Russian and Spanish listener’s perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast: Contributions of native language allophony and individual experience

Abstract

We examined the influence of listeners native phonology on the perception of American English tense and lax front unrounded vowels ([i] and [■]). These vowels are distinguishable according to both spectral quality and duration. Nineteen Russian, 18 Spanish, and 16 American English listeners identified stimuli from a beat-bit continuum varying in nine spectral and nine duration steps. English listeners relied predominantly on spectral quality when identifying these vowels, but also showed some reliance on duration. Russian and Spanish speakers relied entirely on duration. Three additional tests examined listeners allophonic use of vowel duration in their native languages. Duration was found to be equally important for the perception of lexical stress for all three language groups. However, the use of duration as a cue to postvocalic consonant voicing differed due to phonotactic differences across the three languages. Group results suggest that non-native perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast is governed by language-independent psychoacoustic factors and/or individual experience. Individual results show large variability within all three language groups, supporting the hypothesis that individual differences in perceptual sensitivity as well as the more frequently cited factors of second language education and experience play an important role in cross-language perception.