ARTICLE IN PRESS

Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373

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Evidence for featural units in the acquisition of speech production skills:

Linguistic structure in foreign accent
Kenneth de Jonga, Yen-Chen Haoa,, Hanyong Parkb
a
Department of Linguistics, Indiana University, Memorial Hall 322, Bloomington, IN 47405, USA
b
Speech Research Laboratory, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Indiana University, USA
Received 2 December 2008; received in revised form 16 May 2009; accepted 7 June 2009

Abstract

This study examines correlations in accuracy of the production of one set of segments with accuracy in segments that share a featural
contrast in Korean EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners. Results indicate that accuracy rates for segment sets that
share gestures in production tend to correlate, while segments that contrast in the same feature, but require the acquisition of different
gestures do not correlate. Data here are from two tasks, a reading task and a mimicry task. Correlation results are similar across the two
tasks, though a larger range of inter-subject differences in overall accuracy is evident in the mimicry task. Comparison of correlation
patterns with previously published correlation patterns in perceptual identification indicates that patterns differ for perception and
production, indicating that the structure of the skill sets, and hence, the acquisitional units for production and perception are different.
r 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction: Segmental relationships in second language
production
Developing spoken communication in a second language
(L2) requires learning a large array of motor skills in
production, an array of perceptual skills, and internaliza-
tion of the system which governs spoken behavior and how
it is to be perceived. The research reported in this paper
examines the acquisition of L2 production skills necessary
for spoken communication. One of the fundamental issues
in understanding how L2 production skills develop is that
of determining what constitutes a skill.
In many models used in the experimental and quantita-
tive phonological literature, the targets of analysis are very
specific, commonly the segments that appear in particular
phonological environments. For example, the Speech
Learning Model (SLM) developed by Flege and colleagues
(Flege, 1987, 1988, 1995, and later variants) seeks to
characterize accented production in an L2 on a phone-by-
phone basis. Flege, Munro, and Skelton (1992), for
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: yehao@indiana.edu (Y.-C. Hao).
example, exclusively examine the production of word-final
/t/ and /d/ by Mandarin and Spanish learners of English.
Thus, the unit of interest is the particular allophonic
variants of /t/ and /d/ in that position. Similarly, Flege
and Hillenbrand (1986) examine how French, Swedish, and
Finnish learners of English perceive and produce the
contrast between /s/ and /z/ in syllable final (coda) position.
The substance of the SLM is that production skills are
acquired with respect first of all to the transfer of categories
from the native language (L1). The likelihood of transfer is
modulated by the degree of perceptual similarity between
the segments in the two languages. While the SLM focuses
on transfer effects, other models of production learning,
especially the Markedness Differential Hypothesis (MDH,
Eckman, 1977) focus on aspects of the skills themselves.
Eckman’s original insight was that various segments entail
a greater degree of difficulty at some level that makes them
less commonly used in the world’s languages. This
property, called markedness, then tends also to show up
in the learning of production skills, where more difficult
skills tend to be acquired later on in the learning process.
de Jong, Silbert, and Park (2009) noted a somewhat
stronger interpretation of the MDH is that there is an

