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

Levy, Erika S.

doi:10.1121/1.3224715

Cited by 56 publications

(60 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Holliday performance on L2 perception tasks (Flege et al, 1997;Ingram and Park, 1997;Levy, 2009b;Tees and Werker, 1984), suggesting that in some cases L1 influence on L2 speech perception can be overcome with sufficient L2 experience.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…When the results in Levy (2009b) were broken down by vowel context, it was found that the HiExp listeners were more accurate than the ModExp listeners in discriminating between /oe/ and /o/, but not between /y/ and /u/. Thus, even though the HiExp listeners had surely been exposed to many more exemplars of French /y/ and /u/ than the ModExp listeners, this increased experience did not lead to more accurate discrimination between the two vowel sounds.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…For example, Levy (2009b) tested the discrimination accuracy on Parisian French vowel contrasts by 3 groups of native English listeners: naïve listeners with no French experience, L2 learners with an average of 3 years of classroom learning but little immersion experience (ModExp), and L2 learners with an average of 8 years of experience (HiExp), including at least 1 year of immersion in a French-speaking environment. It was found that listeners from the HiExp group were overall more accurate than listeners from the ModExp group when the results were averaged across vowel contexts.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Second Language Experience Can Hinder the Discrimination of Nonnative Phonological Contrasts

Holliday

2016

Phonetica

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Background/Aims: Many studies have shown that experienced second language (L2) learners are more skilled than novice L2 learners at a variety of L2 tasks, including auditory discrimination between members of L2 phonological contrasts. In this paper we argued that while L2 experience is typically beneficial when comparing the effects of more versus less experience, it is not necessarily beneficial when comparing the effects of some experience versus none. Methods: We compared the perceptual assimilation and discrimination of the Korean sibilant fricatives /sh/ and /s*/ by 3 native Mandarin populations: naïve listeners, novice L2 learners (4-6 weeks of experience), and advanced L2 learners (over 2 years of experience). Results: The perceptual assimilation of /sh/ changed as a result of L2 experience, but only in the /a/ context. It is also shown that novice L2 learners were less accurate than the naïve listeners at discriminating between /sh/ and /s*/ but, crucially, only in the /a/ context. Conclusion: The perception of /sh/ by L2 learners may be affected by knowledge of the L2 unavailable to naïve listeners, and some aspects of this knowledge may result in a decline in discrimination accuracy after even a very short period of L2 experience.

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Second Language Experience Can Hinder the Discrimination of Nonnative Phonological Contrasts

Holliday

2016

Phonetica

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“…AE [i+, ae+, U, u+] were each consistently assimilated to only one of the five spectral categories, but categorization as one-or two-mora J vowels was inconsistent both within and across J listeners, and [ae+] was categorized as more similar to a palatalized vowel on a substantial number of trials. Using the group patterns of perceptual assimilation, the 13 contrasting pairs were categorized in terms of PAM patterns, and in terms of overlap scores (Levy, 2009 Table 2, along with the group results on the AXB discrimination test.…”

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Cross-language perceptual similarity predicts categorial discrimination of American vowels by naïve Japanese listeners

Strange

Hisagi

Akahane‐Yamada³

et al. 2011

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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Current speech perception models propose that relative perceptual difficulties with non-native segmental contrasts can be predicted from cross-language phonetic similarities. Japanese (J) listeners performed a categorical discrimination task in which nine contrasts (six adjacent height pairs, three front/back pairs) involving eight American (AE) vowels [iː, ɪ, ɛ, æː, ɑː, ʌ, ʊ, uː] in /hVbə/ disyllables were tested. The listeners also completed a perceptual assimilation task (categorization as J vowels with category goodness ratings). Perceptual assimilation patterns (quantified as categorization overlap scores) were highly predictive of discrimination accuracy (rs = 0.93). Results suggested that J listeners used both spectral and temporal information in discriminating vowel contrasts.

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“…For each contrast and gender, the acoustic overlap score is the smaller percentage of classifications when two members of a BP contrast produced by the ES speakers were classified as the same BP vowel (cf. Levy, 2009). For example, the acoustic overlap score of /o-ɔ/ for male ES speakers is 50 %: 34 % of /o/ tokens and 3 % of /ɔ/ tokens were classified as /o/, whereas 47 % of /o/ tokens and 95 % of /ɔ/ tokens were classified as /ɔ/; summing the smaller percentages when both members were classified as the same BP vowel, i.e., 3 % + 47 %, gives 50 %.…”

Section: Relationship Between Non-native Production and Perceptionmentioning

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Relación entre la percepción y la producción de las vocales del portugués brasileño por parte de monolingües de español europeo

Elvin

Williams

Escudero

2017

loquens

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This study investigates the relationship between non-native perception and production of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) vowels by eight European Spanish monolinguals. Participants' accuracy on a non-native discrimination task was used to predict performance in non-native production. We also investigated the acoustic similarity between participants' non-native and native vowel productions. The findings indicate a perception-production link: non-native vowels which were perceptually difficult to discriminate were also less stable and more varied when produced. These findings support the claim of the Second Language Linguistic Perception model (Escudero, 2005;van Leussen & Escudero, 2015) that learners initially perceive and produce the sounds of a second language according to the acoustic properties of the sounds produced in their native language.Keywords: non-native perception; non-native production; interrelation. RESUMEN:Relación entre la percepción y la producción de las vocales del portugués brasileño por parte de monolingües de español europeo. -Este estudio examina la relación entre la percepción y la producción de las vocales del portugués brasileño por ocho hablantes monolingües de español europeo. Los resultados de la estrategia de discriminación de las vocales por parte de los sujetos del estudio se utilizaron para predecir los de la estrategia de producción por parte de hablantes no nativos de portugués. También investigamos las similitudes acústicas entre la producción de las vocales de la lengua propia de los participantes (el español) y las del portugués. Los resultados indican que existe una relación entre la percepción y la producción de las vocales; en concreto, las vocales que presentaron dificultades de percepción se produjeron de manera menos estable y con más variabilidad en la segunda lengua (el portugués, en este caso). Los resultados se corresponden con el modelo propuesto por la teoría de la Second Language Linguistic Perception (Escudero, 2005;van Leussen & Escudero, 2015) que sostiene que, en los estados iniciales de la adquisición, un individuo percibe y produce los sonidos del segundo idioma con las propiedades acústicas de los sonidos del idioma propio o primera lengua.Palabras clave: percepción de vocales no nativas; producción de vocales no nativas; interrelación entre ambas.

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

Cited by 56 publications

References 36 publications

Second Language Experience Can Hinder the Discrimination of Nonnative Phonological Contrasts

Second Language Experience Can Hinder the Discrimination of Nonnative Phonological Contrasts

Cross-language perceptual similarity predicts categorial discrimination of American vowels by naïve Japanese listeners

Relación entre la percepción y la producción de las vocales del portugués brasileño por parte de monolingües de español europeo

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