Speeded discrimination of American vowels by experienced Russian learners of English

Abstract

This study is part of a project examining how L2 learners whose native languages have small vowel inventories (Japanese, Russian, Spanish) perceive American English (AE) vowels. Experienced Russian (RU) L2 learners’ discrimination was evaluated in a speeded ABX task that included nil Experimental contrasts among adjacent height pairs and front/back pairs; four nonadjacent height pairs served as Controls. An earlier study of Japanese L2 learners indicated that AE contrasts with spectrum and duration differences (S+D) [i:/■, æ:/[g\/], u:/■, ■:/■] were discriminated more rapidly, relative to Control contrasts [i:/[g\/], ■/æ, u:/■, ■/■:], than were contrasts that differed only in spectral structure (S-Only) [■/[g\/], ■/■, [g\/]/■, æ:/■:]. Since vowel duration is not contrastive in Russian, it was hypothesized that discrimination of S-Only and S+D contrasts might be equally slow, relative to Controls, if RU listeners did not attend to duration differences. Preliminary findings confirm that reaction time (RT) difference scores (relative to Controls) were not different for S-Only and S+D contrasts. Relative RTs on both contrast types were slower than for AE listeners, whose RTs were about the same for S-Only and S+D pairs. These findings suggest that speeded discrimination is a sensitive measure of continuing perceptual difficulties of L2 learners. [Work supported by NSF.]