Effects of L2 experience on L2 vowel production and L1 speakers' perception of the improved vowels

Abstract

Effects of L2 experience on the production of L2 vowels were investigated and the perceptual accuracy of the L2 vowels by native speakers was tested to examine whether an improvement in vowel articulation leads to higher accuracy. A total of twenty Mandarin Chinese differing in the experience (6 months vs. 2 years) were compared to ten native Korean speakers in their production of seven Korean vowels, /i,ɛ,ɨ,ʌ,o,u,a/. More experienced Chinese speakers were expected to have acquired new Korean vowels, /ɛ,ɨ,ʌ,o/, in a more native-like manner than the inexperienced group. The results showed that Chinese learners were able to produce the three similar vowels, /i, u, a/ in a native-like manner even before any exposure to Korean. After 2 years of experience, they have shown to produce the new mid vowels, /ɛ, ʌ/ with greater height distinctions (F1 values) from adjacent high vowels. Although the two high back vowels, /o, u/ were deviant from the native norm, the Experienced group learned to distinguish the vowels with a distinctive F2 frequency, which has become a critical cue for the distinction of the two merging vowels by young Seoul speakers. When native Korean speakers were asked to identify the vowels produced by Chinese speakers, not only new mid vowels but also similar vowels were more accurately identified for the experienced group. The greatest improvement in perceptual accuracy was shown for the categories that were newly established by the inexperienced learners.