Kenneth J. de Jong, Noah Silvert, and Hanyong Park.
Experimental models of cross-language perception and second-language acquisition
(such as PAM and SLM) typically treat language differences in terms of whether
the two languages share phonological segmental categories. Linguistic models,
by contrast, generally examine properties which cross classify segments, such
as features, rules, or prosodic constraints. Such models predict that perceptual
patterns found for one segment will generalize to other segments of the same
class. This paper presents perceptual identifications of Korean listeners to
a set of voiced and voiceless English stops and fricatives in various prosodic
locations to determine the extent to which such generality occurs. Results show
some class-general effects; for example, voicing identification patterns generalize
from stops, which occur in Korean, to nonsibilant fricatives, which are new
to Korean listeners. However, when identification is poor, there are clear differences
between segments within the same class. For example, in identifying stops and
fricatives, both point of articulation and prosodic position bias perceptions;
coronals are more often labeled fricatives, and syllable initial obstruents
are more often labeled stops. These results suggest that class-general perceptual
patterns are not a simple consequence of the structure of the perceptual system,
but need to be acquired by factoring out within-class differences.