broersma04@interspeech_2004@ISCA

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#1 Lexical representation of non-native phonemes [PDF] [Copy] [Kimi]

Authors: Mirjam Broersma ; K. Marieke Kolkman

This study investigates whether the inaccurate processing of non-native phonemes leads to a not native-like representation of word forms containing these phonemes. Dutch and English listeners' processing of two English vowels and four plosives was studied in a phoneme monitoring experiment. The processing of difficult to identify non-native phonemes was compared to the processing of easy to identify ones. One of the vowels was difficult and the other easy to identify for Dutch listeners. The plosives were easy in word-initial and word-medial position and difficult to identify in word-final position for Dutch listeners. Lexical mediation was found to play a similar role for Dutch and English listeners, and there were no differences in the amount of lexical mediation for 'difficult' and 'easy' phonemes for Dutch listeners. This suggests that the inaccurate processing of non-native phonemes does not necessarily lead to a not native-like representation of word forms containing these phonemes.