1 Production and perception of a novel, second- language phonetic contrast James Emil Flege 1988, Production and perception of a novel, second- language phonetic contrast James Emil Flege 1988, J. Acoust. S oc. Am. 93 (3), March 1993: Adapted into a class lecture note by Raung-fu Chung

2 Outline I.Literature Review & Hypothesis II.Experimental design III.Experiment 1-production IV.Experiment 2-identification of /t/ V.Experiment 3-choose the preferred /t/ and /d/ VI.Experiment 4-imitation VII.Discussion VIII.General discussion

3 I. Literature Review & Hypothesis 1.L1 would influence L2 learning. Ex. French also use vowel duration as the segmental cues to identify voiced and voiceless sounds. The vowel duration of /p/,/t/,/k/</b/,/d/,/g/. Therefore, when they learn English, it’s easy for them to produce those words. Ex. French also use vowel duration as the segmental cues to identify voiced and voiceless sounds. The vowel duration of /p/,/t/,/k/</b/,/d/,/g/. Therefore, when they learn English, it’s easy for them to produce those words. If the late learners treated word-final English /d/’s and /t/’s as new then, by hypothesis, they should master the word-final English /t/-/d/ contrast. (Hiramatsu,1990) However, the recent studies didn’t support this prediction (Flege, 1988; Crowther and Mann, 1992) Hypothesis  1. Mandarin is a language without final stops, and Taiwanese has final stops /k/,/t/, /p/. In the present study, we want to know whether Mandarin speakers and Taiwanese speakers would perform differently.

4 I. Literature Review & Hypothesis 2. The relation between production and perception. Ex. In Dutch, perception precedes production. They didn’t produce with longer vowel duration before /d/ than /t/, but when they hear it, they know their vowel duration is different. Dutch also has vowel duration difference. (Elsendoor) Ex. In Dutch, perception precedes production. They didn’t produce with longer vowel duration before /d/ than /t/, but when they hear it, they know their vowel duration is different. Dutch also has vowel duration difference. (Elsendoor) Ex. In Japanese, some Japanese subjects may produce English /r/ and /l/ better than they identify these non- native sounds. (Goto, 1971) Ex. In Japanese, some Japanese subjects may produce English /r/ and /l/ better than they identify these non- native sounds. (Goto, 1971)  2. We want to know whether perception precedes production or not. 3. We also want to the role “age” plays in L2 acquisition. 3. We also want to the role “age” plays in L2 acquisition.

5 II. Experimental design -- subjects They are all from Birmingham, Alabama.

6 II. Experimental design Four reasons to choose vowel duration as measurement. 1.Vowel duration is a unique status in English. 2.Vowel duration can be easily measured. 3.An incorrect specification of vowel-duration contributes to foreign accent (Elsendoorn, 1984.) 4.Production and perception of vowel duration has been compared readily.

7 III. Experiment 1- Production 1.The subjects were asked to read out 14 words with CVC structures in a carrying phrase “I will say.” The 14 words are the vowels /i/, /a/,,/e/, and/u/, which were inserted into /b t/ and /b d/ frames. 2.If the subjects speak too fast, they will be asked to say it again. 3.To avoid the possible effects of exposure to the perceptual stimuli on production, experiment 1 was carried out on the first day. 4.The measurement is PM device.

8 III. Experiment 1-Result 1. All five groups produce longer vowel duration in /d/ than in /t/. 2. From one-way ANOVA, post-hoc test Tukey’s HSD revealed that NE and TC produced significantly larger differences than TB, TA, and MA. No other differences were significant.

9 III. Experiment 1- Discussion 1.The lack of a a word-final /t/ and /d/ in an adult learner’s L1 doesn’t guarantee the mastery of the contrast in English. 2.The lack of significant differences between TA and TB suggest that an additional 4 years of English learning is insufficient to increase vowel duration difference measurably. 3.Late learners are also aware that /t/ differs phonologically from /d/ in English.

10 III. Experiment 1- Discussion 4. Look at the between groups in TC: the age expose to English. A. 3 subjects started to learn English A. 3 subjects started to learn English between 3-6 years old (125ms) between 3-6 years old (125ms) B years old (92ms) B years old (92ms) C. Most subjects started to learn English C. Most subjects started to learn English after 7 years old. after 7 years old.  The earlier they learn English, the closer they are to native speakers.  The earlier they learn English, the closer they are to native speakers.

11 IV. Experiment 2- Identification of /t/ Although TB didn’t produce significantly larger vowel difference than TA and MA. If they can perceive better than TA and MA, it can prove the hypothesis that “perception precedes the production.”

