Preceding vowel duration as a cue to the consonant voicing contrast: Perception experiments with Polish-English bilinguals (original) (raw)
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Phonological representations and perception of L2 contrasts
2010
This research investigates factors which underlie the perception of second language (L2) phonological contrasts by highlighting an asymmetry in the perception of the four-way laryngeal stop contrasts in Hindi by native speakers of English and French. We argue that this asymmetry is a result of the influence of differing underlying representations in the first language (L1). Based on a theory that English uses the feature [spread glottis] while French uses the feature [voice] to distinguish voiced and voiceless stops, it was predicted that native speakers of these two language groups would perceive the four-way Hindi contrasts differently. Monolingual Canadian English (n=18) and monolingual Canadian French (n=18) speakers were tested on their perception of Hindi minimal pairs using an ABX discrimination task with a long interstimulus interval. Results supported the predictions; English speakers performed significantly better on contrasts involving the feature [spread glottis] and the...
Can acoustic cues used in L1 really be used to perceive novel sound contrasts?
2015
One issue in language acquisition is whether the acoustic cues used in the L1 can be used to perceive a different phonemic contrast in the L2. A previous study found that Japanese listeners can utilize their sensitivity to vowel duration in their L1 to identify the English coda voicing contrast when asked to classify each token as 'bit' or 'bid'. That is, they could use vowel duration in a way comparable to native English listeners when tested with a lexical identification task. The current study tested whether Japanese listeners could still utilize vowel duration to identify the same contrast when using a phoneme identification task: Japanese listeners were asked to categorize the last sound they heard as ‘t’ or ‘d’. Our results indicate that Japanese listeners rely on vowel duration only in the lexical identification task: the familiar acoustic cues are not applied to the novel phonemic contrast.
Perceptual assimilation and discrimination of non-native vowel contrasts
Research on language-specific tuning in speech perception has focused mainly on consonants, while that on non-native vowel perception has failed to address whether the same principles apply. Therefore, non-native vowel perception was investigated here in light of relevant theoretical models: the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework. American-English speakers completed discrimination and native language assimilation (categorization and goodness rating) tests on six nonnative vowel contrasts. Discrimination was consistent with PAM assimilation types, but asymmetries predicted by NRV were only observed for single-category assimilations, suggesting that perceptual assimilation might modulate the effects of vowel peripherality on non-native vowel perception. Humans are born with the capacity to acquire the language of their environment, but quickly become 'tuned in' to the specific phonetic categories used in their native language. Research on adult cross-language speech perception suggests that the benefits of this perceptual attunement to native speech are often associated with a cost to discrimination of certain pairs of phones that signal a non-native phonological contrast in a language the listener has not previously been exposed to. That is, there is a sort of 'tuning out' of non-native contrasts that are irrelevant in the native language. The extent to which specific non-native contrasts are discriminable varies considerably, however, ranging from poor near-chance performance to excellent near-native performance levels. In recognition of those contrast-specific differences in discrimination, a number of theoretical models have sought to address the causes of the variation in performance. However, the majority of research on this issue has focused on discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts. Relatively little is known about the extent to which performance on non-native vowel contrasts exhibits the same range of variability, nor
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 2004
This study addresses the hypothesis that the more accurately a speaker discriminates a vowel contrast, the more distinctly the speaker produces that contrast. Measures of speech production and perception were collected from 19 young adult speakers of American English. In the production experiment, speakers repeated the words cod, cud, who'd, and hood in a carrier phrase at normal, clear, and fast rates. Articulatory movements and the associated acoustic signal were recorded, yielding measures of contrast distance between /a/ and /[see text for symbol]/ and between /u/ and /[see text for symbol]/. In the discrimination experiment, sets of seven natural-sounding stimuli ranging from cod to cud and who'd to hood were synthesized, based on productions by one male and one female speaker. The continua were then presented to each of the 19 speakers in labeling and discrimination tasks. Consistent with the hypothesis, speakers with discrimination scores above the median produced greater acoustic contrasts than speakers with discrimination scores at or below the median. Such a relation between speech production and perception is compatible with a model of speech production in which articulatory movements for vowels are planned primarily in auditory space.
