Featural generalization in second language identification Performance: Comparing learners with different L1s

- This study examined the perceptual identification patterns of a group of English learners with L1 Taiwan Mandarin, and this data was compared with the responses of a previously published corpus of identification data of a group of L1 Korean listeners.
- Like the previous Korean listeners, these Mandarin listeners were found to learn segmental distinctions which have the same contrast as a unit, based on cross-individual correlation analyses.
- Learners who were especially proficient with stop-fricative distinctions in one set of segments were also relatively proficient with the distinction in other sets.
- This is also true of voicing distinctions.
- Differences in segmental accuracy were also very similar across the two corpora.
- Prosodically triggered allophony in the L1 makes learning contrasts in the L2 a different task.
- Mandarin listeners were systematically better specifically with manner contrasts, apparently due to the prevalence of different contrasting fricatives in the L1.

The current study examined identification responses by Taiwan Mandarin L1 speakers learning English. Stimuli were monosyllabic and disyllabic native English productions of voiced and voiceless, labial and coronal, plosives and non-sibilant fricatives. Analyses correlated individual identification performance for laryngeal (hereafter, “voicing”) contrasts and manner contrasts, obtained from different halves of the overall corpus. Manner accuracy correlations were strong, particularly between voiced and voiceless segments. Manner accuracy also correlated across consonants appearing in different prosodic locations, word-initial, word-final, and intervocalic post-stress and pre-stress positions. Voicing accuracy also correlated across prosodic positions, though not between word-final position and the other positions. These results were interpreted with respect to a previously published corpus of Korean learners. The two corpora showed different patterns of correlation across prosodic positions for voicing, apparently due to the effects of different, prosodically-conditioned voicing allophony in the L1s. Finally, overall segmental and d-prime estimates were compared across the two language groups, revealing very strong similarities in the segmental accuracies for the two L1 groups. Analyses, however, also showed a persistent advantage for Mandarin listeners for manner contrasts. It was proposed that the difficulty of individual segments in specific prosodic locations, combined with the overall characteristics of the L1 phonological system, better account for learners' identification accuracies than does the correspondence of specific L1 and L2 segments.