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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.175-191
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 16 Jan 2023 Revised 10 Feb 2023 Accepted 18 Feb 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202302.175

Word Recognition in English Place Assimilation by L1 and L2 Listeners: An Eye Tracking Study

Eunkyung Sung ; Sehoon Jung ; Sunhee Lee
(1st author) Professor, Dept. of English, Cyber Hankuk University eks@cufs.ac.kr
(corresponding author) Lecturer, Dept. of English, Kyungsung University sejung@ks.ac.kr
(co-author) Associate Professor, Dept. of Chinese, Cyber Hankuk University lishanxi@cufs.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

This study explores the dynamics of lexical activation by comparing the time course of word recognition between assimilated forms (e.g., ca[tp] in cat box) and noncoronal forms (e.g., ca[p] in cap box). Using the Visual World Paradigm, an eye-tracking method, the main goal was to investigate how gradient modification in place assimilation context influences L1 and L2 listeners’ real time word recognition in English. Twenty native Korean learners of English, as well as fourteen native English listeners took part in the listening task integrated into the eye-tracking experiment. The participants were given aural input in the form of instructions (e.g., look at the cat/cap box) and asked to pick the word they had just heard between two options (e.g., cat or cap) on the screen while or after they listened to the input. Their eye movements over the visual screen while listening, along with their keyboard-press responses were recorded for the main analysis. The results showed both English and Korean listeners displayed higher proportions of fixations on the target (e.g., cat) than on the competitor words (e.g., cap) in assimilation contexts (e.g., ca[tp] box), as well as higher proportions of fixations on targets (e.g., cap) than on competitors (e.g., cat) in non-assimilation contexts (e.g., ca[p] box). However, the discrepancy of fixation proportions between targets and competitors was more obvious for the English listeners than for the Korean listeners. In other words, although the L2 listenersin addition to L1 listeners were able to use acoustic variations when identifying the target phonemes, the L1 listeners revealed a higher certainty level than their L2 counterparts. Furthermore, the divergence points between targets and competitors wereshown to appear earlier for the L1 listeners than for the L2 listeners.

Keywords:

word recognition, assimilation, lexical ambiguity, L1 and L2 listeners, eye tracking, targets and competitors

Acknowledgments

This paper was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2019S1A5A2A01047388).

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