Linguistically guided adaptation to foreign-accented speech.

ABSTRACT

Adaptation to foreign-accented sentences can be guided by knowledge of the lexical content of those sentences, which, being an exact match for the target, provides feedback on all linguistic levels. The extent to which this feedback needs to match the accented sentence was examined by manipulating the degree of match on different linguistic dimensions, including sub-lexical, lexical, and syntactic levels. Conditions where target-feedback sentence pairs matched and mismatched generated greater transcription improvement over non-English speech feedback, indicating listeners can draw upon sources of linguistic information beyond matching lexical items, such as sub- and supra-lexical information, during adaptation.