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by two Japanese speakers differing in experience with English
Journal of Phonetics (1984) 12, 187-193
The production of English /r I and /1/ by two Japanese speakers differing in experience with English Gerald N. Zimmermann Department of Speech Path ology and Audiology, Th e University of Io wa , Io wa City, Io wa, U.S .A .
P. J. Price Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
and Takako Ayusawa Kagosh ima University , Co llege of Liberal Arts, 1-21-30 Korimoto, Kagoshima-Shi, 8 90, Japan Received 14th January 1984
Abstract :
The articulation of American English / 1/ and /r/ by one native speaker of American English and two native speakers of Japanese with different degrees of experience and proficiency with American English were studied. Cinefluorographic data show greater distinctiveness in vocal tract shapes for fl/s and /r/s for the native speaker of American English. The Japanese speakers showed relatively little posterior positioning and -bunching of the tongue and only limited or no lip rounding associated with prevocalic I r/ production. The differences are discussed in terms of phonological and articulatory habits.
The perception and production of American English /1/ and / r/ by native speakers of Japanese is relevant to the issue of the role of linguistic and auditory experience in the perception and production of speech (Miyawaki et al., 197 5 ; MacKain et al. , 1981 ) , to the teaching of English as a second language (Isshiki, 1957 ; Kohmoto , 1965 ; Scott, 1966) and to theoretical cross-linguistic issues (Price , 1981). Both phonologic and motoric explanations have been offered for the /r/-/1/ confusion experienced by Japanese speakers of American English. Descriptions of such phonetic and phonological cross-linguistic interference are relevant to theories of production and perception (Nemser & Guhasz , 1971 ; Price , 1981). Descriptions of these cross cultural confusions also bear on the role of early auditory and linguistic experience in constraining phonological and/or motoric behavior. The purpose of this report is to compare the articulation of target American English /1/ 's and /r/ 's as produced by one native speaker of American English and by two native speakers of Japanese with different degrees of experience in and proficiency with American English.
0095-4470/84/030187 + 07 $03 .00/0.
© 1984 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd .
188
G. N Zimmermann et al.
Procedures
Subjects Two female Japanese speakers who resided in the Midwestern United States at the time of this experiment served as subjects. The Japanese subject with less experience with American English (Jl) was 30 years old, born and raised in Tokyo, and had been in the United States for 3 years at the time of the experiment. She had 6 years of English during her primary schooling in Japan (4-5 hours/week) and 2 years of English at the college level (eight credits). This consisted mainly of translation of written English into Japanese. She was judged by herself, by her Japanese friends, and by Americans (including the experimenters) to be a poor speaker of English. The Japanese subject with more experience with English (J2) was a 25-year-old student in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of Iowa. She also was born and raised in Tokyo, and had the same experience with English as J 1 during her primary schooling. In addition, she had a one year intensive course in English which included speaking and hearing English (24 credits). She lived for 2 years in Malaysia, where the primary language of the local people was English. She had been in the united States about 7 years prior to the time of the experiment during which time she boarded with an American woman and had extensive contacts with English speakers. J2 reported some difficulty in discriminating between "1" and "r" though she was aware from her training in phonetics of how they should be produced. She was judged to be a better English speaker than J 1 by their American and Japanese friends, and by the experimenters. The native speaker of American English was a 24-year-old graduate student who had resided in the Midwestern United States all her life.
Filming High speed (1 00 fps) cinefluorography was used to track radiopaque markers secured with a dental adhesive (Durelon) to the lips, jaw, tongue dorsum , and tongue tip . Subjects' productions were also recorded on magnetic tape along with an octal code to allow alignment of kinematic and acoustic events. Frame-by-frame analysis was done with a computer assisted data reduction system. The filming and data reduction procedure have been described elsewhere (Zimmermann, 1980). Vocal tract shapes were traced from frames associated with intended productions of /r/ and /1/ . Frames at which the articulators were at a position of maximal constriction in their movement away from the identified "steady state" portion of the preceding vowel were selected for analysis. The acoustic record was also used as an aid in selecting these frames.