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doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2009.06.001
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
358 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
implicational relationship between structures, such that it is
actually necessary to acquire a less marked structure before
one can acquire a more marked structure. This stronger
version can be called the Implicational Markedness
Hypothesis (IMH).
Models assumed in other L2 phonological research,
which we call generalized featural models, differ from the
SLM and MDH, in that the units of acquisition are general
properties of the two languages’ phonological systems.
Generalized phonological properties, such as prosodic
position or the presence of a featural contrast, are used
to predict the abilities of L2 acquirers with regard to
specific individual segments. Such models predominate the
linguistically oriented literature. For example, Hancin-
Bhatt (1994) classified L1’s into two groups with respect to
how learners will perceive and produce English dental
fricatives; this classification is on the basis of features that
generalize across the whole consonant system, dividing up
the phoneme inventory of the language.
While some models of production like Task Dynamics
(Saltzman & Munhall, 1989) can be used to model very
specific learning of particular segments in particular
prosodic locations, the general thrust of models such as
Articulatory Phonology (Browman & Goldstein, 1986,
1988), a ‘conceptual front-end’ for the Task Dynamics
model, is to treat particular allophones as the intersection
of a set of specific gestures and how they are coordinated
with one another. Hence, examples such as the post-vocalic
voicing contrast examined in Flege and Hillenbrand (1986),
and Flege et al. (1992) would require the learning of
general gestural coordination and dynamics that give rise
to voicing contrasts across the obstruents with a voicing
contrast. These coordinations would cross-cut all of the
segments which have the same voicing contrast, for
example, generalizing across labial and dental fricatives.
However, the acquisition of the English dental fricatives
would require learning oral gestures specific to the dentals,
and thus would likely be treated as a more particular skill
acquisition affecting only dental fricatives. Therefore, in a
Task Dynamics framework, we would not expect the
learning of dental fricatives to impinge upon the learning of
labial fricatives, since labial fricatives require a different
gesture.
The tack taken in the current research is to examine
patterns of variation across a set of learners, expecting that,
if the units of acquisition are not segments, but are some
property that generalizes across segments, then the
segments that share this unit of acquisition will tend to
be better learned as a group by certain learners relative to
other learners. To clarify our manner of speaking about
these patterns, we will refer to units of acquisition as skills,
perceptual or production action sub-systems that are
apparent in the execution of a perceptual or production
task. Subjects who have developed a particular skill, then,
are expected to be systematically better with a particular
aspect of particular segments that involve that skill.
Learners who have better acquired this skill, however,
might not exhibit better performance with other segments
that do not involve that skill. A major question posed by
the current paper, then, is the degree to which perception
and production skills, as evident in cross-subject accuracy
patterns, are the same.
Perceptual identification skills were evaluated in de Jong
et al. (2009) by examining cross-listener differences in
identification accuracy. In that study, the identification
accuracies of Korean EFL learners were examined to
determine which segmental contrasts tended to be learned
together. College-age Korean learners of English in Korea
were presented with productions of English consonants in
isolated nonsense mono- and di-syllables. The targets of
analysis in de Jong et al. (2009) were coronal and labial
stops and fricatives, placed in pre-vocalic and post-vocalic
position in monosyllables, and in the medial position of di-
syllables. The approach taken was to examine variation
among the listeners in their accuracies with different sets of
segments, with the expectation that accuracies for one set
of contrasts should correlate with accuracies in another set
of contrasts that rely on the same perceptual skill. Thus, if
distinguishing /f/ from /p/ involves the same skill as
distinguishing /y/ from /t/, we would expect individuals
who are relatively good at distinguishing the labials to be
relatively good at distinguishing the coronals. However,
accuracies in a contrasting pair that relies on different
perceptual skills from those used for another pair would
not necessarily correlate.
This correlation patterning is what was found. Korean
learners who were particularly accurate at differentiating
one set of stops from fricatives were also more accurate at
differentiating other stops from fricatives. Thus, for
example, the individual’s accuracy rates for differentiating
coronal stops from fricatives correlated with their accuracy
rates for differentiating labial stops from fricatives.
Similarly, their accuracy rates for differentiating stops
from fricatives correlated across prosodic positions; i.e.
their accuracy rates in pre-vocalic position correlated with
those in intervocalic and post-vocalic positions. This
systematic pattern suggested that some individuals were
good at the manner contrast, regardless of the specific
segments or prosodic positions involved, and hence the
results were interpreted as indicating a single perceptual
skill (or skill set) for the manner contrast.
Such correlations were not found for different featural
contrasts; for example, accuracy for the manner contrast
never correlated with that of the voicing contrast in the
group examined in de Jong et al. (2009). Hence, perceiving
voicing contrasts was interpreted as constituting a different
perceptual skill than perceiving the manner contrast. Some
listeners were better with the voicing contrast, but this did
not entail they were also better with the manner contrast.
One notable deviation from this feature generalization
pattern was also found, however. A lack of correlation was
found within the voicing contrast when prosodic location
was examined. While voicing accuracy for different
segments generally correlated with other segments, voicing
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
accuracy in onset position did not correlate with voicing
accuracy in intervocalic or coda position. Similarly, voicing
accuracy for consonants placed between vowels (intervo-
calic position – VCV) did not correlate with that for
consonants at the end following a vowel (coda position –
VC), and neither of these voicing accuracies correlated with
that for consonants placed at the beginning before the
vowel (onset accuracy – CV). This pattern, in contrast with
the pervasive correlation for manner accuracies across
these prosodic positions, suggested the existence of three
different voicing perception skills, one for onset position,
one for intervocalic position, and a third one for the coda
position. The interpretation given for this pattern in de
Jong et al. (2009) was that the laryngeal contrasts in
Korean are affected by allophonic rules that target
intervocalic and coda positions. Intervocalic lax stops in
Korean are extensively shortened and voiced, perhaps
leading the Korean learners to have different category
boundaries for the intervocalic and onset stops, each of
which would have to be adjusted for the English contrast.
In addition, laryngeal neutralization rules target Korean
stops in coda position, creating an additional problem for
the acquisition of laryngeal contrasts.
The current research uses this same cross-subject correla-
tional approach for examining the nature of production skills
in a learner population. That is, it seeks to evaluate whether
there is evidence in patterns of accuracies in L2 productions
that would indicate interpretable units of acquisition that
generalize across segments. Three hypothetical results are
evaluated. (1) Skills could be developed independently
for each segment. (2) The generalization pattern could be
the same as found for the perception data in de Jong et al.
(2009), suggesting the same units of acquisition for
production and perception. (3) The generalization pattern
could indicate production-specific considerations, as re-
flected in gestural representations, such as posited in Task
Dynamics (Saltzman & Munhall, 1989); contrasts which
share either gestural units, or coordination rules which
combine various gestures into coherent syllable patterns, will
act as units of acquisition.
In order to distinguish one of the generalized models
from a segmentally specific model, we take a segmentally
specific model as the null hypothesis. If the production
skills for a consonant bear no relationship to the
production skills for another consonant, we expect that
there will be no necessary correlation between a talker’s
accuracy in producing one consonant and their accuracy
with other segments. If, however, a single production skill
is involved with different segments, we expect a talker’s
accuracy with one consonant contrast to be correlated with
their accuracy with other consonants that share the same
production skill. Note that the logic of the null hypothesis
used here means that the lack of a correlation does not rule
out the presence of a skill that does generalize across
segments, since other factors, whether ceiling or floor
effects or just general noise in the data might mask the
presence of a relationship.
359
As examples, the presence of correlations between
accuracy in producing voicing contrasts for coronal
consonants and accuracy in producing voicing contrasts
for labial consonants would eliminate the null hypothesis
that voicing production is learned independently for
coronal and labial consonants, and support a model in
which voicing is a unit in the process of acquiring the
production system of the L2. Such an outcome seems
particularly plausible in the case of voicing, since
voicing is generally modeled as involving separate glottal
and oral gestures and a generalized rule for coordinating
the glottal with the oral articulation. If learners are
acquiring the glottal gestures and the general rule for
coordination, then they should show correlated increments
in production accuracy across the different places of
articulation. For manner contrasts, however, such an
outcome would not be predicted by Task Dynamic
accounts that have different oral gestures for different
fricatives and stops.
The current research also examines the effect of prosodic
position. The logic of the analysis is the same. For example,
if the production of each segment involves the same skill
regardless of position, and if a talker is particularly good at
distinguishing stops from fricatives in onset position, they
should also be relatively good in other positions. Here, the
initial hypothesis from Task Dynamic modeling would be
that contrasts would generalize across prosodic positions;
since gestural schemata in previous research often required
scaling and retiming of the same gesture. However, the
effect of scaling and retiming should not be under-
estimated; it is quite possible that such effects render the
production skills for a segment in one position to be so
different as to be functionally unrelated to those skills in
another position. Also, with the voicing contrast, the
glottal gestures themselves are often quite different in
different prosodic positions.
Complicating these predictions is the fact that perceptual
factors are clearly involved in the acquisition of speech
motor skills (e.g., as in the general model presented in
Guenther et al., 1999). Hence, another question to be
addressed in the current research is the degree to which
accuracies in production are modulated by perceptual
deficits. In the current study, the results of two production
tasks are compared. One task involves simple reading, and
the other task is a mimicry task, involving both production
and auditory perception skills.
However, there are other reasons besides a unified skill
set that might explain a correlation between the accuracy
rates for two sets of consonants. One obvious cause for a
correlation would be that some acquirers are simply more
experienced with the L2 than are others, and so their
production skills across the board are better than are
others’. Thus, production accuracy for any two consonants
will be correlated. To test for this interpretation of
correlations, we examine a variety of sets of consonants,
expecting that sets of consonants that share a skill set will
systematically exhibit stronger correlations.
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360 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373

