Nonnative perception of allophonic cues to word boundaries: Lou spills versus loose pills for speakers of Polish. (2nd January 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Rojczyk, Arkadiusz
• Is Part Of: Language acquisition. Volume 26:Number 1(2019)
• Page Start: 97
• Page End: 105
• Publication Date: 2019-01-02
• Subjects: Language acquisition -- Periodicals; 401.9305
• DOI: 10.1080/10489223.2018.1433672
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1048-9223

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Word segmentation in L2 is not as optimal as in L1 because many, though not all, cues to signal word boundaries appear to be largely language-specific. Native English listeners use short-lag versus long-lag VOTs in segmenting pairs such as Lou spills versus loose pills . Polish contrasts negative versus short-lag VOTs, so speakers of Polish are expected to be largely insensitive to this English word-boundary cue. Forty-three lower-proficiency and 26 higher-proficiency Polish learners of English segmented English words from VOT cues. Both accuracy and RT measures were analyzed. The results showed that the general accuracy was 59%, identical to Spanish (Altenberg 2005) and French speakers (Shoemaker 2014) and lower than that for Japanese speakers (Ito & Strange 2009). There was no difference between segmenting aspirated and unaspirated onsets in accuracy or RTs. Higher proficiency did not lead to more successful segmentation, but higher-proficiency listeners were faster in their decisions.