12 IV. Experiment 2- Method 1.Only beat-bead continua and bat-bad continua will be tested. 2.The range of vowel duration in beat-bead is ms. The range of vowel duration in bat-bad is ms. The interval is 20 ms. 3.It was played through the headphone. The subjects were instructed to push a button marked “t” and “d”. The 2 CVC continua were presented in counterbalanced order. 4.The natural-edited stimulus will be used instead of synthetic stimulus. 5.The dependent variable was the percentage of times each stimulus was identified as ending in /t/.

13 IV. Experiment 2 — Result (/t/ percentage)

14 IV. Experiment 2-Result (/t/ percentage) 1.According to the subjects’ performance, NE and TC were considered as a group, and TB, TA, and MA were considered another. 2.It can be sure that the long vowel duration will be considered as before /d/, and the short vowel duration will be considered as before /t/. 3.The slopes for beat-bead were significantly shallower than those for bad-bad. 4.The experienced L2 learners have been found to have shallower slopes than native speakers. It suggested that segmental phonetic contrasts are less “sharply defined” for them than native speakers.

15 IV. Experiment 2-Result (boundary analysis) The group doesn’t have effect, but the age has effect. The performance of TC is closer to NE because of the greater vowel duration.

16 IV. Experiment 2-Result (consistency)

17 IV. Experiment 2-Result (consistency) 1.The consistency scores were higher for short-duration than for the long-duration for all groups except the MA. 2.The lowest point of the consistency is because when the vowel duration is at the boundary of long- and short-vowel duration, subjects were not sure whether it is before /t/ or /d/.

18 IV. Experiment 2- Discussion Fact: Different from Experiment 1(the production test), NE and TC are significantly different from TB, TA, NE and TC are significantly different from TB, TA, and MA. But in Experiment 2, shortening the and MA. But in Experiment 2, shortening the duration of vowels in natural edited bat-bad stimuli duration of vowels in natural edited bat-bad stimuli decreased the percentage of /t/ judgment given by decreased the percentage of /t/ judgment given by the subjects in all groups.  There was not a the subjects in all groups.  There was not a significant difference between native speakers and significant difference between native speakers and TB. It suggested that the experienced late learners TB. It suggested that the experienced late learners have acquired a native like sensitivity to vowel have acquired a native like sensitivity to vowel duration. duration. Conclusion: Compare with Experiment 1, it supported the hypothesis “the perception of vowel duration cues precedes its production.”

19 IV. Experiment 2- Discussion Questions for this conclusion: 1.The lack of between-group differences and the lack of statistical power. 2.Several findings in Experiment 2 suggested that the late learners didn’t use vowel duration in a truly native like manner. 3.For identification functions that could be subject to probit analysis, the late learners’ phoneme boundaries occurred at shorter vowel duration than NE and TC.

20 V. Experiment 3-Choose the preferred /t/ and /d/ In order to solve the questions raised by Experiment 2, Experiment 3 was taken. Hypothesis: Flege (1988) said as in L1 acquisition, alignment of production and perception may occur gradually in adult learning.  The possibility existed that the method of adjustment would reveal significant perceptual difference between NE and TB. In this way, “perception precedes production” won’t be correct.

21 V. Experiment 3- Method  Elsendoor used the method of adjustment to examine the range of acceptable vowel duration preceding /t/ and /d/ in English words for NE and Dutch beat, 17 bead, 17 bat, and 17 bad are recorded in order according to the vowel duration. 2.The orders of the target words and continua were counterbalanced across subjects. 3.The stimuli were played out in order from the shortest to the longest before each session “I will say.” 4.The first 2 of 17 trails in each session were not analyzed.

22 V. Experiment 3- Result

23 V. Experiment 3- Result 1.NE and TC showed 2 distinct distributions for words judged to have the best sounding /t/s and /d/s. 2.MA and TA’s preferred /t/s and /d/s overlapped considerably. TB overlapped MA and TA somewhat less. 3.TC and TB resembled the native speakers in showing a somewhat larger effect of vowel duration for beat-bead than bat-bad. On the other hand, TA and MA showed the opposite pattern, and maintained the pattern in Experiment 2.

24 V. Experiment 3- Discussion A post-hoc test revealed that average difference scores were significantly greater for NE and TC than TA and MA. The NE and TC didn’t differ significantly, however from TB. A post-hoc test revealed that average difference scores were significantly greater for NE and TC than TA and MA. The NE and TC didn’t differ significantly, however from TB.  Therefore, the goal of the Experiment 4 is to resolve whether the experienced learners did or did not make the same perceptual use of vowel duration as NE.

25 VI. Experiment 4- Imitation 1.A speech imitation task affords a unique opportunity to asses the relation between sensory and motor process. 2.The relation between categorization and imitating.  It appeared that discontinuities in imitated vowel durations resulted from the subject’s having covertly categorized the final stop as /t/ or /d/ based on variation in preceding vowel duration.  It appeared that discontinuities in imitated vowel durations resulted from the subject’s having covertly categorized the final stop as /t/ or /d/ based on variation in preceding vowel duration.

