Cross-language specialization in phonetic processing: English and Hindi perception of /w/-/v/ speech and nonspeech (original) (raw)
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Neurophysiologic correlates of cross-language perception of phonetic categories
The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 1999
This study examined neurophysiologic correlates of the perception of native and nonnative phonetic categories. Behavioral and electrophysiologic responses were obtained from Hindi and English listeners in response to a stimulus continuum of naturally produced, bilabial CV stimuli that differed in VOT from Ϫ90 to 0 ms. These speech sounds constitute phonemically relevant categories in Hindi but not in English. As expected, the native Hindi listeners identified the stimuli as belonging to two distinct phonetic categories ͑/ba/ and /pa/͒ and were easily able to discriminate a stimulus pair across these categories. On the other hand, English listeners discriminated the same stimulus pair at a chance level. In the electrophysiologic experiment N1 and MMN cortical evoked potentials ͑considered neurophysiologic indices of stimulus processing͒ were measured. The changes in N1 latency which reflected the duration of pre-voicing across the stimulus continuum were not significantly different for Hindi and English listeners. On the other hand, in response to the /ba/-/pa/ stimulus contrast, a robust MMN was seen only in Hindi listeners and not in English listeners. These results suggest that neurophysiologic levels of stimulus processing reflected by the MMN and N1 are differentially altered by linguistic experience.
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 2008
The present study investigated the perception and production of English /w/ and /v/ by native speakers of Sinhala, German, and Dutch, with the aim of examining how their native language phonetic processing affected the acquisition of these phonemes. Subjects performed a battery of tests that assessed their identification accuracy for natural recordings, their degree of spoken accent, their relative use of place and manner cues, the assimilation of these phonemes into native-language categories, and their perceptual maps (i.e., multidimensional scaling solutions) for these phonemes. Most Sinhala speakers had near-chance identification accuracy, Germans ranged from chance to 100% correct, and Dutch speakers had uniformly high accuracy. The results suggest that these learning differences were caused more by perceptual interference than by category assimilation; Sinhala and German speakers both have a single native-language phoneme that is similar to English /w/ and /v/, but the auditory sensitivities of Sinhala speakers make it harder for them to discern the acoustic cues that are critical to /w/-/v/ categorization.
Influence of native language phonetic system on audio-visual speech perception
Journal of Phonetics, 2009
This study examines how native language (L1) experience affects auditory-visual (AV) perception of nonnative (L2) speech. Korean, Mandarin and English perceivers were presented with English CV syllables containing fricatives with three places of articulation: labiodentals nonexistent in Korean, interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, and alveolars occurring in all three L1s. The stimuli were presented as auditory-only, visual-only, congruent AV and incongruent AV. Results show that for the labiodentals which are nonnative in Korean, the Koreans had lower accuracy for the visual domain than the English and the Mandarin perceivers, but they nevertheless achieved native-level perception in the auditory and AV domains. For the interdentals nonexistent in Korean and Mandarin, while both nonnative groups had lower accuracy in the auditory domain than the native English group, they benefited from the visual information with improved performance in AV perception. Comparing the two nonnative groups, the Mandarin perceivers showed poorer auditory and AV identification for the interdentals and greater AV-fusion with the incongruent AV material than did the Koreans. These results indicate that nonnative perceivers are able to use visual speech information in L2 perception, although acquiring accurate use of the auditory and visual domains may not be similarly achieved across native groups, a process influenced by L1 experience.
2020
Speech perception has been extensively proven to be modulated by exposure to native language. As the perception of nonnative sounds is predicted to be influenced by the phonological experiences of learners, it is worthwhile to study the perception of non-native speech sounds by learners who share the same language learning ecology but possess different linguistic repertoires. This study focuses on the perception of English dental fricatives, [θ] and [ð], by Persian and Arabic-Persian EFL learners, with the former lacking these sounds in their L1 and the latter having them in their L1 (Arabic) phonological system. To examine the perception of these sounds by both groups and their perceptual substitutes, 90 Iranian EFL learners – 32 Arabic-Persian bilinguals and 58 Persian monolinguals – completed a discrimination and an identification task. Although the results indicated a significant difference only in the identification of [θ], the trend showed that Arabic-Persian learners were mor...
