Perceptual discrimination and categorization of vowels in different levels of foreign language instruction
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Argitaratua
2025-01-29
Ane Icardo Isasa
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9637-8854
Laburpena
This paper reports on the development of L2 English vowel pair perception by adult L1 Spanish/Basque speakers of differing levels of English instruction. This study focuses on vowel pairs /i-ɪ/, /u-ʊ/ and /ʌ-ɔ/, with differing levels of proximity to native categories. Results of two perceptual tasks show that learners are influenced by their native categories, but that regardless of level, they can still modify their representations. However, the success in categorization varies by sound based on acoustic distance and multiple category competition.
Nola aipatu
Icardo Isasa, Ane. 2025. «Perceptual Discrimination and Categorization of Vowels in Different Levels of Foreign Language Instruction». Anuario Del Seminario De Filología Vasca "Julio De Urquijo" 57 ((1-2):475-94. https://doi.org/10.1387/asju.25964.
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References
Archibald, John. 1998. Second language phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Archila-Suerte, Pilar, Jason Zevin, Ferenc Bunta & Arturo Hernandez. 2011. Age of acquisition and proficiency in a second language independently influence the perception of non-native speech. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition 15(1). 190–201.
Best, Catherine. 1995. A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In Winifred Strange (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research. 171–204. York: Timonium.
Best, Catherine & Michael Tyler. 2007. Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. Language experience in second language speech learning. 13–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2009. Praat: doing phonetics by computer, version 6.0.10. https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/.
Bongaerts, Theo, Chantal van Summeren, Brigitte Planken & Erik Schils. 1997. Age and ultimate attainment in the pronunciation of a foreign language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 19. 447–465.
Boomershine, Amanda. 2013. The perception of English vowels by monolingual, bilingual, and heritage speakers of Spanish and English. In Chad Howe, Sarah E. Blackwell & Margaret Lubbers Quesada (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 103–118. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Boomershine, Amanda & Ji Young Kim. 2018. Speech perception. In Kimberly Geeslin (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics, 237–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bradlow, Ann. 1995. A comparative acoustic study of English and Spanish vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(3). 1916–1924.
Brown, Adam. 1991. Functional load and the teaching of pronunciation. In Adam Brown (ed.), Teaching English pronunciation: a book of readings, 211–224. London: Routledge.
CaMLA = Cambridge Michigan Language Assessments. 2018. Michigan English Language Institute College Entrance Test.
Cebrian, Juli. 2006. Experience and the use of non-native duration in L2 vowel categorization. Journal of Phonetics 34. 372–387.
Cenoz, Jasone & Mª Luisa García Lecumberri. 1999. The effect of training on the discrimination of English vowels. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 37(4). 261–276.
Colantoni, Laura, Jeffrey Steele & Paola Escudero. 2015. Second language speech. Theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cummings Ruiz, Laura. 2019. North Midland /u/-fronting and its Effect on Heritage Speakers of Spanish. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019,1099–1103. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
Escudero, Paola. 2005. Linguistic Perception and Second Language Acquisition. Explaining the attainment of optimal phonological categorization (LOT 113). Utrecht: Netherlands National Graduate School of Linguistics.
Escudero, Paola. 2007. Second-language phonology: The role of perception. In Martha Pennington (ed.), Phonology in context, 109–134. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Escudero, Paola, Titia Benders & Silvia Lipski. 2009. Native, non-native and L2 perceptual cue weighting for Dutch vowels: The case of Dutch, German, and Spanish listeners. Journal of Phonetics 37. 452–466.
Escudero, Paola & Kateřina Chládková. 2010. Spanish listeners’ perception of American and Southern British English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128. 254–260.
Escudero, Paola & Karin Wanrooij. 2010. The effect of L1 orthography on L2 vowel perception. Language and Speech 53(3). 343–365.
Flege, James. 1991. Orthographic evidence of the perceptual identification of vowels in Spanish and English. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 43(3). 701–731.
Flege, James. 1995. Second language speech learning: Theory, findings and problems. In Winifred Strange (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research, 233–277. Timonium: York.
