Cross-language vowel perception and production by Japanese and Korean learners

This paper investigates the roles of language-specific phonological learning and inherent phonetic contrastiveness in the perception of non-native vowels. Native speakers of Korean and Japanese, at two levels of English language experience, were assessed on the perception and production of Australian English monophthongal non-back vowels: / i: I e ( a: /. Prototypicality ratings, or perceived similarities of the foreign vowels to their nearest native (L1) phonemic targets, were also examined, to assess models of cross-language vowel perception. Korean is of interest because of a recent phonological merger of two front vowels ( / e / and / E / ), which has produced a generation split among speakers of Seoul dialect above and below 45 – 50 years of age (Hong, 1991). The present study is the first reported case of how a phonemic merger, resulting in cross-generation dif ferences within a speech community, can influence speakers ’ perception and production of non-native vowels. The ef fects of L1 phonological learning on vowel perception were also observed in the tendency of the Japanese, but not the Korean listeners, to normalize tokens of non-native vowels for speaker-dependent durational variation, consistent with the respective phonological roles of vowel length in Japanese an