Vowel inventory size matters: Assessing cue-weighting in L2 vowel perception

Abstract

To examine whether L1 vowel inventory size could be a contributing factor to the use of temporal cues in L2 vowel perception, this study assessed the perception of English /i-ɪ/ by 66 learners of four different L1s: Danish, Portuguese, Catalan and Russian. The L2 learners performed a forced-choice identification task containing natural and duration-manipulated stimuli. Findings suggest that the participants’ over-reliance on duration cues seems to be partially related to their L1 vowel inventory size.