LINGUIST List 11.725

Thu Mar 30 2000

Sum: L2 Speech Perception

Editor for this issue: Lydia Grebenyova <lydialinguistlist.org>

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  • s-tokuma_eibun, L2 Speech Perception

    Message 1: L2 Speech Perception

     Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2000 11:54:51 +0900
    From: s-tokuma_eibun <s-tokuma_eibunstar.sagami-wu.ac.jp>
    Subject: L2 Speech Perception


    Dear Linguists,

    I recently posted a question about L2 speech perception in noise. (In Linguist 11.587) Due to our local system failure which lasted for some time, some of the response mails were bounced back to the senders or simply lost. Please accept my apologies if your name, even if you sent me a message, is not included in the list of those who replied to me:

    James Jenkins(j3cubeaol.com) Carol M. Johnson (carolju.arizona.edu) Ron Sheen (Ronald_Sheenuqtr.uquebec.ca) Michelle Minnick Fox (minnickunagi.cis.upenn.edu) Mikael Parkvall (parkvallling.su.se) Herman Li (cliasfu.ca) Ewa Latecka (elateckapan.uzulu.ac.za) Debra M. Hardison(hardiso2pilot.msu.edu) Amee Shah(amee7hotmail.com) Robert H. McAllister (bobling.su.se) I am really grateful to everyone!

    First this phenomenon has been investigated and confirmed in several papers and dissertations; certainly it was not our imagination. James Jenkins suggests that the phenomenon presumably reflects the tenuous grasp that L2 listeners have on the signal (i.e., the fact that they do not have full access to ALL of the covariation [redundancy] in the signal that helps the normal listener when listening to his/her own language.) , and this view is shared by other people, such as Ron Sheen and Ewa Latecka.

    The main papers (and the papers dealing with relevant topics) whose full reference I managed to trace are as follows:

    Takata, Y. & Nabelek, A. (1990) "English consonant recognition in noise and in reverberation by Japanese and American listeners." JASA 88, 663-666

    Florentine, M. (1985) "Speech perception in noise by fluent, non-native listeners." Proceedings of Inter-noise 1985, 1021-1024

    Mayo, L., Florentine, M., & Buus, S. (1997). "Age of Second Language Acquisition and Perception of Speech in Noise." Journal of speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 40, 686-693

    Munro, M. (1998) "The effects of Noise on the Intelligibility of Foreign-Accented Speech" Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 20, 139-154.

    Hardison, D.M. (1996) "Bimodal Speech Perception by Native and Nonnative Speakers of English: Factors Influencing the McGurk Effect." Language Learning, 46, 3-73

    Furthermore, there are unconfirmed papers/studies. Robert H. McAllister has recently done the research on the very topic, using native AmeE/Spanish speakers learning Swedish as L2 and found that comprehension S/N ratio threshold was different between L2 learners and native speakers. We asked him to send us his latest paper by snail airmail, and unfortunately it has not arrived to me so far (probably, being a snail mail, it is now on the way) Please mail me later if you want to know the full reference of this paper.

    Carol M Johnson just completed a study for her PhD dissertation (1999) that included L2 perception in noise, but her dissertation is being hard-bound by UMI now and I could not obtain it. Also Amee Shah suggested that one of her colleagues at CUNY studies the same topic for her unpublished Ph.D dissertation, and that I should check the reference in Dissertation Abstracts, Levine 1999, City University of New York.

    James Jenkins and Amee Shah suggested some study done by A. Boothroyd (or Boothroid), probably published in 1997/1998, although I could not find out its citations.

    Finally I thank those who send their personal experience / anecdotal evidence. I do not have a space here to discuss them, but they are very interesting.

    I hope this summary will be useful to those who are interested in this phenomenon.

    Regards =================================== Shinichi TOKUMA (Dr) Dept of English Language and Literature, Sagami Women's University, 2-1-1, Bunkyo, Sagami-hara, 228-8533, Kanagawa, JAPAN e-mail:tokumasagami-wu.ac.jp