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This study examines the degree to which mapping patterns between native language (L1) and second language (L2) categories for one prosodic context will generalize to other prosodic contexts, and how position-specific neutralization in the L1 influences the category mappings. Forty L1-Korean learners of English listened to English nonsense words consisting of /p b t d f v θ ð/ and /ɑ/, with the consonants appearing in pre-stressed intervocalic, post-stressed intervocalic, or coda context, and were asked to identify the consonant with both Korean and English labeling and to give gradient evaluations of the goodness of each label to the stimuli. Results show that the mapping patterns differ extensively from those found previously with the same subjects for consonants in initial, onset context. The mapping patterns for the intervocalic context also differed by position with respect to stress location. Coda consonants elicited poor goodness-of-fit and noisier mapping patterns for all segments, suggesting that an L1 coda neutralization process put all L2-English sounds in codas as “new” sounds under the Speech Learning Model (SLM) framework ( Flege, 1995 ). Taken together, the results indicate that consonant learning needs to be evaluated in terms of position-by-position variants, rather than just being a general property of the overall consonant systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports findings from two experiments on second language learners, comparing their performance in an Imitation task to that in Identification and Read-Aloud tasks. Experiment 1 targeted English speakers׳ learning of Mandarin tones, while Experiment 2 investigated Korean speakers׳ learning of English consonants. The results of Experiment 1 showed that the Imitation task was generally easier for English speakers than the Identification and Read-Aloud tasks, suggesting that imitation was performed without some of the skills required by the other two tasks. As for Experiment 2, the Koreans were consistently less accurate in Imitation than in Read-Aloud, while their Imitation was more accurate than their Identification when the L2 sounds have a close counterpart in Korean. The results from both experiments revealed that the accuracy in Imitation was not always constrained by that in the Identification and Read-Aloud tasks. Hence it can be inferred that L2 imitation may not involve all the skills required by the other two tasks and probably bypasses some aspect of phonological encoding. More detailed predictions of the error patterns in the Imitation task based on Perception, Production, and Cascade models were compared. It was found that English speakers׳ confusion patterns in imitating Mandarin tones correlated to the same degree with the predictions of all three models, which may be because the learners׳ difficulty in perception and production was largely similar. On the other hand, Korean learners׳ errors in imitating English consonants were overall more accurately predicted by a Cascade model, suggesting that both perceptual and production imprecision aggravated imitation performance. The comparison of these two experiments corroborates that various factors may affect the relationships between L2 imitation, perception, and production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the extent of differences between second language (L2) learners in their abilities to identify L2 consonants and provides evidence for linguistic generalization from one consonant to other consonants. It distinguishes among different sorts of models of the relationship between segments: (a) segmentally specific models in which each segment is treated separately and (b) generalized featural models in which segments that share features are treated as a group. It also examines (c) ordered models in which one segment might rely on another previously existing one. The article presents the results of an experiment with 40 Korean learners of English identifying English obstruents in different prosodic locations, and it examines the pattern of variation in perceptual accuracy across the listeners. Results indicate that manner perception varies from person to person as a unit, regardless of the segment, suggesting a single generalized featural skill. Voicing identification, however, does not vary as a unit across the different prosodic positions, suggesting different skills that are applicable to different prosodic positions and are acquired separately. There is also evidence for an implicational relationship between pairs of segments that differ in markedness, providing some evidence for an ordered model; however, such patterns are not pervasive across different contrasts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the results of an acoustic speech-production experiment in which speakers repeated simple syllabic forms varying in consonantal voicing in time to a metronome that controlled repetition rate. Speakers exhibited very different patterns of tempo control for syllables with onsets than for syllables with codas. Syllables with codas exhibited internal temporal consistency, leaving junctures between the repeated syllables to take up most of the tempo variation. Open syllables with onsets, by contrast, often exhibited nearly proportional scaling of all of the acoustic portions of the signal. Results also suggest that phonemic use of vowel duration as a cue to voicing acted to constrain temporal patterns with some speakers. These results are discussed with respect to possible models of local temporal adjustment within a context of global timing constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]