Abstract
This study addresses the question to which extent phonetic contrasts of a foreign language are perceived more easily by speakers of a native language that shares similar phonetic categories. The focus lies on two postalveolar and two alveolo-palatal affricates of Serbian: [tʃ] (postalveolar, voiceless), [ʨ] (alveolo-palatal, voiceless), [ʤ] (postalveolar, voiced) and [ʥ] (alveolo-palatal, voiced). Swiss-German dialects have the postalveolar voiceless affricate [tʃ] only, while the Rhaeto-Romance variety of Sursilvan has three different affricates, i.e. [tʃ], [ʨ], and [ʥ]. In a EEG experiment using a Multi-Deviant Mismatch Negativity (MMN) paradigm, 15 Swiss-German speaking adults and 15 Rhaeto-Romance speaking adults between the ages of 20 to 30 years were instructed to focus on a random reading while not paying attention to the auditory stimuli. The hypothesis is a significant difference in processing between the two groups: Swiss-German speakers will not be able to reliably distinguish the four Serbian affricates. Rhaeto-Romance speakers on the other hand are expected to be able to distinguish all four affricates as they share three of the four phonetic categories. A significant group-effect was found to corroborate that Rhaeto-Romance speakers process the Serbian affricates differently from the Swiss-German speakers.
Kaufmann, Nuria