Phonological and phonotactic influences on perception of two non-native vowel contrasts

Abstract

Listeners’ native phonology constrains their perception of non-native phonetic distinctions. Although most non-native contrasts are discriminated poorly, recent findings that certain contrasts are discriminated well led to development of a ‘‘perceptual assimilation model’’ (PAM), which proposes that the perceptual assimilation of non-native phones to native categories predicts discrimination performance [e.g., Best etal., JEP:HPP 14, 345–360 (1988)]. The current study investigated native phonotactic influences on three assimilation patterns. Non-native contrasts that: (1) assimilate to two categories (TC) and show excellent discrimination; (2) assimilate equally to a single category (SC) and show poor discrimination; (3) assimilate as a category goodness difference (CG) and show good discrimination. American adults labeled and discriminated lip-rounding contrasts among Norwegian high front vowels [/i/–/y/; /barred you/–/y/] in CV’s and CVC’s. In both contexts, Norwegian /i/ of course was assimilated to English /i/; /barred you/ was assimilated to /u/. Although /y/ was assimilated equally to /barred you/ or /i/ in CVCs, it was virtually always called /i/ in CVs, compatible with the English phonotactic constraint against final lax vowels. Thus, /barred you/–/y/ showed TC assimilation and good discrimination in both syllabic contexts. In CVs, /i/–/y/ showed SC assimilation and poor discrimination; in CVCs, it showed TC or CG assimilation and good discrimination.