2. Methods generally exhibits more aspiration than its English counter-

The experiment includes two tasks: (1) Reading: Korean
learners of English read a list of English nonsense words
written in IPA orthography. (2) Mimicry: Four American
English speakers read a list of English nonsense words
written in IPA. Their recordings were presented to Korean
learners of English, and the learners repeated each stimulus
the American speakers produced.
2.1. Reading task
2.1.1. Stimuli
The stimuli are nonsense words consisting of all
combinations of the vowel />/ and the consonants given
in the top half of Table 1. These consonants are all of the
voiced and voiceless, coronal and labial, stops and
non-sibilant fricatives, as arrayed in a 2  2  2 matrix in
Table 1. The consonants appeared alone in each of four
prosodic locations, either before a vowel (Onset Position –
C>, e.g., ‘pa’), after a vowel (Coda Position – >C, e.g. ‘op’),
or between two vowels. The consonants between two
vowels either had primary stress on the vowel preceding the
consonant (Post-Stress Position – >!C>, e.g., ‘oppa’), or on
the vowel following the consonant (Pre-Stress Position –
>C>!, e.g. ‘apah’).
The eight segments examined here, /p b t d f v y j/, can be
categorized into two general classes with respect to the
Korean phonological system. Korean anterior stops
and fricatives are presented at the bottom of Table 1.
The English stops are all similar to stop segments in
Korean. Korean has labial and coronal stops, though the
voicing contrast is somewhat different from that in English.
While American English stops in onset position exhibit a
two-way contrast between aspirated and unaspirated,
Korean stops exhibit a three-way contrast between
aspirated, fortis, and lenis. The aspirated Korean stop
Table 1
Segments examined in current analyses and comparable Korean segments.
English
Coronal Labial
Voiced Voiceless Voiced
Stops /d/ /t/ /b/
Non-sibilant fricatives /j/ /y/ /v/
part, and the voiced English stop corresponds to the two
unaspirated Korean categories that contrast a lenis stop
with a relatively soft release characteristic and low
fundamental frequency on the following vowel, and a
fortis stop with a sharp release and high fundamental
frequency in the following vowel (Ahn & Iverson, 2004;
Han & Weitzman, 1970; Jun, 1998; Kang & Guion,
2006; Kim, 1970; Oglesbee, 2008; Park, 2003; Silva,
2006). Though the match across the languages is not exact,
previous work shows that the voiced English stop is
generally identified as either a fortis or a lenis Korean
stop, and Korean listeners tend to subjectively rate the
match as quite good (Park & de Jong, 2008; Schmidt,
1996). Therefore the four English stops in the stimuli are
considered to have similar counterparts in Korean.
Korean has no non-sibilant fricatives except for /h/, and
previous work (Park & de Jong, 2008; Schmidt, 1996) has
shown that Korean learners vary considerably as to which
Korean consonant label best fits the English fricatives,
both individually and across listeners, and they have lower
confidence ratings when asked to apply the Korean labels
to these fricatives, than when they label English stops.
Hence the four English non-sibilant fricatives do not seem
to correspond well to any sound in Korean.
With respect to the prosodic positions, Korean allows all
of the consonant contrasts to appear in pre-vocalic and
intervocalic position, but there are a number of allophonic
rules in English and in Korean affecting the intervocalic
position. English has reduction rules in the post-stress
environment, and Korean lenis stops in intervocalic
position are shortened and voiced throughout
(Jun, 1996), much like post-stress non-coronal stops in
English. However, Korean does not have a stress-accent
system like English, so it is difficult to evaluate how
Korean listeners will treat the two intervocalic positions.
While various scholars have indicated subjective differ-
ences in the perceived prominence of different syllables,
their judgments often contradict one another and are
generally not verified by experimental data (de Jong, 1994,
2000; Lim & de Jong, 1999; Sohn, 1999, p. 197). Some
varieties do have a limited quantity system that is some-
times analyzed as indicating a contrast in stress, but
quantity has not been noted to interact with segmental
allophonic variation. Korean also allows consonants in
Voiceless coda position as well, but the number of contrasts is greatly
reduced by a variety of neutralization rules that collapse
/p/ productions of fricatives and stops of the three different
/f/
laryngeal types to single voiceless stops.

