Effects of word frequency and familiarity on perceptual epenthesis

This study aimedto examine the effects of word frequency and familiarity on second-language (L2)learners’ perceptual vowel epenthesis in words that violate the phonotactics of theirnative language. To this end, we conducted two lexical decision tests on 55 participants,comprised of native English controls (n = 19), and native speakers of Korean (n = 18)and Chinese (n = 18) learning English as an L2. During the two tests, one of whichfocused on the onset and the other on the coda, the participants listened to each wordand indicated whether it was a real English word or not. The stimuli consisted of baseitems (e.g., please, week), which varied in frequency, and test (e.g., p[ʊ]lease, week[ɨ])and control (p[ɪ]lease, week[ɑ]) items, which were created by inserting an extra vowelto the base items. It is well known that high-frequency words are more likely to beaccepted as real words than low-frequency words. If L2 learners have difficultydistinguishing between stimuli with vowel epenthesis (e.g., p[ʊ]lease) and those without(e.g., please), they should accept high-frequency words with vowel epenthesis (e.g.,p[ʊ]lease) as real words more often than low-frequency words with vowel epenthesis(e.g., p[ʊ]lier). This was confirmed in the onset position, but not in the coda position. The word familiarity results were in line with the frequency results. These findings addto the body of literature by demonstrating the role of word frequency/familiarity inL2 learners’ perceptual epenthesis.