Languages (vol. 5, iss. 4, article 49), 2020
Perception of a nonnative language (L2) is known to be affected by crosslinguistic transfer from a listener's native language (L1), but the relative importance of L1 transfer vis-a-vis individual learner differences remains unclear. This study explored the hypothesis that the nature of L1 transfer changes as learners gain experience with the L2, such that individual differences are more influential at earlier stages of learning and L1 transfer is more influential at later stages of learning. To test this hypothesis, novice L2 learners of Korean from diverse L1 backgrounds were examined in a pretest-posttest design with respect to their perceptual acquisition of novel L2 consonant contrasts (the three-way Korean laryngeal contrast among lenis, fortis, and aspirated plosives) and vowel contrasts (/o/-/ʌ/, /u/-/ɨ/). Whereas pretest performance showed little evidence of L1 effects, posttest performance showed significant L1 transfer. Furthermore, pretest performance did not predict posttest performance. These findings support the view that L1 knowledge influences L2 perception dynamically, according to the amount of L2 knowledge available to learners at that time. That is, both individual differences and L1 knowledge play a role in L2 perception, but to different degrees over the course of L2 development.
Cross-language speech perception: Initial capabilities and developmental change
Developmental Psychology, 1988
This article reports three studies designed to increase our understanding of developmental changes in cross-language speech perception. In the first study, we compared adult speakers of English and Hindi on their ability to discriminate pairings from a synthetic voiced, unaspirated place-of-articulation continuum. Results indicated that English listeners discriminate two categories (ba vs. (Ja), whereas Hindi listeners discriminate three (ba vs. da, and da vs. Da). We then used stimuli from within this continuum in the next two experiments to determine (a) if our previously reported finding (Werker & Tees, 1984a) of a reorganization between 6 and 12 months of life from "universal" to "language-specific" phonetic perception would be evident using synthetic (rather than natural) stimuli in which the physical variability within and between categories could be controlled, and (b) whether the younger infants' sensitivity to nonnative speech contrasts is best explained by reference to the phonetic relevance or the physical similarity of the stimuli. In addition to replicating the developmental reorganization, the results indicate that infant speech perception is phonetically relevant. We discuss the implications of these results.
Individual differences in the acquisition of second language phonology
Brain & Language, 2009
Perceptual training was employed to characterize individual differences in non-native speech sound learning. Fifty-nine adult English speakers were trained to distinguish the Hindi dental-retroflex contrast, as well as a tonal pitch contrast. Training resulted in overall group improvement in the ability to identify and to discriminate the phonetic and the tonal contrasts, but there were considerable individual differences in performance. A category boundary effect during the post-training discrimination of the Hindi but not of the tonal contrast suggests different learning mechanisms for these two stimulus types. Specifically, our results suggest that successful learning of the speech sounds involves the formation of a long-term memory category representation for the new speech sound.
Non-native discrimination across speaking style, modality, and phonetic feature
Discriminating between certain non-native contrasts can be difficult. The Perceptual Assimilation Model [1] predicts that when two non-native phones are assimilated to the same native language category, as equally good or poor versions, discrimination should be poor (a single-category assimilation). However, it is not known to what extent visual and/or clearly articulated speech might assist cross-language speech perception. Monolingual Australian English listeners discriminated two single-category Sindhi consonant contrasts (/ʈ/-/t̪ /, /b/-/ɓ/), across auditory-only (AO) and auditory-visual (AV) conditions, in clear and citation speech. For /b/-/ɓ/ (a laryngeal feature difference), AV contrasts were discriminated more accurately than AO contrasts in citation speech, but not in clear speech, while for /ʈ/-/t̪ / (a place-of-articulation difference) there was AV benefit for clear, but not for citation speech. These results highlight that while perceivers attempt to utilize even subtle gestural differences, speaking style and modality differentially contribute to the success of discriminating across non-native contrasts.
Non-native vowel perception: The interplay of categories and features
2018
The book Non-native vowel perception: The interplay of categories and features is devoted to vowel perception in the second, third and foreign language by Polish advanced learners English, French or Dutch as the second and third language in a formal classroom instruction setting. So far it has been assumed that non-native sound perception is based on assimilation to the first language categories or new category formation. The present book hypothesizes that also individual phonetic features, which the learner is familiar with, and the lack of reaction to unknown features play a role in speech perception. The first study is a longitudinal English vowel perception study which examines which features ease perception development. Studies two and three examine whether and, if so, to what extent, the phonetic features known from the L2 and L3 influence non-native perception. It is tested how the learners of English, French and Dutch perceive Dutch and Turkish vowels. The studies have confi...