Kyoko Nagao, Kenneth J. de Jong, and Byung-jin Lim
Dept. of Linguist., Indiana Univ., 322 Memorial Hall, Bloomington, IN 47405
This paper investigates the degree to which speakers of languages with different syllabic inventories are similar in their perceptions of syllabic affiliation. Stetson (1951) noted that repeated coda (VC) structures become perceived as onset (CV) structures as repetition rates increase. Stimuli were extracted from a repetitive production experiment in which English talkers produced voiced and voiceless labial stop onsets and codas at tempi controlled by a rate varying metronome. Native English, Japanese, and Korean listeners were asked to label the repeated syllable with one of four choices: "bee", "pea", "eeb", "eep". All three language groups showed perceptual shifts from VC to CV as the speech rate increased. However, Japanese listeners are biased toward identifying VC productions as CVs, and very rarely identified CV productions as VCs. These results indicate a very consistent cross-language perception of syllabic affiliation, regardless of a language's syllabic inventory, although the language's inventory does have a small effect on such perceptions. These results differ from those for the voicing contrast. Voicing contrasts in coda position which are non-native for Koreans were more poorly categorized by the Korean listeners. [Work supported by NIDCD and NSF.]