Dr Sandra Kotzor
Senior Lecturer in English Language and Linguistics
School of Education

Research
Groups
Projects
- Journey of words: from manuscript to mind
Projects as Principal Investigator, or Lead Academic if project is led by another Institution
- Journey of words: Manuscript to Mind (led by Oxford) (01/08/2019 - 31/07/2022), funded by: Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), funding amount received by Brookes: £63,489
Publications
Journal articles
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Kotzor S, Schuster S, Lahiri A, 'Still "native"? Morphological processing in second-language immersed speakers'
International Journal of Bilingualism 25 (2021) pp.1389-1416
ISSN: 1367-0069 eISSN: 1756-6878AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARAims and objectives/purpose/research questions: This paper investigates whether sustained immersion in a dominant second-language (L2) environment alters morphological processing strategies compared to those of L1-immersed speakers. Furthermore, we assess the methodological usefulness of a language-mode task in light of the validity of conducting native processing research on L2-immersed speakers.
Design/methodology/approach: We use the design and stimuli of a previous long-lag visual lexical decision task conducted with native German speakers in Germany and use this group as a control. Thirty-two native German speakers resident in the UK (>2 years; minimal day-to-day German use) participated in two experimental sessions (one containing a 20-minute conversation task in German).
Data and analysis: The data shows clear differences between facilitation patterns of L1 and L2-immersed participants. L2-immersed speakers display decreased sensitivity to subtle morphological differences as well as facilitation in a form condition similar to effects seen in L2 processing. Lexical decisions of pseudowords based on plausibility, however, remain similar. While the pre-experiment language-mode task resulted in overall faster responses, there was no effect on processing patterns.
Findings/conclusions: L1 morphological processing is affected by continued exposure to a dominant second language with sensitivity to the internal structure or differences of morphologically complex items decreasing. The attrition group shows certain similarities to L2 morphological processing. Our findings also call for caution in the recruitment of L2-immersed experiment participants. Originality: Research on morphological processing in language attrition is scarce and no previous work has examined complex derived words. The addition of a principled manipulation of the preexperiment task is also uncommon.
Significance/implications: The possible similarity of L1-attrition and L2-learner processing challenges the concept of ‘native’ processing and the notion of ‘nativeness’ as a stable property. Further comparison of these populations may lead to a more thorough understanding of the adaptability of our processing system.
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Meng Y, Kotzor S, Xu C, Wynne HSZ, Lahiri A, 'Asymmetric Influence of Vocalic Context on Mandarin Sibilants: Evidence From ERP Studies'
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 15 (2021)
ISSN: 1662-5161 eISSN: 1662-5161AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARIn the present study, we examine the interactive effect of vowels on Mandarin fricative sibilants using a passive oddball paradigm to determine whether the HEIGHT features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence preceding consonants with unspecified features. The stimuli are two pairs of Mandarin words ([sa] [ù a] and [su] [ù u]) contrasting in vowel HEIGHT ([LOW ] vs. [HIGH ]). Each word in the same pair was presented both as standard and deviant, resulting in four conditions (/standard/TdeviantU : /sa/T aU /ù a/TsaU and /su/T uU /ù u/TsuU ). In line with the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL) model, asymmetric patterns of processing were found in the [su] [ù u] word pair where both the MMN (mismatch negativity) and LDN (late discriminative negativity) components were more negative in /su/T uU (mismatch) than in /ù u/TsuU (no mismatch), suggesting the spreading of the feature [HIGH ] from the vowel [u] to [ù ] on the surface. In the [sa] [ù a] pair, however, symmetric negativities (for both MMN and LDN) were observed as there is no conflict between the surface feature [LOW ] from [a] to [ù ] and the underlying specified feature [LOW ] of [s]. These results confirm that not all features are fully specified in the mental lexicon: features of vowels can spread on the surface and influence surrounding unspecified segments.
