Phonemic categorizations of

English stops among native

speaking/EFL/ESL students

Michael Wei, Ph.D.Yalun Zhou, Ph.D. student

Introduction

Contrast

absence

3. However, there is an absence of voiceless/voiced contrasts among stops after word-initial /s/

1. voiceless /p, t, k/ and voiced /b, d, g/. English

stops

2. In most cases, these two types of stops contrast with each other.

4. phonetically or acoustically, English stops after word initial /s/ are more similar to /b, d, g/

similarity

5. the English writing system represents stops after initial /s/ as voiceless P, T, C/K (e.g. sPort, sTop, sChool, sKate etc.).

complicated

Introduction

Complexity

about review

These phonetic and orthographic complexities of English stops after /s/ as well as people’s different perceptions toward them have drawn linguists’ attention on how people categorize these phonemes and have resulted in long-standing disputes (Jaeger, 1980).

We limit our review on phonetic and phonemic perceptions of people with different ages and different native languages (for more theoretical review, see Mompeán-González, 2004).

Literature review Davidson-Nielsen (1969)

Davidson-Nielsen (1969)

Lotz el al. (1960)

Lotz el al. (1960)

No differences between British English speakers and American English speakers in telling differences between voiceless and voiced stops.

Both British and American native English-speaking participants perceived the words such as spear, steam, score to begin with B, D, G.

The first (maybe the only) one that involves both native and nonnative English-speaking participants.

native speakers of American English identified the residual stops (i.e. the stops after /s/) as voiced /b, d, g/ after the initial /s/ was cut off in the recording; the others, native speakers of Spanish, Hungarian, and Thai, identified them as voiceless stops.

Jaeger (1980)

Jaeger (1980)

Ehri and Wilce (1980)

Lotz el al. (1960)

Literature review

They concluded that the differences were due to the distinctions of the languages in phonemic system.

25 out of 27 (92.6%) of participants psychologically perceived phoneme /k/ in [sk] cluster as the syllable-initial aspirated [kh]-words such as kind, candle, chlorine.

This perception is in line with the notion that phonemes as a unit are important functions in “speech perception” (p.250), and this is especially true in an alphabetic writing system.

Their research indicated that the knowledge of word spellings influences fourth grade native English-speaking children’s perception of the phonemic segments in words (regardless of the familiarity of the words).

Literature review Ehri and Wilce (1980)

Wei& Zhou’s

Wei& Zhou’s

Wei & Zhou’s

Children’s perception of the phoneme segments derived from the visual forms gained in their reading experiences.

Most studies are decades old and focus on native English speakers’ perceptions on individual phonemes under forced situation (i.e. participants react to the cut recordings).

Very few studies on nonnative English speakers’ phonemic categorization in perceiving the residual stop segments after word-initial/s/ as a unit.

None has ever studied the nonnative English speakers whose language system is non-alphabetic (e.g. Chinese) in writing system and is lack of /s/ plus stop clusters in phoneme system. Even fewer is the study on bilinguals’ phoneme categorization.

Wei & Zhou’s

Wei & Zhou’s

Literature review

This research intended to fill this gap of literature by studying the relative perceptions of monolingual Chinese children, monolingual English children and

bilingual Chinese-English children.

In a phoneme deletion task, these three groups of children were asked to tell their phonemic categorizations of the residual stop segments after the removal of word-initial /s/.

Purposes of this study

Wei & Zhou

residual stop segments

after word-initial /s/

Monolingual Chinese/English

speaking children

Bilingual English-Chinese

speaking children

The results would provide updated information on the study of English stops after word-initial /s/, verify previous

studies, and provoke further investigations in second language acquisition and second language literacy.

compare phonemic categorizations with different linguistic backgrounds

Method

Step 3

Trials

Participants

• face-to-face natural interactions of the examiners

• mentally removing the word-initial /s/ by themselves

Three groups of children (two monolingual groups and one bilingual group) in the United States and in southwestern China

children were asked to automatically speak out their

perceptual realization of the sound of the

residual unit

Table 1. Participants in each group

Students (30 each)

Age of children Gender of students

School / Location Language spoken

Group 1

6th graders 12;9 14 male 16 female

Middle school/China

Chinese: L1

Group 2

5th graders 10;0 16 male 14 female

Weekend Chinese school/USA

Chinese-English bilingual

Group 3

5th graders 10;7 12 male 18 female

Elementary school/USA

English: L1

Method

Method

Test items

Nonsense words

The test items contained both real and nonsense words.

