On segmental representations in second language phonology: A perceptual account

The extent to which exposure to new phonemic contrasts (i.e. contrasts that are present in the L2 but not in the L1) will lead to the creation of a new phonemic category in L2 speakers, as well as the phonological nature of these categories, remains an open question insofar as there is no consensus on whether acquiring a new contrast would result in abstract, phoneme-like categories, or if they belong to a less abstract level of representation. This work explores the perception of the /ɑ/–/ʌ/ contrast ( cop – cup) in American English by Spanish speakers of L2 English through a discrimination task. The results show that while the interlanguage state of less experienced learners is best described as a case of single-category assimilation, the interlanguage state achieved by advanced learners is not a full phonemic split, despite the increased sensitivity to otherwise within-category perceptual cues; rather, it seems that while the ability to perceive differences is not affected, the ability to create a new phonemic representation is impaired.

PERSEPSI BUNYI HENTIAN BERSUARA BAHASA INDONESIA OLEH PEMELAJAR TAIWAN

This study investigated the perception performance of the voiced stops of Indonesian language by Taiwanese learners. Previous studies suggest that the perception of foreign languages’ phonemic category absent in the L1 inventory is troublesome, and this is also the case for the Taiwanese learners’ of Indonesian. Seven of eight of our subjects were unable yet to perfectly distinguish between the voiced stops [b, d, g] and their voiceless counterpart [p, t, k] despite being able to speak Taiwanese (Southern Min) which has the voicing distinction for bilabial stops [b]-[p] and velar stops [g]-[k]. The result yielded from a small sized experimental study of forced option test and literature study provides us a preliminary understanding on why some Taiwanese learners sometimes made production errors, oral and written. This study serves as a preliminary study which we hope to lead to a bigger-scale and well-controlled psychoacoustics study in the future in order to have a more definitive result on the perceptional issue by Taiwanese learners of Indonesian. Abstrak: Studi ini meneliti kemampuan persepsi pemelajar Taiwan terhadap bunyi konsonan hentian bersuara bahasa Indonesia. Penelitian sebelumnya menunjukkan bahwa pemelajar bahasa asing memiliki kesulitan mempersepsi terhadap bunyi-bunyi bahasa asing yang tidak dimiliki oleh kategori fonem bahasa pertama dan kondisi yang sama juga dijumpai pada pemelajar bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa asing asal Taiwan. Tujuh dari delapan subjek penelitian masih belum mampu untuk secara sempurna membedakan konsonan hentian bersuara [b, d, g] dan pasangan takbersuaranya [p, t, k] meski semua subjek mampu berbahasa Taiwan (Min Selatan) yang memiliki pembedaan ciri suara pada konsonan hentian bilabial [b]-[p] dan bunyi konsonan hentian velar [g]-[k]. Hasil yang dihasilkan dari penelitian eksperimen dengan teknik force option test dan rujukan kepustakaan berskala kecil ini memberikan gambaran awal tentang kemungkinan penyebab pemelajar bahasa Indonesia asal Taiwan terkadang membuat kekeliruan produksi bahasa, baik secara lisan maupun tulisan. Penelitian ini berfungsi sebagai studi awal yang diharapkan bisa diteruskan untuk penelitian berskala besar dan menggunakan metode psikoakustik untuk mendapatkan hasil yang lebih definitif terhadap isu persepsi pemelajar bahasa Indonesia asal Taiwan.

Production Accuracy of L2 Vowels: Phonological Parsimony and Phonetic Flexibility

Ultimate attainment in foreign-language sound learning is addressed via vowel production accuracy in English spoken by advanced Czech EFL learners. English FLEECE–KIT, DRESS–TRAP, and GOOSE–FOOT contrasts are examined in terms of length, height, and backness. Our data show that, while being constrained by phonemic category assimilation (new vowel height distinctions are not created), the learners’ interlanguage combines phonological parsimony (reusing L1 length feature to contrast L2 vowels) with phonetic flexibility (within-category shifts reflecting L1–L2 phonetic dissimilarity). Although achieving nativelike phonological competence may not be possible learners who acquire L2 in the prevailingly L1 environment, the Czech learners’ implementations of English vowels revealed their ability to adjust for phonetic detail of L2 sounds.

