The Role of Pitch and Length in Spoken Word Recognition: Differences between Seoul and Daegu Dialects

말소리 단어 재인 시 높낮이와 장단의 역할: 서울 방언과 대구 방언의 비교

The purpose of this study was to see the effects of pitch and length patterns on spoken word recognition. In Experiment 1, a syllable monitoring task was used to see the effects of pitch and length on the pre-lexical level of spoken word recognition. For both Seoul dialect speakers and Daegu dialect speakers, pitch and length did not affect the syllable detection processes. This result implies that there is little effect of pitch and length in pre-lexical processing. In Experiment 2, a lexical decision task was used to see the effect of pitch and length on the lexical access level of spoken word recognition. In this experiment, word frequency (low and high) as well as pitch and length was manipulated. The results showed that pitch and length information did not play an important role for Seoul dialect speakers, but that it did affect lexical decision processing for Daegu dialect speakers. Pitch and length seem to affect lexical access during the word recognition process of Daegu dialect speakers.