Tables XX and XXI present the final interpretations of the test sentence, Is your friend the one that can’t go to bed by ten?, for Catalans and Americans. Each informant’s response to gate 24 has been provided with each error highlighted.
Table XX lists the native, American, responses. Quick inspection shows that all American interpretations were syntactically correct, though only four of the twelve American participants arrived at the intended interpretation of the sentence by gate 24.
Seven listeners gave interpretations that included items that were identified correctly phonetically, but which held a different phonological form: “can” rather than CAN’T, two occurrences, and “get a,” [#], rather than GO TO, [#], cases. Such confusions reveal the unintentional ambiguity related to the test signal and the difficulty it prompted in determining juncture in the latter case.
Table XX. Americans’ final responses to the English test sentence, gate 24.
subject 1 Is your friend the one that can't get a bed by ten?
subject 2 Is your friend the one that can't go to bed by ten.
subject 3 Is your friend the one that can't get to bed by 10
subject 4 Is your friend the one that can go to bed by ten.
subject 5 Is your friend the one that can't go to bed by ten
subject 6 Is your friend the one that can't go to bed by ten
subject 7 Is your friend the one that can go to bed by ten?
subject 8 is your friend the one that can't get a bed by ten?
subject 9 As i f / I / kn ow when I can't go to bed by ten.
subject 10 Is your friend the one that can't get a bed by ten?
subject 11 Is your friend the one that can't get a bed by ten
subject 12 Is your friend the one that can't go to bed by ten
AMERICANS
Participant 9 stands out from the other Americans for having misinterpreted the entire first half of the test sentence, Is your friend the one that, [rfenwn], as AS
CH. 3.3 ENGLISH FINAL LEXICAL SELECTION 110 IF I KNOW WHEN I. Though (s)he did not recognize the utterance as intended, it may be observed that a considerable amount of correct phonetic information appears in the confusions: the [z] of IS, the [f] and the [n] of FRIEND, as well as the [w] and [n] of ONE. This listener therefore appears to have interpreted the phonetic information at face value, i.e., bottom-up—with a minimum of phonological processing, behavior that seems more non-native than native-like. For example, for the item FRIEND THE, [fen], this listener was not able to backtrack [n] and restore the hidden /d/ to account for the blending involved; consequently, (s)he identified the signal as simply /n/ (“As if I know”). ONE THAT, [wn], was consequently identified at face value as “when I.”
Speech perception involves a series of decisions which in effect lead us down a path of perception. Once we deviate from the intended path, due to improper analysis of cues in the speech signal, we may become fully committed to the erroneous interpretation. In the case of participant 9, since there was enough of a match between “As if I know when I” and the phonetic signal given and enough of a syntactic match between “As if I know when I” and can’t go to bed by ten, there was no good reason to doubt that a misinterpretation has occurred.
Participant 9’s misinterpreting the test sentence and still arriving at a grammatical final interpretation able to account for most of the acoustic information offered by the signal contrasts with the results of Shockey (1997, 1998, 2003). She found that the three (out of sixteen) native speakers who participated in her study that did not correctly interpret the test sentence, The screen play didn’t resemble the book at all, tended to prioritize low-level phonetic information over higher-level syntactic/semantic information, even though it led to ungrammatical responses. In the present study, phonetic information was faithfully retained, but not at the cost of syntax or semantics.
CH. 3.3 ENGLISH FINAL LEXICAL SELECTION 111 Catalan informants’ final responses at gate 24 are shown in Table XXI. None of the Catalan subjects were able to arrive at the intended interpretation of the test sentence and the majority was unable to arrive at a wholly grammatical final sentence. Only two responses--participant 9 and 6’s response, if “ken” is meant to be a proper name, though this was not indicated with capital letters--may be interpreted as grammatical, though some others are close (informant 2, 4, 7 and 8). Interestingly, participant 9’s, “Joe feared that no one could have come by ten,” deviated almost entirely from what was intended. Though as with American participant 9, there is a good deal of the phonetic signal apparent in the final response [rfenwnkæbedbaten]. As for the many ungrammatical interpretations, these results are more coincident with those of Shockey (1997, 1998, 2003), where there may be a trade-off between the acoustic signal and syntax and semantics. Though most informants compromised grammaticality for phonetic information, participant 9 may have (deliberately) overlooked the acoustic signal in an effort to form words or create a coherent final response.
Table XXI. Catalans’ final responses to the English test sentence, gate 24.
subject 1 Is your friend a bout ten
subject 2 Is your friend no one that can kind of bit by ten
subject 3 Is you fond he can get a bit by ten
subject 4 If you find no one I can ca re of but by ten
subject 5 If I fed not a naked/nak an gue ro but by ten
subject 6 Is your friend the one that ken could have had by ten?
subject 7 Is your friend like Anne could have bet by ten?
subject 8 Is your friend the one that could have bed by ten?
subject 9 feared that no one could have come by ten.
subject 10 Is your friend no one I can't kind of in vite him?
subject 11 Is your friend no one that can't 'could' a bit by ten?
subject 12 Is your no one can ca re up by ten?
CATALANS
Joe
Confusions were found for all lexical items for Catalans. Though, for the most part, across speakers, confusions reflected fine phonetic detail. For instance, the result
CH. 3.3 ENGLISH FINAL LEXICAL SELECTION 112 of reduction in FRIEND THE [fen] was interpreted at face value, as /n/, somewhat consistently (7/12 Catalans versus 1/12 Americans), showing evidence of a lack of correction for the English reduction at hand. Further evidence of bottom-up processing is seen in the fact that in their final interpretation nine of twelve Catalan informants still retained the interpretation of the initial devoiced // of GO as [k], e.g., “kind,” “care,”
and “could,” while those American listeners who had initially shown this confusion had revised their interpretation by this point. There was also general misinterpretation of the flap in GO TO, as mainly /d/ (seven out of twelve informants) and sometimes /r/ (three out of twelve), in addition to misparsing of GO TO, as “could have,” “care of,” “kind of,” etc. Though no Americans misinterpreted the flap, several showed misparsing due to the phonological ambiguity of the signal. CAN’T was misparsed by two Catalan participants, as “naked/nak anguero” and “like Anne,” and rarely interpreted as a negative. In fact, only two Catalan subjects provided CAN’T in comparison to ten American subjects. Finally the interpretation of the final obstruent in BED was typically labeled as voiceless by Catalans, seven out of twelve listeners, in contrast to zero out of twelve for Americans.
CH. 4.1 CATALAN ONLINE PROCESSING 113
4 RESULTS FOR CATALAN