The effect of listener dialect experience on perceptual adaptation to and generalization of a novel vowel shift

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

When adapting to novel vowel shifts, listeners rely on the systematicity of novel variants across vowel categories (e.g., parallel shifts), even when only part of a novel system is presented. We examined how a listener’s experience with components of a novel English front lax vowel backing shift impacts perceptual adaptation and generalization. First, listeners were exposed to no front lax vowels, shifted /ɪ/, shifted /ɪ æ/, or shifted /ɪ ɛ æ/. Then, listeners responded to items with shifted /ɪ ɛ æ/ in a lexical decision task. Listeners had varied dialect experience due to residential history. Westerners were experienced with /ɪ ɛ æ/ backing in the California Vowel Shift, Southerners were experienced with parallel movements of /ɪ ɛ/ but in another direction in the Southern Vowel Shift, and New Englanders were minimally experienced with front lax vowel shifts. Westerners and New Englanders endorsed more critical words in the /ɪ æ/ exposure condition than in the /ɪ/ exposure condition, consistent with a phonological feature theory of generalization, but Southerners endorsed fewer. Southerners’ lack of familiarity with /æ/ shifting in parallel with /ɪ ɛ/ inhibited perceptual adaptation and generalization, suggesting that dialect experience affects listeners’ perceptual processing of novel vowel shifts.