouns not preceded by a pause, the picture-naming and reading tasks revealed credible effects of orthography, phonetic context, and language dominance, with more [v] produced in nouns containing <v>, in VCV contexts, and with increasing dominance in English. The two- and three-way interactions were not credibly different from 0. Importantly, for nouns preceded by a pause, both tasks revealed the same simple effects as well as an interaction between orthography and dominance (the more English dominant, the stronger the effect of orthography), and the naming task additionally revealed an interaction between phonetic context and dominance (the more English dominant, the stronger the effect of phonetic context). 

The parallel effects of orthography and phonetic context suggest that different forces concurrently influence U.S.-based Spanish speakers’ [v] production. Orthographic representations may be pushing Spanish speakers towards a phonemic interpretation of [v], though the proportions of produced [v] remain too low for a split between /b/ and /v/ to be eminent. While the effect of phonetic context appears consistent with an allophonic interpretation of [v], the same effect in data containing pauses (where [b] is expected) suggests that [v] is now being encoded in lexical representations instead of being phonetically driven. We discuss the implications of these findings for theories of bilingual speech production. 

References

• Davidson, J. (2019). La [v]ariebilidad sociofonética en el español de California: Social and linguistic underpinnings of the labiodentalization of /b/. Paper given at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, University of Texas at El Paso. 

• Gertken, L. M., Amengual, M., & Birdsong, D. (2018). Assessing language dominance with the Bilingual Language Profile. In P. Leclercq, A. Edmonds, & H. Hilton (Eds.), Measuring L2 proficiency: Perspectives from SLA (pp. 208-225). Multiliingual Matters.

• Hualde J. I. & Colina, S. (2014). Los Sonidos del Español. Cambridge University Press.  

• Vergara V. & Pérez, H. E. (2013). Estudio de la incidencia de la representación gráfica (escritura) en la producción del alófono labiodental [v] del fonema /b/. Boletín de Filología, 48, 119-128.

Speech perception is shaped by language experience, with listeners learning to selectively attend to acoustic cues that are informative in their language. This study investigates how language dominance (Gertken, Amengual, & Birdsong, 2014), a proxy for long-term language experience, modulates cue weighting in highly proficient Spanish–English bilinguals’ perception of English lexical stress. We tested 39 bilinguals with varying dominance profiles and 40 monolingual English speakers in a stress identification task using auditory stimuli that independently manipulated vowel quality, pitch, and duration (Tremblay et al., 2021). Bayesian logistic regression models revealed that, compared to monolinguals, bilinguals relied less on vowel quality and more on pitch and duration, mirroring cue distributions in Spanish versus English. Critically, cue weighting within the bilingual group varied systematically with language dominance: English-dominant bilinguals patterned more like monolingual English listeners, showing increased reliance on vowel quality and decreased reliance on pitch and duration, whereas Spanish-dominant bilinguals retained a cue weighting that was more Spanish-like. These results support experience-based models of speech perception and provide behavioral evidence that bilinguals’ perceptual attention to acoustic cues remains flexible and dynamically responsive to long-term input. These results are in line with a neurobiological account of speech perception in which attentional and representational mechanisms adapt to changes in the input.

References

• Gertken, L.M., Amengual, M., & Birdsong, D. (2014) Assessing language dominance with the Bilingual Language Profile. In P. Leclercq, A. Edmonds, & H. Hilton (Eds.), Measuring L2 Proficiency: Perspectives from SLA (pp. 208–225). Multiliingual Matters.

• Tremblay, A., Broersma, M., Zeng, Y., Kim, H., Lee, J., & Shin, S. (2021). Dutch listeners’ perception of English lexical stress: A cue-weighting approach. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149, 3703–3714.

This project investigates Spanish and English question intonation among bilingual Heritage speakers of Spanish. Drawing on insights from previous research, the study explores how bilingual speakers utilize intonation strategies influenced by factors such as pragmatic conditions, language dominance, generational status, input variety, and geographic/societal contexts. Using the Autosegmental-Metrical model and the Tones and Break Indices (ToBI) framework, the project analyzes elicited question intonation patterns in both languages, aiming to uncover differences and similarities in suprasegmental features that shape bilingual accents. By comparing intonation data across Spanish and English, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of bilingual prosody in this unique borderland setting.