Influences of listeners' native and other dialects on cross-language vowel perception

Abstract

This paper examines to what extent acoustic similarity between native and non-native vowels predicts non-native vowel perception and whether this process is influenced by listeners' native and other non-native dialects. Listeners with Northern and Southern British English dialects completed a perceptual assimilation task in which they categorized tokens of 15 Dutch vowels in terms of English vowel categories. While the cross-language acoustic similarity of Dutch vowels to English vowels largely predicted Southern listeners' perceptual assimilation patterns, this was not the case for Northern listeners, whose assimilation patterns resembled those of Southern listeners for all but three Dutch vowels. The cross-language acoustic similarity of Dutch vowels to Northern English vowels was re-examined by incorporating Southern English tokens, which resulted in considerable improvements in the predicting power of cross-language acoustic similarity. This suggests that Northern listeners' assimilation of Dutch vowels to English vowels was influenced by knowledge of both native Northern and non-native Southern English vowel categories. The implications of these findings for theories of non-native speech perception are discussed.

Spanish is better than English for discriminating Portuguese vowels: acoustic similarity versus vowel inventory size

“…However, unlike AusE listeners, CE listeners found /a-ɔ/ as difficult as /o-u/, and had significantly lower accuracy scores for /a-ɔ/ than for /e-ε/ and /o-ɔ/. As shown in Williams and Escudero (2014) , differences in non-native vowel perception between native listeners with different English dialects are also explained by dialectal differences in English vowel production. In that respect, ongoing research comparing AusE, CE, and native BP listeners suggest that acoustic properties may be at the heart of the differential non-native patterns.…”

Disentangling the effects of long-term language contact and individual bilingualism: The case of monophthongs in Welsh and English

“…To establish which Welsh vowel categories were acoustically closest to which English ones, a Linear Discriminant Analysis was conducted, in line with previous studies (e.g., Williams & Escudero, 2014a). The analysis initially involved generating linear discriminant functions on the basis of the F1 (Bark), F2 (Bark) and duration values of the Welsh vowels produced by the Welsh-English bilinguals from Welsh-speaking homes.…”

“…This suggests that differences in home language use across the two bilingual groups did not affect their vowel realisations in Welsh. To establish which Welsh vowel categories were acoustically closest to which English ones, a LINEAR DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS was conducted, in line with previous studies (e.g., Williams & Escudero, 2014a -heed, hid-hid, hêd-herd, hed-head, hadhad, hâd-hard, hôd-hoard, hod-hod, hŵd-who'd, hwd-hood, hyd-hud) and language group (monolingual English or Welsh-dominant bilingual) and the random factor was speaker. Random slopes were not entered because vowel pair is not a factor repeated across all participants in the model as the tokens come from two experiments with different within-subjects items.…”

How bidialectalism affects non-native speech acquisition: Evidence from Shanghai and Mandarin Chinese

“…Some studies have also demonstrated the impact of a possible activation switch between different modes of languages/dialects on learning an additional language. For instance, Williams and Escudero (2014a) compared Northern and Southern British listeners in their perceptual categorization of non-native Dutch vowels. Interestingly, they found that the Northern listeners’ categorization of Dutch vowels was influenced by their knowledge about the acoustic patterns of the standard Southern British vowels, possibly due to the activation of the Southern British English mode of speech perception during the laboratory testing session.…”