Perceived similarity of English, Korean, and Japanese stops for native English, Korean, and Japanese listeners.

Abstract

Stops in /Ca/ context produced by four native speakers of English, Korean, and Japanese were presented in an AXB discrimination task to examine and compare interlingual stop identification, where the listeners heard three stimuli in sequence and decided whether the second (X) is more similar to the first (A) or to the third (B). Fifteen native speakers of the three languages heard three stops per trial, each of which was produced by a native speaker of a different language. The results revealed the effects of the listeners’ respective L1. While English and Korean listeners perceived Korean aspirated stops as closer to English voiceless stops than to Japanese voiceless stops, Japanese listeners perceived Korean aspirated stops as closer to Japanese voiceless stops (which are said to be unaspirated or weakly aspirated). English and Korean listeners perceived English voiced stops closer to Korean tense stops rather than Japanese voiced stops, while Japanese listeners perceived English and Japanese voiced sto...