The effects of phonetics training on the production and perception of rhotic vowels in American English

Abstract

This talk examines how the American “r” phoneme affects the production and perception of American English front vowels in pre-rhotic positions. Rhotic vowels challenge listeners in accurately identifying the phonetic quality of vowels due to r-coloring affecting formants (Chung etal., 2021; MacAllister et al., 2017). For example, the vowel in “beer” is commonly perceived as [i] by listeners, yet can be produced as either a tense or lax high front vowel. This challenge is particularly concerning to aspiring clinicians learning phonetic transcription. This study investigates speakers’ acoustic identity of pre-rhotic high and mid front vowels, and listeners’ ability to accurately perceive pre-rhotic vowel identities. This study examines a 50-speaker sample of college-age participants separated into two groups (with and without phonetics training). All participants read a 100-word wordlist and completed a 200-word four-alternative forced-choice identification (AFCI) task. Furthermore, the AFCI task presents each word twice by either a male or a female voice. Listeners select from four options (“BEAT,” “BIT,” “BATE,” “BET”) and rate their confidence level for each choice. Preliminary data, demarcated in PRAAT, processed using FAVE-extract, and analyzed using R software, indicate the mapping between production and perception to be strongest for those with previous phonetic training.