The perception of Mandarin Chinese vowels by native English speakers: categorization, identification and directional asymmetry

There is no doubt that language experience has an early and profound impact on the perception of phonetic segments. There is now clear evidence that phonetic perception is also shaped by universal perceptual biases that can be exposed as directional asymmetries in phonetic discrimination. Much of this work has focused on vowel perception in which we observe robust perceptual asymmetries in infant and adult L2 perception. To explain these patterns, Polka and Bohn (2003) and (2011) outlined the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework which proposes that vowel perception is shaped by both generic (universal) and language-specific processing. In this talk, I will present data showing perceptual biases in consonant perception which suggest that we can extend NRV principles to consonant perception.There is no doubt that language experience has an early and profound impact on the perception of phonetic segments. There is now clear evidence that phonetic perception is also shaped by universal perceptual biases that can be exposed as directional asymmetries in phonetic discrimination. Much of this work has focused on vowel perception in which we observe robust perceptual asymmetries in infant and adult L2 perception. To explain these patterns, Polka and Bohn (2003) and (2011) outlined the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework which proposes that vowel perception is shaped by both generic (universal) and language-specific processing. In this talk, I will present data showing perceptual biases in consonant perception which suggest that we can extend NRV principles to consonant perception.

Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework: An emerging view of early phonetic development

Research on language-specific tuning in speech perception has focused mainly on consonants, while that on non-native vowel perception has failed to address whether the same principles apply. Therefore, non-native vowel perception was investigated here in light of relevant theoretical models: the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework. American-English speakers completed discrimination and native language assimilation (categorization and goodness rating) tests on six nonnative vowel contrasts. Discrimination was consistent with PAM assimilation types, but asymmetries predicted by NRV were only observed for single-category assimilations, suggesting that perceptual assimilation might modulate the effects of vowel peripherality on non-native vowel perception. © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel

As the user of communication especially in English, the speaker has to consider the interlocutor’s position in order to achieve good communication. Here, the speakers which include native and non-native English speakers must choose an appropriate language style for the different interlocutors to avoid social consequences. The purposes of this research were to analyze the use of language style of those speakers in The Ellen Show. Also, it focused on the differences and the similarities between those speakers. Last, it focused on the factors influencing the use of language style. The research used the qualitative method which focuses on content analysis. Here, it focused on three native speakers and three non-native speakers of English as the guests in The Ellen Show. The Ellen Show is a talk show program with a casual discussion that talks about a particular topic or issue which consists of a host, the guest(s) being interviewed, the home audience, and the studio audience from which the host might get some responses from.The findings revealed that the native English speakers used all types of language styles. Meanwhile, the non-native speakers used three types of language styles. Then, the similarities were that both speakers applied formal style, consultative style, and casual style in their utterances. However, the difference was the non-native English speakers did not apply frozen style and intimate style. Furthermore, those speakers used language style because it influenced the participant, the setting, the topic, and the function. Therefore, it is concluded that language styles were useful in English utterances either by native speakers or non-native English speakers.
 
 The speaker has to consider the interlocutor’s position in order to achieve good communication. Here, the speakers which include native and non-native English speakers must choose an appropriate language style for the different interlocutors to avoid social consequences. The purposes of this research were to analyze the use of language style of those speakers in The Ellen Show. Also, it focused on the differences and the similarities between those speakers. Last, it focused on the factors influencing the use of language style. The research used the qualitative method which focuses on content analysis. Here, it focused on three native speakers and three non-native speakers of English as the guests in The Ellen Show. The findings revealed that the native English speakers used all types of language styles. Meanwhile, the non-native speakers used three types of language styles. Then, the similarities were that both speakers applied formal style, consultative style, and casual style in their utterances. However, the difference was the non-native English speakers did not apply frozen style and intimate style. Furthermore, those speakers used language style because it influenced the participant, the setting, the topic, and the function. Therefore, it is concluded that language styles were useful in English utterances either by native speakers or non-native English speakers.

This article examines English vowel perception by advanced Polish learners of English in a formal classroom setting (i.e., they learnt English as a foreign language in school while living in Poland). The stimuli included 11 English noncewords in bilabial (/bVb/), alveolar (/dVd/) and velar (/gVg/) contexts. The participants, 35 first-year English majors, were examined during the performance of three tasks with English vowels: a categorial discrimination oddity task, an L1 assimilation task (categorization and goodness rating) and a task involving rating the (dis-)similarities between pairs of English vowels. The results showed a variety of assimilation types according to the Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) and the expected performance in a discrimination task. The more difficult it was to discriminate between two given vowels, the more similar these vowels were judged to be. Vowel contrasts involving height distinctions were easier to discriminate than vowel contrasts with tongue advancement distinctions. The results also revealed that the place of articulation of neighboring consonants had little effect on the perceptibility of the tested English vowels, unlike in the case of lower-proficiency learners. Unlike previous results for naïve listeners, the present results for advanced learners showed no adherence to the principles of the Natural Referent Vowel framework. Generally, the perception of English vowels by these Polish advanced learners of English conformed with PAM's predictions, but differed from vowel perception by naïve listeners and lower-proficiency learners.

