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Neural Asymmetry in the Perception of South Swedish Word Accents

Cui, Huayuan LU (2023) SPVR01 20231
Master's Programme: Language and Linguistics
Phonetics
Abstract
South Swedish, as a dialect of modern Swedish, has two tonal word accents, accent 1 and accent 2. Regarding these two word accents, there are three groups of hypotheses on which one is more lexically specified. The first group believes that accent 2 is more specified and accent 1 is default shaped by intonation, whereas the second group deems that accent 1 is lexically specified and accent 2 is the default accent. The third group, however, holds the hypothesis that both word accents are specified. In order to find evidence from the brain level to support one of those hypotheses, a mismatch negativity (MMN) study under the passive oddball paradigm was conducted in the present study. Results show that in South Swedish accent 1 elicited... (More)
South Swedish, as a dialect of modern Swedish, has two tonal word accents, accent 1 and accent 2. Regarding these two word accents, there are three groups of hypotheses on which one is more lexically specified. The first group believes that accent 2 is more specified and accent 1 is default shaped by intonation, whereas the second group deems that accent 1 is lexically specified and accent 2 is the default accent. The third group, however, holds the hypothesis that both word accents are specified. In order to find evidence from the brain level to support one of those hypotheses, a mismatch negativity (MMN) study under the passive oddball paradigm was conducted in the present study. Results show that in South Swedish accent 1 elicited significant early MMN while accent 2 elicited significant and robust late MMN. The asymmetry in temporal and amplitude domain suggests that accent 2 has more linguistic information encoded, which suggests that accent 2 in South Swedish has a more specific memory trace in native speakers’ mental phonology. According to the underspecification theory, the more specified structure has more specific memory representation than underspecified features. In conclusion, the results of the present study support the first group’s hypothesis, which is that accent 2 is more lexically specified than accent 1 in South Swedish. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
Cui, Huayuan LU
supervisor
organization
course
SPVR01 20231
year
type
H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
subject
keywords
speech perception, South Swedish, Swedish word accents, mismatch negativity, MMN
language
English
id
9128304
date added to LUP
2023-08-30 15:50:50
date last changed
2023-08-30 15:50:50
@misc{9128304,
  abstract     = {{South Swedish, as a dialect of modern Swedish, has two tonal word accents, accent 1 and accent 2. Regarding these two word accents, there are three groups of hypotheses on which one is more lexically specified. The first group believes that accent 2 is more specified and accent 1 is default shaped by intonation, whereas the second group deems that accent 1 is lexically specified and accent 2 is the default accent. The third group, however, holds the hypothesis that both word accents are specified. In order to find evidence from the brain level to support one of those hypotheses, a mismatch negativity (MMN) study under the passive oddball paradigm was conducted in the present study. Results show that in South Swedish accent 1 elicited significant early MMN while accent 2 elicited significant and robust late MMN. The asymmetry in temporal and amplitude domain suggests that accent 2 has more linguistic information encoded, which suggests that accent 2 in South Swedish has a more specific memory trace in native speakers’ mental phonology. According to the underspecification theory, the more specified structure has more specific memory representation than underspecified features. In conclusion, the results of the present study support the first group’s hypothesis, which is that accent 2 is more lexically specified than accent 1 in South Swedish.}},
  author       = {{Cui, Huayuan}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  note         = {{Student Paper}},
  title        = {{Neural Asymmetry in the Perception of South Swedish Word Accents}},
  year         = {{2023}},
}