Flege, James. 2003. Assessing constraints on second-language segmental production and perception. In Niels Schiller & Antje Meyer (eds.), Phonetics and phonology in language comprehension and production: Differences and similarities, 319–355. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Flege, James, Ocke-Schwen Bohn & Suyoung Jang. 1997. The effect of experience on nonnative subjects’ production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics 25. 437–470.
Flege, James, Murray Munro & Robert Fox. 1994. Auditory and categorical effects on cross-language vowel perception. The Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 95(6). 3623–3641.
Fox, Robert, James Flege & Murray Munro. 1995. The perception of English and Spanish vowels by native English and Spanish listeners: a multidimensional scaling analysis. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(4). 2540–2551.
Fullana, Natalia & Carmen Muñoz. 1999. The development of auditory discrimination skills in EFL learners of different ages. In AEDEAN. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference, 1–7. León: Universidad de León.
Gallardo, Francisco, Mª Luisa García Lecumberri & Jasone Cenoz. 2000. English simple vowel discrimination in learners with different ages of first exposure to EFL. In Ángel Mateos-Aparicio & Silvia Molina (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th International AEDEAN Conference. Ciudad Real: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
Gallardo, Francisco, Mª Luisa García Lecumberri & Jasone Cenoz. 2006. Age and native language influence on the perception of English vowels. In Barbara Baptista & Michael Watkins (eds.), English with a Latin beat: Studies in Portuguese/Spanish-English Interphonology, 57–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
García Lecumberri, Mª Luisa & Jasone Cenoz. 1997. L2 perception of English vowels: Testing the validity of Kuhl’s prototypes. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 10. 55–68.
García Lecumberri, Mª Luisa & Francisco Gallardo. 2003. English FL sounds in school learners of different ages. In Mª del Pilar Mayo & Mª Luisa García Lecumberri (eds.), Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language, 115–135. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Gilner, Leah & Franc Morales. 2010. Functional load: Transcription and analysis of the 10,000 most frequent words in spoken English. The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics 3. 135–162.
Guion, Susan, James Flege, Reiko Akahane-Yamada & Jesica Pruitt. 2000. An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: the case of Japanese adults’ perception of English consonants. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 107. 2711–2724.
Guion-Anderson, Susan. 2013. Speech perception. In Carol Chapelle (ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics, 5348–5356. Oxford: Wiley.
Hualde, José Ignacio. 2005. The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Iverson, Paul & Bronwen Evans. 2007. Learning English vowels with different first-language vowel systems: perception of formant targets, formant movement, and duration. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 122(5). 2842-2854.
Kondaurova, Maria & Alexander Francis. 2008. The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English Tense/Lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 124(6). 3959–3971.
Lennenberg, Eric. 1967. Biological foundations of languages. New York: Wiley.
Levey, Sandra & Denise Cruz. 2004. The discrimination of English vowels by bilingual Spanish/English and monolingual English speakers. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders 31. 162–172.
Maddieson, Ian. 1984. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mora, Joan & Natalia Fullana. 2007. Production and perception of English /i:/-/ɪ/ and /æ/-/ʌ/ in a formal setting: Investigating the effects of experience and starting age. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3, 1613–1616. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.
Morrison, Geoffrey. 2008. L1-Spanish speakers’ acquisition of the English /i–ɪ/ contrast: Duration-based perception is not the initial developmental stage. Language and Speech 51(4). 285–315.
Munro, Murray & Tracey Derwing. 2006. The functional load principle in ESL pronunciation instruction: an exploratory study. System 34(4). 520–531.
Peirce, Jonathan. 2007. PsychoPy - Psychophysics software in Python. Neurosci Methods 162(1-2). 8–13.
Polka, Linda & Ocke-Schwen Bohn. 1996. A cross-language comparison of vowel perception in English-learning and German-learning infants. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 100(1). 577–592.
Ramon-Casas, Marta, Christopher Fennel & Laura Bosch. 2016. Minimal-Pair Word Learning by Bilingual Toddlers: The Catalan /e–ɛ/ Contrast Revisited. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(3). 1–8.
Singleton, David & Lisa Ryan. 2004. Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Strange, Winifred & Valerie Shafer. 2008. Speech perception in second language learners. The re-education of selective perception. In Jette G. Hansen Edwards & Mary L. Zampini (eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition (Studies in Bilingualism 36), 153–191. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.36.09str.
