Discrimination of Arabic contrasts by American learners

• Authors: Mahmoud S. Al Mahmoud
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article reports on second language perception of non-native contrasts. The study specifically tests the perceptual assimilation model (PAM) by examining American learners’ ability to discriminate Arabic contrasts. Twenty two native American speakers enrolled in a university level Arabic language program took part in a forced choice AXB discrimination task. Results of the study provide partial evidence for PAM. Only two-category contrasts followed straightforwardly from PAM; discrimination results of category-goodness difference and both uncategorizable contrasts yielded partial support, while results of uncategorized versus categorized contrast discrimination provided counter-evidence to PAM.

Keywords

EN

discrimination of sound contrasts; Arabic consonant contrasts; perceptual assimilation model

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 3
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 261-292

Dates

published

2013-10-01

Contributors

author

Mahmoud S. Al Mahmoud

• Imam University, Riyadh

References

• Al-Ani, S. H. (1970). Arabic phonology. The Hague: Mouton.
• Al-Karouri, A. M. (1996). Phonetics of classical Arabic: A selectional study of the problematic sounds. Khartoum University Press: Khartoum.
• Amayreh, M. M. (2003). Completion of the consonant inventory of Arabic. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 46, 517-529.
• Archibald, J. (1998). Second language phonology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
• Atkey, S. (2001). The acquisition of L2 segmental contrasts: English speakers’perception and production of Czech palatal stops (Unpublished master’s thesis). University of Calgary, Canada.
• Audacity Team. (2008). Audacity (1.2.4) [Computer program]. Retrieved from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
• Bateson, M. C. (1967). Arabic language handbook. Washington: Center for Applied Linguistics.
• Beddor, P. S., & Gottfried, T. L. (1995). Methodological issues in crosslanguage speech perception research with adults. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 207-32). Timonium, MD: York Press.
• Best, C. T. (1990). Adult perception of non-native contrasts differing in assimilation to native phonological categories. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 88, 177-178.
• Best, C. T. (1993). Emergence of language-specific constraints in perception of non-native speech: A window on early phonological development. In B. de Boysson-Bardies, S. de Schonen, P. Jusczyk, P. MacNeilage, & J. Morton (Eds.), Developmental neurocognition: Speech and face processing in the first year (pp. 289-304). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic.
• Best, C. T. (1994). The emergence of native-language phonological influences in infants: A perceptual assimilation model. In J. C. Goodman & H. C. Nusbaum
• (Eds.), The development of speech perception: The transition from speech sounds to spoken words (pp. 167-224). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Best, C. T. (1995). A direct realist view on cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 171-204). Timonium, MD: York Press.
• Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Goodell, E. (2001). Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to the listener’s native phonological system. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 775-794.
• Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W., & Sithole, N. M. (1988). Examination of perceptual reorganization for non-native speech contrasts: Zulu click discrimination by English-speaking adults and infants. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 345-360.
• Best, C. T., & Strange, W. (1992). Effects of phonological and phonetic factors on cross language perception on approximants. Journal of Phonetics, 20, 305-330.
• Dijkstra, T., Roelofs, A., & Fieuws, S. (1995). Orthographic effects on phoneme monitoring. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 49, 264-271.
• Eckman, F. (1987). Markedness and the contrastive analysis hypothesis. In I.Georgette & S. Weinberger (Eds.), Interlanguage phonology: The acquisition of a second language sound system (pp. 55-69). Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.
• Flege, J. E. (1987). The production of new and similar phones in a foreign language: Evidence for the effect of equivalence classification. Journal of Phonetics, 15, 47-65.
• Flege, J. E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 233-277). Timonium, MD: York Press.
• Flege, J. E., Bohn, O. S., & Jang, S. (1997). The production and perception of English vowels. Journal of Phonetics, 25, 437-470.
• Fowler, C. A. (1989). Real objects of speech perception: A commentary on Diehl and Kluender. Ecological Psychology, 1, 145-160.
• Gass, S. M., & Selinker, L. (2001). Second language acquisition: An introductory course. London: Lawrence Earlbaum.