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Wynne HSZ, Kotzor S, Zhou B, Lahiri A, 'The effect of phonological and morphological overlap on the processing of Bengali words'
Journal of South Asian Linguistics 11 (2) (2020) pp.25-51
ISSN: 1947-8240 eISSN: 1947-8232AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARIn normal language processing, we are continuously analyzing the form and structure of incoming speech signals in order to understand their meaning. At the same time, we unavoidably encounter situations in which words are contained within other words (e.g. ham in hammer ). Since morphologically-related words often have a certain amount of phonological overlap, it is essential to understand the relevance of this overlap while investigating morphological processing. The current study provides a psycholinguistic investigation of the processing consequences of Bengali words overlapping in form both with and without being morphologically related. Overall, form-related items elicited significantly less priming than morphologically related items. Form-related items differing in length by a single segment did not prime one another, while morphologically-related items did. However, form-related items matched in length but differing in a single segment did prime, indicating that relationships between formrelated words are not always straightforward.
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Kotzor S, Zhou B, Lahiri A, '(A)symmetry in vowel features in verbs and pseudoverbs: ERP evidence'
Neuropsychologia 143 (2020)
ISSN: 0028-3932AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARThis paper examines the processing of height and place contrasts in vowels in words and pseudowords, using mismatch negativity (MMN) to determine firstly whether asymmetries resulting from underlying representations found in the processing of vowels in isolation will remain in a word context and secondly whether there is any difference in the way these phonological differences manifest in pseudowords. The stimuli are two sets of English ablaut verbs and corresponding pseudowords (sit ~ sat/*sif ~ *saf and get ~ got/*gef ~ *gof) contrasting in vowel height ([high] vs. [low]) and place of articulation ([coronal] vs. [dorsal]). In line with previous research, the results show a processing asymmetry for place of articulation in both words and nonwords, while different vowel heights result in symmetrical MMN patterns. These findings confirm that an underspecification account provides the best explanation for featural processing and that phonological information is independent of lexical status.
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Kotzor S, Molineaux BJ, Banks E, Lahiri A, '"Fake" gemination in suffixed words and compounds in English and German'
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 140 (2016) pp.356-367
ISSN: 0001-4966 eISSN: 1520-8524AbstractIn languages with an underlying consonantal length contrast, the most salient acoustic cue differentiating singletons and geminates is duration of closure. When concatenation of identical phonemes through affixation or compounding produces “fake” geminates, these may or may not be realized phonetically as true geminates. English and German no longer have a productive length contrast in consonants, but do allow sequences of identical consonants in certain morphological contexts, e.g., suffixation (green-ness; zahl-los “countless”) or compounding (pine nut; Schul-leiter “headmaster”). The question is whether such concatenated sequences are produced as geminates and realized acoustically with longer closure duration, and whether this holds in both languages. This issue is investigated here by analyzing the acoustics of native speakers reading suffixed and compound words containing both fake geminate and non-geminate consonants in similar phonological environments. Results indicate that the closure duration is consistently nearly twice as long for fake geminates across conditions. In addition, voice onset time is proportionally longer for fake geminates in English while vowel duration shows few significant differences (in German sonorants only). These results suggest that English and German speakers articulate fake geminates with acoustic characteristics similar to those found in languages with an underlying length contrast, despite no longer displaying the contrast morpheme-internally.Published here Open Access on RADAR -
Kotzor S, Wetterlin A, Roberts AC, Lahiri A, 'Processing of Phonemic Consonant Length: Semantic and Fragment Priming Evidence from Bengali'
Language and Speech 59 (1) (2016) pp.83-112
ISSN: 0023-8309AbstractPublished hereSix cross-modal lexical decision tasks with priming probed listeners’ processing of the geminate–singleton contrast in Bengali, where duration alone leads to phonemic contrast ([pata] ‘leaf’ vs. [pat:a] ‘whereabouts’), in order to investigate the phonological representation of consonantal duration in the lexicon. Four form-priming experiments (auditory fragment primes and visual targets) were designed to investigate listeners’ sensitivity to segments of conflicting duration. Each prime derived from a real word ([kʰɔm]/[gʰenː]) was matched with a mispronunciation of the opposite duration (*[kʰɔmː]/*[gʰen]) and both were used to prime the full words [kʰɔma] (‘forgiveness’) and [gʰenːa] (‘disgust’) respectively. Although all fragments led to priming, the results showed an asymmetric pattern. The fragments of words with singletons mispronounced as geminates led to equal priming, while those with geminates mispronounced as singletons showed a difference. The priming effect of the real-word geminate fragment was significantly greater than that of its corresponding nonword singleton fragment. In two subsequent semantic priming tasks with full-word primes a stronger asymmetry was found: nonword geminates (*[kʰɔmːa]) primed semantically related words ([marjona] ‘forgiveness’) but singleton nonword primes (*[gʰena]) did not show priming. This overall asymmetry in the tolerance of geminate nonwords in place of singleton words is attributed to a representational mismatch and points towards a moraic representation of duration. While geminates require a mora which cannot be derived from singleton input, the additional information in geminate nonwords does not create a similar mismatch.