Utterances Subjects were instructed to read target words "lap ," "rap ," "lorry," "laurel," and "parallel" embedded in the carrier phrase "It's a _." These phrases were typed on a 5 x 7 inch index card. Only one sample of each utterance was collected because of the apparent consistency in subjects' productions (as judged by the epxerimenters during two practice readings), and in order to limit radiation exposure . The utterances were chosen to include/ r /sand /1/s in syllable initial and syllable final positions, since production has been reported to be sensitive to these contexts (Mochizuki, 1982. Giles & Moll, 1975; Zawadski & Kuehn, 1980).
Production of /r/ and /I/
189
clap-a rap ·
Jl
J2
AI
· ·~
-~
~0 (~) ~) Figure 1
Vocal tract shape for Jl, 12, and Al for the production of /r/ in "rap" and /1/ in "lap".
Results
"lap" vs "rap" Vocal tract shapes for the three speakers (J1, J2 , A1) for the production of lrl in "rap" and Ill in "lap" are shown in Fig. 1. In general, the vocal tract for both I r I and Ill is more open for A1 than for either J1 or 12. For A1 the lrl is produced with a slightly retracted tongue and more lip rounding than for the Ill. In addition, the tongue blade position is higher for Ill than for lrl. J2 shows a distinction between these two articulations. For this talker, production of lrl is associated with a retracted tongue (as for A1) and a more closed position of the upper and lower lips. This lip gesture, however, is more characteristic of
alarry - a lorry .
J2
Jl
AI
.--~---··- .... ~-,
--~
'--···-···~ ...,__ :~
..... ~
~--.)
.... \
f (
\
Figure2
Vocal tract shape for Jl, 12, and Al for the production of /r/ and /1/ in "lorry".
G. N. Zimmermann et al.
190
l®rel ··········· louie! - -
J2
Jl
AI
···T······ · ·--, ·-~~... , ·. :~ ·~ ·-:.-'_·· .
Figure 3
......
.
··· .
Vocal tract shapes for production of /r/ and final /1/ for 11, 12, and Al in "laurel".
Japanese than of English: the lips are moved together but not protruded. For 11 there is little, if any, differentiation in tongue tip or lip positioning for the production of /1/ and I r /. "lorry" Tracings for the /1/ and the lrl, in lorry, are shown in Fig. 2. Again, the vocal tract for lr/ and /11 for A1 is more open than for J 1 or 12. Similar patterns hold for the three speakers in this and the previous figure. Note, however, that the lr/ for talker Al is much more retracted than in the previous figure, due to its position here before an unstressed vowel. 12 again shows for lr/ a more posterior position for the entire tongue and a more superior position for the tongue dorsum than for 111. Lip closure is also greater for lr/ than for /1/. Again, the lips are not protruded. 11 shows some retraction of the tongue body for /r/ relative to /1/. This may be related to differences in the vocalic contexts for the two sounds: lr/ may be retracted because it follows the back vowel lol in "lorry," while the Ill follows the more neutral schwa. Some palatographic evidence for this appears in Sudo et al. (1983); Price (1981) presents both acoustic and palatographic evidence. "laurel" Comparisons between the productions of intervocalic /rl and final Ill in "laurel" are shown in Fig. 3. Once more, the overall shape of the vocal tract is more open for A1 than for 11 or 12. For A1 the Ir I is produced with the tongue bunched and retracted, while for Ill the tongue tip makes alveolar contact. For 12 the pattern seems to be similar to A1 but the tongue tip is lower for 11 I and the dorsum higher for Ir I. For 11 the tongue tip is slightly more anterior for the production of final Ill than it is for the production of the intervocalic lrl. Again this may be due to context differences. "parallel" Figure 4 shows the comparisons of the vocal tract shapes for the production of the intervocalic and final /11 and the intervocalic lrl in the utterance "parallel". As in the previous figures, A1 shows a less obstructed vocal tract than 11 or 12. For Al the vocal tract shapes
Production of / r/ and / I/
191
pa;.allel · parOllel - parallel --------
JI
J2
AI
~
'
"
..=
. .