• Guion, S. G., Flege, J. E., Akahane-Yamada, R., & Pruitt, J. C. (2000). An investigation of current models of second language speech perception: The case of Japanese adults’ perception of English consonants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 107, 2711-2724.
• Halle, P. A., Best, C. T., & Levitt, A. (1999). Phonetic versus phonological influences of French listeners’ perception of American English approximants. Journal of Phonetics, 27, 281-306.
• Harnsberger, J. D. (2001). On the relationship between identification and discrimination of non-native nasal consonants. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 110, 489-503.
• Ingham, B. (1971). Some characteristics of Meccan speech. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 34(2), 273-297.
• Klatt, H., & Stevens, K. N. (1969). Pharyngeal consonants. Quarterly Progress Report, Research Laboratory of Electronics, MIT, 93, 207-216.
• Kuhl, P. K. (1993a). Early linguistic experience and phonetic perception: Implications for theories of developmental speech perception. Journal of Phonetics, 21, 125-139.
• Ladefoged, P. (2001). A course in phonetics. Chicago, IL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Ladefoged, P. (2005). Vowels and consonants: An introduction to the sounds of language. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Ladefoged, P., & Maddieson, I. (1996). The sounds of the world’s languages. Malden, MA: Blackwell.
• Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across cultures: Applied linguistics for language teachers. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.
• Larson-Hall, J. (2004). Predicting perceptual success with segments: A test of Japanese speakers of Russian. Second Language Research, 20(1), 35-80.
• Lupker, S. J. (1982). The role of phonetic and orthographic similarity in pictureword interference. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 36, 349-376.
• Nagao, K., Lim, B., & de Jong, K. (2003, August). Perceptual acquisitions of nonnative syllable structures by native listeners of Japanese. Poster presented at the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Barcelona, Spain.
• O’Shaughnessy, D. (2000). Speech communications: Human and machine. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press.
• Pilus, Z. (2002). Second-language speech: Production and perception of voicing contrasts in word-final obstruents by Malay speakers of English (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Wisconsin, Madison.
• Polivanov, E. (1931). La perception des sons d’une langue´etrang`ere [The perception of non-native language sounds.]. Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague, 4, 79-96.
• Polka, L. (1991). Cross-language speech perception in adults: Phonemic, phonetic, and acoustic contributions. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 89, 2961-2977.
• Rochet, B. L. (1995). Perception and production of L2 speech sounds by adults. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 379-410). Timonium, MD: York Press.
• Selkirk, E. (1982). The syllable. In H. van der Hulst & N. Smith (Eds.), The structure of phonological representations (pp. 337-383). Dordrecht: Foris.
• Strange, W. (1995). Cross-language studies of speech perception: A historical review. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 2-45). Timonium, MD: York Press.
• Taft, M., & Hambly, G. (1985). The influence of orthography on phonological representations in the lexicon. Journal of Memory and Language, 24, 320-335.
• Thelwall, R. (1990). Illustrations of the IPA: Arabic. Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 20(2), 37-41.
• Towell, R., & Hawkins, R. (1994). Approaches to second language acquisition. Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters.
• Trubetzkoy, N. (1939). Principles of phonology (C. A. Baltaxe, Trans.). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
• Werker, J. (1986). The effect of multilingualism on phonetic perceptual flexibility. Applied Psycholinguistics, 7, 141-156.
• Werker, J., & Logan, J. S. (1985). Cross-language evidence for three factors in speech perception. Perception and Psychophysics, 37, 35-44.
• Wright, R. (2004). A Review of perceptual cues and cue robustness. In B. Hayes, R. Kirchner, & D. Steriade (Eds.), Phonetically based phonology (pp. 34-57). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Yamada, R. A. (1995). Age and acquisition of second language speech sounds perception of /r/ and /l/ by native speakers of Japanese. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience (pp. 306-320). Timonium, MD: York Press.
• Yamada, R., & Tohkura, Y. (1992). The effects of experimental variables on the perception of American English /r/ and /l/ by Japanese listeners. Perception and Psychophysics, 52, 376-392.
• Ziegler, J. C., & Ferrand, L. (1998). Orthography shapes the perception of speech: The consistency effect in auditory word recognition. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 5, 683-689.

Identifiers

DOI

10.14746/ssllt.2013.3.2.6