Cross-language perception of final stops in Thai and English: A comparison of native and non-native listeners
This study examined Australian English speakers’ and Thai-English bilingual speakers’ ability to perceive word-final stops in English and Thai. Thai bilinguals lived in Sydney, Australia, for 5.5 years on average (range = 0.2 – 30.3). In Experiment 1 (categorial discrimination test), Thai bilinguals were able to discriminate stop contrasts differing in place of articulation in their two languages with equally high degree of accuracy, but English-speaking listeners’ discrimination was good only for English. In Experiment 2 (identification test), English stops produced by na- tive Thai speakers were perceived most accurately by both English and Thai listeners. English listeners’ performance deteriorated when they heard stops in unfamiliar languages. There ap- peared to be a positive cross-language transfer effect when Thai listeners heard Korean stimuli, as word-final stops in both Thai and Korean are phonetically realized as unreleased stops. De- spite a large variation in length of residence in English-speaking countries, Thai bilinguals were a homogeneous group with respect to their patterns of stop perception. This suggests robustness of the L1 perception system in adult bilinguals.