Perception of English linguadental fricatives by Haitian Kreyol-African American English bilinguals

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This study examined Haitian Kreyol/English bilingual speakers’ ability to discriminate non-native fricative and stop contrasts representing substitution patterns in productions of linguadental fricatives in Haitian-accented English and African American English (AAE). Theories of second language (L2) speech learning propose that much of accented speech production in an L2 is due to difficulties in perceiving speech sounds that are not contrastive in L2 learners’ native language or dialect. Neither voiced nor voiceless linguadental fricatives occur in Haitian Kreyol, and Haitian L2 English learners typically substitute /t, d, or v/ for linguadental fricatives. Linguadental fricatives occur in AAE, but vary with context (linguadental, labiodental substitutions or deletions). Haitian/AAE speakers and AAE/standard AE bidialectal speakers were given a categorial discrimination test in which contrasts between linguadental fricatives and alveolar stops or labiodental fricatives in initial, intervocalic, and final position were presented in real words embedded within a short sentence. Preliminary results showed that bilingual Haitian Kreyol/AAE speakers had different patterns of perceptual errors than bidialectal speakers of AAE/SAE. Perceptual error patterns were somewhat related to substitution patterns in Haitian Kreyol and AAE. Further research is underway to investigate age of English learning and dominance of dialect effects on perception. [Work supported by NIDCD-00323.]