Category and perceptual interference in second-language phoneme learning: An examination of English /w/-/v/ learning by Sinhala, German, and Dutch speakers.

Abstract

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.

Cross-language specialization in phonetic processing: English and Hindi perception of /w/-/v/ speech and nonspeech

“…For example, infants develop L1 phonetic specializations prior to when they are thought to learn words (e.g., Kuhl et al, 1992;Werker and Tees, 1984a), cross-language neuroimaging differences in adults have been found to occur prior to lexical processing (e.g., Näätänen et al, 1997;Raizada et al, 2010), and speakers of tone languages can have auditory processing advantages for nonspeech pitch contours that are analogous to the tone contrasts in their language (e.g., Krishnan and Gandour, 2009). Based on this kind of evidence, our hypothesis has been that there is speech-specific specialization of auditory or phonetic processing that occurs independently from linguistic categorization (Iverson et al, , 2008. This auditory/phonetic specialization may be adaptive for L1 categorization (e.g., Kuhl et al, 2008), but interfere with L2 learning and categorization when it makes the critical L2 phonetic differences less salient (Iverson et al, , 2008.…”

“…Based on this kind of evidence, our hypothesis has been that there is speech-specific specialization of auditory or phonetic processing that occurs independently from linguistic categorization (Iverson et al, , 2008. This auditory/phonetic specialization may be adaptive for L1 categorization (e.g., Kuhl et al, 2008), but interfere with L2 learning and categorization when it makes the critical L2 phonetic differences less salient (Iverson et al, , 2008.…”

“…Individuals become increasingly specialized for native-language (L1) speech sounds through early development, such that they can have difficulty learning second-language (L2) phonetic contrasts as adults (e.g., Kuhl et al, 2006;Werker and Tees, 1984a;Iverson et al, 2008Iverson et al, , 2003. Theories of development and L2 learning have traditionally examined this specialization at the level of linguistic categorization (e.g., phonological or lexical representations; Cutler et al, 2006;Flege, 1995;Best, 1995;Werker and Curtin, 2005).…”

“…English /w/ and /v/ differ in both manner (e.g., F1 frequency, frication, amplitude modulation) and place of articulation (e.g., F2 frequency related to tongue bunching; see Iverson et al, 2008). Pilot work demonstrated that Hindi speakers perceived /w/-/v/ similarly to the Sinhala speakers that we had previously studied (Iverson et al, 2008); they assimilated these English consonants to a single native consonant (labio-dental approximant /t/) and had difficulty discriminating the contrast both in manner and place dimensions. We adopted a graded approach to examining the speech/nonspeech distinction (see also Rosen and Iverson, 2007), rather than the traditional method of comparing clear examples of speech and nonspeech (e.g., Miyawaki et al, 1975).…”

On the assimilation-discrimination relationship in American English adults’ French vowel learning

“…Listeners were clearly sensitive to distinctions that were not necessarily reflected in their categorization patterns. Iverson et al ͑2008͒ suggested that distortions in perceptual space also contribute to L2 learning.…”