Perception of Tashlhiyt consonant quantity contrast by native vs. nonnative listeners from three languages
Résumé
Remarkably, Tashlhiyt has gemination contrasts for all consonants in all word positions. Perception of these contrasts by natives vs. nonnatives is little documented, with the exception of [Hallé, Ridouane, and Best, 2016], which found that natives performed near ceiling on all contrasts under scrutiny, whereas nonnative French listeners were much better on word-final than-initial contrasts. The authors tentatively proposed that the word-initial and word-final positions engage different perceptual processes. We reexamine these findings using a more comprehensive design including initial, medial, and final positions, using Tashlhiyt native listeners and nonnative listeners from three languages differing in terms of quantitative and qualitative incidence of gemination: Chinese, French, and Japanese. Overall, easy perception of non-initial Tashlhiyt geminate-singleton contrasts by nonnative listeners is confirmed, supporting the earlier proposition that they engage universal perceptual processes. In contrast, word-initial contrasts would require languagespecific learning.
Domaines
Linguistique
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