Perception of Fricatives by Dutch and English Speakers

Abstract

Abstract. Two speech perception experiments explored the physical and linguistic bases of phonetic similarity. Because phonological features are grounded in phonetic similarity, these experiments were thus an exploration of the phonetic bases of distinctive features. Experiment 1 found that Dutch listeners rated [s] and [?] as more similar to each other than did American English listeners. We attributed this to a pattern of alternation in Dutch phonology involving these sounds. Experiment 1 also found that Dutch listeners rated [?] and [s], and [?] and [?] as more similar to each other than did American English listeners. We attributed this to the lack of [?] in the Dutch inventory of native sounds. Experiment 2 found that Dutch and American English listeners did not signficantly differ from each other in a speeded discrimination task with the same stimuli as experiment 1. Reaction times in experiment 2 were highly correlated with the rating data of experiment 1 (r = -.86 to -.96) indicating that the general pattern of response in experiment 1 was based on auditory similarity, with language-specific effects superimposed on the general pattern. We conclude that phonetic similarity, a base of phonological features, is comprised of three components: (1) auditory similarity, (2) phonetic inventory, and (3) language- specific patterns of alternation.