26 VI. Experiment 4- Imitation The present experiment assumed that non- native speakers would show significantly discontinuity in imitated vowel durations only if they covertly categorized word-final stops in the CVC stimuli as /t/ or /d/. Hypothesis   In beat-bead and bat-bad continua, one might expect the native speakers to be less accurate in imitating vowel duration than non-natives because categorization induced inaccuracy.  In isolated vowel imitation, native speakers might be more accurate than the non-natives because of their experience using vowel duration as a cue to segmental phonetic distinction.

27 IV. Experiment 4-Method 1.The carrying phrase “I will say.” will be played to the subject, and the subject imitated and say the whole phrase again. 17 beat-bead continua; 17 bat-bad continua; 17 isolated vowels, which were derived from the beat-bead continua. 17 beat-bead continua; 17 bat-bad continua; 17 isolated vowels, which were derived from the beat-bead continua. 2. On the first day, the isolated vowels are tested to avoid the interference caused by the other experiments, and on the second day, CVC continua were tested.

28 IV. Experiment 4- Result (isolated vowels)

29 IV. Experiment 4- Result (isolated vowels) 1.Both NE and TC produced vowels they are roughly 100 ms larger than the stimulus vowels. 2.TB and MA tended to overshot stimulus durations to a greater extent for short than long duration stimuli.

30 IV. Experiment 4- Result (beat-bead continua)

31 IV. Experiment 4- Result (beat-bead continua) 1.The discontinuity of NE and TC take place in the similar locations. (NE is around the 7-8 stimuli, and TC is around 8-9 stimuli.) 2.The differing locations of these discontinuities corresponded to differences in identifications of the beat-bead stimuli by the NE and TC in Experiment 2. It suggested that the discontinuities aroused from the covert categorization of final stops in the beat-bead stimuli. 3.There was no evidence of a discontinuity for 2 inexperienced late learner group.

32 IV. Experiment 4- Result (bat-bad continua) NE and TC had discontinuity at the same location (around 8-9 stimuli.)

33 VI. Experiment 4-Result (mean discontinuity scores)

34 VI. Experiment 4-Result (mean discontinuity scores) 1.In isolated vowel duration, NE has the least discontinuity because they use vowel duration as a cue to identify /t/ and /d/. 2.The discontinuity scores of bat-bad continua is larger than beat-bead continua. The result is consistent with the previous experiment 2.

35 VI. Experiment 4- Discussion 1.The aim of the imitation experiment was to determine if the three groups of late L2 learners could show the same evidence of sensory-motor linkage as NE. 2.The subjects in all five groups showed high stimulus-response correlations. However, only the native speakers and the childhood L2 learners showed clear discontinuity in their beat-bead and bat-bad continua. 3.TB is more similar to TA and MA, but not NE and TC.  It suggested that the experienced late learners probably didn’t establish native like phonetic representations for the contrast between word-final English /t/ and /d/.

36 VII. Discussion 1.Although experienced and inexperienced Taiwanese late learners never differed statistically, the consistent difference in the four experiments showed the additional L2 experience did enable the relatively experienced late learners to approximate English phonetic norms to a greater extent than the relatively inexperienced late learners. 2.From Experiment 3, the foreign accented-scores were also correlated with perceptual data obtained using the method of adjustment. 3.From Experiment 4, we know the larger the discontinuity scores for isolated vowels, the more accented the non- natives are.

37 VIII. General Discussion (production-perception relation) The pattern of significant and non-significant between group differences obtained here is consistent with the hypothesis that non-natives will resemble native speakers more closely in perceiving than producing vowel duration differences. The pattern of significant and non-significant between group differences obtained here is consistent with the hypothesis that non-natives will resemble native speakers more closely in perceiving than producing vowel duration differences. Data for individual subjects, on the other hand, were not consistent with the “perception before production” hypothesis. Data for individual subjects, on the other hand, were not consistent with the “perception before production” hypothesis. For this, Leather concluded that there is “no simple correspondences” between production and perception, although the two may manifest an “independent association” were in very early stages of L2 learning (1991, p.140). For this, Leather concluded that there is “no simple correspondences” between production and perception, although the two may manifest an “independent association” were in very early stages of L2 learning (1991, p.140). Perhaps the study would have supported the “perception before production” hypothesis had more experienced late learners been examined. Perhaps the study would have supported the “perception before production” hypothesis had more experienced late learners been examined.

38 VIII. General discussion (Between-group differences) 1.Age  Those who learned English after the age of 9 years produced somewhat smaller overall voicing effects than whose who began learning English before the age of 9 years. 2.The experience of L2 learning  The effect of additional L2 experience for late learners seems to have been a modest movement in the direction of L2 phonetic norms. 3.The effect of Mandarin or Taiwanese as the mother language  Non-significant differences between these two groups were observed.