Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by inexperienced Russian listeners

Abstract

In a perceptual assimilation task, 16 Russian speakers categorized American English (AE) vowels [i[see text], I, epsilon, ae[see tedxt], a[see text], u[see text]] in /Vp/ disyllables into Russian (RU) response categories and rated their perceived goodness on a 9-point Likert scale. Cross-language discriminant analysis established acoustic similarities to Russian vowels. For all but AE [epsilon], acoustic similarity predicted modal assimilation responses. Russian listeners consistently assimilated AE point vowels to their Russian counterparts, whereas assimilation of the remaining vowels was less consistent. These acoustic and perceptual similarity patterns provide a baseline for future studies of AE vowel discrimination by Russian learners of English.