\
.~
Figure 4
Vocal tract shapes for production of intervocalic and final I r I in "parallel"
Ill and intervocalic
for final and intervocalic Ill are very similar, while the position of the tongue and of the lower lip for the I r I differs markedly; again , for I r I the tongue tip is down, the dorsum is retracted and the lips are slightly closer and protruded. For J2 the vocal t ract shapes for the productions of Ill in the intervocalic and final positions show very similar shapes except that for the intervocalic I I I the tongue tip is slightly posterior to its position for the production of final Ill. Compare, however, the vocal tract shapes for the intervocalic Ill and the intervocalic I r I. The position of the tongue tip is identical for these two gestures. For J I the vocal tract shape for the production of I r I is only slightly different from the shapes associated with the productions of the /l is. The more superior positioning of the tongue dorsum for the final /11 when compared to the intervocalic Ill may , again , be due to the influence of the preceding vowels. Discussion The most obvious difference between the Japanese speakers and the American speakers was the greater distinctiveness between /lis and IrIs. Specifically , the American speaker differentiated I r I from Ill by a more posterior positioning and bunching of the tongue, and, in some cases, by lip rounding. Further, Ills were consistently made with the tongue tip higher than for Iris. In general, the Il ls and Iris produced by this talker were more vowel-like (the vocal tract was more open) than were the productions by the Japanese talkers. The Japanese talkers, particularly J I , showed relatively little posterior positioning and bunching and only limited or no rounding. In general , J I produced utterances that, based on these observations, might as well have been Japanese . J2 produced articulations that more closely approximated those appropriate for American English. These productions, however, were not without obvious influence of Japanese articulatory habits. These diffe rences are related to Japanese phonological and articulatory habits . The problem is further complicated by orthographic habits: in borrowings into Japanese both the Ill and the I r I of American English are transliterated with the character that represents a Japanese phoneme that is very similar phonetically to American English flap ; this phoneme is traditionally transliterated as "R" in Japanese forms borrowed into English. For example,
192
G. N Zimmermann et al.
the Japanese form that is transliterated "hari" (which means "needle") as pronounced in Japanese rhymes with American English "potty" or "toddy" (not with "sorry"). The present findings support the intuitively obvious notion that articulatory habits related to linguistic experiences of native speakers of Japanese are important to understanding their "r-1 problem" when acquiring other languages. Previous findings have shown that linguistic experience affects the discrimination of I r I and Ill by native speakers of Japanese and English and that native speakers of Japanese do not perform as well as native speakers of American English on a categorical perception task of synthesized IrIs and Ills (Miyawaki et al., 1975; MacKain et al. , 1981), tho ugh Mochizuki (1982) has reported differences in this ability with task and with context. The Japanese speakers studied here show evidence of articulatory influences manifested by a lack of retraction of the tongue body and a lack of rounding and protrusion of the lips for I r I. Jl seems to substitute Japanese flap for both lrl and 111 in American English. J2 shows some tendencies in this direction . This may seem a likely strategy for these talkers on orthographic, acoustic , or articulatory grounds. The orthographic influence , discussed above, is probably stronger for those Japanese who have learned English primarily from its written form . This was the experience of Jl and is not an uncommon one. The articulatory and acoustic influences arise from the fact that of all Japanese consonants, the flap (similar to American English flap) causes the least obstruction of the vocal tract, and, consequently, the least acoustic interruption. As such, it may be the most likely to be used as a substitute for the liquids of American English. The basis for the systematic differences observed are likely a combination of orthographic, articulatory or acoustic considerations. A simple "substitution" account is not sufficient to explain what a given Japanese talker may do . There are systematic differences between these two Japanese talkers in their productions of the I ris and Ills. Jl makes a minimal and irregular distinction between the two and this minimal distinction may be due to coarticulatory effects, as discussed above. Talker J2 on the other hand , is clearly attempting to make an articulatory distinction but seems to be influenced by Japanese articulatory habits . The "r-1 problem" may be related to early perceptual experience as well as to methods used to teach English to native speakers of Japanese. That early perceptual experience is important in achieving coordinated speech movements is clear