The establishment of a new phonetic category by German learners of English

Abstract

This paper reports experiments examining the production of English vowels (/i, ı, ıɛ, æ) and German vowels (/i/ɪ, ɛ, ɛ:,a/) by two groups of native German speakers differing in English-language experience. In experiment 1, German and English monolinguals read lists of English bVt words. Similar recordings were made of German front vowels by the German subjects. On the whole, duration and spectral measurements indicate that the distance between /i/ and /ɪ/ in an F1/F2 space is about the same in German, English, and native Germans' English. The vowels /i/ and /ɪ/ of English and German differed acoustically. Both experienced and inex perienced Germans approximated but did not reach the English monolinguals' values for /i/ and /ı/. Experienced but not inexperienced native Germans differentiated English /æ/ and /ɛ/ acoustically, probably because German lacks an /æ/ category. The acoustic results of experiment 1 were consistent with experiment 2, which examined monolingual English listeners' categorization of the German speakers' English bVt words. The results support Flege's [J. Phonetics 15, 47–65 (1987)] model of L2 learning which predicts that extended foreign language experience will lead to the establishment of phonetic categories for new (e.g., /æ/) sounds in L2. [Work supported by NIH Grant 20963.]