Misperception of Italian Singleton and Geminate Obstruents by Native Japanese Speakers

Abstract

Misperception of voiced and voiceless obstruent length in Italian by native Italian and native Japanese speakers was compared. Both Italian and Japanese use consonant length contrastively. This may lead to the expectation that there is a positive first language transfer for the native Japanese speakers. While the native Japanese listeners’ misperception of Italian length categories was limited, they still made significantly more errors than the native Italian listeners. The native Japanese listeners’ length misperception was more noticeable when the word-medial obstruent was short than when it was long and when it was voiced than when it was voiceless.