Perceptual assimilation of Hindi dental and retroflex stop-consonants by native English and Japanese speakers

Abstract

Previous research has shown that English speakers have great difficulty distinguishing the dental and retroflex stop-consonants of the Hindi language. However, native Japanese speakers have somewhat less difficulty perceiving this contrast even though it is not employed in the Japanese language. Best and colleagues have attributed similar differences in the perception of non-native speech sounds to differences in the assimilation of such sounds to native-language speech categories [Best, McRoberts, and Sithole, J. Exp. Psych: Human Percept. Perform. 14 (1988)]. According to Best’s Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), four patterns of assimilation have been described which are purportedly predictive of perceptual difficulty. To determine if this model could be applied to the present case, native speakers of English and Japanese transcribed multiple instances of the Hindi consonants in different voicing/manner classes, produced with different vowels. Marked differences were found between the responses of the two language groups which were partially dependent upon the voicing/manner class of the contrast. Interestingly, an assimilation pattern emerged which was different from those discussed in PAM. Implications of these findings for PAM and for perceptual training of non-native speech sounds will be discussed. [Work supported in part by NIDCD.]