Article ID: jp980078 Perceptual assimilation of American English vowels by Japanese listeners

speakers in two sets of materials: /hVb" / disyllables spoken in citation-form (lists) and in /hVb / syllables embedded in a short carrier sentence. J listeners were asked to select the J vowel category to which each AE vowel was most similar and to rate its category goodness on a 7-point scale. While the overall pattern of assimilation to the five Japanese (J) vowel qualities (spectral assimilation pattern) was partially predictable on the basis of cross-language phonetic similarities, there were some unexpected results, and spectral assimilation patterns differed across disyllable and sentence conditions for 4 of the 11 vowels. There were also large differences across the two sets of materials in assimilation of long and short AE vowels to J long (2-mora) and short (1-mora) vowel categories (temporal assimilation pattern). The long AE vowels were perceived as similar to long J vowels only when they were produced and presented in sentence context. In a second study in which the final /"/ portions of the disyllables were electronically shortened, assimilation o