Korean 2.1.2. Talkers

Twenty talkers, 15 female and 5 male, were recruited
Coronal Labial
from the undergraduate student population at Kyonggi
Fortis Lenis Aspirated Fortis Lenis Aspirated University, in Suwon (located near Seoul), Korea. All were
h
in their mid-twenties (between 23 and 28, with the mean
Stops /t’/ /t/ /t / /p’/ /p/ /ph/
Fricatives /s’/ /s/
24.35), and none had resided for more than three months
in an English-speaking country prior to the experiment.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
Each of them was recruited from basic level English classes,
and all of them identified themselves as English majors.
With their experience with English classes in primary and
secondary school, this would mean that they have extensive
experience with written English, though commensurate
experience with spoken English is rare. Hence, each of
them would probably be classified as an inexperienced
learner, with respect to native English spoken productions.
However, analyses presented below indicate the presence of
a broad range of production abilities among the talkers.
2.1.3. Procedure
The 20 Korean learners were seated in a quiet room
individually, and presented the stimuli written twice from a
randomized list, and were asked to produce each item once.
For all of the segments, except the dental fricatives, the
consonants were represented with the typical orthographic
symbols. For the dental fricatives, the voiced and voiceless
segments were indicated with IPA symbols. Each talker
was checked informally concerning their familiarity with
the written IPA symbols, and all talkers were familiar
with the symbols through their instruction in English.
In addition, after each prompt, the consonant value was
also indicated with a list of three keywords with the
consonant appearing in different prosodic positions. In the
Korean school system, students typically learn English
using the IPA symbols for the dental fricatives; the
pronunciation of English words is commonly included
with words targeted for learning in the textbooks used in
Korean secondary schools. This familiarity was also
evident in their responses in the parallel perceptual study
in de Jong et al. (2009). Stress was also indicated on the di-
syllabic forms with an acute accent, again following the
typical approach used in English instruction in Korea.
The productions were recorded digitally onto a Sony
MZ-R909 mini-disc recorder in non-compressed mode by
means of a stand-alone Sony ECM-MS907 microphone.
The total tokens for each talker are 8 (consonants)  4
(prosodic locations)  2 repetitions ¼ 64.
2.2. Mimicry task
2.2.1. Mimicry production stimuli
Four speakers of American English in their late twenties
who grew up and resided at the time of recording in the
northern Midwest produced the stimuli written in IPA.
The stimuli were the eight segments in four prosodic
locations, and each combination appeared twice in the list.
Thus the total amount of tokens for each American
speaker is 8 (consonants)  4 (prosodic locations)  2
(repetitions) ¼ 128. The American speakers were seated
in a sound-treated room in the Indiana University
Phonetics Lab and recorded onto DAT using a free-
standing microphone (Electro Voice RE50). The talkers
were familiarized with the orthographic stimuli before
recording to ensure that they knew what each of the letters
indicated and how the orthography cued the various
361
prosodic locations and stress patterns, and they were
monitored for accurate interpretation of each stimulus.
Recordings were digitized at 44.1 kHz and target nonsense
words were digitally spliced, amplitude normalized, and
randomized. The edited stimuli were presented to Korean
talkers.
2.2.2. Talkers
The same 20 Korean talkers in the Reading task
participated in the Mimicry task. For half of the talkers,
the reading production task preceded the mimicry task,
and for the other half of them, it followed the mimicry task.
2.2.3. Procedure
The Korean talkers were seated in a quiet room
individually, and presented with the stimuli over head-
phones. Each subject was presented each of the produc-
tions once, and was asked to repeat each stimulus. Stimuli
were presented at a comfortable pace with five-second
intervals. The productions were recorded digitally onto a
Sony MZ-R909 mini-disc recorder in non-compressed
mode by means of a stand-alone Sony ECM-MS907
microphone. A block of five items, randomly selected from
the stimuli, was run first, and the listeners were asked if
they had any questions about the procedure. These practice
items were not included in the analyses. Items were
randomized in blocks, with four different randomizations
used for the 20 subjects.
2.2.4. Assessing accuracy in Reading and Mimicry tasks
The productions of the twenty talkers in Reading and
Mimicry were divided into five blocks of four talkers each.
The productions for each block were randomized and
presented to 10 native American English speakers,
recruited mostly from the undergraduate population at
Indiana University. Hence, there were 50 native listeners,
yielding 10 evaluations per Korean production. The
listeners were seated in a quiet room in groups of 1–5,
and presented with the stimuli over a centrally located
loudspeaker. The listeners were presented each of the
productions once, and were asked to identify the consonant
in each stimulus by circling the appropriate Roman
consonant symbol from a list of 15 alternatives presented
on a paper response form. The 15 alternatives were chosen
on the basis of pilot work to the Identification task
presented in de Jong et al. (2009) with Korean listeners in
the United States. Along with each response alternative
was a keyword, which was chosen to exemplify each
segment. The response alternatives and keywords are given
in Table 2. Also, listeners were provided with the option of
indicating a write-in response (Other:___), which listeners
used rarely (a total of 2.9% of the responses). The current
analysis, then, includes 5 (blocks)  4 (Korean talkers)  10
(American listeners)  8 (segments)  4 (prosodic locations)  2
(repetitions) ¼ 12,800 Mimicry responses, and 5 (blocks)  4
(Korean talkers)  10 (American listeners)  8 (segments)  4
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
362 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
Table 2
Orthographic response alternatives.
dog tell thin that fall vase sit zip
d t y j f v s z
(prosodic locations) ¼ 6400 Reading responses, totaling
19,200 data points.
2.2.5. Testing for generalization
To test the generalized model, we examine accuracy
patterns with respect to a null hypothesis that different
segments involve no common skills. We determine whether
the accuracy for one set of segments correlates with the
accuracy for another set of segments that contrast in the
same feature. If each segment involves its own individual
production skill, the development of abilities for one
segment set need not parallel that of abilities for another
segment set that contrasts in the same feature. However, all
segments that share a production skill should develop in
parallel. Common gestural skills, thus, predict that listeners
who are better at a gestural distinction in one set of
segments (e.g., the voicing contrast between /p/ and /b/)
will also be better at another parallel set (e.g., the voicing
contrast between /t/ and /d/). It is not necessary that the
actual accuracies for any two parallel sets will be the same,
because the instantiation of the contrast in the acoustic
signal for one pair is not necessarily as robust for another
pair. For example, the contrast between /p/ and /f/ is
systematically easier for native English listeners to differ-
entiate than that for /b/ and /v/ (Silbert & de Jong, in
review). However, what is necessary is that the abilities
develop in a correlated fashion. It should also be noted
that, since the null hypothesis is that segments involve only
individually specific skills, a lack of correlation will fail to
provide evidence for a generalized skill, but does not
eliminate it as a hypothesis.
Accuracies for each set of consonants were determined
as the proportion of times an English listener selected a
segment on the response sheet that matched the target
segment in terms of the feature in question. For example,
when comparing voicing accuracy for labials and coronals,
two variables are generated. Labial voicing accuracy is the
proportion of times an English listener selected a voiced
segment when presented with /v/ or /b/, or selected a
voiceless segment when presented with /f/ or /p/. Coronal
voicing accuracy is the proportion of times English
listeners selected a voiced segment when presented with
/j/ or /d/, or selected a voiceless segment when presented
with /y/ or /t/. The proportions for each talker, then, are
plotted against each other, yielding scatter plots, and the
degree of correlation between the two variables is assessed
using the Pearson r2 statistics, which vary from 0 to 1 and
whose value indicates proportion of variation in one
variable shared with the other variable, from 0% to 100%.
pin ball ship vision hall chop job
p b sh zh h ch j
One obvious problem with interpreting correlations as
evidence for a unitary skill set is that it might be the case
that the various accuracy rates correlate with one another
simply because different talkers vary in overall skill with
spoken English. To test for the strength of general
correlation across different accuracies, we compare corre-
lations of one feature’s accuracy in one set of data with that
feature’s accuracy in a different set (e.g., voiced vs.
voiceless labials compared with voiced vs. voiceless
coronals) with correlations of that feature’s accuracy with
a different feature in a different set (e.g., voiced vs.
voiceless coronals compared with coronal stops vs.
fricatives). Thus, for example, for voicing accuracy with
coronals, we calculate the proportion of times that a
listener chooses a voiced segment when presented with a
Korean production of /d/ or /j/, or chooses a voiceless
segment when presented with a Korean production of /t/ or
/y/, and correlate this with the proportion of times the
listener chooses a fricative when presented with /v/ or /f/,
or chooses a stop when presented with /b/ or /p/. If the
accuracies across features also correlate, it is individual
subject’s English proficiency rather than featural general-
ization that causes the correlation. However, if accuracies
systematically correlate within a feature, but not across
features, this would disconfirm the segmentally specific
model, and provide strong evidence for generalized
learning. The criterion for significance of these correlations
is set at p ¼ .01.
3. Results
3.1. Reading
3.1.1. Manner accuracy correlations across place
of articulation
The first case we examined concerns the development of
non-sibilant fricative production as compared to stop
production. This development would be considered the
development of a ‘new’ skill in the SLM. First we examine
whether Korean learners’ ability to distinguish stops and
fricatives in labials correlates with that in coronals. The
correlation across subjects is plotted in Fig. 1. The x-axis is
the manner accuracy for each subject in labials, while the
y-axis is the manner accuracy in coronals.
As we can see, the correlation is very low, despite a good
distribution of accuracies over 30% of the scale in both
dimensions (r2 ¼ .018). There are some talkers who were
good at both labials and coronals, and some who are bad
at both. But there are also subjects who are good at one
and bad at the other, suggesting that the acquisition of the

K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
1.0
0.9
0.8
Manner accuracy for coronals
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.4
Fig. 1. Accuracy rates for distinguishing coronal stops from fricatives plotted against rates for labials in the Reading task. Each symbol indicates one
talker.
manner contrast in one place of articulation does not entail
the acquisition in another place of articulation. This result
differs from the assumption of generalized featural model. But
if we consider the articulation of these consonants, the result is
not unexpected. The different fricatives require the use of
different articulators and hence, different motor skills. There-
fore when learners acquire the manner contrast among labials,
this ability is not necessarily applicable to coronals.
3.1.2. Manner accuracy across voicing
Fig. 2 plots manner accuracy in voiced segments against
that in voiceless segments. Here, we find a strong
correlation (r2 ¼ .408). Also apparent in Fig. 2, Korean
learners are all better at producing voiceless segments than
voiced segments, as is evident in the large offset of all of the
data points below the diagonal, indicating higher voiceless
accuracy than voiced accuracy. This difference in manner
accuracy for voiced and voiceless segments was also found
in the perceptual data in de Jong et al. (2009), and
corresponds to a difference in accuracy found with native
listeners and talkers in the speech-in-noise data analyzed in
Silbert and de Jong (in review). Thus, the offset from the
ARTICLE IN PRESS
363
R Sq Linear = 0.018
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Manner accuracy for labials
diagonal apparent in Fig. 2 appears to reflect general facts
about the salience of encoding for labial and coronal
consonants, and not necessarily something specifically
about the acquisition process.
Yet, even with this offset, the two accuracies correlate.
When the Korean learners are better at manner contrasts in
voiceless segments, they also tend to be better at voiced
segments. This result is expected. Considering articulation,
the oral gestures that are creating the distinction between
the stops and fricatives are likely to be very similar for
voiced and voiceless segments.
3.1.3. Manner accuracy across prosodic locations
We also examined correlations of manner accuracies
across the four prosodic locations: onset, intervocalic post-
stress and pre-stress, and coda. The results, in Table 3,
indicate a general correlation across all of the positions,
except that the accuracy in coda position does not correlate
with any other position. This would imply that if the
learners acquire the manner contrast in one prosodic
location, it generalizes to other positions except the coda.
This seems to indicate that the production of manner
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
364 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373

