The role of abstraction in non-native speech perception

Abstract

The end-result of perceptual reorganization in infancy is currently viewed as a reconfigured perceptual space, “warped” around native-language phonetic categories, which then acts as a direct perceptual filter on any non-native sounds: naïve-listener discrimination of non-native-sounds is determined by their mapping onto native-language phonetic categories that are acoustically/articulatorily most similar. We report results that suggest another factor in non-native speech perception: some perceptual sensitivities cannot be attributed to listeners’ warped perceptual space alone, but rather to enhanced general sensitivity along phonetic dimensions that the listeners’ native language employs to distinguish between categories. Specifically, we show that the knowledge of a language with short and long vowel categories leads to enhanced discrimination of non-native consonant length contrasts. We argue that these results support a view of perceptual reorganization as the consequence of learners’ hierarchical inductive inferences about the structure of the language’s sound system: infants not only acquire the specific phonetic category inventory, but also draw higher-order generalizations over the set of those categories, such as the overall informativity of phonetic dimensions for sound categorization. Non-native sound perception is then also determined by sensitivities that emerge from these generalizations, rather than only by mappings of non-native sounds onto native-language phonetic categories.

Difficulty in learning similar-sounding words: A developmental stage or a general property of learning?

“…We chose the length and the place dimensions because they have been shown to be differentially discriminable by two different L1-speaker populations: L1-Korean and L1-Mandarin (Pajak, 2012; Pajak & Levy, 2014). In particular, Korean speakers have an advantage over Mandarin speakers in discriminating consonant length contrasts, while Mandarin speakers have an advantage over Korean speakers in discriminating alveolo-palatal and retroflex consonant contrasts.…”

“…We know less, however, about listeners' overall abilities—as a group—to learn similar-sounding words when (i) they can reliably perceive the perceptual contrast, and (ii) the L1 phonetic-category information does not strongly interfere with L2 perception (cf. Pajak & Levy, 2014). This is the topic of the present paper.…”

“…That is, instead of trying to predict an individual's ability to learn words from that individual's ability to discriminate those words, as in prior work (e.g., Silbert et al, 2015), we investigate the relationship between perceptual discrimination and word learning in listeners as a function of one of two different native language backgrounds. We use two native-language populations which we know have complementary expertise in perceptual discrimination: Mandarin speakers, who are sensitive to non-native sibilant place-of-articulation distinctions, and Korean speakers, who are sensitive to non-native consonant length distinctions (Pajak & Levy, 2014). …”

The influence of second language vowels on foreign language vowel perception

“…Furthermore, with regard to selective attention to features (Pajak and Levy 2014), these results suggest that familiarity with the feature [+rounded] from L1 (Polish uses rounding for its back vowels and /w/, but the feature is not used contrastively/distinctively) does not mean it can be easily abstracted and used in a completely different context (front vowels). It is therefore argued that the hypothesis about selective attention to features should incorporate markedness -i.e.…”

“…Introduction. Pajak and Levy (2014) postulate an important role for selective attention to features in second language speech perception. They argue that listeners have enhanced sensitivity along phonetic dimensions that their L1 uses to distinguish between phonetic categories.…”