Cross-language acoustic similarity predicts perceptual assimilation of Canadian English and Canadian French vowels

Abstract

Monolingual Peruvian Spanish listeners identified natural tokens of the Canadian French (CF) and Canadian English (CE) /ɛ/ and /æ/, produced in five consonantal contexts. The results demonstrate that while the CF vowels were mapped to two different native vowels, /e/ and /a/, in all consonantal contexts, the CE contrast was mapped to the single native vowel /a/ in four out of five contexts. Linear discriminant analysis revealed that acoustic similarity between native and target language vowels was a very good predictor of context-specific perceptual mappings. Predictions are made for Spanish learners of the /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast in CF and CE.