Perception of Vietnamese back vowels contrasting in rounding by English listeners

Publication date: March 2019Source: Journal of Phonetics, Volume 73Author(s): Irina A. ShportAbstractThe perception of back vowels contrasting in rounding has not previously been examined in major theoretical frameworks of cross-language speech perception. In two experiments, Southern U.S. English speakers naïve to the contrast categorized the Vietnamese vowels [u o ɯ ɤ] in terms of their native vowel categories and identified oddball vowels in triads representing the contrasts [u]-[o], [ɯ]-[u], [ɯ]-[ɤ], and [o]-[ɤ]. The relationship between vowel categorization and discrimination was more accurately predicted when predominant and secondary categorization patterns were taken into account. Group results showed that Vietnamese [ɤ] and [u o] were perceived as being most similar to English /ʌ/ and /oʊ/, respectively, whereas [ɯ] did not have a predominant categorization. Discrimination was not significantly more accurate in vowel pairs contrasting in rounding than in vowel pairs contrasting in height. It was more accurate, however, in less-to-more peripheral vowel presentation order than in the opposite direction. This asymmetry was even observed in the [o]-[ɤ] pair in which each member assimilated to a different native category. Collectively, the findings suggest that multiple-category membership and individual variability among listeners are to be considered in vowel perception. Acoustic-phonetic similarity between vowels may be a better predictor than the category ...

Source: Journal of Phonetics - January 9, 2019 Category: Speech-Language Pathology Source Type: research