Distinctiveness and Assimilation in Vowel Perception in a Second Language

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate how the distinctive establishment of 2nd language (L2) vowel categories (e.g., how distinctively an L2 vowel is established from nearby L2 vowels and from the native language counterpart in the 1st formant [F1] × 2nd formant [F2] vowel space) affected L2 vowel perception. Method Identification of 12 natural English monophthongs, and categorization and rating of synthetic English vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ in the F1 × F2 space were measured for Chinese-native (CN) and English-native (EN) listeners. CN listeners were also examined with categorization and rating of Chinese vowels in the F1 × F2 space. Results As expected, EN listeners significantly outperformed CN listeners in English vowel identification. Whereas EN listeners showed distinctive establishment of 2 English vowels, CN listeners had multiple patterns of L2 vowel establishment: both, 1, or neither established. Moreover, CN listeners' English vowel perception was significantly related to the perceptual distance between the English vowel and its Chinese counterpart, and the perceptual distance between the adjacent English vowels. Conclusions L2 vowel perception relied on listeners' capacity to distinctively establish L2 vowel categories that were distant from the nearby L2 vowels.

Assessment of L2 intelligibility: Comparing L1 listeners and automatic speech recognition

“…This is not surprising considering that the word list consisted of minimal pairs targeting difficult vowel contrasts, as used in a larger project on the training of English vowels by EFL learners. The results, therefore, confirmed that these L2 speakers struggled with the production of target English vowels, especially the lax/tense distinction (Chang & Weng, 2013;Hu, Tao, Li & Liu, 2019), and that this affected their intelligibility both by ASR and L1 listeners.…”

How L1-Chinese L2-English learners perceive English front vowels: A phonological account

“…Finally, the /e/ vowel was misidentified as /i/ 20% of the time and as /ɛ/ at 15%. The vowel accuracy results for the ESL learners described here are descriptive in nature since no statistical analyses were carried out, but a general comparison between the vowel confusion matrices here and in Hu et al (2019) and Ho (2009), for example, nevertheless reveal evidence of significant progress in perceptual accuracy.…”

“…This section reviews perception data of English vowels by low proficiency learners whose experience is restricted to English as a foreign language (EFL) environments (Jia et al 2006;Ho 2009;Lai 2010;Hu et al 2019). This will be followed by examination of vowel perception with more advanced proficiencies in English or of those who have had more experience and exposure to English while living in North America (Jia et al 2006;Xiahou 2012;Yu 2012).…”

“…Using both vowel identification and vowel perception tasks, Hu et al (2019) set out to examine what effects participants' native Mandarin vowel inventory had on the identification of L2…”

“…To test our hypothesis, we have regrouped the participants of the previous studies we have summarized in Section 2 (see Table 16). Phase 1 represents the monolingual learners from Jia et al (2006), Ho (2009), Hu et al (2019), andLai (2010). These monolingual learners are participants who are learning English as a foreign language.…”