Vowel inventory size matters: assessing cue-weighting in L2 vowel perception

• Autor(a) principal: Kivistö-de Souza, Hanna
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Outros Autores: Carlet, Angélica, Julkowska, Izabela, Rato, Anabela
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Ilha do Desterro
• Texto Completo: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/desterro/article/view/2175-8026.2017v70n3p33

To examine whether L1 vowel inventory size could be a contributing factor to the use of temporal cues in L2 vowel perception, this study assessed the perception of English /i-ɪ/ by 66 learners of four different L1s: Danish, Portuguese, Catalan and Russian. The L2 learners performed a forced-choice identification task containing natural and duration-manipulated stimuli. Findings suggest that the participants’ over-reliance on duration cues seem to be partially related to their L1 vowel inventory size. The participants with the greatest L1 vowel inventory (Danish) demonstrated the most native-like vowel perception and the participants with the smallest L1 vowel inventory (Russian) over-relied on duration cues more than the other learners. Interestingly, the participants with somewhat comparable L1 vowel inventories (Portuguese and Catalan) performed similarly.