Doctoral Dissertation Research: Perception of place-of-articulation contrasts in English word-final consonants by Japanese adult L2 learners

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People have difficulties communicating with non-native speakers, both understanding their speech and being understood. This study examines the difficulties that non-native English learners have in understanding continuous speech. English word-final consonants in connected speech are produced very differently from those produced in isolation; this phenomenon is referred to as coarticulation. The proposed study will examine the identification of words ending with /p/, /t/, /k/, /b/, /d/, /g/, /m/, /n/, and /ng/ (as in "king") followed by a word beginning with /p/, /t/ or /k/ in meaningful sentences by Japanese listeners. The task is to identify the target word in minimal triplets (e.g., sip, sit, sick) after listening to a sentence, such as "He said the word "sip" (or "sit" or "sick") positively" (or "tauntingly" or "cautiously"). The sentences will be spoken in both "clear speech" and in "fast conversational speech" styles. The former is used when native English speakers know that the listener may have difficulty understanding them; the latter is used when speaking with friends.The proposed studies will investigate whether Japanese listeners have difficulty recognizing the final consonants in English words relative to native English listeners. whether their error patterns are different from those of English listeners, and whether they perform significantly better when the sentences are produced in "clear speech" style. Correctly identifying English word-final stops is expected to be challenging for Japanese listeners because Japanese words do not end in word-final consonants, with the exception of a nasal stop (/N/). Word-final nasal stops are also potentially confusable because the Japanese nasal is produced as /m/ /n/ or /ng/ depending on the following consonant. These data will have implications for how native speakers can modify their speech to improve communication with non-native speakers in English language classrooms and in work environments.