hide
Free keywords:
-
Abstract:
Native listeners generally understand reduced forms effortlessly, in contrast to learners of a language. We investigated which
mechanisms may underlie the poor comprehension of reduction by advanced learners. We focused on how natives and
learners process schwa reduction in French nouns (e.g., /ʀkɛ̃/ for /ʀəkɛ̃/ requin ‘shark’) occurring in sentences.
Participants performed a passive listening visual world task. They heard a sentence with either a reduced or a full
word form together with pictures representing the target word (e.g., fenêtre /fǝnɛtʁ/‘window’), a phonological competitor
(e.g., fourchette /fuʀʃɛt/ ‘fork’), and two neutral distractors. Eye movements and EEG were recorded simultaneously.
The EEG data show no N400 effect of reduction in the natives. Natives seem to activate the representations of reduced
forms as easily as unreduced forms. Unlike natives, non-natives only showed an N400 for unreduced, but not for reduced
forms. This suggests that non-natives have not activated the meaning of reduced forms. The eye tracking data reveal that the
non-natives considered competitors more seriously and for a longer stretch of time than the natives. Interestingly, when the
non-natives heard a reduced target, it was mainly the phonological competitor that was interfering with the identification of
the target word. Taken together, the data suggest that highly proficient learners suffer more from reduction than natives do
and that in learners reduction does not only affect semantic processing of words but also processing at the form level.