from reports on the speech development of the deaf and hard of hearing. That auditory information is essential to the production process is also evidenced in reports on speech production deficits in the postlingually adventitiously deaf. The fact that Japanese speakers have limited or no experience with the acoustic and articulatory events related to the production of the American English I r I may lead to difficulties in acquiring the behavioral patterns necessary for later acquisition . The late development of I r I in American English speaking children, the common misarticulations of I r I and Ill, and the degeneration of I r I in the adventitiously deaf, may suggest that the production strategies for these sounds are particularly dependent for acquisition and maintenance on auditory experience. The articulatory problems of children with chronic otitis media and hearing loss also support this position . The ability to discriminate non-native speech contrasts is present in infants and shows evidence of decline by age 4 (see Werker & Tees, 1983). Potentially related are studies by Gottlieb (1980) who has shown that certain auditory experiences are essential to the acquisition and maintenance of certain behaviors in ducklings. As for Gottlieb's ducklings, certain experiences may act to facilitate learning at a given sensitive period. If these experiences are not present, acquisition of certain behaviors may be delayed or achieved
Production of /r/ and /1/
193
only with great difficulty. The rarity of achieving native-like language acquired as an adult may lend support to this. The relation between difficult-to-learn distinctions and early linguistic experience may be important both theoretically and practically. Results reported based on these three subjects must certainly not be overinterpreted. However, these three subjects are clearly distinguishable in terms of their experience with American English and in their perceptually judged American English. The data are at least heuristically compelling in that they are interpretable in terms of the experience and proficiency of the talkers with American English. More extensive studies of the production and perception of groups of Japanese speakers with varying degrees of experience with American English may be useful for understanding the relationship between specific aspects of early perceptual experience and speech production. Hopefully a non-invasive technique can be found appropriate for such a study so that a large amount of data for a large number of talkers can be collected. This study was supported by grant PHS NIH #07555 and NIH #2T32NS07040-7 to M.I.T. References Giles, S. & Moll, K. (1975) . A cineflourographic study of selected allophones of English Ill. Phonetica, 31,206-277 . Gottlieb, G. (1980) . Development of species specific identification in ducklings: VI. Specific embryonic experience required to maintain species and typical perception in Peking duckings·. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psy chology , 94 , 578-586. Isshiki, M. (1957) . A comparative analysis of the English and the Japanese consonant phonemes. In : Study of Sounds. Articles Contributed in Commemoration of the Founding of the Phonetic Society of Japan.pp. 391-416. Kohmoto, S. (1965) . Applied English Phonology: Teaching of English Pronunciation to the Native Japanese Speaker. Tokyo : Tanaka Press. MacKain, K. S. , Best, C. T. & Strange, W. (1981) . Categorical perception of English lr I and Ill by Japanese bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 369-390. Miyawaki, K., Strange, W., Verbrugge, R., Liberman, A. M., Jenkins, J. J. & Fujimura, 0. (1975). An effect of linguistic experience : The discrimination of I r I and I 11 by native speakers of Japanese and English. Perception and Psychophysics 18, 331-340. Mochizuki, M. (1982) . The identification of I r I and /II in natural and synthesized speech. Journal of Phonetics, 9, 283-303. Nemser, W. & Guhasz, F. (1971). An Experimental Study of Phonological Interferences in the English of Hungarians. Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic Studies, Vol. 5. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Price, P. J. (1981) . A cross linguistic study of flaps in Japanese and in American English. University of Pennsylvania PhD Thesfs. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Microfilms. Scott, C. (1966) . Preliminaries to English Teaching. Essays for the teaching of English in Japan. Tokyo: The English Language Educational Council. Sudo, M. M., Kiritani, S. & Sawashima, M. (1983). The articulation of Japanese intervocalic ldl and lrl: An electro-palatographic study. Annual Bulletin of Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, 17,55-59. Werker, J. F. & Tees, R. C. (1983). Developmental changes across childhood in the perception of nonnative speech sounds. Canadian Journal of Psychology 37 , 278-286 . Zawadzski, P. & Kuehn, D. (1980). A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English lr 1. Phonetica, 37 , 253-266. Zimmermann, G. N. (1980) . Articulatory dynamics of fluent utterances of stutterers and nonstutterers, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 23, 95-107 .
