视觉信息与辅音感知

Visual Information and Consonant Perception

第一方言为某些南方方言(如广东话)的人,在学习英语和普通话里的/l/和/n/这一对音时往往感觉两者比较难以区分。由于短期听觉强化训练对这两个音正确识别率的提高有限,文章意在探讨视觉信息在此过程中的作用。以往对于视觉信息与语言感知的研究,主要侧重于可观察到的发音特征(如发音位置)在语言感知中的作用,而对于发音方式的视觉信息差异则关注较少,且主要集中在/r/和/l/这一对音上。/l/与/n/同属齿龈音,有相近的发音位置,虽然理论上认为这两者的发音过程中应该没有视觉上的差异,但通过研究本族语为美式英语的人的发音录像,发现这两个音其实存在较明显差异,主要表现在舌尖的位置上。最后,文章测试了这一视觉信息在英语/l/与/n/辨识过程中的作用。结果表明,这一较明显的视觉信息确实能够帮助提高这对英语辅音的正确感知率,但是这种辅助作用表现得并不均衡。

Native speakers （NSs） of certain southern dialects of Modern Chinese, e. g. , Canton- ese, have been reported to have difficulty in learning the contrast of/1/and/n/in English or Putong- hua. Intensive short-term audio training could only moderately improve the identification ability of these learners. This study investigates whether visual information will facilitate such perceptual process. Effects of visual articulatory cues in perception of places of articulation have attracted much attention, but little attention has been drawn on the effect in perceiving manners, except for the cont- arst between/r/ and/1/ in English. As/1/ and/n/ share the same place of articulation, it has been assumed that visually noticeable difference is minimal between the two. Our analysis on video record- ing of/1/ and /n/ production by native English speakers, however, reveals visual differences in ad- vancement of tongue tips. Our research then testfies the effects of such visual cues in the identification of the non-native contrast by Cantonese learners of English. Results show that the addition of rela- tively more distinct visual information can help Cantonese speakers better perceive the two sounds in certain contexts, but perception under a single modal remains poor.