Perceptual similarity is not all: online perception of English coda stops by Korean listeners

Abstract

Abstract This study examines conscious judgments of perceptual similarity between foreign and native structures, focusing on vowel epenthesis following coda stops in English nonwords borrowed into Korean. In a similarity judgment experiment, Korean listeners heard a triplet consisting of an English stop-final form and two Korean forms, one ending in a stop and one ending in stop-vowel; then they indicated which of the two Korean forms the English form sounded more similar to. This study investigated six different predictors: release, voicing and place of coda stop, vowel tenseness, final stress, and word length. Similarity judgment choices showed that Korean CVCV is judged as more similar to English CVC than Korean CVC when the English final stop is released or dorsal or when the English word is monosyllabic. Although this result confirms that stop release is indeed a major factor explaining vowel insertion in this context, no effects of stop voicing and vowel tenseness are not compatible with the perceptual similarity hypothesis, which is surprising since they have been previously argued to involve acoustic cues affecting L2 speech perception. These findings support the need for further research that concentrates more on direct perception rather than judgments of perceptual similarity.