Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners of English

Abstract This paper investigates the roles of language-specific phonological learning and inherent phonetic contrastiveness in the perception of non-native vowels. Native speakers of Korean and Japanese, at two levels of English language experience, were assessed on the perception and production of Australian English monophthongal non-back vowels: /i: i e ae a:/. Prototypicality ratings, or perceived similarities of the foreign vowels to their nearest native (L1) phonemic targets, were also examined, to assess models of cross-language vowel perception. Korean is of interest because of a recent phonological merger of two front vowels (/e/ and /ϵ/), which has produced a generation split among speakers of Seoul dialect above and below 45–50 years of age (Hong, 1991). The present study is the first reported case of how a phonemic merger, resulting in cross-generation differences within a speech community, can influence speakers' perception and production of non-native vowels. The effects of L1 phonological learning on vowel perception were also observed in the tendency of the Japanese, but not the Korean listeners, to normalize tokens of non-native vowels for speaker-dependent durational variation, consistent with the respective phonological roles of vowel length in Japanese and Korean.