Variability in cross-language and cross-dialect perception. How Irish and Chinese migrants process Australian English vowels.

We investigate how three adult groups - experienced L2 English listeners; experienced D2 (second dialect) listeners; and native L1/D1 listeners - categorise Australian English (AusE) lax front vowels /ɪ e æ/ in /hVt/, /hVl/ and /mVl/ environments in a forced-choice categorisation task of synthesised continua. In study 1, AusE listeners show predictable categorisations, with an effect of coarticulation raising the vowel in perception for nasal onset stimuli, and a following lateral lowering the vowel in perception. In study 2, Irish (D2) and Chinese listeners (L2) have different categorisations than AusE listeners, likely guided by their D1/L1. Coarticulation influences the D1/D2 groups in similar ways, but results in more difficulty and less agreement for the Chinese. We also investigate the role of extralinguistic factors. For the Chinese listeners, higher proficiency in English does not correlate with more Australian-like categorisation behaviour. However, having fewer Chinese in their social network results in more Australian-like categorisation for some stimuli. These findings lend partial support to the role of experience and exposure in L2/D2 contexts, whereby categorisation is likely still driven by native categories, with increased exposure leading to better mapping, but not to a restructuring of underlying phonetic categories.

Sociophonetic Variation in Vowel Categorization of Australian English.

This study involves a perceptual categorization task for Australian English, designed to investigate regional and social variation in category boundaries between close-front vowel contrasts. Data are from four locations in southeast Australia. A total of 81 listeners from two listener groups took part: (a) so-called mainstream Australian English listeners from all four locations, and (b) L1 Aboriginal English listeners from one of the locations. Listeners heard front vowels /ɪ e æ/ arranged in 7-step continua presented at random. Varied phonetic contexts were analyzed, with a focus on coda /l/ because of a well-known prelateral merger of /e æ/ through mid-vowel lowering (e.g., celery-salary) reported to occur in some communities in this part of Australia. The results indicate that regional variation in Australian English is evident in perception. In particular, merging of /el/-/æl/ is shown to occur in the southernmost regions analyzed, but rarely in the northern regions of the geographical area under investigation. Aside from regional variation observed, age was also a factor in how participants responded to the task: older speakers had more merger than younger speakers in many locations, which is a new finding-previously, the merger was thought to be increasing in frequency over time, yet here we see this in only one location. Aboriginal English listeners also responded differently when compared with mainstream Australian English listeners. By analyzing the perception results across a variety of regional locations, with data from two different Australian social groups in the same location, this study adds a new dimension to our understanding of regional and social variations in Australian English.