Japanese adult’s and children’s production and perception of English fricatives: A longitudinal study

Abstract

This study examined the production and perception of English fricatives by native Japanese (NJ) adults and children (16 per group, mean age=40 and 10 years), and age-matched native English (NE) adults and children (16 per group). The subjects were tested two times (T1, T2) 1 year apart. (At T1, the NJ subjects’ mean length of residence in the U.S. was 0.5 year.) A picture-naming task was used to elicit the production of English words beginning with /s/ and /θ/, and intelligibility scores were obtained for both. The intelligibility scores of the NJ children but not adults improved significantly from T1 to T2. The NJ children obtained significantly lower scores than the NJ adults did at T1, but at T2 the adult–child difference was nonsignificant. The perception of /s/ and /θ/ was tested by a categorial discrimination task. Although the NJ adult’s and children’s scores improved from T1 to T2, the T1–T2 differences were nonsignificant. Thus, the results showed that the NJ children’s production scores improved significantly from T1 to T2, while there was no significant change for the perception scores on the discrimination of /s/–/θ/. The relationship between production and perception in L2 speech learning will be discussed. [Work supported by NIH.]