Related Experiment Video
Updated: Feb 4, 2026

Ultrasound Images of the Tongue: A Tutorial for Assessment and Remediation of Speech Sound Errors
Published on: January 3, 2017
Imitation in a Second Language Relies on Phonological Categories but Does Not Reflect the Productive Usage of
Miquel Llompart1, Eva Reinisch1
1Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany.
Abstract:
This study investigated the relationship between imitation and both the perception and production abilities of second language (L2) learners for two non-native contrasts differing in their expected degree of difficulty. German learners of English were tested on perceptual categorization, imitation and a word reading task for the difficult English /ɛ/-/æ/ contrast, which tends not to be well encoded in the learners' phonological inventories, and the easy, near-native /i/-/ɪ/ contrast. As expected, within-task comparisons between contrasts revealed more robust perception and better differentiation during production for /i/-/ɪ/ than /ɛ/-/æ/. Imitation also followed this pattern, suggesting that imitation is modulated by the phonological encoding of L2 categories. Moreover, learners' ability to imitate /ɛ/ and /æ/ was related to their perception of that contrast, confirming a tight perception-production link at the phonological level for difficult L2 sound contrasts. However, no relationship was observed between acoustic measures for imitated and read-aloud tokens of /ɛ/ and /æ/. This dissociation is mostly attributed to the influence of inaccurate non-native lexical representations in the word reading task. We conclude that imitation is strongly related to the phonological representation of L2 sound contrasts, but does not need to reflect the learners' productive usage of such non-native distinctions.
Related Concept Videos
The Sense of Self: Reflected Self-Appraisal and Social Comparison
Language
Corballis and Suddendorf (2007) and Tomasello and Rakoczy (2003) highlight the role of language in...
Categories of Equilibrium
One of the categories of equilibrium is collinear equilibrium, which involves forces acting along a straight line. This type of equilibrium requires only one force equation in the direction of the forces, as the other equations are...
Drug Classes and Categories
Korotkoff Sounds
During blood pressure assessment, inflating the cuff 30 millimeters of mercury above the patient's systolic blood pressure...
Heart Sounds
Auscultation is the process of listening to these internal body sounds using a stethoscope. The heart produces four types of sounds, but only two—S1 and S2—can usually be heard with a stethoscope.
S1, also known as the "lub" sound, is caused by the closure of atrioventricular (A-V)...

