Native-language influence on phonetic perception in Dutch–English bilinguals

Abstract

We examined how native-language experience influences processing a second language, focusing on how native Dutch listeners who learned English as a second language perceive the English voiceless consonant /p/. Previous research [J. E. Flege and W. Eefting, Speech Commun. 6, 185–202 (1987)] shows that the voiced–voiceless boundary for an (English-based) voice-onset-time (VOT) series is located at a shorter VOT for such bilingual listeners than for native English listeners, consistent with the fact that voiceless stops are produced with shorter VOTs in Dutch than in English. We asked whether such bilinguals also differ from native English listeners in which stimuli throughout the series are perceived as reasonable exemplars of /p/. Native English listeners and native Dutch listeners were tested on a three-choice identification task with an (English-based) extended VOT series that ranged from /ba/ to /pa/ to an ‘‘unnatural’’ exaggerated /pa/, labeled */pa/. Both the /b/-/p/ and /p/-*/p/ boundaries were located at shorter VOTs for the native Dutch than the native English listeners, indicating that Dutch native-language experience influenced the entire range of VOTs perceived as reasonable exemplars of the /p/ category. Thus native-language experience has a comprehensive influence on the mapping from acoustic signal to phonetic category. [Work supported by NIH/NIDCD.]