Perception of word boundaries in English speech by Japanese L2 learners of English

Abstract

This study investigated the perception of aspiration and glottal stop phonetic cues for word juncture in English phrases by Japanese L2 learners of English, replicating a study of Spanish L2 learners [E. P. Altenberg, Second Language Research. 21, 325–358 (2005)]. Thirty Japanese and 10 American listeners responded to 84 phrases in randomly ordered lists containing 42 contrasting pairs, e.g., keeps talking versus keep stalking (aspiration-cued contrasts) and a nice man versus an ice man (glottal stop-cued contrasts) in a two-choice task with confidence ratings. Results indicated that aspiration cues were less available to Japanese listeners (mean=73% correct) than glottal stop cues (mean=91% correct); Americans performed near ceiling on both types of contrasts (96% and 97% correct). Japanese listeners had the most difficulty perceiving aspiration-cued contrasts containing consonant clusters at word junctures, e.g., keeps canning versus keep scanning, tops crawled versus top scrawled. JapaneseEconfidence ratings were high even when they erred, while those of native listeners better reflected response accuracy. The results support the notion that L1/L2 differences in both phonetic and phonotactic structure significantly affects perception of L2 word boundaries.