James Emil Flege

Native Italian speakers' perception and production of English vowels

This study examined the production and perception of English vowels by highly experienced native Italian speakers of English. The subjects were selected on the basis of the age at which they arrived in Canada and began to learn English, and how much they continued to use Italian. Vowel production accuracy was assessed through an intelligibility test in which native English-speaking listeners attempted to identify vowels spoken by the native Italian subjects. Vowel perception was assessed using a categorial discrimination test. The later in life the native Italian subjects began to learn English, the less accurately they produced and perceived English vowels. Neither of two groups of early Italian/English bilinguals differed significantly from native speakers of English either for production or perception. This finding is consistent with the hypothesis of the speech learning model [Flege, in Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Theoretical and Methodological Issues (York, Timonium, MD, 1995)] that early bilinguals establish new categories for vowels found in the second language (L2). The significant correlation observed to exist between the measures of L2 vowel production and perception is consistent with another hypothesis of the speech learning model, viz., that the accuracy with which L2 vowels are produced is limited by how accurately they are perceived.

Interaction between the native and second language phonetic subsystems

The underlying premise of this study was that the two phonetic subsystems of a bilingual interact. The study tested the hypothesis that the vowels a bilingual produces in a second language (L2) may differ from vowels produced by monolingual native speakers of the L2 as the result of either of two mechanisms: phonetic category assimilation or phonetic category dissimilation. Earlier work revealed that native speakers of Italian identify English/eI/ tokens as instances of the Italian /e/ category even though English /eI/ is produced with more tongue movement than Italian /e/ is. Acoustic analyses in the present study examined /eI/s produced by four groups of Italian-English bilinguals who differed according to their age of arrival in Canada from Italy (early versus late) and frequency of continued Italian use (low-L1- use versus high-L1-use). Early bilinguals who seldom used Italian (Early-low) were found to produce English /eI/ with significantly more movement than native English speakers. However, both groups of late bilinguals (Late-low, Late-high) tended to produced /eI/ with less movement than NE speakers. The exaggerated movement in /eI/s produced by the Early-low group participants was attributed to the dissimilation of a phonetic category they formed for English /eI/ from Italian /e/. The undershoot of movement in /eI/s produced by late bilinguals, on the other hand, was attributed to their failure to establish a new category for English /eI/, which led to the merger of the phonetic properties of English /eI/ and Italian /e/.

An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: the case of Japanese adults' perception of English consonants.

This study reports the results of two experiments with native speakers of Japanese. In experiment 1, near-monolingual Japanese listeners participated in a cross-language mapping experiment in which they identified English and Japanese consonants in terms of a Japanese category, then rated the identifications for goodness-of-fit to that Japanese category. Experiment 2 used the same set of stimuli in a categorial discrimination test. Three groups of Japanese speakers varying in English-language experience, and one group of native English speakers participated. Contrast pairs composed of two English consonants, two Japanese consonants, and one English and one Japanese consonant were tested. The results indicated that the perceived phonetic distance of second language (L2) consonants from the closest first language (L1) consonant predicted the discrimination of L2 sounds. In addition, this study investigated the role of experience in learning sounds in a second language. Some of the consonant contrasts tested showed evidence of learning (i.e., significantly higher scores for the experienced than the relatively inexperienced Japanese groups). The perceived phonetic distance of L1 and L2 sounds was found to predict learning effects in discrimination of L1 and L2 sounds in some cases. The results are discussed in terms of models of cross-language speech perception and L2 phonetic learning.

Perceived phonetic dissimilarity and L2 speech learning: the case of Japanese /r/ and English /l/ and /r/

Abstract Previous research has demonstrated that English /r/ is perceptually more dissimilar from Japanese /r/ than English /l/ is for native Japanese (NJ) speakers. It has been proposed by the Speech Learning Model that the more distant an L2 sound (phonetic segment) is from the closest L1 speech sound, the more learnable the L2 sound will be (in: W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-language Research, York Press, Timonium, MD, 1995, p. 233). This hypothesis was evaluated in this study by investigating whether NJ speakers will have more success acquiring English /r/ than /l/. A longitudinal study examined the perception (Experiment 1) and production (Experiment 2) of English /l/, /r/, and/w/ by NJ adults and children who were living in the US at the time of testing. The results suggested that there was greater improvement for English /r/ than English /l/ among the NJ children. The NJ childrens discrimination of /l/-/r/ and /r/-/w/ was significantly better at the second testing (T2) than 1 year earlier (T1). The NJ children also showed greater improvement from T1 to T2 in producing /r/ than /l/. The results are taken as support for a hypothesis of the Speech Learning Model (in: W. Strange (Ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-language Research, York Press, Timonium, MD, 1995, p. 233) that degree of perceived phonetic dissimilarity influences L2 learners’ success in acquiring L2 phonetic segments.

Perceiving Vowels in a Second Language.

This study examines the perception of English vowels by native speakers of Italian. In two preliminary experiments, Italian university students who had lived in Canada for 3 months were found to have difficulty discriminating because they often identified both members of each contrast as instances of a single Italian vowel. The participants in two other experiments, long-time residents of Canada, were assigned to groups based on their age of arrival in Canada from Italy (early vs. late) and percentage of first language (L1) use (high L1 use vs. low L1 use). Experiment 3 focused on the discrimination of , and experiment 4 examined the discrimination of correct from incorrect realizations of . In both experiments, the early learners obtained higher discrimination scores than the late learners, and low-L1-use participants obtained higher scores than high-L1-use participants. Most important, the early learners who used Italian often (early high), but not the early learners who used Italian seldom (early low), were found to differ from native speakers of English in perceiving English vowels. These results suggest two important conclusions regarding second language (L2) perceptual learning: Learning an L2 in childhood does not guarantee a nativelike perception of L2 vowels, nor does the establishment of a sound system for the L1 preclude a functionally nativelike perception of L2 vowels. Another important finding is that, although the late learners generally perceived English vowels less accurately than the early learners, some perceived them accurately. This study was supported by grant DC00257 from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Communicative Disorders. The authors thank J. Prosperine and M. Pearse for help locating participants, Fr. M. Brodeur of St. Anthonys Church in Ottawa, Ontario, and all the participants. The authors are grateful to D. Meador and T. Piske for help preparing the stimuli used in experiment 4. Finally, thanks are extended to K. Aoyama, S. Imai, K. Tsukada, T. Piske, and three anonymous SSLA reviewers for comments on an earlier version of this article.

