Perception of American English consonants /v/ and /w/ by Hindi speakers of English
Vikas Grover | New York Medical College
Valerie L. Shafer | The Graduate Center, CUNY
Erika S. Levy | Teachers College, Columbia University
This study examined perception of the American English (AE) /v/-/w/ consonant contrast by Hindi speakers of
English as a second language (L2). A second aim was to determine whether residence in the US modulated perception of this
difficult contrast for proficient bilingual Hindi-English listeners. Two groups of Hindi-English bilinguals (the first resided in
the US for more than five years, the second lived in India) and a group of AE-speaking listeners participated in the study.
Listeners’ identification and discrimination of nonsense words (e.g., “vagag” vs. “wagag”) were examined. Hindi listeners
performed significantly less accurately than AE controls. Accuracy by Hindi listeners was near chance for identification and
higher-than-chance for discrimination. Exposure to AE in the US did not improve performance. These results are consistent with
previous studies of late L2 learners and extend findings to a population that was proficient in an L2 before arriving in the L2
environment.
Keywords: speech perception, Hindi, Bilingualism, length of residence
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 1.1Status of /v/ and /w/ in English versus Hindi
- 1.2Bilingual experience
- 1.3Automatic Selective Perception Model
- 1.4The current study
- 2.Methods
- 2.1Participants
- 2.2Stimulus materials
- 2.3Procedure
- 2.3.1Task 1-identification
- 2.3.2Task 2-categorial AXB discrimination
- 2.4Data analysis
- 3.Results
- 3.1Identification task: Control consonants
- 3.2Identification task: Experimental contrast
- 3.2.1Accuracy
- 3.3AXB categorial task: Control pairs
- 3.4AXB categorial task: Experimental pair
- 3.4.1Accuracy
- 4.Discussion
- 4.1Perception patterns for /v/ and /w/
- 4.2Models of second-language learning
- 4.3Second language experience
- 4.4Phonemic context effects
- 4.5Limitations and future directions
- 4.6Conclusion
- Note
-
References
Published online: 11 March 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.20033.gro
https://doi.org/10.1075/jslp.20033.gro
References
Abbasi, A. M., Pathan, H., & Channa, M. A.
Aggarwal, K. S.
Alam, F., Habib, S. M., & Khan, M.
(2008) Acoustic analysis of Bangla consonants. Spoken Languages Technologies for Under-resourced Languages (SLTU-2008), 108–113. Retrieved from https://isca-speech.org/archive/SLTU_2008/papers/su08_108.pdf
Baigorri, M., Campanelli, L., & Levy, E. S.
Barr, D. J., Levy, R., Scheepers, C., & Tily, H. J.
Bates, D., Mächler, M., Bolker, B., & Walker, S.
Best, C. T.
Best, C. T., & Tyler, M. D.
Bradlow, A. R.
Brown, V. A., Hedayati, M., Zanger, A., Mayn, S., Ray, L., Dillman-Hasso, N., & Strand, J. F.
Buschfeld, S., Hoffman, T., Huber, M., & Kautzsch, A.
Census of India
(2011) Comparative Speaker’s strength of Scheduled Languages. Retrieved from http://www.censusindia.gov.in/2011Census/C-16_25062018_NEW.pdf
Chand, V.
Datta, H., Hestvik, A., Vidal, N., Tessel, C., Hisagi, M., Wróblewski, M., & Shafer, V. L.
Flege, J. E.
Flege, J. E., & Eefting, W.
Flege, J. E., & Fletcher, K. L.
Flege, J. E., MacKay, I. R. A., & Meador, D.
Fedorenko, E., Gibson, E., & Rohde, D.
Fuchs, R.
(2019) Almost [w]anishing: The elusive /v/-/w/ contrast in Educated Indian English. In Sasha Calhoun, Paola Escudero, Marija Tabain & Paul Warren (eds.), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019 (pp. 1382–1386). Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
Hisagi, M., Shafer, V. L., Strange, W., & Sussman, E. S.
Hisagi, M., & Strange, W.
Hisagi, M., Tajima, K., & Kato, H.
Hisagi, M., Garrido-Nag, K., Datta, H., & Shafer, V. L.
Hurks, P. P. M., Vles, J. S. H., Hendriksen, J. G. M., Kalff, A. C., Feron, F. J. M., Kroes, M., … Jolles, J.
Iverson, P., Ekanayake, D., Hamann, S., Sennema, A., & Evans, B. G.
Iverson, P., Wagner, A., Pinet, M., & Rosen, S.
Jaeger, T. F.
Lenth, R., Love, J., & Herve, M.
(2018) emmeans: Estimated marginal means, aka least-squares means (Version 1.1). Retrieved from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans
Levy, E. S.
Levy, E. S., & Strange, W.
Lewandowsky, S., Oberauer, K., Yang, L. X., & Ecker, U. K. H.
Mackay, I. R. A., & Flege, J. E.
Massaro, D. W.
Näätänen, R., Paavilainen, P., Rinne, T., & Alho, K.
Oberauer, K., & Kliegl, R.
Ohala, M.
Pierrehumbert, J., & Nair, R.
Piller, B., & Skillings, M. J.
(2005) English language teaching strategies used by primary teachers in one New Delhi, India School. The Electronic Journal for English as a Second Language, 9(3). Retrieved from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume9/ej35/ej35cf/
Psychology Software Tools, Inc. [E-Prime 2.0.10.248]
(2015) Retrieved from http://www.pstnet.com
R Core Team
(2017) R: A language and environment for statistical computing (Version 3.4.3). Vienna, Austria: R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Retrieved from http://www.R-project.org/
Sahgal, A., & Agnihotri, R.
Sahgal, A.
Schneider, E. W.
Sebastian-Galles, N., & Diaz, Begoña
Sharma, M.
Smiljanić, R., & Bradlow, A. R.
Strange, W.
United States Census Bureau
(2015) Detailed languages spoken at home and ability to speak English for the population 5 years and over for United
States: 2009–2013. [Data File]. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/data/tables/2013/demo/2009-2013-lang-tables.html
Werker, J. F., & Logan, J. S.