TY - JOUR
T1 - The effect of word learning on the perception of non-native consonant sequences
AU - Davidson, Lisa
AU - Shaw, Jason
AU - Adams, Tuuli
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors thank the three anonymous reviewers, and audiences at Yale University and the New York University Phonetics/Phonology Lab for their comments on this work. We would also like to thank David Goldberg for creating the cartoon characters used in the experiments. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation CAREER Grant No. BCS-0449560.
PY - 2007
Y1 - 2007
N2 - Previous research in cross-language perception has shown that non-native listeners often assimilate both single phonemes and phonotactic sequences to native language categories. This study examined whether associating meaning with words containing non-native phonotactics assists listeners in distinguishing the non-native sequences from native ones. In the first experiment, American English listeners learned word-picture pairings including words that contained a phonological contrast between CC and CVC sequences, but which were not minimal pairs (e.g., [ftake], [f Schwa (phonetic symbol) talu]). In the second experiment, the word-picture pairings specifically consisted of minimal pairs (e.g., [ftake], [f Schwa (phonetic symbol) take]). Results showed that the ability to learn non-native CC was significantly improved when listeners learned minimal pairs as opposed to phonological contrast alone. Subsequent investigation of individual listeners revealed that there are both high and low performing participants, where the high performers were much more capable of learning the contrast between native and non-native words. Implications of these findings for second language lexical representations and loanword adaptation are discussed.
AB - Previous research in cross-language perception has shown that non-native listeners often assimilate both single phonemes and phonotactic sequences to native language categories. This study examined whether associating meaning with words containing non-native phonotactics assists listeners in distinguishing the non-native sequences from native ones. In the first experiment, American English listeners learned word-picture pairings including words that contained a phonological contrast between CC and CVC sequences, but which were not minimal pairs (e.g., [ftake], [f Schwa (phonetic symbol) talu]). In the second experiment, the word-picture pairings specifically consisted of minimal pairs (e.g., [ftake], [f Schwa (phonetic symbol) take]). Results showed that the ability to learn non-native CC was significantly improved when listeners learned minimal pairs as opposed to phonological contrast alone. Subsequent investigation of individual listeners revealed that there are both high and low performing participants, where the high performers were much more capable of learning the contrast between native and non-native words. Implications of these findings for second language lexical representations and loanword adaptation are discussed.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=38849166155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=38849166155&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1121/1.2801548
DO - 10.1121/1.2801548
M3 - Article
C2 - 18247777
AN - SCOPUS:38849166155
SN - 0001-4966
VL - 122
SP - 3697
EP - 3709
JO - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
JF - Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
IS - 6
ER -