Limits on phonetic accuracy in foreign language speech production

This study examined the French syllables /tu/ (‘‘tous’’) and /ty/ (‘‘tu’’) produced in three speaking tasks by native speakers of American English and French talkers living in the U. S. In a paired‐comparison task listeners correctly identified more of the vowels produced by French than American talkers, and more vowels produced by experienced than inexperienced American speakers of French. An acoustic analysis revealed that the American talkers produced /u/ with significantly higher F2 values than the French talkers, but produced /y/ with F2 values equal to those of the French talkers. A labeling task revealed that the /y/ vowels produced by the experienced and inexperienced Americans were identified equally well, but that the experienced Americans produced a more identifiable /u/ than the inexperienced Americans. It is hypothesized that English speakers learn French /y/ rapidly because this vowel is not—like French /u/—judged to be equivalent to a vowel of English. The French and American talkers produc...

Pronunciation proficiency in the first and second languages of Korean-English bilinguals*

This study examined pronunciation proficiency in both the first (Korean) and second (English) languages of bilinguals. The participants were adult immigrants whose age of arrival in the USA ranged from 1–23 years. English and Korean sentences were rated by native listeners to obtain measures of pronunciation proficiency. English pronunciation of participants with ages of arrival of 1–5 years was close to monolinguals, heavier accents were noted as ages of arrival increased from 6 to 23 years. Korean pronunciation of participants with ages of arrival of 1–7 years was distinctly accented, while those with ages of arrival of 12–23 years were rated the same as monolinguals. Participants with ages of arrival of 1–9 years pronounced English better than Korean, whereas the reverse was true for ages of arrival of 12–23 years. Overall, the results were more consistent with the view that deviations from native pronunciation result from interactions between the languages of bilinguals rather than with the view of a maturationally defined critical period for language learning.

Cross-language switching in stop consonant perception and production by Dutch speakers of English

Voiceless /p,t,k/ are implemented as aspirated stops in English, but as unaspirated stops in Dutch. We examined identification of a voice onset time (VOT) continuum ranging from /da/ to /ta/ in two language “sets” designed to induce native Dutch subjects to perceive the stimuli as if they were listening to Dutch or English. The effect of language set was highly significant, but the boundary shift was very small (2.1 ms longer in English than in Dutch) for three groups of subjects differing widely in English language proficiency. It nevertheless showed the subjects were aware of acoustic differences distinguishing Dutch and English /t/ and that the procedures were effective in creating differing language sets. Nearly every subject produced a longer mean VOT in English than Dutch /t/. The magnitude of the production shift was significantly greater for proficient than non-proficient subjects. Proficient Dutch speakers of English produced Dutch /t/ with shorter VOT values than non-proficient subjects, suggesting they formed a new category for English /t/. We speculate that the language set effect was small because subjects used their English /t/ category to identify stops in both sets. This was probably due to the fact that the synthetic stimuli, which were modeled on the English /t/-/d/ contrast, differed substantially from their Dutch /t/ category.

Cross-Language Phonetic Interference: Arabic to English.

This study compares phonetic implementation of the stop voicing contrast produced in Arabic by Saudi Arabians and by both Americans and Saudis in English. The English stops produced by Saudis manifested temporal acoustic correlates of stop voicing (VOT, stop closure duration, and vowel duration) similar to those found in Arabic stops. Despite such phonetic interference from Arabic to English, however, American listeners generally had little difficulty identifying the English stops produced by the Saudis, with the exception of /p/. This phoneme, which is absent in Arabic, was frequently produced with glottal pulsing during the stop closure interval. The timing of /p/, however, suggests that the Saudis did grasp the phonological nature of /p/ (i.e., that the contrast between /p—b/ is analogous to that between /t—d/ and /k—g/) but were unable to control all the articulatory dimensions by which this sound is produced.

Degree of foreign accent in English sentences produced by Korean children and adults

The purpose of this longitudinal study was to evaluate the influence of age (adult vs. child) and length of residence (LOR) in an L2-speaking country (3 vs. 5 years) on degree of foreign accent in a second language (L2). Korean adults and children living in North America, and age-matched groups of native English (NE) adults and children, recorded English sentences in sessions held 1.2 years apart (T1 vs. T2). NE-speaking listeners rated the sentences for overall degree of perceived foreign accent using a 9-point scale. The native Korean (NK) children received significantly higher ratings than the NK adults did, but lower ratings than the NE children. The NK children—even those who had arrived as young children and been enrolled in English-medium schools for an average of 4 years—spoke English with detectable foreign accents. The effects of LOR and the T1–T2 differences were non-significant for both the NK adults and the NK children. The findings were inconsistent with the hypothesis that adult–child differences in L2 speech learning are due to the passing of a critical period. The suggestion is made that the milder foreign accents observed for children than adults are due, at least in part, to the greater L2 input typically received by immigrant children than adults.