1.0

0.9
Manner accuracy for voiced segments

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

R Sq Linear = 0.408
0.4

0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

Manner accuracy for voiceless segments

Fig. 2. Accuracy rates for distinguishing voiceless stops from fricatives plotted against rates for voiced segments in the Reading task. Each symbol
indicates one talker.

Table 3
Pearson r2 values for manner accuracy rates across prosodic position in Reading.

Onset (C>) Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)

Onset (C>) 1.000 .548 .324 .098

Pre-stress (>C>!) 1.000 .493 .178
Post-stress (>!C>) 1.000 .128
Coda (>V) 1.000
 Indicates a significance at po.01.

contrasts is a single skill that is obtained regardless of
prosodic location. However, situating that production in a
post-vocalic and coda position presents an additional
problem. The coda position in Korean has a special status,
in that there is an extremely restricted set of segments that
occur in this position. Neutralization rules merge the three-
way contrast in onset stops into the lenis stop, and also
change the coda fricatives /s/, /s’/, and /h/ into the lenis /t/
(Kim & Jongman, 1996). Therefore it is not unexpected
that the manner contrast in this position is different from
that in other locations.
3.1.4. Cross-feature correlation analysis
Although we find a correlation of manner accuracy
between voiced and voiceless segments, and also across
various prosodic locations, it does not necessarily support
the generalized featural model. It might also be possible
that some subjects are better than others at everything.
Accordingly, their accuracy for any contrast correlates
with their accuracy for any other contrasts. To test this
alternative interpretation, we took the accuracy for two
different features, manner and voicing in different prosodic
locations, and correlated them with each other. The results
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K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373 365

are given in Table 4. The rows are manner accuracies
across four prosodic positions, while the columns are
voicing accuracies.
If it is true that some subjects learn better and are good
at everything, we should find a correlation between the
accuracies of any two features. Yet, Table 4 shows that,
with one exception (manner in the coda marginally
correlates with voicing in the onset), there are no significant
correlations across features. Since we conducted 16
analyses, this single correlation could easily be due
to chance. If we had adjusted alpha-levels downward to
correct for the large number of significance tests, the
correlation in question would not have been considered
significant. We are confident that the overall pattern allows
us to conclude that the correlations between manner
accuracies indicate developmental grouping of parallel
segments, rather than the overall proficiency of individual
talkers.
3.1.5. Voicing accuracy
After examining the manner accuracies, we turn to
another feature, voicing. First, we tested whether the
subjects’ voicing accuracy in labial consonants correlates
with that in coronal consonants, as plotted in Fig. 3.

Table 4
Pearson r2 values for manner accuracy rates (rows) and voicing accuracy rates (columns) for each prosodic position in Reading.

Onset (C>) Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)

Onset (C>) .073 o.001 .024 .034

Pre-stress (>C>!) .029 o.001 .036 .003
Post-stress (>!C>) .035 .061 .068 .002
Coda (>V) .278 .007 .016 .006
 Indicates a significance at po.05.

1.0

0.9
Voicing accuracy for coronals

0.8

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.4 R Sq Linear = 0.014

0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0

Voicing accuracy for labials

Fig. 3. Accuracy rates for distinguishing voiceless from voiced coronal obstruents plotted against rates for labial obstruents in the Reading task. Each
symbol indicates one talker.

366
Unexpectedly, we did not find significant correlation
(r2 ¼ .014). More subjects are better at labials, but there
are also some who are better at coronals but not better at
labials. It suggests that if learners acquire the voicing
contrast in one place of articulation, they do not
necessarily apply it to other places of articulation, which
does not fit the prediction of a generalized featural model.
Fig. 4 plots the relationship for voicing accuracy across
stops and fricatives. Again we did not find significant
correlation (r2 ¼ .021). However, this lack of correlation is
not unexpected. The voicing contrast in stops is quite
different from that in fricatives (e.g. the voicing contrast in
stops involves aspiration, while that in fricatives is reflected
in the generation of voicing in the frication). Note that this
prediction of a gestural model is different from that above
for the manner contrast, where we predicted that the
production of manner contrasts would generalize across
voicing. There, the oral gestures for stops and fricatives are
similar for voiced and voiceless segments, while here the
glottal gestures and their coordination required for voiced
and voiceless segments are different for stops and fricatives
(Lisker, Abramson, Cooper, & Schvey, 1969; and refer-
1.0
0.9
0.8
Voicing accuracy for fricatives
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.4
Fig. 4. Accuracy rates for distinguishing voiceless from voiced fricatives plotted against rates for stops in the Reading task. Each symbol indicates one
talker.
ARTICLE IN PRESS
K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
ences reported in Yoshioka, Löfqvist, & Collier, 1982). The
lack of generalization for the voicing contrast found here,
then, suggests that the motor skills required to distinguish
voicing in one set of segments (stops) may not, prepare
them to contrast voicing in the other set (fricatives).
However, a confounding problem with this interpreta-
tion is that the distribution of accuracies is narrower for
voicing than for manner. The talkers, in general, differ
from one another less in voicing accuracy than manner
accuracy, perhaps due to the laryngeal contrasts being
entangled with laryngeal contrasts in their L1. Hence, it is
possible that, with a broader range of accuracies, a
correlation may become apparent. There is, however, little
in the distributions in Figs. 3 and 4 to suggest this.
(In addition, the distribution in Fig. 3 reveals one outlier
who was exceptional in being exceptionally bad with
voicing in labials while being one of the better talkers with
voicing in coronals. The lack of correlation is not due to
this outlier, since removing this subject still does not yield a
significant correlation (r2 ¼ .061).)
The voicing accuracies across different prosodic loca-
tions are displayed in Table 5. There are no significant
R Sq Linear = 0.021
0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Voicing accuracy for stops
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373 367

