Salento Italian listeners' perception of American English vowels
- Resource Type
- Authors
- Mirko Grimaldi; Paola Escudero; Bianca Sisinni
- Source
- Scopus-Elsevier
INTERSPEECH
- Subject
- Categorization
Computer science
Perception
media_common.quotation_subject
Assimilation (phonology)
American English
Linguistics
media_common
- Language
The present study investigates Salento Italian (SI) listeners’ initial state in the perception of American English (AE) vowels. Results of categorization and discrimination tasks are discussed in terms of the Perceptual Assimilation Model [1] and the Second Language Linguistic Perception model (L2LP; [2]). Further, the categorization results are compared to those of the Peruvian Spanish (PS) listeners in [3] to test the L2LP acoustic hypothesis, according to which the acoustic differences between the five SI and PS vowels will lead to different categorizations of AE vowels. Predictions of differential perceptual development across listener groups are provided.