Lexical encoding and perception of palatalized consonants in L2 Russian

Abstract

Previous studies have investigated the link between lexical encoding and perception by analyzing contrasts that differ in primary features of articulation, e.g., /l/ vs. /ɹ/. The goal of this study was to explore how the lexical encoding of contrasts that differ in the secondary feature of palatalization, e.g., /l/ vs. /lʲ/, was affected by learners’ perceptual abilities. The participants in the study were 40 American English learners of Russian and 10 Russian native speakers. Error rates on an auditory word-picture matching task measured learners’ ability to encode and retrieve words with the plain/palatalized contrast. Learners’ scores on an ABX task assessed their perceptual abilities. Results suggest that learners did not have clearly separated lexical representations for words with palatalized and plain consonants. They accepted most non-words as possible productions of the target words, especially in the word-final position, whereas Russian native speakers did not. The ability to perceive the contrast between plain and palatalized consonants was found to be helpful in establishing separate lexical representations for words with this contrast among advanced learners, even though it did not guarantee that words with palatalized consonants would be encoded and retrieved as such.