Native Catalan learners' perception and production of English vowels

Abstract This paper reports two experiments on nonnative vowel perception and production. In Experiment 1, three groups of Catalan learners varying in English proficiency were tested on their ability to discriminate seven Catalan–English (C–E) and four English–English (E–E) vowel contrasts. The vowel contrasts were natural speech tokens obtained from native Catalan and native American English speakers. On average, listeners distinguished the C–E /i–ɪ/ contrast relatively well, and they could partially distinguish /i–i/, /u–u/, and /a–ɑ/, but they had great difficulty with the /a–ʌ/, /a–ae/ and /ɛ–ɛ/ contrasts. As for the E–E pairs, the learners could discriminate the speech sounds in the /i–ɪ/ and /u–ʊ/ pairs, suggesting that learners may have established new phonetic categories for /ɪ/ and /ʊ/. In Experiment 2, a subgroup of the Catalan learners and a control group of native English speakers produced words containing one of the English vowels /i/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /ae/, /ɑ/, /ʌ/, /ʊ/, and /u/. Vowel accuracy was assessed by means of acoustic measurements and by native listener judgments. The acoustic measurements revealed that, in spectral terms, learners produced vowels that were less peripheral than the native English (NE) versions, although there was a tendency for vowel expansion as a function of language proficiency. Vowel duration in the tense–lax vowel pairs also progressed toward more nativelike values in the productions of the more proficient learners. Finally, the NE listener judgments showed that most learners produced the vowels /ɪ/, /ae/, /ʊ/, and /u/ intelligibly but with significantly lower goodness ratings than did the NE speakers.

[1]  J. S. Johnson,et al.  Critical period effects in second language learning: The influence of maturational state on the acquisition of English as a second language , 1989, Cognitive Psychology.

[2]  David Birdsong,et al.  Nativelike pronunciation among late learners of French as a second language , 2007 .

[3]  G. E. Peterson,et al.  Control Methods Used in a Study of the Vowels , 1951 .

[4]  Paul Boersma,et al.  Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer , 2002 .

[5]  J. Flege,et al.  Effects of experience on non-native speakers' production and perception of English vowels , 1997 .

[6]  James Emil Flege,et al.  THE RELATION BETWEEN L 2 PRODUCTION AND PERCEPTION , 1999 .

[7]  J. B. Pickering,et al.  The Oxford acoustic phonetic database on compact disc , 1993 .

[8]  J. Flege,et al.  Amount of native-language (L1) use affects the pronunciation of an L2 , 1997 .

[9]  Juli Cebrian.  Phonetic similarity, syllabification and phonotactic constraints in the acquisition of a second language contrast (2002) , 2002 .

[10]  James Emil Flege,et al.  Interaction between the native and second language phonetic subsystems , 2003, Speech Commun..

[11]  H. Wode.  PERCEPTION AND PRODUCTION IN EARLY L 1 ACQUISITION AND SOME THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS , 1999 .

[12]  T. Gay.  Effect of speaking rate on diphthong formant movements. , 1968, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[13]  J. Hillenbrand,et al.  Acoustic characteristics of American English vowels. , 1994, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[14]  Stephen T. Holgate,et al.  Reliability: What is it, and how is it measured? , 2000 .

[15]  Winifred Strange,et al.  Perception and production of English vowels by Mandarin speakers: age-related differences vary with amount of L2 exposure. , 2006, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[16]  I. R. MacKay,et al.  Native Italian speakers' perception and production of English vowels. , 1999, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[17]  Tracey M. Derwing,et al.  Foreign Accent, Comprehensibility, and Intelligibility in the Speech of Second Language Learners , 1995 .

[18]  Lucrecia Rallo Fabra.  Predicting ease of acquisition of L2 speech sounds: a perceived dissimilarity test , 2005 .

[19]  P. Boersma.  Praat : doing phonetics by computer (version 5.1.05) , 2009 .

[20]  Niels O. Schiller,et al.  The Acquisition of Syllable Types , 2000 .

[21]  Byunggon Yang.  A comparative study of American English and Korean vowels produced by male and female speakers , 1996 .

[22]  B. Planken,et al.  AGE AND ULTIMATE ATTAINMENT IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF A FOREIGN LANGUAGE , 1997, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[23]  Erika S. Levy,et al.  Acoustic variability within and across German, French, and American English vowels: phonetic context effects. , 2007, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[24]  David Birdsong,et al.  A developmental study of English vowel production and perception by native Korean adults and children , 2005, J. Phonetics.

