On the perceptual accuracy of non-native phonemic contrasts: A case study of native Arabic speakers

Bader Yousef Alharbi, Mohammad Aljutaily

Abstract


Research on native Arabic speakers’ perception of non-native English phonemic contrasts has manifested various conclusions. Some studies have revealed that native Arabic speakers experience difficulty in the perception of non-native English phonemic contrasts, where others have concluded that they largely do not experience such difficulty. Due to this discrepancy, the current study aimed to examine the overall perceptual accuracy of only the English labial categories /p, b, f, and v/ in onset positions performed by native Arabic speakers. The study also examined the potential effects of the phonetic contexts and the familiarity of the stimuli being tested on the participants’ perceptual performance. Twenty-four Saudi male participants completed consonantal phoneme identification and discrimination tasks. The findings revealed that the participants experienced difficulty in the perception of the categories /p/ and /v/, confusing them with their counterparts /b/ and /f/. The findings also revealed that neither phonetic context nor familiarity had any effect on the participants’ perceptual accuracy of all of the categories in question, except in the context in which the category /v/ was followed by back vowels. In this specific context, the participants’ performance tended to be lower, which could be attributed to the influence of lip rounding, which results in coarticulation with the fricative noise associated with this category (/v/). Lastly, the results obtained in this study provide additional crucial insights into auditory phonetics and present additional explanation on how the human auditory system recognizes speech sounds.


Keywords


speech perception; second language acquisition; Arabic speakers; English labial sounds; Speech Learning Model

Full Text:

PDF

References


Ahmad, J. (2011). Pronunciation problems among Saudi learners: A case study at the preparatory year program, Najran University Saudi Arabia. Language in India, 11, 22-36.

Albadawi, K. (2012). An analysis of phonetic, morphological and syntactic errors in English: A case study of Saudi BA students at King Khalid University. International Journal of Social Science and Humantiy, 2 (6), 536-538.

Alzahrani, M. (2015). Saudi speakers’ perception of the English bilabial stops /b/ and /p/. Sino-US English Teaching, 12 (6), 435-447.

Barros, A. (2003). Pronunciation difficulties in the consonant system experienced by Arabic speakers when learning English after the age of puberty. (Unpublished master thesis). West Virginia University, Morgantown.

Best, C. (1995). A direct realist view of cross-language speech perception. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Issues in cross-language research (pp. 171-204). Baltimore: York Press.

Best, C., McRoberts, G., & Goodell, E. (2001). Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to the listener's native phonological system. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 109, 775-794.

Binturki, A. (2008). Analysis of pronunciation errors of Saudi ESL learners. (Unpublished master thesis). Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, Carbondale.

Bradlow, A., Pisoni, D., Yamada, R., & Tohkura, Y. (1997). Training Japanese listeners to identify English /r/ and /l/: Some effects of perceptual learning on speech production. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101 (4), 2299-2310.

Brown, C. (2000). The interrelation between speech perception and phonological acquisition from infant to adult. Second Language Acquisition and Linguistic Theory, 1, 4-64.

Buali, I. (2010). The perception and production of /p/ in Saudi Gulf Arabic English: a variationist perspective. (Unpublished master thesis). Concordia University, Montreal.

Evans, B., & Alshangiti, W. (2018). The perception and producation of British English vowels and consonants by Arabic learners of English. Journal of Phonetics, 68, 15-31.

Flege, J. (1995). Second language speech learning: Theory, findings, and problems. Speech Perception and Linguistic Experience: Issues in Cross-Language Research, 92, 233–277.

Hartmann, J., Hegedűs, V., & Van Riemsdijk, H. (2008). Sounds of silence: Empty elements in syntax and phonology. Amsterdam: Brill.

Kazanina, N., Phillips, C., & Idsardi, W. (2006). The influence of meaning on the perception of speech sounds. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 103 (30), 11381-11386.

Lado, R. (1957). Linguistics across culture: Applied linguistics for language teaching. Michigan: University of Michigan Press.

Lisker, L. (1970). On learning a new contrast. Haskins Laboratories Status Report on Speech Research, 24, 1-15.

Moustafa, M. (1979). Perception analysis. The Modern Language Journal, 63 (8), 435-441.

Permuttler, M. (1989). Intelligility rating of L2 speech pre- and postintervention. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 68 (2), 515-521.

Price, P. (1981). A corss-linguistic comparison of flaps in Japanese and American English. (Doctoral dissertation). University of Pennsylvania, Morgantown.

Rochet, B. (1995). Perception and production of L2 speech sounds by adults. In W. Strange (Ed.), Speech perception and linguistic experience: Theoretical and methodological issues (pp. 379-410). Timonium: York Press.

Salim, J., & Albadawi, A. (2017). The perception of English consonants by Arab ELF learners: A case study of University students at ZU. Advances in Socail Sciences Research Journal, 4 (17), 26-33.

Sharfiro, V., Levy, E., Dakwar, R., & Kharkhurin, A. (2012). Perceptual confusions of American English vowels and consonants by native Arabic bilinguals. Language and Speech, 56 (2), 145-161.

Strange, W., Weber, A., Levy, E., Shafiro, V., Hisagi, M., & Nishi, K. (2007). Accoustic variability within and across German, French, and American English vowels: Phonetic context effects. The Jouranl of the Accoustical Society of America, 122 (2), 1111-1129.

Tyler, M. D., & Fenwick, S. (2012). Perceptual assimilation of Arabic voiceless fricatives by English monolinguals. In Thirteenth Annual Conference of the International Speech Communication Association.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies
ISSN 1305-578X (Online)
Copyright © 2005-2022 by Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies