Perception of the English tense/lax vowel contrast by native speakers of Russian

Abstract

The present study examined the effect of native language background on the perception of American English tense and lax front unrounded vowels ([i] and [I]). These vowels are distinguishable according to both spectral (vowel quality) and temporal (vowel duration) properties. Nineteen native Russian and 12 native American English listeners identified stimuli from a two-dimensional beat-bit continuum varying in 10 spectral and nine duration steps. English listeners used predominantly spectral quality when identifying these vowels, but also showed some reliance on duration cues. In contrast, Russian listeners failed to employ vowel quality to differentiate English tense and lax vowels which can be explained by their assimilation to the same Russian /i/ phoneme in a ‘‘single category assimilation’’ process (Best, 1995). Instead, they relied almost entirely on the duration cue, despite the absence of distinctive vowel length in Russian. These results could be interpreted as supporting the desensitization hypothesis (Bohn, 1995): When spectral differences are insufficient to distinguish a non-native vowel contrast, duration will be employed by default. Alternatively, the strength of Russian listeners’ reliance on duration may instead reflect the influence of prior experience with subphonemic duration contrasts within the lexical stress system of the Russian language.