Effects of native language and amount of experience on crosslinguistic perception.

Abstract

Models of second language (L2) speech learning draw on the notion of perceptual similarity to make predictions about L2 perception and production difficulty. Crosslinguistic perceived similarity is commonly assessed by means of perceptual assimilation tasks involving identification of target stimuli and goodness of fit ratings. Further, experience with an L2 may affect the perception of not only target language vowels but also native vowels. This paper reports the results of a crosslinguistic perception study involving English and Catalan vowels and diphthongs. The study assessed the perceived similarity of the two vowel systems by testing native speakers of each language on sounds from both their native language and the foreign language. Vowels were presented in CVC syllables. The effect of learning a second language was investigated by comparing the performance of language learners and monolingual speakers on the same task. The comparison between the two monolingual groups indicated a symmetry in the pattern of crosslinguistic perceived similarity while the effect of experience was found to vary with different vowels. The results are discussed in light of current theories and their predictions for second language perception and production. [Work supported by Grants HUM2005-02746/FILO (Spanish Ministry of Education) and 2005SGR00864 (Catalan Government).]