title: Release bursts in English word-final voiceless stops produced by native English and Korean adults and children.
abstract: The aim of this study was to evaluate the acquisition of statistical properties of a second language (L2). Stop consonants are permitted in word-final position in both English and Korean, but they are variably released in English and invariably unreleased in Korean. Native Korean (K) adults and children living in North America and age-matched native English (E) speakers repeated English words ending in released tokens of /t/ and /k/ at two times separated by 1.2 years. The judgments of E-speaking listeners were used to determine if the stimuli were repeated with audible release bursts. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed fewer final releases for K than E adults, and fewer releases for /t/ (but not /k/) for K than E children. Nearly all /t/ and /k/ tokens were heard as intended in experiment 3, which evaluated intelligibility. However, the K adults' /k/ tokens were identified with less certainty than the E adults'. Taken together, the results suggested that noncontrastive (i.e., statistical) properties of an L2 can be learned by children, and to a somewhat lesser extent by adults.
authors.affiliation: University of Western Sydney, Penrith South DC, N.S.W., AUstralia. k.tsukada@uws.edu.au
authors.forename: Kimiko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Tsukada
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Birdsong
authors.forename: Molly
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mack
authors.forename: Hyekyung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Sung
authors.forename: Ellen
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Bialystok
authors.forename: James
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Flege
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001301:Audiometry, Pure-Tone; D002648:Child; D005260:Female; D006309:Hearing / Q000502:physiology; D006801:Humans; D007723:Korea; D007802:Language; D008037:Linguistics; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D013067:Speech Perception; D014481:United States; D014825:Vocabulary