Cross-dialect perception of English vowels by native Japanese speakers

Abstract

The present study will examine the influence of dialect on second language acquisition in terms of perceptual abilities. Our lab is currently comparing vowel productions from native Japanese (NJ) speakers with native American English speakers residing in two divergent dialectal regions of the United States (Alabama and Ohio). This study is an elaboration of this work that explores the extent to which there is regional variation in the perceptual responses in NJ as a function of local dialect. We recorded sets of words from four groups of subjects: NJ subjects residing in Alabama (JA) and Ohio (JO) and native English (NE) subjects from Alabama (EA) and Ohio (EO). These tokens were then used in an identification experiment utilizing the same four subject groups. The experiment addresses at least two different questions: (1) Does the intelligibility of Japanese vowels change as a function of dialect for the English listeners? (2) Does the perceptual responses of the Japanese listeners to the EA and EO tokens vary as a function of their ambient linguistic context? The results will be discussed in terms of second language acquisition and dialect acquisition. [Work supported, in part, by an INRS Award from the NIH to Fox, P.I.]