Archila-Suerte, Pilar, Jason Zevin, Ferenc Bunta & Arturo Hernandez. 2011. Age of acquisition and proficiency in a second language independently influence the perception of non-native speech. Bilingualism: Language & Cognition 15(1). 190–201.
Best, Catherine. 1995. A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In Winifred Strange (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research. 171–204. York: Timonium.
Best, Catherine & Michael Tyler. 2007. Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. Language experience in second language speech learning. 13–34. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Boersma, Paul & David Weenink. 2009. Praat: doing phonetics by computer, version 6.0.10. https://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat/.
Bongaerts, Theo, Chantal van Summeren, Brigitte Planken & Erik Schils. 1997. Age and ultimate attainment in the pronunciation of a foreign language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition 19. 447–465.
Boomershine, Amanda. 2013. The perception of English vowels by monolingual, bilingual, and heritage speakers of Spanish and English. In Chad Howe, Sarah E. Blackwell & Margaret Lubbers Quesada (eds.), Selected Proceedings of the 15th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium, 103–118. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.
Boomershine, Amanda & Ji Young Kim. 2018. Speech perception. In Kimberly Geeslin (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics, 237–258. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bradlow, Ann. 1995. A comparative acoustic study of English and Spanish vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(3). 1916–1924.
Brown, Adam. 1991. Functional load and the teaching of pronunciation. In Adam Brown (ed.), Teaching English pronunciation: a book of readings, 211–224. London: Routledge.
CaMLA = Cambridge Michigan Language Assessments. 2018. Michigan English Language Institute College Entrance Test.
Cebrian, Juli. 2006. Experience and the use of non-native duration in L2 vowel categorization. Journal of Phonetics 34. 372–387.
Cenoz, Jasone & Mª Luisa García Lecumberri. 1999. The effect of training on the discrimination of English vowels. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching 37(4). 261–276.
Colantoni, Laura, Jeffrey Steele & Paola Escudero. 2015. Second language speech. Theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cummings Ruiz, Laura. 2019. North Midland /u/-fronting and its Effect on Heritage Speakers of Spanish. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019,1099–1103. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
Escudero, Paola. 2005. Linguistic Perception and Second Language Acquisition. Explaining the attainment of optimal phonological categorization (LOT 113). Utrecht: Netherlands National Graduate School of Linguistics.
Escudero, Paola. 2007. Second-language phonology: The role of perception. In Martha Pennington (ed.), Phonology in context, 109–134. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Escudero, Paola, Titia Benders & Silvia Lipski. 2009. Native, non-native and L2 perceptual cue weighting for Dutch vowels: The case of Dutch, German, and Spanish listeners. Journal of Phonetics 37. 452–466.
Escudero, Paola & Kateřina Chládková. 2010. Spanish listeners’ perception of American and Southern British English vowels. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 128. 254–260.
Escudero, Paola & Karin Wanrooij. 2010. The effect of L1 orthography on L2 vowel perception. Language and Speech 53(3). 343–365.
Flege, James. 1991. Orthographic evidence of the perceptual identification of vowels in Spanish and English. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 43(3). 701–731.
Flege, James. 1995. Second language speech learning: Theory, findings and problems. In Winifred Strange (ed.), Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research, 233–277. Timonium: York.
Flege, James. 2003. Assessing constraints on second-language segmental production and perception. In Niels Schiller & Antje Meyer (eds.), Phonetics and phonology in language comprehension and production: Differences and similarities, 319–355. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Flege, James, Ocke-Schwen Bohn & Suyoung Jang. 1997. The effect of experience on nonnative subjects’ production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics 25. 437–470.
Flege, James, Murray Munro & Robert Fox. 1994. Auditory and categorical effects on cross-language vowel perception. The Journal of the Acoustic Society of America 95(6). 3623–3641.
Fox, Robert, James Flege & Murray Munro. 1995. The perception of English and Spanish vowels by native English and Spanish listeners: a multidimensional scaling analysis. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 97(4). 2540–2551.
