Word frequency and neighborhood density effects on L2 listeners: English listeners learning Korean

Abstract

This study investigated the word frequency and neighborhood density effects on native and non‐native speakers’ word recognition. There has been a disagreement among previous studies on word frequency and neighborhood density effects on non‐native listening (Bradlow and Pisoni, 1999; Imai et al., 2005; Yoneyama, 2006). In the present study, Korean and English test stimuli with varying word frequency and neighborhood density were presented to English speakers learning Korean, who differed in Korean pronunciation proficiency. Two experiments were conducted: In the first experiment, each language was produced by its native speaker, while in the second one, the Korean stimuli were produced by an English‐Korean bilingual, in order to color the stimuli with an English accent. The experimental results revealed a strong influence of word frequency and neighborhood density on word recognition in non‐native listening of the English speakers. The participants’ pronunciation proficiency turned out to affect word recognition in the non‐native listening as well. Yet, English‐accented stimuli showed no significant effects on the word recognition of the Korean‐learning English speakers across the proficiency levels. These results are discussed in relation to the exemplar model (Bybee, 2000; 2001).