Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination

Costa Rican Spanish listeners associate intervocalic [z] with specific social attributes in a matched-guise test (Chappell 2016) but experience difficulty when explicitly asked to produce or even comment on the variant. Given this perception-production discrepancy, the present study seeks to determ...

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Main Author: Whitney Chappell
Format: Article
Language:Catalan
Published: Universitat de Barcelona 2017-04-01
Series:Estudios de Fonética Experimental
Subjects:
Online Access:http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/experimentalphonetics/article/view/44059
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author Whitney Chappell
author_facet Whitney Chappell
author_sort Whitney Chappell
collection DOAJ
description Costa Rican Spanish listeners associate intervocalic [z] with specific social attributes in a matched-guise test (Chappell 2016) but experience difficulty when explicitly asked to produce or even comment on the variant. Given this perception-production discrepancy, the present study seeks to determine how successfully listeners discriminate between allophonic differences like intervocalic [s] and [z] compared to other allophone pairs, phonemic contrasts, and identical stimuli. 106 Costa Rican listeners completed similarity rating and AX discrimination tasks in which they evaluated word pairs that were identical or differed only in one phoneme or allophone. Statistical analyses fitted to 2,862 tokens in the similarity rating task and 3,604 tokens from the AX discrimination task indicate that listeners perceive phonemic contrasts more successfully than allophonic differences, which, in turn, are perceived as more distinct than identity pairs. Interestingly, the [s] ~ [z] distinction is less successfully perceived than other allophone pairs including [n] ~ [ŋ] and [d] ~ [ð]. I contend that allophonic differences that encode linguistic information, e.g. the variable’s position within the word, or are less expected given their low frequency are heard more successfully than [s] ~ [z]. However, even the least salient phonetic variants like [s] ~ [z] can encode local social meaning and contribute to listeners’ evaluations of speakers’ social qualities.
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spelling doaj-art-0af729d55428443089b6dfeccd8afd5c2025-08-20T03:54:28ZcatUniversitat de BarcelonaEstudios de Fonética Experimental1575-55332385-35732017-04-0126Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discriminationWhitney Chappell0The University of Texas at San Antonio Costa Rican Spanish listeners associate intervocalic [z] with specific social attributes in a matched-guise test (Chappell 2016) but experience difficulty when explicitly asked to produce or even comment on the variant. Given this perception-production discrepancy, the present study seeks to determine how successfully listeners discriminate between allophonic differences like intervocalic [s] and [z] compared to other allophone pairs, phonemic contrasts, and identical stimuli. 106 Costa Rican listeners completed similarity rating and AX discrimination tasks in which they evaluated word pairs that were identical or differed only in one phoneme or allophone. Statistical analyses fitted to 2,862 tokens in the similarity rating task and 3,604 tokens from the AX discrimination task indicate that listeners perceive phonemic contrasts more successfully than allophonic differences, which, in turn, are perceived as more distinct than identity pairs. Interestingly, the [s] ~ [z] distinction is less successfully perceived than other allophone pairs including [n] ~ [ŋ] and [d] ~ [ð]. I contend that allophonic differences that encode linguistic information, e.g. the variable’s position within the word, or are less expected given their low frequency are heard more successfully than [s] ~ [z]. However, even the least salient phonetic variants like [s] ~ [z] can encode local social meaning and contribute to listeners’ evaluations of speakers’ social qualities. http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/experimentalphonetics/article/view/44059Costa Rican SpanishVoicingIntervocalic /s/Phonetic discriminationAllophonyPerception
spellingShingle Whitney Chappell
Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination
Estudios de Fonética Experimental
Costa Rican Spanish
Voicing
Intervocalic /s/
Phonetic discrimination
Allophony
Perception
title Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination
title_full Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination
title_fullStr Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination
title_full_unstemmed Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination
title_short Costa rican spanish speakers’ Phonetic discrimination
title_sort costa rican spanish speakers phonetic discrimination
topic Costa Rican Spanish
Voicing
Intervocalic /s/
Phonetic discrimination
Allophony
Perception
url http://revistes.ub.edu/index.php/experimentalphonetics/article/view/44059
work_keys_str_mv AT whitneychappell costaricanspanishspeakersphoneticdiscrimination