Phonological Adaptation of Non-Native Words and the Perception of Feature Contrasts
This paper is a review of Jacobs (2014), who reviews Peperkamp et al. (2008), Calabrese (2010), and Boersma & Hamann (2010)-in that order-and of Boersma & Hamann (2010) in more detail. It deals with the adaptation of non-native words (i.e. loanwords) to native phonology, and investigates the question of at what point in the process information enters into the listener's L1 phonological system. It is argued that this takes place during the perception stage, i.e. that phonology is already involved in perception itself, not only in subsequent steps of the process. On the basis of some empirical evidence, it is concluded that rather than mapping L2 phonemes directly onto L1 phonemes, perception of non-native speech sounds involves mapping L2 phoneme contrasts onto L1 phoneme contrasts; and that this view is fully compatible with both the model by Jacobs and that by Boersma and Hamann. Thus, the nature of perception (both linguistically and in general) is described as being essentially reliant on contrast, although a distinction is made between subconscious and conscious perception. The process of phonological adaptation of loanwords is likened to children's acquisition of their L1 phonemic inventory. Originally a term paper I wrote for Optimality Theory class at Radboud University, taught by prof. dr. Haike Jacobs. I intend to rewrite it at some point, more elaborately, in order to more clearly express my thoughts.
A cross-language study of categorical perception for semi-vowel and liquid glide contrasts
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1982
Perception of non-native consonant contrasts may be influenced by phonetic, as well as phonological, properties of the listener's native language. The impact of both factors on perception of American English /r l w j/ was investigated with native speakers of Danish and German, which have /r l j/ but lack /w/, thus employing /r/-/l/ but lacking /w/-/j/ and /w/-/r/ as phonological contrasts. However, while the three languages realize /j/ identically, Danish/German ''light'' alveolar [l] differs modestly from English ''dark'' [ ] (velarized), Danish pharyngeal and labiodental approximant realizations of /r, v/ are more similar to English /r, w/ than are German uvular and labiodental fricative realizations, and Danish is richer in approximants than English or German. Phonetic similarities perceptually outweighed phonological correspondences: Danish listeners' performance on /w/-/r/ and /r/-/l/ approached that of English speakers, and discrimination of /w/-/j/ was remarkably higher than English speakers', all largely irrespective of spoken English experience. German listeners' identification of all contrasts was highly categorical, but discrimination was poorer than English and Danish listeners' for /w/-/r/ and /r/-/l/ and fell in between those two groups for /w/-/j/. Thus, cross-language phonetic relationships among corresponding (or neighboring) phonemes strongly influence perception. Together with systemic consideration of English, Danish, and German vowel and approximant subsystems, our results indicate that non-native speech perception is affected not only by the phonological contrastiveness and phonetic realizations of the target phonemes in the listeners' language, but also by broader systemic factors such as phonological subclasses.
The Use of Visual Cues In the Perception of Non-Native Consonant Contrasts
The Journal of the …, 2006
This study assessed the extent to which second-language learners are sensitive to phonetic information contained in visual cues when identifying a non-native phonemic contrast. In experiment 1, Spanish and Japanese learners of English were tested on their perception of a labial∕labiodental consonant contrast in audio (A), visual (V), and audio-visual (AV) modalities. Spanish students showed better performance overall, and much greater sensitivity to visual cues than Japanese students. Both learner groups achieved higher scores in the AV than in the A test condition, thus showing evidence of audio-visual benefit. Experiment 2 examined the perception of the less visually-salient ∕l∕-∕r∕ contrast in Japanese and Korean learners of English. Korean learners obtained much higher scores in auditory and audio-visual conditions than in the visual condition, while Japanese learners generally performed poorly in both modalities. Neither group showed evidence of audio-visual benefit. These results show the impact of the language background of the learner and visual salience of the contrast on the use of visual cues for a non-native contrast. Significant correlations between scores in the auditory and visual conditions suggest that increasing auditory proficiency in identifying a non-native contrast is linked with an increasing proficiency in using visual cues to the contrast.