Data_Sheet_1_Free Allophonic Variation in Native and Second Language Spoken Word Recognition: The Case of the German Rhotic.PDF

The question of how listeners deal with different phonetic variant forms for the same words in perception has sparked great interest over the past few decades, especially with regard to lenited and regional forms. However, the perception of free variant forms of allophones within the same syllable position remains surprisingly understudied. Because of this, in the present study, we investigate how free allophonic variation in the realization of the German rhotic (/r/) impacts spoken word recognition for native German listeners and two groups of non-native listeners (French and Italian learners of German). By means of a visual-world eye-tracking task, we tested the recognition of spoken German words starting with /r/ when the rhotic was produced either as the more canonical variant, the uvular fricative [] which is considered the German standard, or as an alveolar trill [r], a common realization in the south of Germany. Results showed that German listeners were more efficient at recognizing /r/-initial words when these were produced with the uvular fricative than with the alveolar trill. French listeners did not differ from German listeners in that respect, but Italian listeners showed exactly the opposite pattern: they showed an advantage when words were produced with the alveolar trill. These findings suggest that, for native listeners, the canonicity of the variant form is an important determiner of ease of recognition, even in the absence of orthographic or perceptual motivations for the primacy of canonical variants for this particular example of variation. For non-native listeners, by contrast, results are better explained by the match of the different allophones to the canonical realization of /r/ in their native language than by the status or frequency of the allophones in the non-native language itself.

近数十年来，听者在语音感知中如何处理同一词汇的不同语音变体形式这一问题已引发学界广泛关注，尤以语音弱化变体与地域变体为甚。然而，同一音节位置内音位变体（allophone）的自由变体的感知研究仍令人意外地未得到充分开展。
鉴于此，本研究探讨了德语/r/音位实现中的自由音位变体，对德语母语听者、两组非母语听者（学习德语的法国学习者与意大利学习者）的口语词汇识别（spoken word recognition）的影响。
本研究采用视觉-眼动追踪任务（visual-world eye-tracking task），测试了以/r/起首的德语口语词汇的识别表现，其中/r/的发音分为两种变体：一种是被视作德语标准音的小舌擦音（uvular fricative）[ʀ]，即更为规范的变体；另一种是德国南部较为常见的齿龈颤音（alveolar trill）[r]。
结果显示，相较于齿龈颤音[r]，当/r/起首词汇采用小舌擦音[ʀ]发音时，德语母语听者的词汇识别效率更高。
法国学习者在此方面与德语母语听者并无显著差异，但意大利学习者的表现恰好相反：当词汇采用齿龈颤音[r]发音时，其识别表现更具优势。
上述发现表明，即便对于这类音位变体而言，并无正字法或感知层面的证据支持标准变体的优先性，母语听者对变体形式的规范度仍是影响识别难易程度的重要因素。
相较而言，非母语听者的识别表现更易通过各音位变体与自身母语中/r/的标准实现形式的匹配度来解释，而非基于该非母语语言中音位变体的地位或使用频率。