Effect of Perceptual Training on the Production of English Tense-Lax Vowels by Native Chinese Speakers

Abstract

The current study investigated the effect of percep-tual training on the production of English tense-lax vowels by native Chinese speakers. 16-session phonetic category identification training was conducted, and the tokens from 10 English tense-lax vowels produced by Chinese speakers were recorded before and after training. A series of acoustic measures and analyses demonstrated that there was no significant formant quality change for the Chinese speakers after training, and the formant trajectories of individual vowels did not become more native-like either. Although small changes in vowel duration were found after training, the conclusion that training generally had limited effects on Chinese speakers' vowel production was clear.