Abstract
This study investigated Japanese, Cantonese, English, and French listeners’ ability to perceive non-native quantity contrasts (e.g., short vs. long). In these languages, duration is used to mark phonemic quantity contrasts to different degrees. We had native listeners of these four languages listen to resynthesized pseudo-Japanese and pseudo-Estonian stimuli in AXB and identification tasks. The stimuli contrasted in consonant and vowel quantity. The results showed that while Japanese listeners, who have systematic phonemic quantity contrasts in their L1, generally outperformed other listeners in identification and in discrimination, their identification accuracy for
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