Who is Fu? – Perception of L2 sounds that are partially neutralized in L1

Abstract

This study investigates the interference of L1 phonology with L2 speech perception, focusing on the identification of the English fricatives /f/ and /h/ by Japanese listeners. In Japanese, the contrast of /f/ vs /h/ is lost only in the /_u/ environment by neutralization (/fu/ and /hu/ > [ɸu]). This makes food vs who’d extremely difficult for Japanese to discern while fee vs he poses no problem. Perceptual experiments demonstrated that while /f/ and /h/ were accurately identifiable when isolated from non-/u/ syllables [e.g. f(a) vs h(a)], those isolated from /_u/ were rather hard [f(u) vs h(u)] and became even harder when presented with the vowel [fu vs hu]. Such Cs alone [f(u)/h(u)] were easier than the whole CVs [fu/hu] from which those Cs were excised, contrary to our general expectations. A cross-splicing experiment further revealed it was not the acoustics of coarticulated fricatives but the presentation of /u/ that made the identification difficult. The basic phonetic process of f/h was debilitated in fu/hu, where the L1 neutralization applied, cancelling the contrast and the need for attunement, which was then transferred to L2. It was argued that the L1-L2 sound correspondence can be affected by the knowledge of L1 phonological processes.