Immediate and Distracted Imitation in Second-Language Speech: Unreleased Plosives In English

Abstract

<jats:p>The paper investigates immediate and distracted imitation in second-language speech using unreleased plosives. Unreleased plosives are fairly frequently found in English sequences of two stops. Polish, on the other hand, is characterised by a significant rate of releases in such sequences. This cross-linguistic difference served as material to look into how and to what extent non-native properties of sounds can be produced in immediate and distracted imitation. Thirteen native speakers of Polish first read and then imitated sequences of words with two stops straddling the word boundary. Stimuli for imitation had no release of the first stop. The results revealed that (1) a non-native feature such as the lack of the release burst can be imitated; (2) distracting imitation impedes imitative performance; (3) the type of a sequence interacts with the magnitude of an imitative effect</jats:p>

Imitation in a Second Language Relies on Phonological Categories but Does Not Reflect the Productive Usage of Difficult Sound Contrasts

“…Others investigated whether improvements following training in one modality transferred to the other modality and, if so, under what circumstances (Akahane-Yamada, McDermott, Adachi, Kawahara, & Pruitt, 1998; Bradlow, Akahane-Yamada, Pisoni, & Tohkura, 1999; Bradlow, Pisoni, Akahane-Yamada, & Tohkura, 1997; Hirata, 2004; Lopez-Soto & Kewley-Port, 2009; Thorin, Sadakata, Desain, & McQueen, 2018; Wong, 2013). Finally, imitation after a native speaker model has frequently been used as a window into the link between L2 perception and production (de Jong et al, 2009; Flege & Eefting, 1988; Hao & de Jong, 2016; Jia, Strange, Wu, Collado, & Guan, 2006; Rojczyk, 2013; Rojczyk, Porzuczek, & Bergier, 2013; Schouten, 1977). Imitation tasks are considered to be especially informative regarding this issue because they involve the engagement of the two systems in one task.…”

Cognitive Factors in Thai-Naïve Mandarin Speakers’ Imitation of Thai Lexical Tones

“…The less than expected effect of memory load could be because when waiting for imitation in the long interval condition, participants rehearsed internally, which reduced the decay of phonetic details perceived from the stimuli, thus diminishing the difference between two memory load conditions. Studies that asked participants to do other tasks while waiting have reported stronger effect of memory load [7].…”

“…Furthermore, they proposed that participants can operate on a phonetic mode of processing without any access to native phonology. In [7], native speakers of Polish imitated English unreleased plosives in two-stop sequences in two imitation conditions. In one condition, they imitated the stimuli immediately and, in another condition, they read a digit after the auditory input before imitating.…”

Stop Release in Polish English — Implications for Prosodic Constituency

“…Thus, the acquisition of stop release suppression may be suggested to be an instrumental aspect of prosodic learning in L2 English. In the context of L1 Polish speakers learning English, previous studies by Bergier (2010) and Rojczyk et al (2013) have investigated the production of unreleased stops.…”