The production of English /r I and /1/ by two Japanese speakers differing in experience with English Gerald N. Zimmermann Department of Speech Path ology and Audiology, Th e University of Io wa , Io wa City, Io wa, U.S .A .
P. J. Price Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
and Takako Ayusawa Kagosh ima University , Co llege of Liberal Arts, 1-21-30 Korimoto, Kagoshima-Shi, 8 90, Japan Received 14th January 1984
Abstract :
The articulation of American English / 1/ and /r/ by one native speaker of American English and two native speakers of Japanese with different degrees of experience and proficiency with American English were studied. Cinefluorographic data show greater distinctiveness in vocal tract shapes for fl/s and /r/s for the native speaker of American English. The Japanese speakers showed relatively little posterior positioning and -bunching of the tongue and only limited or no lip rounding associated with prevocalic I r/ production. The differences are discussed in terms of phonological and articulatory habits.
The perception and production of American English /1/ and / r/ by native speakers of Japanese is relevant to the issue of the role of linguistic and auditory experience in the perception and production of speech (Miyawaki et al., 197 5 ; MacKain et al. , 1981 ) , to the teaching of English as a second language (Isshiki, 1957 ; Kohmoto , 1965 ; Scott, 1966) and to theoretical cross-linguistic issues (Price , 1981). Both phonologic and motoric explanations have been offered for the /r/-/1/ confusion experienced by Japanese speakers of American English. Descriptions of such phonetic and phonological cross-linguistic interference are relevant to theories of production and perception (Nemser & Guhasz , 1971 ; Price , 1981). Descriptions of these cross cultural confusions also bear on the role of early auditory and linguistic experience in constraining phonological and/or motoric behavior. The purpose of this report is to compare the articulation of target American English /1/ 's and /r/ 's as produced by one native speaker of American English and by two native speakers of Japanese with different degrees of experience in and proficiency with American English.
0095-4470/84/030187 + 07 $03 .00/0.
© 1984 Academic Press Inc. (London) Ltd .
188
G. N Zimmermann et al.
Procedures
Subjects Two female Japanese speakers who resided in the Midwestern United States at the time of this experiment served as subjects. The Japanese subject with less experience with American English (Jl) was 30 years old, born and raised in Tokyo, and had been in the United States for 3 years at the time of the experiment. She had 6 years of English during her primary schooling in Japan (4-5 hours/week) and 2 years of English at the college level (eight credits). This consisted mainly of translation of written English into Japanese. She was judged by herself, by her Japanese friends, and by Americans (including the experimenters) to be a poor speaker of English. The Japanese subject with more experience with English (J2) was a 25-year-old student in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at the University of Iowa. She also was born and raised in Tokyo, and had the same experience with English as J 1 during her primary schooling. In addition, she had a one year intensive course in English which included speaking and hearing English (24 credits). She lived for 2 years in Malaysia, where the primary language of the local people was English. She had been in the united States about 7 years prior to the time of the experiment during which time she boarded with an American woman and had extensive contacts with English speakers. J2 reported some difficulty in discriminating between "1" and "r" though she was aware from her training in phonetics of how they should be produced. She was judged to be a better English speaker than J 1 by their American and Japanese friends, and by the experimenters. The native speaker of American English was a 24-year-old graduate student who had resided in the Midwestern United States all her life.
Filming High speed (1 00 fps) cinefluorography was used to track radiopaque markers secured with a dental adhesive (Durelon) to the lips, jaw, tongue dorsum , and tongue tip . Subjects' productions were also recorded on magnetic tape along with an octal code to allow alignment of kinematic and acoustic events. Frame-by-frame analysis was done with a computer assisted data reduction system. The filming and data reduction procedure have been described elsewhere (Zimmermann, 1980). Vocal tract shapes were traced from frames associated with intended productions of /r/ and /1/ . Frames at which the articulators were at a position of maximal constriction in their movement away from the identified "steady state" portion of the preceding vowel were selected for analysis. The acoustic record was also used as an aid in selecting these frames.