Individual Differences in Subphonemic Sensitivity and Phonological Skills

Many studies have established a link between phonological abilities (indexed by phonological awareness and phonological memory tasks) and typical and atypical reading development. Individuals who perform poorly on phonological assessments have been mostly assumed to have underspecified (or “fuzzy”) phonological re- presentations, with typical phonemic categories, but with greater category overlap due to imprecise encoding. An alternative posits that poor readers have overspecified phonological representations, with speech sounds perceived allophonically (phonetically distinct variants of a single phonemic category). On both accounts, mismatch between phonological categories and orthography leads to reading difficulty. Here, we consider the implications of these accounts for online speech processing. We used eye tracking and an individual differences approach to assess sensitivity to subphonemic detail in a community sample of young adults with a wide range of reading-related skills. Subphonemic sensitivity inversely correlated with meta-phonological task performance, consistent with overspecification.

Speech Rate Normalization and Phonemic Boundary Perception in Cochlear-Implant Users

Purpose Normal-hearing (NH) listeners rate normalize, temporarily remapping phonemic category boundaries to account for a talker's speech rate. It is unknown if adults who use auditory prostheses called cochlear implants (CI) can rate normalize, as CIs transmit degraded speech signals to the auditory nerve. Ineffective adjustment to rate information could explain some of the variability in this population's speech perception outcomes. Method Phonemes with manipulated voice-onset-time (VOT) durations were embedded in sentences with different speech rates. Twenty-three CI and 29 NH participants performed a phoneme identification task. NH participants heard the same unprocessed stimuli as the CI participants or stimuli degraded by a sine vocoder, simulating aspects of CI processing. Results CI participants showed larger rate normalization effects (6.6 ms) than the NH participants (3.7 ms) and had shallower (less reliable) category boundary slopes. NH participants showed similarly shallow slopes when presented acoustically degraded vocoded signals, but an equal or smaller rate effect in response to reductions in available spectral and temporal information. Conclusion CI participants can rate normalize, despite their degraded speech input, and show a larger rate effect compared to NH participants. CI participants may particularly rely on rate normalization to better maintain perceptual constancy of the speech signal.

The perception of language-specific phonetic categories does not guarantee accurate phonological representations in the lexicon of early bilinguals

ABSTRACTThis study examines the perception and processing of the Catalan /e/–/ɛ/ and /o/–/ɔ/ vowel contrasts by 60 Spanish–Catalan bilinguals in Majorca (Spain). Results from binary forced-choice identification, AX discrimination, and lexical decision tasks show that even though these early and highly proficient bilinguals demonstrate a high accuracy in perceptual identification and discrimination tasks, they have difficulties distinguishing between words and nonwords in a lexical decision task. Spanish dominants also exhibited higher error rates than Catalan dominants in the lexical decision task. These findings provide evidence that making explicit judgments regarding whether a certain sound belongs to a phonemic category (i.e., as accomplished via identification and discrimination tasks) does not entail that listeners have an appropriate representation at the lexical level.

Representation of second language phonology

ABSTRACTOrthographies encode phonological information only at the level of words (chiefly, the information encoded concerns phonetic segments; in some cases, tonal information or default stress may be encoded). Of primary interest to second language (L2) learners is whether orthography can assist in clarifying L2 phonological distinctions that are particularly difficult to perceive (e.g., where one native-language phonemic category captures two L2 categories). A review of spoken-word recognition evidence suggests that orthographic information can install knowledge of such a distinction in lexical representations but that this does not affect learners’ ability to perceive the phonemic distinction in speech. Words containing the difficult phonemes become even harder for L2 listeners to recognize, because perception maps less accurately to lexical content.

What Does the Right Hemisphere Know about Phoneme Categories?

Innate auditory sensitivities and familiarity with the sounds of language give rise to clear influences of phonemic categories on adult perception of speech. With few exceptions, current models endorse highly left-hemisphere-lateralized mechanisms responsible for the influence of phonemic category on speech perception, based primarily on results from functional imaging and brain-lesion studies. Here we directly test the hypothesis that the right hemisphere does not engage in phonemic analysis. By using fMRI to identify cortical sites sensitive to phonemes in both word and pronounceable nonword contexts, we find evidence that right-hemisphere phonemic sensitivity is limited to a lexical context. We extend the interpretation of these fMRI results through the study of an individual with a left-hemisphere lesion who is right-hemisphere reliant for initial acoustic and phonetic analysis of speech. This individual's performance revealed that the right hemisphere alone was insufficient to allow for typical phonemic category effects but did support the processing of gradient phonetic information in lexical contexts. Taken together, these findings confirm previous claims that the right temporal cortex does not play a primary role in phoneme processing, but they also indicate that lexical context may modulate the involvement of a right hemisphere largely tuned for less abstract dimensions of the speech signal.