Contextual similarity beyond segments: Interlanguage vocalic distance affects Chinese learners' perception of English...

This study investigated the effect of interlanguage vocalic distance on the perception of English alveolar (/n/) and velar (/ŋ/) nasal codas by Chinese learners. The aim is to explore the context effect on cross-language similarity at the syllabic level. Forty participants completed two tasks: (1) a perceptual assimilation task (PAT), mapping vowel-nasal syllables to native language (L1) categories, and (2) a perceptual discrimination test (PDT), assessing their ability to distinguish /n/-/ŋ/ codas across vowel contexts. PAT results revealed uncategorized-categorized assimilation patterns in native-distant vowel contexts (/æ/, /ɛ/) and single-category patterns in native-adjacent contexts (/ɔ/, /ʌ/). PDT results showed significantly higher discrimination accuracy in native-distant than in native-adjacent vowel contexts. These findings confirm the context effect of interlanguage vocalic distance on L2 nasal perception. The alignment between PAT and PDT patterns supports the Perceptual Assimilation Model, while the enhanced discrimination in phonetically dissimilar contexts provides empirical support for the Speech Learning Model's prediction that greater L1-L2 dissimilarity facilitates new category formation. The study further suggests that L1-L2 phonetic similarity extends beyond individual segments and interacts with coarticulatory influences at the syllabic level, offering new insights for similarity-related L2 phonetic theories.