Native phonotactic interference in L2 vowel processing: mouse-tracking reveals cognitive conflicts during identification

Yizhou Wang, Rikke L. Bundgaard-Nielsen, Brett J. Baker, Olga Maxwell

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

    Abstract

    Regularities of phoneme distribution in a listener's native language (L1), i.e., L1 phonotactics, can at times induce interference in their perception of second language (L2) phonemes and phonemic strings. This paper presents a study examining phonological interference experienced by L1 Mandarin listeners in identifying the English/i/vowel in three consonantal contexts/p, f, w/, which have different distributional patterns in Mandarin phonology:/pi/is a licit sequence in Mandarin, */fi/is illicit due to co-occurrence restrictions, and */wi/is illicit due to Mandarin contextual allophony. L1 Mandarin listeners completed two versions of an identification experiment (keystroke and mouse-tracking), in which they identified vowels in different consonantal contexts. Analysis of error rates, response times, and hand motions in the tasks suggests that L1 co-occurrence restriction and contextual allophony induce different levels of phonological interference in L2 vowel perception compared to the licit control condition. In support of the dynamic theory of linguistic cognition, our results indicate that illicit phonotactic contexts can lead to more identification errors, longer decision processes, and spurious activation of a distractor category.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of INTERSPEECH 2022, Human and Humanizing Speech Technology, September 18-22, 2022 Incheon, Korea
    Place of PublicationKorea
    PublisherInternational Speech Communication Association
    Pages5223-5227
    Number of pages5
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2022
    Event23rd Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2022 - Incheon, Korea, Republic of
    Duration: 18 Sept 202222 Sept 2022

    Publication series

    NameProceedings of the Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH
    ISSN (Print)2308-457X

    Conference

    Conference23rd Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association, INTERSPEECH 2022
    Country/TerritoryKorea, Republic of
    CityIncheon
    Period18/09/2222/09/22

    Bibliographical note

    Publisher Copyright:
    Copyright © 2022 ISCA.

    Keywords

    • Mandarin
    • phonotactics
    • vowel perception

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Native phonotactic interference in L2 vowel processing: mouse-tracking reveals cognitive conflicts during identification'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this