Unexpected findings from L2 speech research can help us understand how humans process vowels

Research on nonnative speakers’ vowel production and perception has provided us with a number of surprising insights on how learners cope with nonnative vowels. Three of these initially unexpected, yet later solidly replicated, findings will be presented: (1) A decline in intelligibility of nonnative vowels as general proficiency improves (when an increase in intelligibility will be expected), (2) the use of acoustic cues in L2 vowel perception that cannot be attributed to transfer from the native language, and that are nonfunctional in the L2, and (3) the maintenance from infant speech perception in adult cross-language vowel perception of a bias favoring peripheral vowels. This presentation will discuss implications of these findings for our understanding of how vowel categories coexist in the minds of multilinguals, and of universally (native-language independent) preferred ways of vowel perception.