Positive expectation in the processing of allophones.

Area of Science:

• Phonetics
• Psychoacoustics
• Linguistic perception

Background:

• Native language knowledge shapes auditory perception of speech sounds.
• Allophones, variations of a phoneme, often occur in predictable phonetic contexts.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate whether native language knowledge creates perceptual biases against allophones that do not fit their typical phonetic context.
• To compare how German and English listeners perceive allophonic and non-allophonic sound continua.

Main Methods:

• Participants (German and English speakers) listened to "allophonic" ([ç-x]) and "non-allophonic" ([ç-f], [x-f]) continua.
• These continua were presented after front and back vowels.

Main Results:

• Vowel context influenced German listeners' perception of [ç-x] and [ç-f] continua, but not [x-f].
• Vowel context affected English listeners' perception across all tested continua.
• German listeners' asymmetric responses suggest a perceptual expectation of [ç] after front vowels.

Conclusions:

• Native language phonotactics create specific perceptual expectations for allophones.
• English listeners' responses indicate a more general acoustic misparsing mechanism influenced by vowel context.