[25]  Daniel Recasens,et al.  Dispersion and variability of Catalan vowels , 2006, Speech Commun..

[26]  Murray J. Munro,et al.  Language Experience in Second Language Speech Learning: In Honor of James Emil Flege , 2007, Phonetica.

[27]  Juli Cebrian,et al.  Experience and the use of non-native duration in L2 vowel categorization , 2006, J. Phonetics.

[28]  Winifred Strange,et al.  Cross-language phonetic similarity of vowels: Theoretical and methodological issues , 2007 .

[29]  James Emil Flege,et al.  The Production of English Vowels by Fluent Early and Late Italian-English Bilinguals , 2002, Phonetica.

[30]  Erika S. Levy,et al.  Perception of French vowels by American English adults with and without French language experience , 2008, J. Phonetics.

[31]  Juli Cebrian.  OLD SOUNDS IN NEW CONTRASTS: L2 PRODUCTION OF THE ENGLISH TENSE-LAX VOWEL DISTINCTION , 2007 .

[32]  B. Lindblom.  Spectrographic Study of Vowel Reduction , 1963 .

[33]  C. Best,et al.  Nonnative and second-language speech perception : commonalities and complementarities , 2007 .

[34]  A. Holbrook,et al.  THE VOWEL FORMANTS OF DEAF AND NORMAL-HEARING ELEVEN- TO FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD BOYS. , 1964, The Journal of speech and hearing disorders.

[35]  Erika S. Levy.  Language experience and consonantal context effects on perceptual assimilation of French vowels by American-English learners of French. , 2009, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[36]  C. Best.  The emergence of native-language phonological influences in infants: A perceptual assimilation model. , 1994 .

[37]  J. Flege.  Second Language Speech Learning Theory , Findings , and Problems , 2006 .

[38]  J. Flege,et al.  2. Effects of equivalence classification on the production of foreign language speech sounds , 1986 .

[39]  J. Flege,et al.  An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: the case of Japanese adults' perception of English consonants. , 2000, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[40]  Joan C. Mora,et al.  Production and perception of English /i/-// and /æ/-// in a formal setting: Investigating the effects of experience and starting age , 2007 .

[41]  Gail Levy-Berger,et al.  Human Experimental Psychology , 1985 .

[42]  Susan G. Guion,et al.  ACOUSTIC ANALYSIS OF THE PRODUCTION OF UNSTRESSED ENGLISH VOWELS BY EARLY AND LATE KOREAN AND JAPANESE BILINGUALS , 2006, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[43]  Cynthia G. Clopper,et al.  Acoustic characteristics of the vowel systems of six regional varieties of American English. , 2005, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[44]  L. A. Chistovich.  Relation between Speech Production and Speech Perception , 1984 .

[45]  Joy Conway,et al.  Professional articlesReliability: What is it, and how is it measured?Funding , 2000 .

[46]  Erika S. Levy.  On the assimilation-discrimination relationship in American English adults' French vowel learning. , 2009, The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America.

[47]  C. Pallier,et al.  A limit on behavioral plasticity in speech perception , 1997, Cognition.

[48]  I. R. MacKay,et al.  PERCEIVING VOWELS IN A SECOND LANGUAGE , 2004, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[49]  Terrance M. Nearey,et al.  Modeling the role of inherent spectral change in vowel identification , 1986 .

[50]  G. Yeni-Komshian,et al.  Age Constraints on Second-Language Acquisition , 1999 .

[51]  Roy C. Major,et al.  Phonological Similarity, Markedness, and Rate of L2 Acquisition , 1987, Studies in Second Language Acquisition.

[52]  Ian Maddieson,et al.  Patterns of sounds , 1986 .

[53]  ACQUISITION OF A SECOND LANGUAGE VOWEL SYSTEM : EVIDENCE FROM ENGLISH SPEAKERS LEARNING SPANISH , 1999 .

[54]  Robert Hagiwara,et al.  DIALECT VARIATION AND FORMANT FREQUENCY : THE AMERICAN ENGLISH VOWELS REVISITED , 1997 .

[55]  J. Hillenbrand.  Static and dynamic approaches to understanding vowel perception. , 2009 .