The perceptual assimilation model (PAM) [Best etal ., JEP: HPP 14, 345–360 (1988)] posits that perception of non-native contrasts is constrained by experience with both the phonological functions and the phonetic details of familiar native contrasts. Adults’ discrimination of an unfamiliar contrast depends not only on whether its members resemble a known phonological contrast, but also on perceived ‘‘goodness of fit’’ to native phonetic categories. Adult findings support PAM’s prediction that perceptual assimilation of contrasting non-native consonants or vowels to a single native category yields poorer discrimination than assimilation to two categories (TC contrasts). Discrimination is worst if both phones are equally similar to a single category (SC), substantially better if they differ in category goodness (CG), near ceiling for TC assimilations. PAM predictions have focused on adults’ first encounters with unfamiliar contrasts. However, non-native speech perception also provides a window on infants’ emerging knowledge about phonetic details and phonological organization in native speech. Native phonetic experience influences discrimination of unfamiliar non-native contrasts by 10 months, but systematic phonological knowledge is not evident until later. PAM can also be extended to phonetic and phonological aspects of second language (L2) learning developmentally. [Work supported by NICHHD and NIDCD.]

The mechanisms underlying directional asymmetries in vowel perception have been the subject of considerable debate. One account—the Natural Referent Vowel (NRV) framework—suggests that asymmetries reflect a language-universal perceptual bias, such that listeners are predisposed to attend to vowels with greater formant convergence (Polka & Bohn, 2011). A second (but not mutually exclusive) account—the Native Language Magnet (NLM) theory—suggests that asymmetries reflect an experience-dependent language-specific bias favoring “good” exemplars of native language vowel categories (Kuhl, 1993). We tested the above hypotheses by investigating whether listeners, from different language backgrounds, display asymmetries influenced by formant proximity and/or language experience. Specifically, we examined monolingual English and French listeners’ performance in a within-category AX vowel discrimination task, using variants of /u/ that systematically differed in both their degree of formant proximity (between F1 and F2) and category “goodness” judgments. Results revealed asymmetries that pattern as predicted by NRV when pairs of /u/ tokens exhibited a relatively larger difference in their F1-F2 convergence patterns, and as predicted by NLM when the pairs of /u/ tokens exhibited a relatively smaller difference in their F1-F2 convergence patterns. These findings suggest that language-universal perceptual biases and specific language experience interact to shape vowel perception.

Previous research has shown that English speakers have great difficulty distinguishing the dental and retroflex stop-consonants of the Hindi language. However, native Japanese speakers have somewhat less difficulty perceiving this contrast even though it is not employed in the Japanese language. Best and colleagues have attributed similar differences in the perception of non-native speech sounds to differences in the assimilation of such sounds to native-language speech categories [Best, McRoberts, and Sithole, J. Exp. Psych: Human Percept. Perform. 14 (1988)]. According to Best’s Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM), four patterns of assimilation have been described which are purportedly predictive of perceptual difficulty. To determine if this model could be applied to the present case, native speakers of English and Japanese transcribed multiple instances of the Hindi consonants in different voicing/manner classes, produced with different vowels. Marked differences were found between the responses of the two language groups which were partially dependent upon the voicing/manner class of the contrast. Interestingly, an assimilation pattern emerged which was different from those discussed in PAM. Implications of these findings for PAM and for perceptual training of non-native speech sounds will be discussed. [Work supported in part by NIDCD.]

English vowels may be difficult to discriminate for many learners of English (L2 learners). Research in L2 speech perception has shown that the use of visual cues improves speech perception, at least for visually-salient contrasts. This study investigated the use of visual cues in the perception of English vowels by L2 Advanced learners (Spanish native speakers) and English native speakers (ENS). 37 L2 learners and 20 ENS were given a vowel test that presented real CVC words in audio (A), audiovisual (AV) and video-alone (V) mode. The A and AV conditions were presented in noise (-10 dB SNR) to ENS and in quiet to L2 learners. For ENS, identification rates were significantly higher in AV than in A condition, suggesting there were visual cues to vowel identity. For L2 learners, A scores were significantly lower than for ENS, and AV scores did not differ significantly from results in A mode. This suggests low sensitivity to visual cues to vowel identification, though L2 learners achieved better than chance scores when forced to attend to visual information in the V mode. These results support previous findings of relatively poor sensitivity to visual cues to phoneme identity in L2 learners.

