Prosodic location modulates listeners' perception of novel German sounds

Interaction of sounds on the melodic tier (segments) with prosodic and phonotactic structure (syllabic context) in cross-language perception is not explicitly addressed by models of second language phonology (e.g., Perceptual Assimilation Model: Best, 1995). At initial stages of foreign language exposure, learners rely on position-specific phonetic detail more than native speakers or advanced learners, thus mappings according to prosodic and phonotactic context are a crucial factor in early interlanguage phonological development. In a perceptual assimilation experiment, we manipulated syllable position (onset vs. coda) and phonotactic complexity (simple vs. complex codas) in phonotactically similar languages for auditory presentation of six German obstruents (i.e., familiar [h k ʃ] and novel [ç x p͡f]) to native speakers of American English who had no previous exposure to German. By means of weighted proportions (Park & de Jong, 2008) and overlap scores (Levy, 2009), we found that [h k ʃ p͡f] mapped categorically to English orthographic categories <h>, <k>, <sh>, and <f>, respectively, in all positions, whereas the novel fricatives [ç x] exhibited distinct mapping patterns from each other, from other sounds, and according to syllable position. These results demonstrate profound influences of both low-level prosodic and phonotactic contexts on perceptual assimilation of novel sounds.