engleski

Cue weighting in the perception of English tenseness distinction in Polish and Croatian subjects: transfer or universal over-reliance on temporal cues?

Whereas the majority of effects in L2 perceptual studies were originally attributed to transfer from L1, many recent studies indicate that in categorization of foreign vowel contrasts non- native speakers universally rely predominantly on durational (temporal) rather than spectral (quality) cues – at least at an earlier stage in acquisition (Bohn 1995 ; Escudero 2001, 2005 ; Flege & Bohn 1989 ; Flege, Bohn, & Jung 1997 ; Kondaurova & Francis 2004). The finding seems to hold irrespective of whether L1 has/does not have a phonemic vowel length distinction. A comparison of the perception of tenseness contrast in English was drawn between subjects with Polish and Croatian as their L1. Croatian, unlike Polish, has phonemic vowel length distinction ; Polish, unlike Croatian, has two high front vowels that differ in quality. The research questions were: 1. Do Polish subjects rely on the durational cues in the perception of the tenseness contrast of high front vowels or do they rather use the spectral cues as a result of transfer from their L1? 2. Do Polish subjects follow the same strategy in the perception of back vowels? 3. Do Croatian speakers behave as expected, i.e., do they over-rely on the durational cues? A forced-choice identification test and an AXB test were conducted using stimuli manipulated in duration and quality. The initial results indicate that Polish subjects (both advanced and non- advanced), unlike the Croatian participants, show in the identification tests no statistically relevant reliance on duration as the cue. The results of AXB tests go in the same direction. These findings document a huge difference in the behavior of L2 learners with and without relevant temporal and spectral cues in their L1. A particularly interesting finding is the relatively low sensitivity of Polish speakers to the durational cue in the high back vowels even in the absence of the relevant L1 spectral distinction, which suggests that the very presence of fine spectral distinctions somewhere in the system allows retaining the sensitivity to spectral distinctions in the acquisition of L2.

perception; English vowels; cue weighting; Polish; Croatian

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