Perception of second language phonetic contrasts by monolinguals and bidialectals: A comparison of competencies

Abstract

This study aims to examine the perception of English vowels by Greek monolingual and bidialectal speakers of English as a second language (L2) and assess the predictions of the Universal Perceptual Model (UPM). Adult Cypriot Greek (CG) bidialectal speakers and Standard Modern Greek (SMG) monolingual speakers participated in classification and discrimination tests. The two groups were matched for various linguistic, sociolinguistic, and cognitive factors. Another group of adult English speakers served as controls. Data analysis has been conducted with the use of Bayesian regression models. The results of the discrimination test were predicted by acoustic similarity only to some extent, while perceptual similarity predicted most contrasts, confirming the hypotheses of UPM. A crucial finding was that bidialectals outperformed monolinguals in the discrimination of L2 contrasts. The advantage observed in bidialectals could be attributed to the greater flexibility of their speech categories, stemming from exposure to more diverse linguistic input.

Categorization of second language accents by bilingual and multilingual listeners

“…An alternative expectation for enhanced performance among bi-/multilinguals compared to monolinguals stems from the proposition of more adaptable speech sound categories and heightened phonetic flexibility in the former individuals (Cowan & Olmstead, 2023;Levi et al, 2019). This proposition is corroborated by the findings of Georgiou et al (2024), who observed that bidialectals outperformed monolinguals in discriminating L2 sound contrasts, after controlling for various sociolinguistic and cognitive variables.…”