correlations. It appears that the mastery of voicing in one
prosodic context is independent from that in other
contexts.
3.2. Mimicry
3.2.1. Manner and voicing correlations
In general, the mimicry data exhibit very strong manner
and voicing correlations across all sub-sets of the data.
Talkers’ manner accuracies for labials and coronals
significantly correlate with each other (r2 ¼ .561), as they
do for voiceless and voiced segments (r2 ¼ .699). Manner
accuracies also correlate across all of the different prosodic
contexts, as indicated in Table 6. These correlations are
very strong, especially as compared to the correlations
found for reading (above) and the correlations for
perceptual identification in de Jong et al. (2009).
For the voicing accuracy correlation across place of
articulation, we found significant correlation between
labials and coronals (r2 ¼ .657), but when we turned to
voicing accuracies across stops and fricatives, the correla-
tion is only marginally significant (r2 ¼ .255, po.05).
As we proposed for the Reading data, this lack of strong
correlation might be due to the different motor skills
required to produce voicing contrasts in stops than in
fricatives. Finally, regarding the voicing accuracies in
different prosodic contexts, we only found marginally
significant correlations between the two intervocalic posi-
tions, as shown in Table 7.
For data in the Mimicry task, we found evidence that
seems to support a generalized featural model most of the
time. However, these high correlations might be attributed
to differences in the overall proficiency of individual
subjects. If this is true, the accuracy of any feature would
correlate with that of any other feature. Hence it is
necessary to run a cross-feature correlation analysis to
verify the cause of correlation.
3.2.2. Cross-feature correlation analysis
As with the Reading data, we correlated manner
and voicing accuracies in different prosodic contexts.
As Table 8 shows, the voicing accuracy in onset position
does not correlate with manner accuracy in any other
position. Also, the voicing accuracy in intervocalic pre-
stress position does not correlate with the manner accuracy
in intervocalic post-stress position. However, aside from
these, all the other cells show significant correlations.
Thus, for the mimicry results, we cannot rule out the
possibility that the correlations are due to some of the
talkers being better overall at the mimicry task than others

Table 5
Pearson r2 values for voicing accuracy rates across prosodic position in Reading.

Onset (C>) Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)

Onset (C>) 1.000 o.001 .032 .012

Pre-stress (>C>!) 1.000 .042 .148
Post-stress (>!C>) 1.000 .003
Coda (>V) 1.000

Table 6
Pearson r2 values for manner accuracy rates across prosodic position in Mimicry.

Onset (C>) Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)

Onset (C>) 1.000 .646 .526 .486

Pre-stress (>C>!) 1.000 .753 .549
Post-stress (>!C>) 1.000 .663
Coda (>V) 1.000
Indicates a significance at po.01.

Table 7
Pearson r2 values for voicing accuracy rates across prosodic position in Mimicry.

Onset (C>) Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)

Onset (C>) 1.000 .066 .037 .038

Pre-stress (>C>!) 1.000 .202 .070
Post-stress (>!C>) 1.000 .172
Coda (>V) 1.000
 Indicates a significance at po.05.
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
368 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
Table 8
Pearson r2 values for manner accuracy rates (rows) and voicing accuracy rates (columns) for each prosodic position in Mimicry.
Onset (C>)
Onset (C>) o.001
Pre-stress (>C>!) .023
Post-stress (>!C>) .102
Coda (>V) .072
 Indicates a significance at po.05.
 Indicates a significance at po.01.
were. The mimicry task involves perceiving the auditory
stimuli and reproducing them immediately. Therefore it
requires the on-line coordination of perceptual skills and
motor control. Such coordination might be particularly
difficult for certain subjects, perhaps due to constraints on
processing or working memory (Baddeley, 2007; Baddeley,
Gathercole, & Papagno, 1998). To factor out differences
that might be due to non-feature-specific differences in
accuracy, then, we further conducted a step-wise regression
analysis to determine if correlations between features
remain after the effect of overall proficiency is factored out.
3.2.3. Stepwise residual analysis – manner
To factor out overall non-feature-specific differences in
accuracy, we first calculated the overall manner and
voicing accuracy of each talker in the whole set of data.
We then used these accuracy values as a measure of their
general ability to do the Mimicry task, which is logically
independent of the manner accuracies we are testing.
We conducted a two-step regression analysis, in which a
particular manner or voicing accuracy was first correlated
with the overall accuracy in the other feature, and then the
residual was correlated with the related manner or voicing
accuracy. For example, a relation between manner
accuracy in coronals and in labials was tested by first
correlating manner accuracy in coronals with overall
accuracy in voicing, and then looking for a correlation of
the residual from this analysis with labial accuracy.
Similarly, for the voicing correlation across coronals and
labials, we use voicing in coronals as the dependent
variable, the overall manner accuracy as the first factor,
and the voicing in labials as the second factor. If the second
independent variable causes a significant r2 change in
accounting for the dependent variable, we can conclude
that featural generalization contributes to the correlation
we found. If the second independent variable does not have
a significant effect, it suggests that the correlation we found
could just be due to overall differences between talkers’
abilities to do the Mimicry task.
First we looked at the manner accuracies in coronals and
labials, where we found a significant correlation between
these two sets before factoring out the background
correlation. We first accounted for the variance of manner
accuracy in coronals by the overall voicing accuracy, which
Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)
.203 .503 .299
.234 .584 .250
.178 .504 .265
.332 .465 .230
shows a significant effect (r2 ¼ .604), and then looked for
the effect of the second factor, manner accuracy in labials.
The result shows that there is no significant effect of the
second factor (r2 change ¼ .067), suggesting that after
the overall Mimicry ability is factored out, we no longer see
the correlation of manner across place of articulation.
Turning to manner accuracy across voiced and voiceless
segments, the manner accuracy of voiced and voiceless
segments correlates before we enter the factor ‘mimicry
ability’. After removing the overall voicing accuracy
correlation first, the manner accuracy of the voiceless
segments still causes a significant r2 change (r2 change ¼ .176)
in accounting for the manner accuracy of voiced segments.
It suggests that even if there is individual difference in the
ability to perform the Mimicry task, there is still additional
correlation between the manner accuracy in voiced and
voiceless segments. This correlation was also found in the
Reading task.
For the manner accuracy across different prosodic
locations, we found correlation between any two prosodic
contexts previously. To filter out the overall ability effect,
we used the manner accuracy in one context (e.g. onset) as
the dependent variable, and that in another context
(e.g. coda) as the second independent variable. Then we
calculated the overall accuracy in the other two contexts
(in this case intervocalic pre-stress and post-stress) as the
first independent variable that represents the overall ability.
The logic of using the accuracy in the other two prosodic
contexts instead of the overall accuracy is that these data
constitute a different sample that can be used to index the
talkers’ overall abilities. If the second independent variable
causes a significant r2 change, then it indicates featural
generalization across different prosodic positions. If the
overall accuracy accounts for most of the variance of
the dependent variable and the second independent
variable does not have a significant effect, we may conclude
that the general Mimicry ability accounts for the correla-
tion we saw earlier.
The r2 change of the second independent variable is
summarized in Table 9. Most correlations still persist after
filtering out the general correlation, except between the
onset and intervocalic post-stress position, and between
onset and coda, both of which achieve marginal signifi-
cance. It seems to suggest the existence of featural
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K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
generalization across prosodic contexts in the Mimicry
task. We did not expect to find correlations between the
coda and other positions due to the coda neutralization in
Korean. There was no significant correlation in the
Reading task, yet, interestingly, in the Mimicry task we
did find that the accuracy in coda position correlates with
that in the two intervocalic positions.
3.2.4. Step-wise residual analysis – voicing
For the voicing feature, we conducted the same stepwise
regression analysis as with the manner accuracy. When
the voicing accuracy of coronals is the dependent variable,
the effect of the voicing accuracy in labials after consider-
ing the overall manner accuracy factor is significant
(r2 change ¼ .253), indicating that beyond the general
ability to perform the Mimicry task, learners can apply the
voicing contrast they acquire in one place of articulation to
another place of articulation.
For the voicing accuracy in stops and fricatives, we did
not find significant correlation in the previous analysis of
Mimicry, and after factoring out the overall accuracy, the
voicing accuracy in the stops is still not a significant factor
accounting for the variance in the accuracy in fricatives
(r2 ¼ .003). This is expected since the voicing contrast in
stops and fricatives is quite different. This lack of
correlation is also observed in the Reading data.
Since there is no voicing accuracy correlation between
any two prosodic contexts in the Mimicry data, we did not
conduct further regression analyses for this set.
Table 9
r2 change by the second independent factor in manner accuracy across prosodic position in Mimicry.
Onset (C>)
Onset (C>)
Pre-stress (>C>!)
Post-stress (>!C>)
Coda (>V)
 Indicates a significance at po.05.
Indicates a significance at po.01.
Table 10
Summary of significant correlations in Reading and Mimicry tasks with perceptual correlations from de Jong et al. (2009) and predictions from a gestural
acquisition model.
Accuracy measure Splitting feature Perceptual results
Manner Place 
Manner Voice 
Manner Prosodic position 
Voicing Place 
Voicing Manner 
Voicing Prosodic position (only intervocalic)
 Indicates a significance at po.05.
Indicates a significance at po.01.
369
4. Discussion
4.1. Overall patterns of correlation
The current research employs two tasks, one with an
auditory input, and the second with a written input. Since
both tasks involve speech motor control, we expected to
find similar patterns in the Reading results and the
Mimicry results, and some patterns are, in fact, replicated
across the two tasks. The general pattern of results is
summarized in Table 10, with predictions of a gestural
acquisition model and results for the perceptual identifica-
tion data in de Jong et al. (2009). The general pattern of
correlation conforms to what would be predicted from
a gestural acquisition model, with some exceptions.
Considering cross-segment correlations, we found signifi-
cant correlation between the manner accuracy in voiced
and voiceless segments in both tasks. This correlation is
expected since the motor skills required for the manner
contrast in voiced segments are similar enough to those in
the voiceless segments. Such feature generalization is also
observed in previous perception data (de Jong et al., 2009).
A lack of correlation is also shared by the two
production tasks. There is no manner accuracy correlation
across labials and coronals. This is expected since the
gestures required to contrast labial stops and fricatives are
different from those to contrast coronal stops and
fricatives. Hence learners have to acquire two sets of
gestures for the two places of articulation instead of
acquiring one oral gesture that applies to both coronal and
labial segments. This effect seems to reside specifically in
Pre-stress (>C>!) Post-stress (>!C>) Coda (>C)
.186 .055 .155
.263 .230
.351
Gestural hypothesis Reading results Mimicry results
  