Utterances Subjects were instructed to read target words "lap ," "rap ," "lorry," "laurel," and "parallel" embedded in the carrier phrase "It's a _." These phrases were typed on a 5 x 7 inch index card. Only one sample of each utterance was collected because of the apparent consistency in subjects' productions (as judged by the epxerimenters during two practice readings), and in order to limit radiation exposure . The utterances were chosen to include/ r /sand /1/s in syllable initial and syllable final positions, since production has been reported to be sensitive to these contexts (Mochizuki, 1982. Giles & Moll, 1975; Zawadski & Kuehn, 1980).
Production of /r/ and /I/
189
clap-a rap ·
Jl
J2
AI
· ·~
-~
~0 (~) ~) Figure 1
Vocal tract shape for Jl, 12, and Al for the production of /r/ in "rap" and /1/ in "lap".
Results
"lap" vs "rap" Vocal tract shapes for the three speakers (J1, J2 , A1) for the production of lrl in "rap" and Ill in "lap" are shown in Fig. 1. In general, the vocal tract for both I r I and Ill is more open for A1 than for either J1 or 12. For A1 the lrl is produced with a slightly retracted tongue and more lip rounding than for the Ill. In addition, the tongue blade position is higher for Ill than for lrl. J2 shows a distinction between these two articulations. For this talker, production of lrl is associated with a retracted tongue (as for A1) and a more closed position of the upper and lower lips. This lip gesture, however, is more characteristic of
alarry - a lorry .
J2
Jl
AI
.--~---··- .... ~-,
--~
'--···-···~ ...,__ :~
..... ~
~--.)
.... \
f (
\
Figure2
Vocal tract shape for Jl, 12, and Al for the production of /r/ and /1/ in "lorry".
G. N. Zimmermann et al.
190
l®rel ··········· louie! - -
J2
Jl
AI
···T······ · ·--, ·-~~... , ·. :~ ·~ ·-:.-'_·· .
Figure 3
......
.
··· .
Vocal tract shapes for production of /r/ and final /1/ for 11, 12, and Al in "laurel".
Japanese than of English: the lips are moved together but not protruded. For 11 there is little, if any, differentiation in tongue tip or lip positioning for the production of /1/ and I r /. "lorry" Tracings for the /1/ and the lrl, in lorry, are shown in Fig. 2. Again, the vocal tract for lr/ and /11 for A1 is more open than for J 1 or 12. Similar patterns hold for the three speakers in this and the previous figure. Note, however, that the lr/ for talker Al is much more retracted than in the previous figure, due to its position here before an unstressed vowel. 12 again shows for lr/ a more posterior position for the entire tongue and a more superior position for the tongue dorsum than for 111. Lip closure is also greater for lr/ than for /1/. Again, the lips are not protruded. 11 shows some retraction of the tongue body for /r/ relative to /1/. This may be related to differences in the vocalic contexts for the two sounds: lr/ may be retracted because it follows the back vowel lol in "lorry," while the Ill follows the more neutral schwa. Some palatographic evidence for this appears in Sudo et al. (1983); Price (1981) presents both acoustic and palatographic evidence. "laurel" Comparisons between the productions of intervocalic /rl and final Ill in "laurel" are shown in Fig. 3. Once more, the overall shape of the vocal tract is more open for A1 than for 11 or 12. For A1 the Ir I is produced with the tongue bunched and retracted, while for Ill the tongue tip makes alveolar contact. For 12 the pattern seems to be similar to A1 but the tongue tip is lower for 11 I and the dorsum higher for Ir I. For 11 the tongue tip is slightly more anterior for the production of final Ill than it is for the production of the intervocalic lrl. Again this may be due to context differences. "parallel" Figure 4 shows the comparisons of the vocal tract shapes for the production of the intervocalic and final /11 and the intervocalic lrl in the utterance "parallel". As in the previous figures, A1 shows a less obstructed vocal tract than 11 or 12. For Al the vocal tract shapes
Production of / r/ and / I/
191
pa;.allel · parOllel - parallel --------
JI
J2
AI
~
'
"
..=
. .
