Does the native language use of duration affect the perception of non-native length contrasts?

This study compared native Italian (NI) and American English (NE) speakers’ abilities to perceive Japanese phonemic length contrasts. Japanese has both vowel and consonant length contrasts, Italian has only consonant length contrast, and English has neither. The study examined to which extent the differential use of duration in their native languages affects their abilities to perceive length contrasts in an unfamiliar language. Twenty-two mono- lingual NI speakers perceived Japanese words in isolation and in sentences and were asked to identify the number of moras in target words, e.g., /o.do.t.ta/ as four moras. Their test scores were compared to those of 18 NE participants (Hirata 2004) in an analysis of variance. Group (NE, NI) was a between-subjects factor, and context isolation, sentences and word type long vowels, geminates, combination, and short segments were within- subjects factors. While there was no main effect of group (NI: 44.6%; NE: 39.5%), there was a significant three-way interaction. The NI group scored significantly higher than the NE group on words with geminates spoken in sentences (43.3 vs 31.1%). Results are discussed as to whether the perception of non-native length contrasts is driven by language-specific ability (McAllister et al. 2002) or by more general auditory ability (Bohn 1995).