Auditory and categorical effects on cross-language vowel perception

Abstract

English monolinguals and native Spanish speakers of English rated the dissimilarity of tokens of two Spanish vowel categories, two English vowel categories, or one Spanish and one English vowel category. The dissimilarity ratings of experienced and inexperienced Spanish subjects did not differ significantly. For both the native Spanish and English subjects, perceived dissimilarity increased as the distance between vowels in an F1-F2 acoustic space increased. This supported the existence of a universal, sensory-based component in cross-language vowel perception. The native English and Spanish subjects' ratings were comparable for pairs made up of vowels that were distant in an F1-F2 space, but not for pairs made up of vowels from categories that were adjacent in an F1-F2 space. The inference that the differential classification of a pair of vowels augments perceived dissimilarity was supported by the results of experiment 2, where subjects rated pairs of vowels and participated in an oddity discrimination task. Triads in the oddity task were made up of tokens of vowel categories that were either adjacent (e.g., /a/-/ae/-/a/) or nonadjacent (e.g., /a/-/i/-/i/) in an F1-F2 space. The native English subjects' discrimination was better than the native Spanish subjects' for adjacent but not nonadjacent triads. The better the Spanish subjects performed on adjacent triads--and thus the more likely they were to have differentially classified the two phonetically distinct vowels in the triad--the more dissimilar they had earlier judged realizations of those two categories to be when presented in pairs. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for second language acquisition.

The Effects of L2 Experience and Vowel Context on the Perceptual Assimilation of English Fricatives by L2 Thai Learners

“…For example, even though Bohn and Flege (1990) found the positive effect of the language experience towards perceptual discrimination for /ɛ/-/ae/ as stated above, they did not find this factor useful in distinguishing /i/-/ɪ/. Similarly, Flege et al (1994) had found no significant effect of language experience in the dissimilarity rating of stimuli of many English and Spanish vowels as perceived by L2 Spanish learners. It seems that the issue of the correlation between L2 experience and English learning is still inconclusive as they might be various internal and external factors at play.…”

“…Bohn & Flege, 1990;Flege, Munro, & Fox, 1994;Munro, 1993) did not show the support of language experience over L2 learning. For example, even though Bohn and Flege (1990) found the positive effect of the language experience towards perceptual discrimination for /ɛ/-/ae/ as stated above, they did not find this factor useful in distinguishing /i/-/ɪ/.…”

Production and identification of English word-final nasal consonants by Brazilian EFL learners

“…The material was digitally edited and the inter-trial interval set at 2.8 s and the interstimulus at 1.3 s following Flege (1994). The order of the trials was randomized to minimize any ordering effect.…”

“…Kluge and colleagues (Kluge, 2004;Kluge et al, 2007) in their investigation of the perception of syllable-final nasals by twenty pre-intermediate Brazilian students of English, assessed perception through a Categorial Discrimination Test, modeled after Flege, Munro and Fox (1994), and an Identification Test. A group of three native speakers also took both perception tests as a reference for comparison.…”

L1 Korean vocalic transfer in adult L2 Korean learners’ production of Vietnamese monophthong vowels

“…Certain L2 sounds are sufficiently phonetically different from their nearest L1 targets to be perceived as "new" or "foreign", whereas others are sufficiently close to L1 targets to be classified as "similar", though not identical to some L1 phonemic target. Afterward, Flege and Munro (1994) proposed that phonetic distance between vowels could be related directly to distances between point targets in the Bark-scaled F1 -f 0 / F 2 -F1 plane (Syrdal and Gopal 1986).…”