\
.~
Figure 4
Vocal tract shapes for production of intervocalic and final I r I in "parallel"
Ill and intervocalic
for final and intervocalic Ill are very similar, while the position of the tongue and of the lower lip for the I r I differs markedly; again , for I r I the tongue tip is down, the dorsum is retracted and the lips are slightly closer and protruded. For J2 the vocal t ract shapes for the productions of Ill in the intervocalic and final positions show very similar shapes except that for the intervocalic I I I the tongue tip is slightly posterior to its position for the production of final Ill. Compare, however, the vocal tract shapes for the intervocalic Ill and the intervocalic I r I. The position of the tongue tip is identical for these two gestures. For J I the vocal tract shape for the production of I r I is only slightly different from the shapes associated with the productions of the /l is. The more superior positioning of the tongue dorsum for the final /11 when compared to the intervocalic Ill may , again , be due to the influence of the preceding vowels. Discussion The most obvious difference between the Japanese speakers and the American speakers was the greater distinctiveness between /lis and IrIs. Specifically , the American speaker differentiated I r I from Ill by a more posterior positioning and bunching of the tongue, and, in some cases, by lip rounding. Further, Ills were consistently made with the tongue tip higher than for Iris. In general, the Il ls and Iris produced by this talker were more vowel-like (the vocal tract was more open) than were the productions by the Japanese talkers. The Japanese talkers, particularly J I , showed relatively little posterior positioning and bunching and only limited or no rounding. In general , J I produced utterances that, based on these observations, might as well have been Japanese . J2 produced articulations that more closely approximated those appropriate for American English. These productions, however, were not without obvious influence of Japanese articulatory habits. These diffe rences are related to Japanese phonological and articulatory habits . The problem is further complicated by orthographic habits: in borrowings into Japanese both the Ill and the I r I of American English are transliterated with the character that represents a Japanese phoneme that is very similar phonetically to American English flap ; this phoneme is traditionally transliterated as "R" in Japanese forms borrowed into English. For example,
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G. N Zimmermann et al.
the Japanese form that is transliterated "hari" (which means "needle") as pronounced in Japanese rhymes with American English "potty" or "toddy" (not with "sorry"). The present findings support the intuitively obvious notion that articulatory habits related to linguistic experiences of native speakers of Japanese are important to understanding their "r-1 problem" when acquiring other languages. Previous findings have shown that linguistic experience affects the discrimination of I r I and Ill by native speakers of Japanese and English and that native speakers of Japanese do not perform as well as native speakers of American English on a categorical perception task of synthesized IrIs and Ills (Miyawaki et al., 1975; MacKain et al. , 1981), tho ugh Mochizuki (1982) has reported differences in this ability with task and with context. The Japanese speakers studied here show evidence of articulatory influences manifested by a lack of retraction of the tongue body and a lack of rounding and protrusion of the lips for I r I. Jl seems to substitute Japanese flap for both lrl and 111 in American English. J2 shows some tendencies in this direction . This may seem a likely strategy for these talkers on orthographic, acoustic , or articulatory grounds. The orthographic influence , discussed above, is probably stronger for those Japanese who have learned English primarily from its written form . This was the experience of Jl and is not an uncommon one. The articulatory and acoustic influences arise from the fact that of all Japanese consonants, the flap (similar to American English flap) causes the least obstruction of the vocal tract, and, consequently, the least acoustic interruption. As such, it may be the most likely to be used as a substitute for the liquids of American English. The basis for the systematic differences observed are likely a combination of orthographic, articulatory or acoustic considerations. A simple "substitution" account is not sufficient to explain what a given Japanese talker may do . There are systematic differences between these two Japanese talkers in their productions of the I ris and Ills. Jl makes a minimal and irregular distinction between the two and this minimal distinction may be due to coarticulatory effects, as discussed above. Talker J2 on the other hand , is clearly attempting to make an articulatory distinction but seems to be influenced by Japanese articulatory habits . The "r-1 problem" may be related to early perceptual experience as well as to methods used to teach English to native speakers of Japanese. That early perceptual experience is important in achieving coordinated