Part of
Topics in Theoretical Asian Linguistics: Studies in honor of John B. WhitmanEdited by Kunio Nishiyama, Hideki Kishimoto and Edith Aldridge
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 250] 2018
► pp. 331–341
This study explores a pattern of speech perception in Korean and Japanese with special attention to American English vowel /æ/. Two identification tests reveal that Korean speakers pay more attention to the second formant (F2) signaling the backness of a vowel, whereas Japanese speakers are more sensitive to the first formant (F1) signaling the height of a vowel. The distinct sensitivity to different acoustic cues in the languages discussed here is accounted for by two language-specific factors: Different L1 vowel systems and language-specific variations.