Lexical familiarity affects Japanese speakers' perception of /b/ and /v/.

Abstract

Flege et al. (1996) suggested that a relative familiarity of the words existing as a minimal pair affects the identification of word‐initial English /l/ and /r/ by Japanese speakers. This study investigated the influence of relative familiarity on word‐initial /b/ and /v/ identification by Japanese ESL speakers. Ten real word‐real word minimal pairs and ten real word‐nonword minimal pairs, both of which begin with /v/ or /b/, were used. Participants were instructed to identify whether a word‐initial consonant was either /v/ or /b/ as quickly and accurately as possible in each trial. Further, relative familiarity of the minimal pairs and subjective familiarity of each word were collected. The identification correctness and reaction time analyzes revealed the following findings. First, relative familiarity affected the identification of /v/ and /b/ more than subjective familiarity did. Second, the percentage of initial‐sound identification correctness was higher if the relative familiarity of the word was higher. Third, /b/ was identified more quickly and accurately than /v/. Altogether, this study confirmed that relative familiarity affects the identification of word‐initial /b/ and /v/ by Japanese ESL speakers.