Sociophonetics: The Role of Words, the Role of Context, and the Role of Words in Context

This paper synthesizes a wide range of literature from sociolinguistics and cognitive psychology, to argue for a central role for the "word" as a vehicle of language variation and change. Three crucially interlinked strands of research are reviewed-the role of context in associative learning, the word-level storage of phonetic and contextual detail, and the phonetic consequences of skewed distributions of words across different contexts. I argue that the human capacity for associative learning, combined with attention to fine-phonetic detail at the level of the word, plays a significant role in predicting a range of subtle but systematically robust observed socioindexical patterns in speech production and perception.

[1]  J. Hay,et al.  Congruence between ‘word age’ and ‘voice age’ facilitates lexical access , 2011 .

[2]  Katie Drager,et al.  Sociophonetic Variation in Speech Perception , 2010, Lang. Linguistics Compass.

[3]  Richard N. Aslin,et al.  Incremental implicit learning of bundles of statistical patterns , 2016, Cognition.

[4]  R N Aslin,et al.  Statistical Learning by 8-Month-Old Infants , 1996, Science.

[5]  Paul Foulkes,et al.  The evolution of medial /t/ over real and remembered time , 2016 .

[6]  A. Baddeley,et al.  Context-dependent memory in two natural environments: on land and underwater. , 1975 .

[7]  Janet B. Pierrehumbert,et al.  Tracking word frequency effects through 130years of sound change , 2015, Cognition.

[8]  Sarah C. Creel,et al.  Word learning under adverse listening conditions: Context-specific recognition , 2012 .

[9]  Martin Cooke,et al.  Spectral and temporal changes to speech produced in the presence of energetic and informational maskers. , 2010, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[10]  Steven M. Smith,et al.  Environmental context-dependent memory: A review and meta-analysis , 2001, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[11]  A. Samuel,et al.  First Impressions and Last Resorts , 2008, Psychological science.

[12]  Sarah Hawkins,et al.  polysp: a polysystemic, phonetically-rich approach to speech understanding , 2001 .

[13]  Janet B. Pierrehumbert,et al.  The next toolkit , 2006, J. Phonetics.

[14]  Joan L. Bybee,et al.  Word frequency and context of use in the lexical diffusion of phonetically conditioned sound change , 2002, Language Variation and Change.

[15]  S. Goldinger.  Echoes of echoes? An episodic theory of lexical access. , 1998, Psychological review.

[16]  J. Pierrehumbert,et al.  Social Salience Discriminates Learnability of Contextual Cues in an Artificial Language , 2017, Front. Psychol..

[17]  A. Bell.  Language style as audience design , 1984, Language in Society.

[18]  Paul Foulkes,et al.  The social life of phonetics and phonology , 2006, J. Phonetics.

[19]  R. Aslin,et al.  Statistical learning of higher-order temporal structure from visual shape sequences. , 2002, Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition.

[20]  J. Hay,et al.  Changing word usage predicts changing word durations in New Zealand English , 2017, Cognition.

[21]  Nathaniel J. Smith,et al.  The effect of word predictability on reading time is logarithmic , 2013, Cognition.

[22]  D. Pisoni,et al.  Talker-specific learning in speech perception , 1998, Perception & psychophysics.

[23]  William D. Raymond,et al.  How discourse context shapes the lexicon: Explaining the distribution of Spanish f- / h- words , 2012 .

[24]  Margaret Maclagan,et al.  /r/-sandhi in early 20th century New Zealand English , 2012 .

[25]  Paul A Luce,et al.  Representational specificity of within-category phonetic variation in the long-term mental lexicon. , 2006, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[26]  M. Chun,et al.  Contextual Cueing: Implicit Learning and Memory of Visual Context Guides Spatial Attention , 1998, Cognitive Psychology.

[27]  Meghan Sumner.  The social weight of spoken words , 2015, Trends in Cognitive Sciences.

[28]  Malcah Yaeger-Dror,et al.  Lexical Classes in Montreal French: The Case of (ε:) , 1992 .

[29]  M. Chun,et al.  Contextual cueing of visual attention , 2022 .

[30]  Elizabeth A. Strand,et al.  Auditory–visual integration of talker gender in vowel perception , 1999 .

[31]  Abby Walker,et al.  Phonological, lexical, and frequency factors in coronal stop deletion in early New Zealand English , 2008 .

[32]  R. Aslin,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article UNSUPERVISED STATISTICAL LEARNING OF HIGHER-ORDER SPATIAL STRUCTURES FROM VISUAL SCENES , 2022 .

[33]  Scott Seyfarth,et al.  Word informativity influences acoustic duration: Effects of contextual predictability on lexical representation , 2014, Cognition.

[34]  Auditory priming: implicit and explicit memory for words and voices. , 1992 .

[35]  R. Shillcock,et al.  Eye Movements Reveal the On-Line Computation of Lexical Probabilities During Reading , 2003, Psychological science.

[36]  William D. Raymond,et al.  Cumulative context effects and variant lexical representations: Word use and English final t/d deletion , 2016, Language Variation and Change.

[37]  S. Goldinger,et al.  Episodic memory reflected in printed word naming , 2004, Psychonomic bulletin & review.

[38]  S. Piantadosi,et al.  Info/information theory: Speakers choose shorter words in predictive contexts , 2013, Cognition.

[39]  Timothy F. Brady,et al.  PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Article Statistical Learning Using Real-World Scenes Extracting Categorical Regularities Without Conscious Intent , 2022 .

[40]  Arthur G. Samuel,et al.  How lexical is the lexicon? Evidence for integrated auditory memory representations , 2014, Cognitive Psychology.

[41]  Jennifer Hay,et al.  Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress , 2006, J. Phonetics.

[42]  Jason M. Brenier,et al.  Predictability Effects on Durations of Content and Function Words in Conversational English , 2009 .

[43]  Jennifer Hay,et al.  Car-talk: Location-specific speech production and perception , 2017, J. Phonetics.

[44]  Matthew H. Davis,et al.  Accent modulates access to word meaning: Evidence for a speaker-model account of spoken word recognition , 2017, Cognitive Psychology.

[45]  Kathryn Campbell-Kibler,et al.  The sociolinguistic variant as a carrier of social meaning , 2010, Language Variation and Change.

[46]  Elizabeth A. Strand.  Uncovering the Role of Gender Stereotypes in Speech Perception , 1999 .

[47]  P. Foulkes,et al.  Listener evaluation of sociophonetic variability: Probing constraints and capabilities , 2013 .

[48]  J. Hay,et al.  Stuffed toys and speech perception , 2010 .

[49]  Jonny Kim,et al.  Perceptual Associations Between Words and Speaker Age , 2016 .

[50]  Janet B. Pierrehumbert,et al.  Phonological Representation: Beyond Abstract Versus Episodic , 2016 .

[51]  Sarah C. Creel,et al.  Heeding the voice of experience: The role of talker variation in lexical access , 2008, Cognition.

[52]  Sarah C. Creel,et al.  On-line acoustic and semantic interpretation of talker information , 2011 .