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KMID : 0917520080150010037
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Journal of Speech Sciences
2008 Volume.15 No. 1 p.37 ~ p.57
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The Role of L1 Phonological Feature in the L2 Perception and Production of Vowel Length Contrast in English
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Chang Woo-Hyeok
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Abstract
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The main goal of this study is to examine if there is a difference in the utilization of a vowel length cue between Korean and Japanese L2 learners of English in their perception and production of postvocalic coda contrast in English. Given that Japanese subjects’ performances on the identification and production tasks were much better than Korean subjects’ performance, we may support the prediction based on the Feature Hypothesis which maintains that L1 phonological features can facilitate the perception of L2 acoustic cue. Since vowel length contrast is a phonological feature in Japanese but not in Korean, the tasks, which assess L2 leaners’ ability to discriminate vowel length contrast in English, are much easier for the Japanese group than for the Korean group. Although the Japanese subjects demonstrated a better performance than the Korean subjects, the performance of the Japanese group was worse than that of the English control group. This finding implies that L2 learners, even Japanese learners, should be taught that the durational difference of the preceding vowels is the most important cue to differentiate postvocalic contrastive codas in English.
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KEYWORD
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vowel length contrast, phonological feature, feature hypothesis, L2 speech perception and speech production
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