Perception of Vowels Following Obstruents by Native English Speakers and Native Japanese Speakers

This study was conducted to examine whether the vowel duration in different consonantal contexts affect the category perception of a syllable by native Japanese speakers with varying levels of proficiency in English. Voiceless and voiced fricative (/su/ and /zu/) and stop consonants (/ku/ and /gu/) followed by a vowel were used as sound stimuli, with the duration of the vowel was respectively apprehended at 50% and 100% by the native Japanese speakers in Katayama\u27s (2014) study. Native Japanese speakers at differing levels of English proficiency and native English speakers transcribed them. Their transcriptions were categorized using the perceptual assimilation model (PAM; Best, McRoberts, & Goodell, 2001). The results revealed that most English speakers assimilated the sound stimuli into a single unit, while the native Japanese speakers tended to classify them as two distinct categories. The native Japanese-speaking participants categorized syllables according to the vowel duration and were also influenced by the type of consonant the vowel followed