The perception of place of articulation in three coronal nasal contrasts

Abstract

Place of articulation contrasts which undergo perceptual assimilation are often difficult to discriminate if absent in a listener’s native language, as demonstrated by American English (AE) listeners with Hindi dental-retroflex stops [Polka (1991)] and Salish velar-uvular ejectives [Werker and Tees (1984)]. To see if this pattern generalizes to other manners of articulation, nasal contrasts (dental-alveolar, dental-retroflex, alveolar-retroflex) from three languages (Malayalam, Marathi, and Oriya), varying in talker, syllabic position, and vowel context, were presented to speakers of Malayalam, Marathi, and Oriya (control groups), and Bengali, AE, Tamil, and Punjabi in two tests: AXB discrimination, and identification with goodness ratings. AE and Bengali were chosen because both possess a single relevant perceptual category for these stimuli, an alveolar nasal. Tamil and Punjabi were selected for their two nasal categories, dental and retroflex. Of the contrasts tested, Malayalam dental-alveolar was the most challenging, with all non-native groups performing at-chance on the AXB test. The discriminability of the other contrasts proved to be highly dependent on the particular talker, syllable position, or vowel context, with performance ranging from at-chance to 98.4%. An acoustic analysis of the stimuli will also be provided.