Efficacy of L2 on L3 segment perception: a case study on native Arabic speakers’ discriminability of Korean vowels
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.36505/ExLing-2012/05/0016/000222Keywords:
Korean, Arabic, vowel, perception, L3Abstract
The study aims to investigate cross-linguistic influence in speech perception by tracing the source of L3 vowel perception. Two groups of native Egyptian Arabic speakers—monolinguals and late-bilinguals of English—were examined for their ability to discriminate Korean vowels. It was assumed that discriminability depends on factors such as L2 experience, phonological constraints of L1, type of memory, and phonetic contrasts. The results suggest that L2 experience could enhance sensitivity to certain L3 vowel contrasts. However, L2 experience does not do much to overcome an L1 phonological constraint. Also, it was found that even in the phonemic process, listeners may rely on auditory memory for discriminating novel speech sounds.
References
Al-Ani, S. 1970. *Arabic Phonology: An Acoustical and Physiological Investigation*. The Hague: Mouton.
Becker, R. 2010. Roy Becker’s vowel corpus. [http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/facilities/databases/databases.html](http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/faciliti/facilities/databases/databases.html) (accessed May 28, 2026).
Best, C. T., McRoberts, G. W. and Goodell, E. 2001. Discrimination of non-native consonant contrasts varying in perceptual assimilation to the listener's native phonological system. *The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America*, 109(2), 775–794.
Escudero, P. and Williams, D. 2011. Perceptual assimilation of Dutch vowels by Peruvian Spanish listeners. *The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America*, 129(1), 1–7.
Flege, J. E., Bohn, O. S. and Jang, S. 1997. The effect of experience on nonnative subjects’ production and perception of English vowels. *Journal of Phonetics*, 25(4), 437–470.
Williams, S. and Hammarberg, B. 1998. Language switches in L3 production: Implications for a polyglot speaking model. *Applied Linguistics*, 19(3), 295–333.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2012 Seung-ah Hong (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
