Perceptual categorization of English vowels by native European Portuguese speakers

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2018.v14n2a17542

Keywords:

Categorização percetiva. Semelhança inter-linguística. Vogais do inglês L2. Falantes nativos de português europeu.

Abstract

This study reports the results of a perceptual assimilation task (PAT) used to assess the degree of perceived cross-language (dis)similarity between the vowel inventories of European Portuguese (L1) and American English (L2) and, thus, predict difficulty in the perception and production of non-native vowels. Thirty-four native European Portuguese speakers completed a PAT, in which they mapped both L2 English and L1 Portuguese vowels to native vowel categories and rated them for goodness-of-fit to L1 vowels. The results are discussed in terms of theoretical models of cross-language perception and L2 speech learning (SLM, Flege, 1995, & PAM-L2, Best & Tyler, 2007).

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Original in English.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.31513/linguistica.2018.v14n2a17542.

Author Biography

Anabela Rato, University of Toronto

I am an assistant professor at the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Toronto. My research interests include second language speech acquisition, speech perception and production, phonetic training, applied phonetics, and sound variation.

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Published

2018-09-15