Is more always better? : the perception of Dutch vowels by English versus Spanish listeners

Samra Alispahic, Paola Escudero, Karen E. Mulak

    Research output: Chapter in Book / Conference PaperConference Paperpeer-review

    Abstract

    The present study investigates Australian English (AusE) monolingual listeners' perception of non-native vowels in Dutch, a language with fewer vowels compared to AusE. AusE listeners' performance was compared to native monolingual Peruvian Spanish (PS) listeners whose L1 contains fewer vowels than Dutch. Results show that compared to PS listeners, AusE listeners were better at discriminating only one contrast, /ɪ -Ê /. AusE listeners took full advantage of their vowel inventory size by mapping Dutch vowels across multiple English categories. Surprisingly, they also appear to duplicate the PS single category assimilation by mapping Dutch /ɪ / and /i/ to both English /i/ and /ɪ /.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of the 15th Australasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology (SST2014), 2-5 December 2014, Rydges Latimer Hotel, Christchurch, New Zealand
    PublisherAustralasian Speech Science and Technology Association
    Pages219-222
    Number of pages4
    Publication statusPublished - 2014
    EventAustralasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology -
    Duration: 2 Dec 2014 → …

    Publication series

    Name
    ISSN (Print)1039-0227

    Conference

    ConferenceAustralasian International Conference on Speech Science and Technology
    Period2/12/14 → …

    Keywords

    • Dutch language
    • vowels
    • speech perception
    • phonetics, acoustic

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