\u201cThe speech signal is packed with lots of information, and a lot of that information is redundant,\u201d Tucker said. \u201cIt\u2019s why we can communicate when there\u2019s lots of noise around\u2014we can default to other cues.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The researchers looked at native Dutch speakers who speak and understand English. Many are fluent in English and have an advanced understanding of grammar, vocabulary, complicated sentences, and the varied complexities of their second language. They recorded non-native listeners\u2019 responses to native reductions of words and observed what cues the non-native listeners used to fill in the understanding gap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The short answer? Context. If you\u2019re asking a question seeking information, \u201cI don\u2019t know\u201d is an expected answer, so its abbreviated form is easier to interpret. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Curious about reductions in English? Hear samples from Tucker\u2019s lab <\/a>or get a hilarious example from this comic strip<\/a>. Do you know what they\u2019re saying?<\/p>\n\n\n\n But they also found that some factors, such as the use of the conversation filler \u201clike,\u201d helped listeners determine verb tense. If a speaker starts a sentence with \u201che\u2019s,\u201d it\u2019s not immediately obvious if that is short for \u201che is\u201d or \u201che was.\u201d But the more that \u201clike\u201d made its way into a conversation, the more likely listeners were to correctly interpret it as a story happening in the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The researchers also identified an X factor of sorts. When the context was ambiguous, most of the non-native listeners still identified the correct usage most of the time because they listen differently than native speakers. Why? Tucker isn\u2019t sure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s something left in the signal that I can\u2019t see, that I can\u2019t figure out, that listeners were able to recover,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Likely not much for learning a second language, Tucker said, but it does have some interesting implications for working with people who have speech and communication disorders. Because there\u2019s limited research around conversational speech, researchers want to learn how this clinical experience can translate for patients when they leave the clinic. For example, for a child learning to say their R\u2019s, how do they deal with that in the real world? <\/p>\n\n\n\n The same is true for Parkinson\u2019s patients and others who are experiencing limited speech because of another condition. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the next projects for Tucker, whose research overlaps between applied linguistics and communications disorders, is looking at pronunciation differences in Spanish words among three types of speakers: native Spanish speakers, Spanish language learners, and heritage speakers of Spanish, or those for whom Spanish is a first language but they are now more comfortable speaking English. <\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Benjamin](\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/college-health-human-services\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/PICT0259.jpg\")
<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\nWhat this means for language learning<\/strong> <\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n