Shin, Sarah J.2019-12-052019-12-052001-09Shin, Sarah J.; Cross-language speech perception in adults: Discrimination of Korean voiceless stops by English speakers; Studies in the Linguistic Sciences Volume 31, Number 2 (Fall 2001); https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/handle/2142/9557;http://hdl.handle.net/11603/16639This study examines the ways in which three classes of alveolar stops in Korean (voiceless 'tense' unaspirated /t*/, voiceless 'lax' slightly aspirated /t/, and voiceless heavily aspirated /th/) present different degrees of perceptual difficulty to adult English and Korean listeners. Results show that the /t/-/th/ contrast presented the greatest difficulty in perceptual discriminability for the American listeners (61% error rate) while the /t*/-/t/ and the /t*/-/th/ contrasts presented relatively easy discriminability with 9% and 3% error rates respectively. Painvise t-test results show that English listeners discriminated the /t*/-/th/ contrast significantly better than the /t*/-/t/ contrast, suggesting that a larger difference in VOT between stimulus items increases discriminability. These and other results suggest that English listeners' perception of Korean voicing contrasts is largely determined by phonemic status and to a lesser extent by the magnitude of acoustic difference.12 pagesen-USThis item is likely protected under Title 17 of the U.S. Copyright Law. Unless on a Creative Commons license, for uses protected by Copyright Law, contact the copyright holder or the author.perceptual discriminabilityphonemic statusacoustic differencecross-language speech perceptionkorean voiceless stopsText