Perception of English phonetics

Leaño et al.'s paper, "Speaking Difficulties of Philippine Indigenous Learners in English Phonology," highlights three challenging phonological areas for Tagalog L1 learners of English: alphabet knowledge, phonics and word recognition, and phonological awareness. Given the limited research on the speech processing of Tagalog L1 learners, this study focuses on identifying phonological differences between English, Tagalog, and Philippine English. The goal is to gather existing literature comparing speech processing and production in Tagalog and English, predicting variations in how Tagalog L1 learners process certain phonetic properties of English. The study specifically examines consonant and vowel production, as well as stress patterns in Tagalog and Philippine English. As there is a growing interest in documenting the evolution of Englishes in the outer circle, including Philippine English, it's worth noting that the documentation of Philippine English is still in progress due to its rapid evolution. Notably, Philippine English's distinctiveness lies in its development during US-American colonization, distinguishing it from other Englishes in the outer circle that emerged from British colonization.

Why Consonants and Vowels?

CLICK FOR RUN DOWN OF CONSONANTS OR
  • VOWELS
    • (especially for audio files!)

    Since Leaño et. Al suggests that an area in which Tagalog L1 learners have trouble in is alphabet knowledge despite the fact that Tagalog phonology seems relatively similar to English, I want to dive into Tagalog phonemes to understand where this issue may arise from. Additionally, this may give some insight as to how natives of the Philippines have adapted English to fit the phonetic make-up of the languages already present on the islands, as well as to why there exists such difficulty in perception and production, despite English being a major L2. In other words, it may give us a perspective into how Tagalog L1 speakers categorize English phonemes.

    Because English has an uncommonly large number of vowel phonemes, this is an obvious area in which many learners of English have trouble. L1 Tagalog speakers are no exception to this, since Tagalog only has five vowels. While there has not been research done specifically for Tagalog that deals with how to bridge the gap in vowel perception for L1 Tagalog learners of L2 English, research done on a study of L1 Japanese learners of English in this sphere could act as a model for future research. Nishi and Kewley-Port of Indiana University conducted a study testing on how to increase the accuracy of non-native speakers of English's categorization of English vowels non-native to their L1. Much like Tagalog, Japanese only has five vowels (/a/, /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/). While the study was limited to twelve L1 Japanese learners, who were only trained for nine days, it still revealed some interesting results: the more vowels that they were trained in at a time, the more likely they were to build up long-term retention.

    Another potential area of issues in speech perception could be the categorization of voiced consonants and voiceless consonants. The University of Toronto Scarborough studied the cross-language influence of Tagalog and English in Canadian heritage speakers of Tagalog. This study showed that heritage speakers of Tagalog did establish a Tagalog and English cateogory for each language's respective voiceless stops, but created a partially merged category for that of voiced stops. When pronouncing Tagalog voiced consonants, there was less prevoicing than native speakers of Tagalog, while there was more prevoicing when pronouncing English voiced consonants in comparison to English native speakers. This research indicates that there exists some type of difference between prevoicing of voiced consonants in English and Tagalog. Since perception of voiced consonant is sensitive to prevoicing, I predict that it would be worth studying where Tagalog L1 speakers start to perceive a voiced consonant as a prevoiced consonant in Tagalog, as well as where they perceive it in Philippine English.

    Why Stress Placement?

    CLICK FOR RUNDOWN ON Philippine English. Numerous studies have highlighted that L2 English learners often struggle with English comprehension due to difficulties in stress perception. For instance, Guo and Chen’s research revealed that L1 Chinese learners of English rely on the fundamental frequency of a speech signal to discern word stress, as opposed to considering intensity or duration. English speakers, on the other hand, perceive stress by considering all three factors (intensity, duration, and fundamental frequency), along with vowel reduction. Given the distinct stress patterns in Philippine English and English loanwords in Tagalog, a potential research direction involves exploring a methodology similar to Guo and Chen's. This approach could help identify the factors Tagalog learners of English rely on for stress determination in English. In this modified study, the intensity, duration, fundamental frequency, and vowel reduction of English words were manipulated and presented to speakers of various dialects in China and native English speakers. Participants were then tasked with determining whether the first or second syllable was stressed. For Tagalog, adjustments would be necessary to account for the typical stress placement in three- and four-syllable words.