 (all but coda) (initial position weaker)
 
 (only intervocalic)
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
370 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
articulation, since the previous work in perceptual identi-
fication found significant correlations. This divergence of
the results for perception and production tasks would
make sense, since the stop–fricative contrast is similar on
the acoustic side, requiring the differentiation of stop and
burst from low-intensity noise for both coronals and
labials. However, on the production side, reference to
different articulators would suggest that the two sets
require different production skills.
Another, similar case is the voicing contrast in stops and
fricatives. There is no accuracy correlation in either
Reading or Mimicry data. This might be due, again, to
the use of different articulatory mechanisms for the voicing
distinction in stops and fricatives. We might further
speculate that the production of the voiced fricatives is
particularly at issue, not only due to the aerodynamic
difficulty of maintaining voicing and creating frication, but
potentially also because Korean does not have voiced
allophones of its sibilant fricatives. While the lax stops
have voiced allophones in intervocalic position, the
fricatives do not. Hence, the production of voiced frication
is not required in Korean, and is a skill that needs to be
developed specifically for English. Again this separation
did not appear in perceptual data, where voicing identifica-
tion accuracy did correlate across stops and fricatives.
This divergence would also make sense in light of the
common effects of voicing for stops and fricatives on the
acoustic side, where voicing creation in fricatives is
aerodynamically quite different from that in stops.
The general point, then, of these analyses is that
requirements for the acquisition of production skills are
different from perception skills, and these differences tend to
encourage different sets of skills to be acquired as a group.
Put another way, the acquisition of production skills in the
L2 appears to be well described as the acquisition of a set of
gestures, affecting all segments that share the gesture. It is
striking how well the predictions concerning cross-segment
correlations based on the criterion of shared gestures predict
the pattern of correlations in the current data. This differs
from perceptual acquisition, which seems to operate at the
level of features, which cross-cut segments.
Complicating this general picture are questions of
prosodic position, which modulate the patterning. The
voicing accuracy in one prosodic context usually does not
correlate with other contexts in the current data. In English
the gestural composition of the voicing distinction for stops
is different in various positions, including aspiration in the
onset position, intervocalic lenition patterns, and vowel
duration differences recruited for post-vocalic coda voi-
cing. Thus, perhaps, it is not surprising that the voicing
accuracy for the different positions would not correlate.
These differences are further complicated by the Korean
laryngeal contrasts, which also exhibit large differences
across prosodic positions. Hence not unexpectedly, we
found only a marginally significant voicing accuracy
correlation between intervocalic positions in the Mimicry
data, and no correlation at all in Reading.
These prosodic patterns differ markedly from those
obtained for manner accuracy, which suggest strongly that
the acquisition of fricative production involves skills that
generalize across prosodic positions. All of the correla-
tions, except those involving coda position, are strongly
significant in the Reading data, and most are significant in
the Mimicry data. Compared to the large allophonic
differences between voicing contrasts in different prosodic
positions, variation in fricatives across positions is expected
to be quite small. The production uniformity would fit well
with an explanation of the correlations as indicating that
learners are developing the gestures for stops and fricatives
irrespective of their coordination with the surrounding
context.
One striking aspect of prosodic correlations in the
Reading data, however, is the systematic lack of correla-
tion between post-vocalic coda manner contrasts and the
other manner contrasts. It should be noted that manner
accuracies in the mimicry data here, as well as previous
perception data (de Jong et al., 2009) were obtained across
all prosodic positions, including codas. Thus, this coda
difference is particularly localized in productions
(Reading). An apparent source for this difference might
be the Korean neutralization rules. Due to pervasive
neutralization of post-vocalic consonants, it is possible
that the coordination of fricative gestures with a preceding
vowel itself is a novel skill. In this interpretation, the
learners must not only acquire the novel fricative gestures,
but also have to acquire a novel coordinative skill to place
the fricatives in post-vocalic coda position. This interpreta-
tion would also fit with previous studies that find coda
fricatives to be particularly prone to triggering vowel
epenthesis.
This interpretation is also supported by a more detailed
examination of the accuracy patterns, plotted in Fig. 5.
Here, manner accuracies in all positions except codas are
plotted as a function of accuracies in the coda. The lack of
correlation is obvious, as is a generally well-distributed
range of accuracies (there are no apparent ceiling or floor
effects in the data). There is one relationship between the
accuracy rates, however, that is apparent in the distribu-
tions, specifically the general lack of cases in which
accuracy in codas is greater than in other positions. This
pattern is not like the accuracy difference patterns noted
above, for example, in Fig. 2, in which there was a general
correlation of the two accuracies, however, shifted off of
the diagonal. Here, there is no relationship between coda
accuracy and accuracy in other positions for the cases in
which coda accuracy is lower, the systematic relationship is
only apparent in the empty lower right half of the figure.
This pattern would be one predicted by the Implicational
Markedness Hypothesis, where one structure cannot be
acquired until another is acquired. Here, talkers cannot be
accurate with coda distinctions, until they are accurate with
the distinction in other positions. Put another way, these
data suggest an interpretation where there are two aspects
to coda manner production; first, there is the acquisition of

