The Role of Speech Perception in French Nasal Vowel Adaptation: Phonemic vs. Acoustic Processing

The present study examines the role of speech perception during the adaptation of French nasal vowels in Korean and English. French nasal vowels undergo the process called ‘unpacking’ when they are integrated into Korean and English, by which they are adapted as a sequence of an oral vowel followed by a nasal consonant. In Korean, a nasal consonant occurring after an oral vowel is consistently realized as /ŋ/ while it is realized as /n/, /m/, or /ŋ/ in English. It was found in the present study that such adaptations of French nasal vowels in Korean and English were more closely related to phonemic perceptual processing rather than acoustic perceptual processing. In addition, phonemic uniformity and orthography were also at play in the place realization patterns of a nasal consonant occurring after an oral vowel during the unpacking process in Korean and English. The results of the present study suggest that teachers need to consider such various factors influencing L2 sound perception to improve L2 learners’ listening comprehension abilities.