English vowels may be difficult to discriminate for many learners of English (L2 learners). Research in L2 speech perception has shown that the use of visual cues improves speech perception, at least for visually-salient contrasts. This study investigated the use of visual cues in the perception of English vowels by L2 Advanced learners (Spanish native speakers) and English native speakers (ENS). 37 L2 learners and 20 ENS were given a vowel test that presented real CVC words in audio (A), audiovisual (AV) and video-alone (V) mode. The A and AV conditions were presented in noise (-10 dB SNR) to ENS and in quiet to L2 learners. For ENS, identification rates were significantly higher in AV than in A condition, suggesting there were visual cues to vowel identity. For L2 learners, A scores were significantly lower than for ENS, and AV scores did not differ significantly from results in A mode. This suggests low sensitivity to visual cues to vowel identification, though L2 learners achieved better than chance s...

Bit and beat are heard as the same: Mapping the vowel perceptual patterns of Greek-English bilingual children

Each summer, students may lose some of the academic abilities they gained over the previous school year. English learners (ELs) may be at particular risk of losing English skills over the summer, but they have been neglected in previous research. This study investigates the development of oral reading fluency (ORF) of ELs compared with native English speakers. Using the AIMSweb Reading Curriculum-Based Measurement (R-CBM) in a pre-post design, reading fluency of N = 3,280 students] n = 363/11.1% ELs vs. n = 2,917/88.9% native speakers (NS)] was assessed in a school district in the Southeastern U.S. in May (4th grade) before and September (5th grade) after the summer break. Results showed that, on average, ELs performed 23.36 points below NS after the summer break. However, native English speakers and ELs lost ORF at similar rates over the summer (β = –0.02, p = 0.281). Contradictory to our hypothesis, students who had been higher performing in the spring had more reading performance losses over the summer (β = –0.45, p < 0.001). Future studies should assess the underlying individual student characteristics and learning mechanisms in more detail in order to develop evidence-based recommendations for tailored programs that can close the achievement gap between ELs and native English speakers.

This article discusses the current requirement for scientific research to be published in the English language and the problems arising from this requirement not only for authors whose first language is not English but also for society and for the world's scientific community. The assistance which is and should be available to authors is considered as well as a future looking towards multilingual publication.

Adults discriminate many non-native speech contrasts poorly, especially from an unfamiliar language that is not (yet) an L2. The Perceptual Assimilation Model (PAM) [Best et al., JEP: HPP 14, 34 560 (1988)] posits that this difficulty stems from knowledge of both the phonological functions and the phonetic details of native speech segments. Thus, discrimination of an unfamiliar contrast depends not only on whether it resembles a native phonological contrast, but also on perceived goodness of fit between the non-native segments and native phonetic category(s). Cross-language comparisons support PAMs prediction that perceptual assimilation of contrasting non-native segments to a single native category yields poorer discrimination than assimilation to two categories (TC contrasts). Discrimination is worst if both phones are equally similar to a single category (SC), substantially better if they differ in category goodness (CG), near ceiling for TC assimilations, and good to excellent for consonants that fail to be assimilated as speech, instead being perceived as nonspeech events (non-assimilable: NA). Recent findings indicate that, as predicted, SC, CG, and TC assimilations are associated with preferential activation of left hemisphere language regions, whereas NA stimuli yields bilateral brain activation. Other findings with fluent bilinguals indicate a persisting L1 effect on non-native consonant discrimination even if their L2 is acquired prior to 5 years. [Work supported by NICHHD and NIDCD.]

This study examined the production and perception of English vowels by highly experienced native Italian speakers of English. The subjects were selected on the basis of the age at which they arrived in Canada and began to learn English, and how much they continued to use Italian. Vowel production accuracy was assessed through an intelligibility test in which native English-speaking listeners attempted to identify vowels spoken by the native Italian subjects. Vowel perception was assessed using a categorial discrimination test. The later in life the native Italian subjects began to learn English, the less accurately they produced and perceived English vowels. Neither of two groups of early Italian/English bilinguals differed significantly from native speakers of English either for production or perception. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis of the speech learning model [Flege, in Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (York, Timonium, MD, 1995)] that early bilinguals establish new categories for vowels found in the second language (L2). The significant correlation observed to exist between the measures of L2 vowel production and perception is consistent with another hypothesis of the speech learning model, viz., that the accuracy with which L2 vowels are produced is limited by how accurately they are perceived.