Perception of English Tense and Lax Vowels by Young Dialect Speakers and its Pedagogical Implication

Abstract

This study attempts to investigate the perception of English tense and lax vowels /i, ɪ, u:, ʊ, eɪ, ɛ, oʊ, ɔ/ by two regional dialect Korean speakers focusing on the phonological and phonetic distinction. Their perceptual patterns are analyzed based on the Perceptual Assimilation Model. For this study, two perceptual tasks, the AX discrimination task and an identification task, were carried out with 18 Kyunggi dialect speakers and 12 North Kyungsang dialect speakers by using different sets of 80 tokens. The major results indicate that: (1) in phonetic distinction, there was no major difference in discriminating tense and lax vowels between regional dialect speakers; (2) in phonological distinction, a significant difference was detected in /i-ɪ/ pair in North Kyungsang dialect speakers; (3) Both groups showed the poorest performance in perceiving /u:-ʊ/ in phonetic and phonological distinction, specifically lower in phonological distinction; and (4) Employing this result of the L2 perceptual category into PAM, it can be explained that each regional dialect group uses different parameters of category goodness in L2 acquisition. Based on this analysis, the pedagogical implication is provided.