The perception of estonian vowel categories by estonian L1 and spanish L1 listeners

• Katrik Leppik ^[1]
  1. [1] University of Tartu

     University of Tartu

     Tartu linn, Estonia

     
• Localización: Tendencias actuales en fonética experimental: Cruce de disciplinas en el centenario del Manual de Pronunciación Española (Tomás Navarro Tomás) / coord. por Victoria Marrero Aguiar, Eva Estebas Vilaplana, 2017, ISBN 978-84-697-7855-5, págs. 240-244
• Idioma: inglés
• Enlaces
  • Texto Completo Libro (pdf)
• Resumen

  • This paper studies the perception of Estonian vowel categories by Estonian L1 and Spanish L1 listeners. Spanish has 5 vowels /i, e, a, o, u/. Estonian has 9 vowels /i, y, e, ø, æ, ɑ, o, ɤ, u/. The vowels /i, u, e, o/ are identical in both languages, while Estonian /æ/ and /ɑ/ are similar to Spanish /a/, Estonian /y, ø, ɤ/ do not have corresponding vowels in Spanish. In addition to the crowded vowel space, Estonian has a rather complex three-way quantity system. A vowel categorization task was conducted to investigate the perception of Estonian vowels. The results show that Spanish L1 listeners have difficulties in categorizing both new (/ɤ, ø/) and similar (/æ/) vowels. Also, Spanish L1 listeners’ reaction time is longer than that of the Estonian L1 listeners.