We present the results from an experiment that tests the perception of English consonantal sequences by Korean speakers and we confirm that perceptual epenthesis in a second languge (L2) arises from syllable structure restrictions of the first language (L1), rather than linear co-occurence restrictions. Our study replicates and extends Dupoux, Kakehi, Hirose, Pallier, & Mehler's (1999) results that suggested that listeners perceive epenthetic vowels within consonantal sequences that violate the phonotactics of their L1. Korean employs at least two kinds of phonotactic restrictions: (i) syllable structure restrictions that prohibit the occurence of certain consonants in coda position (e.g., *[c.], *[g.]), while allowing others (e.g., [k.], [l.]), and (ii) consonantal contact restrictions that ban the co-occurrence of certain heterosyllabic consonants (e.g., *[k.m]; *[l.n]) due to various phonological processes that repair such sequences on the surface (i.e., /k.m/ → [ŋ.m]; /l.n / → [l.l]). The results suggest that Korean syllable structure restrictions, rather than consonantal contact restrictions, result in the perception of epenthetic vowels. Furthermore, the frequency of co-occurrence fails to explain the epenthesis effects in the percept of consonant clusters employed in the present study. We address questions regarding the interaction between speech perception and phonology and test the validity of Steriade's (2001 a,b) Perceptual-Mapping (P-Map) hypothesis for the Korean sonorant assimilation processes. Our results indicate that Steriade's hypothesis makes incorrect predictions about Korean phonology and that speech perception is not isomorphic to speech production.
Best, C.T. (1995). A direct realist perspective on cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.) Speech perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues in cross-language speech research (pp.167-200). Timonium, MD: York Press.
2.
Blevins, J. (2002). The independent nature of phonotactic constraints: An alternative to syllable-based approaches. In C. Féry & G. van de Weijer (Eds.), The syllable in optimality theory (pp. 375 - 403). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.
Cohen, J.D., MacWhinney, B., Flatt, M., & Provost, J. (1993). PsyScope: A new graphic interactive environment for designing psychology experiments. Behavioral Research Methods, Instruments, and Computers, 25, 257-271.
4.
Cutler, A., & Norris, D. (1988). The role of strong syllables in segmentation for lexical access. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 14, 113-121.
5.
Cutler, A., Demuth, K., & McQueen, J.M. (2002). Universality versus language-specificity in listening to running speech. Psychological Science, 13, 258-262.
6.
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., Dupoux, E., & Gout, A. (2000). Electrophysiological correlates of phonological processing: A cross-linguistic study. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 12,635-647.
7.
Dehaene-Lambertz, G., & Gliga, T. (2004). Common neural basis for phoneme processing in infants and adaults. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 16(8), 1375 -1387.
8.
Dulay, H., Burt, M., & Krashen, S. (1982). Language two. New York: Cambridge University Press.
9.
Dupoux, E., Kakehi, K., Hirose, Y., Pallier, C., & Mehler, J. (1999). Epenthetic vowels in Japanese: A perceptual illusion ? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 25, 1568-1578.
10.
Dupoux, E., Pallier, C., Kakehi, K., & Mehler, J. (2001). New evidence for prelexical phonological processing in word recognition. Language and Cognitive Processes, 16, 491 - 505.
11.
Dziubalska-Kolaczyk, K. (1994). Acquisitional evidence against the phonological syllable. Papers and studies in contrastive linguistics, 29, 17-30.
12.
Ewen, C., & van der Hulst, H. (2001). The phonological structure of words: An introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
13.
Flege, J. (1980). Phonetic approximation in second language acquisition . Language Learning, 30,117-134.
14.
Flege, J. (1987). The production of "new" and "similar" phones in a foreign language: Evidence for the effect of equivalence classification . Journal of Phonetics, 15, 47-65.
15.
Flege, J.E. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues in cross-language speech research (pp. 233-273). Timonium, MD : York Press.
16.
Fant, G. (1973). Speech sounds and features. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
17.
Green, D.M., & Swets, J.A. (1974). Signal detection theory and psychophysics. Huntington, New York: Krieger.
18.
Hallé, P., Segui, J., Frauenfelder, U., & Meunier, C. (1998). Processing of illegal consonant clusters: A case of perceptual assimilation? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 24, 592-608.
19.
Itô, J. ( 1986). Syllable theory in prosodic phonology. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
20.
Itô, J. ( 1989). A prosodic theory of epenthesis. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 7, 217 - 259.
21.
Jusczyk, P., Friederici, A., Wessels, J., Svenkerud, V., & Jusczyk, A. (1993). Infants' sensitivity to the sound pattern of native language words. Journal of Memory and Language, 32, 402-420.
22.
