| Absctract |
This is an extension study of Ganong effect. Different from the original one, which examined the relationship between speech perception and the lexical status of phonetic sequences (word and nonword comparison), this study focuses on the influence of word frequency (commonly and uncommonly used words comparison). Each acoustic continuum contains a high frequency word at the endpoint, and a low frequency word at the other endpoint. In-between, there are a series of stimuli with various VOTs (voice onset time). In the experiment, there are five pairs of words being tested, including two pairs of experimental stimuli: the high frequency word duìhuà (对话“conversation”) and the low frequency word tuìhuà (退化“degeneration”), the other pair is the low frequency word duìyì (对弈“play chess”) and the high frequency word tuìyì (退役 “retire”). One pair of neutral stimuli are also being used to determine the exact boundary of speech perception within the <d>-<t> continuum (*duìchī and *tuìchī). In addition, there are two pairs of word-nonword stimuli being used as manipulation check (*duìchū vs tuìchū (退出), and duìfāng (对方) vs *tuìfāng). The result shows that duìhuà (对话) is more commonly being perceived in the {d/t}uìhuà context, and tuìyì (退役) is more commonly being perceived in the {d/t}uìyì context. The result of the experiment shows that word frequency also plays an important role in influencing individual’s speech perception.
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