L1-Spanish Speakers' Acquisition of the English /i/-/I/ Contrast II: Perception of Vowel Inherent Spectral Change

Abstract

L1-Spanish learners of English have been reported to distinguish English /i/ and /I/ on the basis of duration cues, whereas L1-English listeners primarily use spectral cues. Morrison (2008a) hypothesized that duration-based perception is a secondary developmental stage that emerges from an initial stage of multidimensional-category-goodness assimilation of tokens of English /i/ and /I/ to Spanish /i/, with English vowel tokens perceived to be good examples of Spanish /i/ labeled as English /I/ and poor examples labeled as English /i/.