Practice itemsAll the practice items were real words and did not contain English stops after word-initial/s/.

Some real words after removing /s/. /sku:l/ - /ku:l/ or /gu:l/. Children need to decide what sound was left in the segment.

Method

15 words yielding stop segment realizations were created:

four SP clusters: spag, spid, spill, spum

four ST clusters: stig, stit, store, stug

four SK clusters : skag, skiv, skuk, skin

two SC clusters: school, scrape

one SQ cluster: square

calculated Cronbach’s reliability was .965.

Results (Group 1)Table 3. Perceptual realization of residual stop segments for each of the fifteen test items, Group 1.

Test item

No. of voiced realization (max = 30)

No. of voiceless realization (max = 30)

Neither voiced nor voiceless (max=30)

spag 30 0 0 spid 30 0 0 spill 30 0 0 spum 30 0 0 stig 30 0 0 stit 30 0 0

store 30 0 0 stug 30 0 0 skag 30 0 0 skiv 30 0 0 skuk 1 29 0 skin 30 0 0

scrape 30 0 0 school 30 0 0 square 30 0 0

Results (Group 1)

An informal interview with the English teacher of Group 1 was conducted immediately after collecting the above data: she taught her students that the stops after word-intitial /s/ should be pronounced similarly to aspirated voiced /b, d, g/

Why most students did not provide voiced sound in the nonword skuk after /s/ was removed? The teacher said that it seemed that most students just felt more comfortable in giving voiceless sound the stop after /s/.

Results (Group 2)

Table 5. Results of native English speakers’ perceptions

Age of participants

5;10 – 5:11 (Hannam et al., 2006)

5;7-6;9 yrs old vs. adults (Treiman, 1985)

7 & 8 yrs old vs. adults (Fink, 1974)

11;2 (current study)

18-25 yrs old (Jaeger, 1980)

Results 85% percent of 1st graders favored B, D, G spellings for stops after /s/; the perception will last until the onset of literacy instruction

29.5% kindergarteners tented to spell the stops after /s/ as voiced, higher tendency than 1st graders, who in turn had higher tendency than adults

3rd graders were closer to adults’ orthographic realization than 2nd graders;

88.89% of the 5th graders perceived phonologically the residual stop segments as voiceless /p, t, k/

92.6% of the adult participants psychologically perceived phoneme /k/ in [sk] cluster as the sound in the same category as the syllable-initial aspirated [kh] in words like kind, candle

Results (All three groups)

Table 6. Frequencies of different perceptions by children in all three groups

Voiced Voiceless Neither Group 1

(Chinese) (total = 450)

421 93.6% 29 6.4% 0 0 %

Group 2 (Bilingual)

(total = 450)

182 40.44% 244 54.23% 24 5.33%

Group 3 (English)

(total = 450)

1 0.22% 400 88.89% 49 10.89%

Conclusion

monolingual Chinese-speaking children and monolingual English-speaking children had sharp differences on segments after word-initial /s/

bilingual Chinese-English children were between with more tendencies to that of monolingual English-speaking children.

monolingual Chinese-speaking and bilingual Chinese-English-speaking had different phonemic categorization.

Conclusion

once children internalize the orthographic conventions of English stops after word-initial /s/, they never hear /b, d, g/ after /s/ again

The different perceptions of children with different literacy history are with the length of formal literacy instruction and the knowledge of orthography are crucial in phonemic judgments.

How should English teachers teach the English stops after word-initial /s/? 1

Thank You! 2

challenges to SLA

Conclusion

What is the pacing and timing to teach the acoustic ambiguity and orthographic processing complexities of the /s/ + stop clusters?