Chapter Thirteen. Anglophone Perceptions Of Arabic Syllable Structure

Echoes of L1 Syllable Structure in L2 Phoneme Recognition

“…We find evidence that both phonological and phonetic cues are used by L2 learners to identify sound categories, and that the learners' use of these cues varies depending on the input they are given and their L1 experience. This argues against previous proposals, Phonetic-and Phonological-Superiority Hypotheses, that claim one cue consistently outweighs the other (Cho and McQueen, 2006;Ali et al, 2011), and suggests that learners may be capable of combining information from their L1 structure with perceived cue-reliability as part of a rational cue integration framework for L2 perception and categorization.…”

“…However, their design does not distinguish between these two hypotheses. The current research study extends the work of Ali et al (2011) by testing Japanese, and adding audio-only and congruent audio-visual stimuli to test the effects of syllabification preferences beyond just McGurk fusion. Eighteen native English speakers and 18 native Japanese speakers were asked to transcribe nonsense words in an artificial language.…”

“…To argue that this difference is the result of syllable representation and a preference for certain syllable structure, Ali et al (2011) further tested English learners of Arabic (with an average of 3 years of part-time Arabic instruction) in addition to English and Arabic monolinguals. English speakers with significant Arabic instruction showed a similar response to Arabic monolinguals when they were presented with Arabic stimuli: they fused audio and visual information almost equally in onset and coda positions.…”

“…The first explanation is that, as Ali et al (2011) claimed, the difference in the magnitude of McGurk fusion rate is dependent on the phonological syllabic structure, and thus reflects language-specific phonological preferences inherited from L1. This supports the Phonological-Superiority Hypothesis, which claims that cross-linguistic differences in consonant perception in different syllable positions arise from differences in the native phonological structure preferences (Cho and McQueen, 2006).…”

“…As a result, we expect to see language-specific syllable structure influencing speech perception as well. Initial evidence of an effect appears in Ali et al (2011), who argued that cross-linguistic differences in McGurk fusion within a syllable reflected listeners' language-specific syllabification preferences. Building on a framework from Cho and McQueen (2006), we argue that this could reflect the Phonological-Superiority Hypothesis (differences in L1 syllabification preferences make some syllabic positions harder to classify than others) or the Phonetic-Superiority Hypothesis (the acoustic qualities of speech sounds in some positions make it difficult to perceive unfamiliar sounds).…”