The role of the native language in non-native perception and spoken word recognition : English vs. Spanish learners of Portuguese

Abstract

The ultimate goal for adult learners of a second language (L2) is successful communication. If learners cannot perceive, recognise and produce sounds and words in the L2 they may struggle to understand speakers of that language, who may in turn struggle to understand L2 learners. Not all learners will attain the same level of proficiency and even when immersed in the L2 environment, difficulties in L2 speech perception, spoken word recognition and L2 production persist. These difficulties in L2 speech are often attributed to the influence of the native language on the acquisition of L2 speech perception, spoken word recognition and production. This thesis investigates the role of the native language in Australian English (AusE) and Iberian Spanish (IS) listeners' non-native vowel perception and spoken word recognition of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and the interrelation between these two abilities. The thesis also investigates whether or not individual listeners follow different developmental patterns when perceiving and recognising BP. Rather than focusing on beginner, intermediate or advanced learners, this thesis investigates nai¨ve listeners (i.e., AusE and IS monolinguals) with no prior knowledge of BP in order to establish the onset (or initial state) of learning. This thesis comprises four content chapters, as well as an Introduction and Discussion. Chapter 2 reports on Elvin et al. (2014) which is a preliminary investigation of AusE and IS listeners' discrimination of BP vowels and investigates vowel inventory size and acoustic similarity as predictors of discrimination difficulties. Chapter 3 reviews previous acoustic analyses of IS and BP and introduces a new comprehensive acoustic analysis of AusE vowels (Elvin, Williams, & Escudero, 2016) that can be used to predict L2 difficulty in future cross-linguistic studies. The study in Chapter 4 (Elvin, Escudero, Williams, Shaw & Best, under review a) investigates of the role of acoustic similarity in predicting individual listeners' non-native categorisation and discrimination patterns. Chapter 5 (Elvin, Escudero, Williams, Shaw & Best, under review b) investigates whether individual listeners' difficulties in spoken word recognition are the same as their non-native discrimination difficulties. The findings indicate that the native language plays an important role in predicting non-native speech perception and spoken word recognition. Specifically, acoustic similarity largely predicted listeners' non-native categorisation and discrimination patterns, and that difficulty in discrimination positively correlated with word recognition difficulty. Interestingly, AusE and IS listeners, whose native languages differ in terms of the size of their vowel inventories, found the same BP vowel contrasts equally easy/difficult to perceive and recognise. Finally, the analyses of individual differences in both abilities were essential for understanding the original group findings, particularly in spoken word recognition where individual variation accounts for part of the identified group effect.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English