Place: Psychology 128 (conference room)

Jeff Holliday

In studying how second language (L2) learners acquire a particular L2 perceptual contrast, we typically begin our research with the observation that L2 learners have difficulty accurately perceiving the contrast. We might then take a look at how naïve listeners perceive the contrast, and then compare how novice and advanced L2 learners perceive the contrast. One assumption that underlies this methodology is the existence of some sort of perceptual continuity between naïve listeners and novice learners. That is, the starting point for L2 acquisition is the naïve listener: as L2 instruction begins, anything the naïve listener was already doing “right” should remain the same, and anything the naïve listener was doing “wrong” should eventually be corrected and gravitate towards a native benchmark. In other words, beginning to explicitly learn an L2 should not “mess things up”. By looking at data from L1 Mandarin and L1 Japanese learners of L2 Korean, I would like to examine whether L1 Mandarin listeners’ perception of Korean fricatives is constrained by metalinguistic knowledge acquired through learning to read. In this work-in-progress talk, I will give an overview of my dissertation findings, and then kick around my ideas for some experiments planned for this summer. Your feedback is most welcome.