Posters

English Listeners' Perception of Korean Laryngeal Contrasts Among Word-Initial Stops

---

Abstract

The Perceptual Assimilation Model predicts which novel phonological contrasts will be more challenging for adult learners by relating listeners' perceptual assimilation patterns to discriminability. Research has examined the perceptual assimilation or discrimination of Korean stop contrasts. As no study has related the findings of these two tasks to predict the relative difficulty of the contrasts for inexperienced English listeners, the present study aims to address this gap. Our perceptual assimilation task results showed that Korean fortis stops were assimilated to English voiced stops and Korean lenis and aspirated stops to English voiceless stops. The AX discrimination task results demonstrated that the lenis-aspirated contrast was more difficult to discriminate than the lenis-fortis and aspirated-fortis contrasts. The results confirm the predictions of the PAM and suggest that the lenis-aspirated contrast my present difficulty for English learners of Korean.

Keywords: L2 speech perception, L2 phonology, Korean, English, Perceptual Assimilation Model

How to Cite:

Lee, E. (2024).  English Listeners’ Perception of Korean Laryngeal Contrasts Among Word-Initial Stops. In D. J. Olson, J. L. Sturm, O. Dmitrieva, & J. M. Levis (eds), Proceedings of 14th Pronunciation in Second Language Learning and Teaching Conference, (pp. 1-12). Purdue University, September 2023. https://doi.org/10.31274/psllt.17278