Native phonotactic interference in L2 vowel processing: Mouse-tracking reveals cognitive conflicts during identification

Abstract

Regularities of phoneme distribution in a listener's native language (L1), i.e., L1 phonotactics, can at times induce interference in their perception of second language (L2) phonemes and phonemic strings. This paper presents a study examining phonological interference experienced by L1 Mandarin listeners in identifying the English/i/vowel in three consonantal contexts/p, f, w/, which have different distributional patterns in Mandarin phonology:/pi/is a licit sequence in Mandarin, */fi/is illicit due to co-occurrence restrictions, and */wi/is illicit due to Mandarin contextual allophony. L1 Mandarin listeners completed two versions of an identification experiment (keystroke and mouse-trackin..