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Roberts AC, Sandra K, Wetterlin A, Lahiri A, 'Asymmetric processing of durational differences - Electrophysiological investigations in Bengali'
Neuropsychologia 58 (1) (2014) pp.88-98
ISSN: 0028-3932AbstractPublished hereDuration is used contrastively in many languages to distinguish word meaning (e.g. in Bengali, [pata] ‘leaf’ vs. [pat:a] ‘whereabouts’). While there is a large body of research on other contrasts in speech perception (e.g. vowel contrasts and consonantal place features), little work has been done on how durational information is used in speech processing. In non-linguistic studies of low-level processing, such as visual and non-linguistic acoustic pop-out tasks, an asymmetry is found where additional information is more readily detected than missing information. In this study, event-related potentials were recorded during two cross-modal auditory-visual semantic priming studies, where nonword mispronunciations of spoken prime words were created by changing the duration of a medial consonant (real word [dana] ‘seed’>nonword ⁎[dan:a]). N400 amplitudes showed an opposite asymmetric pattern of results, where increases in consonantal duration were tolerated and led to priming of the visual target, but decreases in consonantal duration were not accepted. This asymmetrical pattern of acceptability is attributed to the fact that a longer consonant includes all essential information for the recognition of the original word with a short medial consonant (a possible default category) and any additional information can be ignored. However, when a consonant is shortened, it lacks the required durational information to activate the word with the original long consonant.
Books
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Lahiri A, Kotzor S, (ed.), The Speech Processing Lexicon: Neurocognitive and Behavioural Approaches, De Gruyter Mouton (2017)
ISBN: 978-3-11-063492-1 eISBN: 978-3-11-042277-1AbstractPublished hereIn this book, some of today’s leading neurolinguists and psycholinguists provide insight into the nature of phonological processing using behavioural measures, computational modeling, EEG and fMRI. The essays cover a range of topics including categorization, acoustic variability and invariance, underspecification, talker-specificity and machine learning, focusing on the acoustics, perception, acquisition and neural representation of speech.
Book chapters
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Kotzor S, Wetterlin A, Lahiri A, 'Bengali Geminates: Processing and representation' in Kubozono H (ed.), The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants, Oxford University Press (2017)
ISBN: 9780198754930 eISBN: 9780191071102AbstractPublished hereBengali has a robust medial geminate/singleton contrast across oral stops and nasals in five places of articulation. This chapter presents a synchronic account of the phonological system involving the consonantal length contrast, which supports an asymmetric moraic representation of geminates. Based on these representational assumptions, two EEG and two behavioural experiments were conducted to investigate the processing of this geminate/singleton contrast by Bengali native speakers. The results reveal a processing asymmetry for the duration contrast: the processing of the duration contrast is indeed asymmetric: a geminate mispronunciation is accepted for a singleton real word, while the reverse is not the case. This provides evidence that the lexical representation of the duration contrast must be asymmetric and thus privative rather than equipollent.
