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The Perception of Phonological Quantity based on Durational Cues by Native Speakers, Second-language Users and Nonspeakers of Finnish

Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland, sari.ylinen{at}helsinki.fi, Department of Languages, University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Anna Shestakova

Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland

Paavo Alku

Laboratory of Acoustics and Audio Signal Processing, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland

Minna Huotilainen

Cognitive Brain Research Unit, Department of Psychology, University of Helsinki, Finland, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland

Some languages, such as Finnish, use speech-sound duration as the primary cue for a phonological quantity distinction. For second-language (L2) learners, quantity is often difficult to master if speech-sound duration plays a less important role in the phonology of their native language (L1). By comparing the categorization performance of native speakers of Finnish, Russian L2 users of Finnish, and non-Finnish-speaking Russians, the present study aimed to determine whether the L2 users, whose native language does not have a quantity distinction, have been able to establish categories for Finnish quantity. The results suggest that the native speakers and some of the L2 users that have been exposed to Finnish for a longer time have access to phonological quantity categories, whereas the L2 users with shorter exposure and the non-Finnish-speaking subjects do not. In addition, by comparing categorization and discrimination tasks it was found that the native speakers show a phoneme-boundary effect for quantity that is cued by duration only, whereas the non-Finnish-speaking subjects and the subjects with low proficiency in Finnish do not.

Key Words: perception • phoneme-boundary effect • quantity • second language • speech-sound duration

Language and Speech, Vol. 48, No. 3, 313-338 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/00238309050480030401


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