The KEY to the ROCK: Near-homophony in nonnative visual word recognition

Ota, Masahiro; Hartsuiker, Robert J.; Haywood, Sarah L.

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2008.12.007

Cited by 53 publications

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“…Broersma, 2012;Cutler et al, 2006;Darcy et al, 2012;Weber and Cutler, 2004). Furthermore, L1 homophone effects observed for orthographic stimuli (Ota et al, 2009) suggest that L1 homophone effects can manifest themselves without the direct involvement of phonetic processing, raising 16 two possibilities: (1) L1 homophone effects can occur independently of L2 listeners' abilities to distinguish difficult L2 contrasts, or (2) the effects can occur under an indirect influence of L2 listeners' lack of abilities to discriminate difficult L2 contrasts reliably.In order to distinguish the two possibilities, we conducted a word learning experiment that examined whether or not L1 homophone effects can be observed in spoken-word recognition by L2 participants who can perceptually discriminate a difficult L2 contrast with native-like accuracy. We note that most of our L2 participants were clearly not native equivalents in all aspects of English proficiency, consistent with their self-reports, although the L2 groups did not differ significantly from the L1 English group in their abilities to discriminate the members of the relevant L2 contrasts.…”

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confidence: 96%

“…In a semantic-relatedness task using orthographic words only, Ota et al (2009) observed L1 homophone effects for minimal-pair English words differing by /p/ vs. /b/ (e.g. bad vs. pad) in L1 Arabic speakers, and for words differing by /l/ vs. /r/ (e.g.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…lock vs. rock) in L1 Japanese speakers. As Ota et al (2009) pointed out, the observed L1 homophone effects could not have been directly caused by the L2 participants' lack of ability to discriminate the difficult L2 contrast, as the stimuli were presented in print.Ota et al 's (2009) findings are consistent with two possibilities. One possibility is that L1 homophone effects can occur independently of L2 listeners' abilities to discriminate difficult L2 contrasts.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Another possibility is that L1 homophone effects can be caused indirectly by L2 listeners' inadequate phonetic processing abilities. For example, the effects can occur without auditory input if L2 listeners who cannot reliably distinguish a difficult contrast have a single phonological representation (Broersma, 2012;Pallier et al, 2001) or ambiguous phonological representations (Ota et al, 2009) for L2 words that contain a member of that contrast. In the first scenario, L1 homophone effects will never entirely disappear, even if the L2 listener has become capable of distinguishing the difficult L2 contrast with nativelike accuracy.…”

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A prerequisite to L1 homophone effects in L2 spoken-word recognition

Nakai

Lindsay

Ota

2014

Second Language Research

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When both members of a phonemic contrast in L2 (second language) are perceptually mapped to a single phoneme in one's L1 (first language), L2 words containing a member of that contrast can spuriously activate L2 words in spoken-word recognition. For example, upon hearing cattle, Dutch speakers of English are reported to experience activation of kettle, as L1 Dutch speakers perceptually map the vowel in the two English words to a single vowel phoneme in their L1. In an auditory wordlearning experiment using Greek and Japanese speakers of English, we asked whether such cross-lexical activation in L2 spoken-word recognition necessarily involves inaccurate perception by the L2 listeners, or can also arise from interference from L1 phonology at an abstract level, independent of the listeners' phonetic processing abilities. Results suggest that spurious activation of L2 words containing L2-specific contrasts in spoken-word recognition is contingent on the L2 listeners' inadequate phonetic processing abilities. Key wordsEnglish, Greek, Japanese, L1 phonology, L2 spoken-word recognition, phonetic processing 2 I IntroductionResearch on second language (L2) speech perception has shown that various L2 phonemic contrasts do not pose the same degree of challenge to L2 learners. Since the 1990s, many studies have shown that it is difficult to learn to discriminate L2 phonemes when the contrasting phonemes are perceived by the L2 listeners to be similar to a single phoneme in their first language (L1), while L2 phonemes perceived to be similar to different L1 phonemes are easy to discriminate (hereafter 'difficult' vs. 'easy' L2 contrasts), consistent with Best's Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best, 1991;Best and Tyler, 2007). Difficult L2 contrasts include the English /l/ vs. /r/ in syllable-initial position for L1 Japanese listeners, who would perceptually map both phonemes to the only liquid sound /ɾ/ in Japanese (see Aoyama et al., 2004, and references therein), and the English /ɛ/ vs. /ae/ contrast for L1 Dutch listeners, who would perceptually map both vowels to the Dutch /ɛ/ (Cutler et al., 2005). Easy L2 contrasts include the English /w/ vs. /j/ for L1 Japanese listeners, who would perceptually map each of the English phonemes to /w/ vs. /j/ in their L1 (Best and Strange, 1992).As one would expect, difficult L2 phonemic contrasts have been shown to produce non-native like behaviour in L2 spoken-word recognition. Specifically, minimal-pair words differing by a difficult L2 contrast (e.g. lock and rock for the Japanese; kettle and cattle for the Dutch) appear to be treated as if they were homophonous in L2 spoken-word recognition. In an auditory lexical decision task, the presentation of a member of such a minimal pair can facilitate the recognition of the other member (Broersma, 2002;Pallier et al., 2001; see, however, Broersma, 2012, for the observation of both facilitation and inhibition). Nonwords that differ from real words by a difficult L2 contrast (e.g. geng /gɛŋ/ vs. gang /gaeŋ/ for L1 Dutch listeners) t...

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A prerequisite to L1 homophone effects in L2 spoken-word recognition

Nakai

Lindsay

Ota

2014

Second Language Research

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“…Second, the fact that English words containing /θ/ and /ð/ are also quite limited in number again aggravates the difficulty (Smith, 2009). Thus, L2 speakers encounter considerate challenges when they encode them (Ota et al, 2009). Though the subjects in the present study have learnt English for about averagely 6.5 years, they received far more instructions in the formal aspect of the language, i.e.…”

Section: International Journal Of Linguisticsmentioning

confidence: 96%

The Impact of L1 Negative Phonological Transfer on L2 Word Identification and Production

Jiang

Liu²

2014

IJL

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Abstract30 intermediate Chinese English learners participated in two experiments which address the issue of first language negative phonological transfer on second language word identification and production. In Experiment 1, the subjects performed an auditory priming task. In Experiment 2, the subjects completed a pronunciation task, in which they were asked to read words containing "th" and some filler words. Results showed that the subjects assimilated the English phonemes /s/, /θ/ and /d/, /ð/ into the Chinese phonemic categories of (s) and (d) respectively and used (s) and (d) to substitute /s/, /θ/ and /d/, /ð/ in word identification and production. The result partly confirmed the Speech Learning Model and the abstractionist model of speech perception and the researchers argued that the negative phonological transfer resulted in false phonological representations of L2 words in the learners' mental lexicon.

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Automatic Speech Recognition System to Support Aural Vocabulary Learning

Hirata,

Yamada

2024

Cognition and Exploratory Learning in the Digital Age

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The KEY to the ROCK: Near-homophony in nonnative visual word recognition

Cited by 53 publications

References 31 publications

A prerequisite to L1 homophone effects in L2 spoken-word recognition

A prerequisite to L1 homophone effects in L2 spoken-word recognition

The Impact of L1 Negative Phonological Transfer on L2 Word Identification and Production

Automatic Speech Recognition System to Support Aural Vocabulary Learning

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