title: The influence of lexical characteristics and talker accent on the recognition of English words by speakers of Japanese.
abstract: Whether or not the influence of listeners' language proficiency on L2 speech recognition was affected by the structure of the lexicon was examined. This specific experiment examined the effect of word frequency (WF) and phonological neighborhood density (PND) on word recognition in native speakers of English and second-language (L2) speakers of English whose first language was Japanese. The stimuli included English words produced by a native speaker of English and English words produced by a native speaker of Japanese (i.e., with Japanese-accented English). The experiment was inspired by the finding of Imai, Flege, and Walley [(2005). J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 117, 896-907] that the influence of talker accent on speech intelligibility for L2 learners of English whose L1 is Spanish varies as a function of words' PND. In the currently study, significant interactions between stimulus accentedness and listener group on the accuracy and speed of spoken word recognition were found, as were significant effects of PND and WF on word-recognition accuracy. However, no significant three-way interaction among stimulus talker, listener group, and PND on either measure was found. Results are discussed in light of recent findings on cross-linguistic differences in the nature of the effects of PND on L2 phonological and lexical processing.
authors.affiliation: Department of English, Faculty of Foreign Languages, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo, Japan.
authors.forename: Kiyoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Yoneyama
authors.affiliation: Department of Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455, USA.
authors.forename: Benjamin
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Munson