Perception and Production of Illicit Lateral Sequences by Korean Learners of English

Abstract

Speech production has been thought to be the product of speech perception and thus reflects what listeners perceive. Given the patterns of production and perception of illicit consonant sequences involving the lateral by Korean of English, this paper investigates adaptation of English illicit sequences on a perceptual and productional basis, and explores the relationship between speech perception and production. The results of two experiments show a clear discrepancy between Korean learners perception and production of the sequences. Given the results, this paper maintains that speech production might not mirror speech perception while it does mirror the phonology of the native language, which is against the traditional theories but is partly congruent with recent studies. This finding suggests that production is very loosely related to perception in the case of a cluster acquisition, and that acquisition of foreign illicit sequences are different from acquisition of a foreign segment. It also contends that native phonological constraints including phonotactics play a more important role in speech production than in speech perception.