Judgment of L2 phonotactics by Korean listeners at two proficiency levels

Abstract

This study attempts to determine whether native English listeners and native Korean listeners at two different proficiency levels of English show the same judgment patterns when presented with English nonce words composed of three different syllable structures (i.e., legal syllables, illegal syllables with a sonority rise, and illegal syllables with a sonority plateau). Ten native English listeners and twenty native Korean listeners participated in a word-likeness judgment task. The results indicate that both native English listeners and native Korean listeners with higher L2 proficiency reveal the same patterns. Their judgment scores become higher as the sonority distance of onset clusters increases. However, the results for Korean listeners with lower L2 proficiency are not consistent with those of the other two groups. Although listeners with lower proficiency can distinguish between legal and illegal syllables in L2, they do not prefer illegal syllables with a sonority rise to those with a sonority plateau. In addition, the reaction time results show that all the listeners respond faster when they hear nonce words containing illegal syllables than when they listen to those composed of legal syllables. These results suggest that L2 phonotactic knowledge expands as L2 proficiency increases and plays a more important role in the judgment of L2 nonce words than do universal preferences based on the sonority principle.