Examining the Lexical Effect on Categorical Perception of Stops in Taiwan Southern Min

Examining the Lexical Effect on Categorical Perception of Stops in Taiwan Southern Min

The goal of this study is to examine if there is a word superiority effect on perception of three-way contrast of stops in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM). Based on Ganong's (1980) findings that English participants showed a significant lexical effect in phonetic perception, I hypothesize that there exists a difference in perception between real words and nonwords in TSM. The prediction is that the categorical boundary shifts as lexical status plays a role in perception of stops. Experiment 1 was conducted as a neutral set of perception of TSM bilabial stops b-p-ph. In experiment 2, cases of“nonword-word-nonword”set along the b-p-ph continuum were conducted. Results showed that real words corresponded to a wider range of VOT in the continuum compared to the neutral pattern. The categorical boundaries (both between /b/ and /p/ and between /p/ and /ph/) were found to shift away from the real word sides towards the nonword sides. The lexical effect may be explained by parallel processing in which a higher level of processing (lexical level) interacts with a lower level (phonemic level) in speech perception.