The perception of English front vowels by North Holland and Flemish listeners: Acoustic similarity predicts and explains cross-linguistic and L2 perception

Abstract

a b s t r a c tWe investigated whether regional differences in the native language (L1) influence the perception of second language (L2) sounds. Many cross-language and L2 perception studies have assumed that the degree of acoustic similarity between L1 and L2 sounds predicts cross-linguistic and L2 performance. The present study tests this assumption by examining the perception of the English contrast between /e/ and /ae/ in native speakers of Dutch spoken in North Holland (the Netherlands) and in East-and West-Flanders (Belgium). A Linear Discriminant Analysis on acoustic data from both dialects showed that their differences in vowel production, as reported in and Adank, van Hout, and Van de Velde (2007), should influence the perception of the L2 vowels if listeners focus on the vowels' acoustic/ auditory properties. Indeed, the results of categorization tasks with Dutch or English vowels as response options showed that the two listener groups differed as predicted by the discriminant analysis. Moreover, the results of the English categorization task revealed that both groups of Dutch listeners displayed the asymmetric pattern found in previous word recognition studies, i.e. English /ae/ was more frequently confused with English /e/ than the reverse. This suggests a strong link between previous L2 word learning results and the present L2 perceptual assimilation patterns.

Regional differences in the perception of a consonant change in progress

“…The consequence of this perceptual attunement to the input is that listeners with different native languages show different perceptual patterns, as they have been exposed throughout their life to different sound systems. This has been confirmed by numerous studies on both the segmental (e.g., Escudero, Simon & Mitterer, 2012;Flege, Takagi & Mann, 1996;Guion et al, 2000) and the supra-segmental level (e.g., Guion, Harada & Clark, 2004;Hallé, Chang & Best, 2004;Hirata, 2004;McAllister, Flege & Piske, 2002). …”

Effects of acoustic–phonetic detail on cross-language speech production

“…In all cases, it is plausible that unfaithful decoding maps nonnative inputs to the most phonetically similar native sound structures (e.g., Best, 1995;Escudero, Simon, & Mitterer, 2012;Flege, 1995).…”

Abstraction of phonological representations in adult nonnative speakers

“…Because the model focuses on the phonetic level, DA of acoustic information on L2 segments is used as a tool to predict identification results. While the DA predict the perceptual abilities of naïve listeners ( Strange, Bohn, Nishi, & Trent, 2005;Strange et al, 2004), with some exceptions, this type of analysis strongly predicts the perceptual abilities of L2 listeners (Escudero et al, 2012;Gilichinskaya & Strange, 2010).…”

“…Studies measuring acoustic characteristics of L1 and L2 have been conducted by Strange (Strange et al, 2004), and others (e.g., Escudero, Simon, & Mitterer, 2012) in order to determine the reliability of the ASP as a model. Some experiments focus on naïve learners, similar to the original PAM (Best, 1994), while others test L2 learners.…”

“…The predictions of the ASP will be quantified by measuring the acoustic variables thought to influence perception in NS productions and submitting these measurements to a DA. The results of such an analysis have been shown to accurately predict L2 learners' perception of non-native vowels (Escudero et al, 2012;Gilichinskaya & Strange, 2010) in a manner that takes into account all the relevant acoustic variables and is context-dependent.…”