ASA 128th Meeting - Austin, Texas - 1994 Nov 28 .. Dec 02

3aSP4. Effects of lexical status on native and non-native English-speaking adults' vowel perception.

Dept. of Psychol., Univ. of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294

James E. Flege

UAB

Monolingual, English-speaking adults and native Chinese (Mandarin) speakers who learned English as a second language heard stimuli from two ``native,'' synthetic continua, in which the vowels ranged from English /(small capital eye)/ to /i/ in the context /bb/ or /bp/. Thus the end points of the first continuum constituted an English word and a nonword (``bib'' vs *``beeb''); the reverse held for the second continuum (*``bip'' vs ``beep''). These same subjects also heard stimuli from two ``foreign'' continua, where the vowels ranged from English /(small capital eye)/ to a foreign (non-English) vowel /Y/ in the contexts described above. Thus the end points of the first continuum corresponded to a word and a nonword (``bib'' vs *``bYb''); both end points of the second continuum corresponded to nonwords (*``bip'' vs *``bYp''). After training on end points, subjects' identifications of the nine stimuli of a given continuum were examined to assess whether: the Chinese speakers, like native English speakers, exhibit a ``lexical bias'' effect for English vowels (from the native continua); vowel categories not bounded by another native/English vowel (as in the foreign continua) expand outward or become better defined with increased exposure to English and/or lexical status. [Work supported by NIH.]