speech movements is clear from reports on the speech development of the deaf and hard of hearing. That auditory information is essential to the production process is also evidenced in reports on speech production deficits in the postlingually adventitiously deaf. The fact that Japanese speakers have limited or no experience with the acoustic and articulatory events related to the production of the American English I r I may lead to difficulties in acquiring the behavioral patterns necessary for later acquisition . The late development of I r I in American English speaking children, the common misarticulations of I r I and Ill, and the degeneration of I r I in the adventitiously deaf, may suggest that the production strategies for these sounds are particularly dependent for acquisition and maintenance on auditory experience. The articulatory problems of children with chronic otitis media and hearing loss also support this position . The ability to discriminate non-native speech contrasts is present in infants and shows evidence of decline by age 4 (see Werker & Tees, 1983). Potentially related are studies by Gottlieb (1980) who has shown that certain auditory experiences are essential to the acquisition and maintenance of certain behaviors in ducklings. As for Gottlieb's ducklings, certain experiences may act to facilitate learning at a given sensitive period. If these experiences are not present, acquisition of certain behaviors may be delayed or achieved
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only with great difficulty. The rarity of achieving native-like language acquired as an adult may lend support to this. The relation between difficult-to-learn distinctions and early linguistic experience may be important both theoretically and practically. Results reported based on these three subjects must certainly not be overinterpreted. However, these three subjects are clearly distinguishable in terms of their experience with American English and in their perceptually judged American English. The data are at least heuristically compelling in that they are interpretable in terms of the experience and proficiency of the talkers with American English. More extensive studies of the production and perception of groups of Japanese speakers with varying degrees of experience with American English may be useful for understanding the relationship between specific aspects of early perceptual experience and speech production. Hopefully a non-invasive technique can be found appropriate for such a study so that a large amount of data for a large number of talkers can be collected. This study was supported by grant PHS NIH #07555 and NIH #2T32NS07040-7 to M.I.T. References Giles, S. & Moll, K. (1975) . A cineflourographic study of selected allophones of English Ill. Phonetica, 31,206-277 . Gottlieb, G. (1980) . Development of species specific identification in ducklings: VI. Specific embryonic experience required to maintain species and typical perception in Peking duckings·. Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psy chology , 94 , 578-586. Isshiki, M. (1957) . A comparative analysis of the English and the Japanese consonant phonemes. In : Study of Sounds. Articles Contributed in Commemoration of the Founding of the Phonetic Society of Japan.pp. 391-416. Kohmoto, S. (1965) . Applied English Phonology: Teaching of English Pronunciation to the Native Japanese Speaker. Tokyo : Tanaka Press. MacKain, K. S. , Best, C. T. & Strange, W. (1981) . Categorical perception of English lr I and Ill by Japanese bilinguals. Applied Psycholinguistics, 2, 369-390. Miyawaki, K., Strange, W., Verbrugge, R., Liberman, A. M., Jenkins, J. J. & Fujimura, 0. (1975). An effect of linguistic experience : The discrimination of I r I and I 11 by native speakers of Japanese and English. Perception and Psychophysics 18, 331-340. Mochizuki, M. (1982) . The identification of I r I and /II in natural and synthesized speech. Journal of Phonetics, 9, 283-303. Nemser, W. & Guhasz, F. (1971). An Experimental Study of Phonological Interferences in the English of Hungarians. Indiana University Publications, Uralic and Altaic Studies, Vol. 5. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. Price, P. J. (1981) . A cross linguistic study of flaps in Japanese and in American English. University of Pennsylvania PhD Thesfs. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Microfilms. Scott, C. (1966) . Preliminaries to English Teaching. Essays for the teaching of English in Japan. Tokyo: The English Language Educational Council. Sudo, M. M., Kiritani, S. & Sawashima, M. (1983). The articulation of Japanese intervocalic ldl and lrl: An electro-palatographic study. Annual Bulletin of Research Institute of Logopedics and Phoniatrics, 17,55-59. Werker, J. F. & Tees, R. C. (1983). Developmental changes across childhood in the perception of nonnative speech sounds. Canadian Journal of Psychology 37 , 278-286 . Zawadzski, P. & Kuehn, D. (1980). A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English lr 1. Phonetica, 37 , 253-266. Zimmermann, G. N. (1980) . Articulatory dynamics of fluent utterances of stutterers and nonstutterers, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, 23, 95-107 .