Poster A74, Tuesday, August 20, 2019, 10:15 am – 12:00 pm, Restaurant Hall
Grammatical Expectations of American English Dialects
Rachel Elizabeth Weissler1, Jonathan Brennan1;1University of Michigan Computational Neurolinguistics Lab
We test how listeners alter their grammatical expectations when listening to different American English varieties in two EEG experiments. Bountiful neurolinguistics evidence shows that people invoke prediction during sentence processing through Event-related potentials (ERPs) (Kutas et al 2014), and that these predictions are conditioned by the identity of the speaker. For example, Van Berkum et al (2008) observe a N400 response for sentences like I like a glass of wine before bed when uttered in a child’s voice. This supported the hypothesis that listeners rapidly take in perceived speaker information when processing sentences. The present studies aim to distinguish whether speakers of a main-stream variety have specific knowledge of multiple grammars, or whether they lump all other stigmatized dialects into non-specific “other” categories with relaxed grammatical expectations. The grammatical phenomenon of “auxiliary dropping” is a feature of African American Language (AAL) but not Mainstream U.S. English (MUSE) (e.g. “My brother, {he is/he’s/he} working today”). Listeners heard sentences with auxiliaries present and absent in MUSE and AAL. They also heard matched sentences that are ungrammatical in all English varieties (e.g. “My brother, he’ll working today”). We predicted that if listeners form specific expectations, the presence of the ungrammatical “ll” feature should elicit a P600 response when hearing both MUSE and AAL, whereas auxiliary dropping should elicit a P600 in MUSE, but not in AAL. Alternatively, if listeners group all non-standard dialects into an “other” category with relaxed grammatical expectations, neither auxiliary absence or the ungrammatical condition should show a P600 for AAL speech. Experiment 1 used stimuli from one bidialectal Midwestern black speaker of both MUSE and AAL, yielding a within subject 2 (language varieties) by 3 (grammatical features) design. EEG was recorded using 61 active electrodes and ERP analysis targeted the P600. Result for AAL show a P600 response to only the ‘ll condition, and no P600 for the auxiliary present or absent conditions. This supports the dialect-specific hypothesis, that listeners might be expecting speakers of AAL to use either of these constructions. Surprisingly, no P600s were found for the MUSE dialect; this may reflect listeners recognizing that the stimuli call came from a single speaker, or even possibly, the unwillingness to grant dialect fluidity to a speaker. Experiment 2 sought to clarify this issue by recording the MUSE stimuli from a Caucasian American male with a similar demographic background. MUSE results show a P600 for the auxiliary absent condition, and the ungrammatical ‘ll stimuli, but no P600 for those same conditions in AAL. Through analysis of American English dialects, this work contributes to further understanding of how social information interfaces with online processing, and expectations that may be formed depending on the perceived identity of a voice. The impact of this work is paramount, as perceptions of stigmatized language varieties can lead to dialect discrimination that negatively affects the way those speakers are treated (Rickford 1999).
Themes: Perception: Speech Perception and Audiovisual Integration, Speech Perception
Method: Electrophysiology (MEG/EEG/ECOG)