Acoustically distinct and perceptually ambiguous: ʔayʔaǰuθəm (Salish) fricatives.

ʔayʔaǰuθəm (Comox-Sliammon) is a Central Salish language spoken in British Columbia with a large fricative inventory. Previous impressionistic descriptions of ʔayʔaǰuθəm have noted perceptual ambiguity of select anterior fricatives. This paper provides an auditory-acoustic description of the four anterior fricatives /θ s ʃ ɬ/ in the Mainland dialect of ʔayʔaǰuθəm.

Prior Pronunciation Knowledge Bootstraps Word Learning.

Learners often struggle with L2 sounds, yet little is known about the role of prior pronunciation knowledge and explicit articulatory training in language acquisition. This study asks if existing pronunciation knowledge can bootstrap word learning, and whether short-term audiovisual articulatory training for tongue position with and without a production component has an effect on lexical retention. Participants were trained and tested on stimuli with perceptually salient segments that are challenging to produce.