1.0
0.9
0.8
Manner accuracy in non-coda position
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.2
Fig. 5. Accuracy rates for distinguishing stops from fricatives in the coda position against the rates in the non-coda positions in the Reading task. Each
symbol indicates one talker.
the different fricative-stop gestures, and subsequently,
there is the acquisition of the coordination that allows
these gestures to be grouped with a previous vowel as a
coda. One cannot acquire the gestural coordination with-
out having already acquired the gestures that are coordi-
nated.
We also note one other complicating possibility, and that
is that talkers who are particularly accurate with the
manner distinction in codas may be employing an
epenthesis strategy, removing the segments from the coda.
The lack of correlation found here, then, could be due to
variation between subjects as to whether they employ this
strategy. Our preliminary work on the perceptual data
(Park & de Jong, 2006) does not suggest that this
conjecture will prove correct, but clearly this possibility is
one worth pursuing in future research.
4.2. Difference between Reading and Mimicry
Reading and Mimicry results, though similar, also differ
in some aspects. For the manner accuracy across different
prosodic contexts, the coda position did not correlate with
any other context in the Reading task. But other contexts
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K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373 371
R Sq Linear = 0.166
0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.0
Manner accuracy in coda position
correlated with one another. If we consider previous
perception results (de Jong et al., 2009), correlation
between any two contexts suggests that Korean coda
neutralization rules interfere with learners’ L2 production
more than perception. In the Mimicry task, on the other
hand, a lack of correlation is found between the onset and
the post-nuclear contexts (intervocalic post-stress and coda
position). It appears that the coda neutralization effect is
reduced when a perceptual component is involved in the
task. But it is unclear why we did not get correlation
between onset and intervocalic post-stress positions in
Mimicry since we did get the correlation in both
Identification and Reading tasks. It is possible that this
lack is due to the more complicated multi-step regression
analysis, which would tend to inflate the effects of noise on
the results.
Another difference between these two tasks is the voicing
correlation between coronal and labial segments. The
articulatory mechanism to contrast voicing in different
places of articulation should be similar. Thus the lack of
correlation in the Reading task is unexpected. However, we
did get a significant correlation that indicates featural
generalization in the Mimicry task and also in perception
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
372 K. de Jong et al. / Journal of Phonetics 37 (2009) 357–373
(de Jong et al., 2009). It is possible that this difference in
results is due to a smaller range of accuracies in the
Reading data, but it is also possible that, for some reason,
the generalization of this feature is manifested particularly
in perception-related tasks.
4.3. The relationship between current production tasks and
perceptual identification skills
The range of the overall accuracy rates for each subject is
similar in the Reading task (.38–.71) and the Identification
tasks with similar subjects in de Jong et al. (2009) (.37–.76),
but these two tasks displayed somewhat different patterns.
In Identification, we found evidence for featural general-
ization in most cases. Yet in Reading, there is no significant
correlation in some sub-sets, most of which can be
explained by articulatory phonetics or L1 phonological
rules. It might imply that featural generalization develops
earlier in perception. It is developed later in production
because the motor system is not as flexible as the auditory
perceptual system. Hence the gestures acquired by the
learners to do certain contrasts in one context may not
apply to other contexts. The talkers’ overall accuracy in the
Mimicry task is significantly lower than in the Reading task
(t(19) ¼ 4.983, po.05), suggesting that the Mimicry task is
more difficult and their performance in mimicry is not only
determined by each subject’s L2 proficiency but also by
their ability to do this type of task (Baddeley, 2007;
Baddeley et al., 1998). Before we filtered out the overall
correlation, the correlation patterns of the Mimicry task
differed drastically from those in the Reading task. We
found correlation in almost all sub-sets that contrast by the
same feature, which is similar to perception (de Jong et al.,
2009). After we ran the stepwise regression and factored
out the background correlation, its patterns were similar to
those in the Reading task. But in addition, Mimicry
displayed some correlations that were observed in the
previous Identification task but not in the Reading task,
such as the correlation in manner accuracy across prosodic
locations, and voicing accuracy across places of articula-
tion. In such cases the perceptual component may play a
more important role, and the motor constraints are
diminished.
5. Conclusion
Comparing the previous perception study (de Jong et al.,
2009) with the present one sheds light on the relationship
between perception and production. The average accuracy
rates of the Identification and Reading task are very similar
(mean ¼ .58 for Identification; mean ¼ .55 for Reading),
as is the overall range of accuracies among the subjects,
suggesting that learners did not have more difficulty in one
as opposed to the other. However, they displayed different
learning units in perception and production. The acquisi-
tion in perception seems to proceed along the lines of
features. Learners acquire a general featural contrast,
applying it to all segments that participate in that contrast.
Therefore learners’ perception of one set of segments
develops in parallel with another set that is distinguished
by the same feature. This is evident in the data that
learners’ ability to identify a manner or voicing contrast in
one set of segments significantly correlates with that in
another set. The only exception is with the voicing
distinction in different prosodic locations, which suggests
that the voicing contrasts in the three contexts are too
different for learners to acquire them as a single featural
contrast.
Learners’ L2 production, on the other hand, appears to
proceed in terms of gestures and their coordination. The
accuracy rate correlations are largely predictable from the
articulatory point of view. For example, the gestures for
the manner contrast in labials are physically different from
those in the coronals. Thus we did not find significant
correlation between manner accuracies in labials and
coronals. But we did find correlation between manner
accuracies in voiced and voiceless segments, since the
gestures for producing the manner contrast are similar
across voiced and voiceless segments. One additional thing
to note is that Korean coda neutralization rules impacted
learners’ production patterns more than the perception
patterns in the previous perception study. The manner
accuracies in codas did not correlate with other positions in
the Reading task, but correlated with other contexts in the
Identification task.
Particularly pressing questions that remain are whether
these overall patterns will change as the learners’ profi-
ciency level increases. However, what is clear currently is
that, despite the fact that production and perception
systems are in general very closely tuned to one another,
during the process of second language acquisition, what
constitutes a set of skills in perception is not the same as
that in production.
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