Lexical encoding of the second language vowel length contrasts.

Abstract

Given the previous results for the L2 learners’ processing difficulties of suprasegmentals as compared to segmentals, this study tests whether L2 late learners lack a proper phonological representation of suprasegmentals they could use to encode those contrasts. In Experiment 1, two groups of Korean late learners of Japanese (beginner versus advanced) as well as Japanese controls took a simple AX discrimination of the nonword pairs that varied in vowel length only, and showed that both groups of Korean learners had no difficulty to perceive the acoustic differences of the long versus short vowels in Japanese. However, in Experiment 2, when the same groups of learners participated in a more demanding lexical decision task using word‐nonword pairs with vowel length differences, they had much difficulty in the use of such vowel length to access the lexicon. Even though there was significant improvement between the beginner and the advanced groups, there were still significant differences between the advanced...