Fullana, Natalia & Carmen Muñoz. 1999. The development of auditory discrimination skills in EFL learners of different ages. In AEDEAN. Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference, 1–7. León: Universidad de León.
Gallardo, Francisco, Mª Luisa García Lecumberri & Jasone Cenoz. 2000. English simple vowel discrimination in learners with different ages of first exposure to EFL. In Ángel Mateos-Aparicio & Silvia Molina (eds.), Proceedings of the 24th International AEDEAN Conference. Ciudad Real: Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha.
Gallardo, Francisco, Mª Luisa García Lecumberri & Jasone Cenoz. 2006. Age and native language influence on the perception of English vowels. In Barbara Baptista & Michael Watkins (eds.), English with a Latin beat: Studies in Portuguese/Spanish-English Interphonology, 57–70. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
García Lecumberri, Mª Luisa & Jasone Cenoz. 1997. L2 perception of English vowels: Testing the validity of Kuhl’s prototypes. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses 10. 55–68.
García Lecumberri, Mª Luisa & Francisco Gallardo. 2003. English FL sounds in school learners of different ages. In Mª del Pilar Mayo & Mª Luisa García Lecumberri (eds.), Age and the Acquisition of English as a Foreign Language, 115–135. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Gilner, Leah & Franc Morales. 2010. Functional load: Transcription and analysis of the 10,000 most frequent words in spoken English. The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics 3. 135–162.
Guion, Susan, James Flege, Reiko Akahane-Yamada & Jesica Pruitt. 2000. An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: the case of Japanese adults’ perception of English consonants. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 107. 2711–2724.
Guion-Anderson, Susan. 2013. Speech perception. In Carol Chapelle (ed.), The encyclopedia of applied linguistics, 5348–5356. Oxford: Wiley.
Hualde, José Ignacio. 2005. The sounds of Spanish. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Iverson, Paul & Bronwen Evans. 2007. Learning English vowels with different first-language vowel systems: perception of formant targets, formant movement, and duration. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 122(5). 2842-2854.
Kondaurova, Maria & Alexander Francis. 2008. The relationship between native allophonic experience with vowel duration and perception of the English Tense/Lax vowel contrast by Spanish and Russian listeners. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 124(6). 3959–3971.
Lennenberg, Eric. 1967. Biological foundations of languages. New York: Wiley.
Levey, Sandra & Denise Cruz. 2004. The discrimination of English vowels by bilingual Spanish/English and monolingual English speakers. Contemporary Issues in Communication Science and Disorders 31. 162–172.
Maddieson, Ian. 1984. Patterns of Sounds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mora, Joan & Natalia Fullana. 2007. Production and perception of English /i:/-/ɪ/ and /æ/-/ʌ/ in a formal setting: Investigating the effects of experience and starting age. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, vol. 3, 1613–1616. Saarbrücken: Universität des Saarlandes.
Morrison, Geoffrey. 2008. L1-Spanish speakers’ acquisition of the English /i–ɪ/ contrast: Duration-based perception is not the initial developmental stage. Language and Speech 51(4). 285–315.
Munro, Murray & Tracey Derwing. 2006. The functional load principle in ESL pronunciation instruction: an exploratory study. System 34(4). 520–531.
Peirce, Jonathan. 2007. PsychoPy - Psychophysics software in Python. Neurosci Methods 162(1-2). 8–13.
Polka, Linda & Ocke-Schwen Bohn. 1996. A cross-language comparison of vowel perception in English-learning and German-learning infants. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 100(1). 577–592.
Ramon-Casas, Marta, Christopher Fennel & Laura Bosch. 2016. Minimal-Pair Word Learning by Bilingual Toddlers: The Catalan /e–ɛ/ Contrast Revisited. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 20(3). 1–8.
Singleton, David & Lisa Ryan. 2004. Language Acquisition: The Age Factor. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Strange, Winifred & Valerie Shafer. 2008. Speech perception in second language learners. The re-education of selective perception. In Jette G. Hansen Edwards & Mary L. Zampini (eds.), Phonology and second language acquisition (Studies in Bilingualism 36), 153–191. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. https://doi.org/10.1075/sibil.36.09str.
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