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Ehrenhofer L, Roberts A C, Kotzor S, Wetterlin, A, Lahiri A, 'Asymmetric processing of consonant duration in Swiss German' in Kubozono H (ed.), The Phonetics and Phonology of Geminate Consonants, Oxford University Press (2017)
ISBN: 9780198754930 eISBN: 9780191071102AbstractPublished hereIn Swiss German, which encodes a phonological contrast in consonant length, consonant duration signals the segment’s geminate status and, in medial position, indicates the word’s syllable structure. The present work investigates the interaction between these aspects of durational processing using the N400, an electrophysiological component which offers a fine-grained measure of the success of lexical access. A cross-modal semantic priming ERP study tested to what extent words with medial consonants whose duration had been phonetically lengthened or shortened (leading to an incorrect syllable structure) trigger lexical access. Behavioural and ERP results revealed a processing asymmetry: lengthening a singleton does not negatively impact lexical access, but shortening a geminate does. This asymmetry supports an underspecification account of the geminate/singleton contrast, and may indicate a bias towards initially parsing acoustic input according to a CV template.
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Kotzor S, Wetterlin A, Lahiri A, 'Symmetry or asymmetry: Evidence for underspecification in the mental lexicon' in Lahiri A, Kotzor S (ed.), The Speech Processing Lexicon: Neurocognitive and Behavioural Approaches, De Gruyter Mouton (2017)
ISBN: 978-3-11-063492-1 eISBN: 978-3-11-042277-1AbstractPublished hereWe focus here on asymmetries which are part and parcel of phonological systems of natural language. We provide an overview of our assumptions concerning asymmetric representations which are abstract and underspecified, outlining the principles underpinning the Featurally Underspecified Lexicon (FUL; Lahiri & Reetz 2002, 2010) and illustrating how questions regarding the specificity of lexical representations can be translated into experimental paradigms addressing processing issues. The second half of the chapter is dedicated to the discussion of experimental studies, covering segmental feature contrasts (place and manner) in consonants and vowels as well as duration contrasts in consonants. Experimental results from English and Bengali support our hypotheses that underspecified asymmetric representations lead to asymmetries in processing.
Conference papers
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Kotzor S, Schuster S, Wynne HSZ, Lahiri A, 'Form or structure? Morphological processing in second-language English speakers: evidence from long-lag lexical decision'
(2020) pp.28-35
AbstractPublished here Open Access on RADARWhether second-language speakers process morphological complexity using native-like strategies has yet to be conclusively established. While some research supports native-like strategies, other evidence suggests a shallower approach with greater reliance on surface similarity. This paper employs a visual lexical decision task with long-lag priming using tri-morphemic stimuli in three conditions, form (fluently-influential), semantic (exceptional-remarkable) and morphological (natural-unnatural), with native English subjects and proficient second-language English speakers (native language Bengali). Both groups show robust morphological priming and, while L2 speakers display a form priming effect, this is significantly reduced compared to morphological priming. The results indicate possible differences in the use of sources of information in first- and second-language processing but show that morphological structure does play a role in the latter.
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Kotzor S, Roberts A C, Wetterlin A, Lahiri A, 'Perception and representation of Bengali nasal vowels'
(2015) pp.1041-
ISBN: 9780852619414AbstractPublished hereThe paper addresses the question of native speakers’ online awareness and perceptual use of phonetic nasalisation by examining surface nasalisation in two types of surface vowels in Bengali: underlying nasal vowels and nasalised vowels before a nasal consonant. In a cross-modal forced-choice experiment, we investigate the hypothesis that only unpredictable nasalisation is represented and that this sparse representation governs listeners’ interpretation of vowel nasality. Auditory primes consisting of CV segments of monosyllabic CVC words containing either nasal vowels ([cã] for cãd), oral vowels ([ca] for cal) or nasalised oral vowels ([ca(n)] for can) preceded visual full-word targets. Faster reaction times and fewer errors are observed after nasal vowel primes compared to both oral and nasalised vowel primes. This indicates that nasal vowels are specified for nasality and lead to faster recognition compared to the oral vowel conditions, which are underspecified and thus cannot be perfectly matched with incoming signals.