Perceptual prothesis in native Spanish speakers

Abstract

Previous research suggests a perceptual bias exists for native phonotactics [D. Massaro and M. Cohen, Percept. Psychophys. 34, 338–348 (1983)] such that listeners report nonexistent segments when listening to stimuli that violate native phonotactics [E. Dupoux, K. Kakehi, Y. Hirose, C. Pallier, and J. Mehler, J. Exp. Psychol.: Human Percept. Perform. 25, 1568–1578 (1999)]. This study investigated how native-language experience affects second language processing, focusing on how native Spanish speakers perceive the English clusters /st/, /sp/, and /sk/, which represent phonotactically illegal forms in Spanish. To preserve native phonotactics, Spanish speakers often produce prothetic vowels before English words beginning with /s/ clusters. Is the influence of native phonotactics also present in the perception of illegal clusters? A stimuli continuum ranging from no vowel (e.g., ‘‘sku’’) to a full vowel (e.g., ‘‘esku’’) before the cluster was used. Four final vowel contexts were used for each cluster, resulting in 12 sCV and 12 VsCV nonword endpoints. English and Spanish listeners were asked to discriminate between pairs differing in vowel duration and to identify the presence or absence of a vowel before the cluster. Results will be discussed in terms of implications for theories of second language speech perception.