Native language experience influences the perceived similarity of second language vowel categories.

Abstract

Most studies of L2 speech perception seek to characterize—at least implicitly—how the similarity among L2 speech sound categories is shaped by L1 experience. Intercategory similarity for native language speakers is rarely considered, however. Here, we derive two indices of graded intercategory similarity for a front vowel series (pin, pen, and pan): One from an off‐line perceptual similarity judgment task and a second from online measures of arm‐movement trajectories in a word recognition task. Both tasks revealed graded effects of intercategory similarity, but the similarity spaces differed between language groups. Both groups perceived /ae/ and /E/ to be most similar, but the native Italian speakers perceived /I/ to be equally similar to /E/ and /ae/, whereas English speakers perceived the /I/ and /E/ to be more similar than /I/ and /ae/. The Italian speakers’ performance in both tasks suggests a similarity space that is dominated by dimensions that are contrastive for /I/ with respect to the other vowels. This may reflect a compensatory strategy for L2 vowel perception that may derive from experience with the distributional properties of their native vowels.