Learning Foreign Vowels

Autor/in	Kingston, John
Titel	Learning Foreign Vowels
Quelle	In: Language and Speech, 46 (2003) 2-3, S.295-348 (54 Seiten) PDF als Volltext Verfügbarkeit
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	0023-8309
DOI	10.1177/00238309030460020201
Schlagwörter	Second Languages; Auditory Perception; German; Native Speakers; North American English; Vowels; Phonemic Awareness; Attention; Classification; Distinctive Features (Language) + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? Second language; Zweitsprache; Auditive Wahrnehmung; Akustische Wahrnehmung; Akustik; Deutscher; Muttersprachler; Amerikanisches Englisch; Aufmerksamkeit; Classification system; Klassifikation; Klassifikationssystem
Abstract	Two hypotheses have recently been put forward to account for listeners' ability to distinguish and learn contrasts between speech sounds in foreign languages. First, Best's Perceptual Assimilation Model and Flege's Speech Learning Model both predict that the ease with which a listener can tell one non-native phoneme from another varies directly with the extent to which these sounds assimilate to different native phonemes (Best, 1994; also Best, McRoberts, & Goodell, 2001; Flege, 1991). Second, Logan, Lively,& Pisoni (1991) have argued that training listeners to identify non-native phonemes teaches them sets of exemplars rather than more abstract distinctive feature values. I report here the results of three sets of experiments designed to test these hypotheses, in which American English listeners were trained to categorize German nonlow vowels. The first set of experiments show that some instances of the same contrast between German vowels are more easily discriminated than others, a result incompatible with the predictions of either Best's or Flege's models, but compatible with the alternative category recognition interpretation. The second set of experiments reveals effects of contextual and speaker variation on listeners' ability to learn [tense] but not [high] contrasts between foreign vowels, and are thus at least partly compatible with an exemplar model of foreign category learning (Pisoni, Lively, & Logan, 1994; also Nosofsky, 1986). The third set of experiments compares the predictions of Nosofsky's (1986) selective attention exemplar model of category learning with those of a feature learning model in tests of listeners' learning the natural classes to which the German vowels belong. The results are mixed: listeners learned the features that define the natural classes of [[plus or minus]high] and [[plus or minus]back] vowels, but could have learned either the feature that defines the natural classes of [[plus or minus]tense] vowels or sets of [[plus or minus]tense] exemplars. Natural classes defined by abstract distinctive feature values are thus learnable, even if their membership is phonetically polymorphous. (Contains 10 tables, 20 figures and 9 footnotes.) (As Provided).
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Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2017/4/10