Jusczyk, P., Luce, P., & Charles-Luce, J. (1994). Infants' sensitivity to phonotactic patterns in the native language. Journal of Memory and Language, 33, 630-645.
23.
Kabak, B. (2003). The perceptual processing of second language consonant clusters. Unpublished PhD Dissertation. University of Delaware .
24.
Kabak, B., & Idsardi, W. (2003). Syllabically conditioned perceptual epenthesis . Proceedings of the Berkeley Linguistic Society, 29, 233 -245.
25.
Kadlec, H. (1999). Statistical properties of d' and [beta] estimates of signal detection theory. Psychological Methods, 4, 22-43.
26.
Kang, H. (1996). English loanwords in Korean. Studies in phonetics, phonology, and morphology, 2, 21-48. Seoul: The Phonology-Morphology Circle of Korea.
27.
Kang, Y. - J. (2003). Perceptual similarity in loanword adaptation: English postvocalic word-final stops in Korean. Phonology , 20, 219-274
28.
Kazanina, N., Phillips, C., & Idsardi, W. (2005). The influence of meaning on perception of speech sounds. Ms.: University of Maryland/University of Delaware .
29.
Kim-Renaud, Y.-K. (1995). Korean consonantal phonology. Seoul: Hanshin.
30.
Lamontagne, G. (1993). Syllabification and consonant cooccurrence restrictions. Unpublished PhD Dissertation, University of Massachusetts , Amherst.
31.
Lee, I., & Ramsey, S.R. (2000). The Korean language. Albany : State University of New York Press.
32.
Luce, P.A., & Pissoni, D.B. (1998). Recognizing spoken words: The neighborhood activation model. Ear and Hearing, 19, 1-36.
33.
MacMillan, N.A., & Creelman, C.D. (2005). Detection theory: A user's guide. (2nd ed.). Mahwah, NJ : Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
34.
Major, R.C. (1987). Foreign accent: Recent research and theory. International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language Teaching (IRAL), 15, 185-202.
35.
Major, R.C. (2001). Foreign accent: The ontogeny and phylogeny of second language phonology. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
36.
Martin, S. (1992). A reference grammar of Korean. Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company.
37.
Massaro, D.W., & Cohen, M.M. (1983). Phonological constrainst in speech perception . Perception and Psychophysics, 34, 338-348.
38.
McClelland, J.L., & Elman, J.L. (1986). The TRACE model of speech perception. Cognitive Psychology, 18, 1-86.
39.
Moreton, E. (2002). Structural constraints in the perception of English stop-sonorant clusters. Cognition, 84, 55-71.
40.
Norris, D. (1994). Shortlist: A connectionist model of continuous speech recognition. Cognition, 52, 189-234.
41.
Peperkamp, S., & Dupoux, E. (2003). Reinterpreting loanword adaptations: The role of perception. Proceedings of the 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 367-370.
42.
Peperkamp, S. (in press). A psycholinguistic theory of loanword adaptations. Proceedings of the 30th Annual Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society.
43.
Pitt, M.A. (1998). Phonological processes and the perception of phonetically illegal consonant clusters. Perception and Pschycophysics , 60, 941-951.
44.
Pitt, M.A., & McQueen, J.M. (1998). Is compensation for coarticulation mediated between monosyllabic spoken words. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition, 15, 378-387.
45.
Sapir, E. (1933 / 1949). The psychological reality of phonemes. D. G. Mandelbaum (Ed.), Selected writings of Edward Sapir in language, culture and personality . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
46.
Sohn, H.-M. (1994). Korean. New York: Routledge.
47.
Sohn, H.-M. (1999). The Korean language. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
48.
Steriade, D. (1999). Alternatives to syllabic analysis of consonantal phonotactics. In O. Fujimura & B. Palek (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2nd Linguistics and Phonetics Conference (pp.205-245). Prague: Charles University Press.
49.
Steriade, D. (2001a). The phonology of perceptibility effects: The P-map and its consequences for constraint organization. Unpublished Manuscript . University of California, Los Angeles.
50.
Steriade, D. (2001b). Directional asymmetries in place assimilation: A perceptual account; In E. Hume & K. Johnson (Eds.), The role of speech perception in phonology (pp. 219-250). New York: Academic Press.
51.
Vitevitch, M.S., & Luce, P.A. (1998). When words compete: Levels of processing in perception of spoken words. Psychological Science, 9, 325-329.
52.
Vitevitch, M.S., & Luce, P.A. (1999). Probabilistic phonotactics and neighborhood activation in spoken word recognition. Journal of Memory and Language , 40, 374-408.
53.
Wells, J.C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press.
54.
Werker, J.F., & Logan, J.S. (1985). Cross-language evidence for three factors in speech perception. Perception and Psychophysics, 37, 35-44.
