Abstract
The aim of this study was to assess the effect of speaking rate changes
on the perception of English stop consonants by four groups of subjects:
English and Spanish monolinguals, 'early' Spanish/English bilinguals
who learned English in childhood, and 'late' bilinguals who learned
English in adulthood. Subjects identified, and then later rated for
goodness as exemplars of the English /p/ category, the members of
two voice onset time (VOT) continua. The English monolinguals identified
a well-defined range of VOT stimuli as English /p/, and stimuli with
longer VOT values as 'exaggerated' instances of English /p/. Their
goodness ratings increased as VOT increased, then showed a systematic
decrease as VOT began to exceed values typical for English /p/. The
English monolinguals' goodness ratings also varied systematically
as a function of speaking rate, which was simulated in the two continua
by varying syllable duration. The Spanish monolinguals, on the other
hand, failed to consistently identify any of the stimuli as English
/p/. Although speaking rate influenced their goodness ratings, the
Spanish monolinguals' rate effects differed significantly from the
English monolinguals'. The early bilinguals resembled the English
monolinguals, and differed from the Spanish monolinguals to a greater
extent than did the late Spanish/English bilinguals. This was taken
as support for the hypothesis that early bilinguals are more likely
than are late bilinguals to establish new phonetic categories for
stop consonants in a second language.
- adolescent,adult,age
- comparison,humans,l2,language,mexico,phonetics,speech
- ethnology,verbal
- factors,cross-cultural
- learning,consonants,language,perception,stops
- perception,united
- states,united
- states:
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