On the relationship between the perception and learning of Hindi voicing and place contrasts by native speakers of American English.

Abstract

Many non‐native speech sounds are challenging to perceive and, ultimately, to acquire. Predicting specific learning outcomes from perceptual data has been hampered by (1) problems in quantifying acoustic‐phonetic similarity between non‐native and native sounds, (2) calculating the perceptual weighting of acoustic cues in the native language, and (3) the high‐variability commonly observed in the perceptual assimilation of non‐native contrasts to multiple native categories. This variability may reflect long‐term persistent patterns in learning or it may represent only a brief early stage prior to fossilization. To examine these two possible accounts, the perceptual assimilation by 15 American English listeners of 7 voicing and place contrasts produced by 6 Hindi speakers was examined before and after training in a paired‐associate word learning task. Training utilized tokens from four of the six talkers used in perceptual assimilation tasks. The purpose of the study was to determine whether or not assimilat...