Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23

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Journal of Phonetics
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/Phonetics

Research Article

Perception of Vietnamese back vowels contrasting in rounding by English

listeners
Irina A. Shport
Department of English, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, 70803 LA, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The perception of back vowels contrasting in rounding has not previously been examined in major theoretical
Received 12 September 2017 frameworks of cross-language speech perception. In two experiments, Southern U.S. English speakers naïve
Received in revised form 9 December 2018
to the contrast categorized the Vietnamese vowels [u o ɯ ɤ] in terms of their native vowel categories and identified
Accepted 11 December 2018
Available online 8 January 2019 oddball vowels in triads representing the contrasts [u]-[o], [ɯ]-[u], [ɯ]-[ɤ], and [o]-[ɤ]. The relationship between
vowel categorization and discrimination was more accurately predicted when predominant and secondary catego-
Keywords: rization patterns were taken into account. Group results showed that Vietnamese [ɤ] and [u o] were perceived as
Rounding being most similar to English /ʌ/ and /oʊ/, respectively, whereas [ɯ] did not have a predominant categorization.
Back vowels Discrimination was not significantly more accurate in vowel pairs contrasting in rounding than in vowel pairs
Vietnamese contrasting in height. It was more accurate, however, in less-to-more peripheral vowel presentation order than
Cross-language associations in the opposite direction. This asymmetry was even observed in the [o]-[ɤ] pair in which each member assimilated
Vowel discrimination
to a different native category. Collectively, the findings suggest that multiple-category membership and individual
Perceptual Assimilation Model
Natural Referent Vowel framework
variability among listeners are to be considered in vowel perception. Acoustic-phonetic similarity between vowels
may be a better predictor than the category membership in naïve listeners.
! 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction categorization shapes the perception of non-low back vowels

1.1. Factors influencing cross-language perception of vowels
Adult listeners are highly attuned to the phonemes of their
native language (L1). This attunement comes at the expense
of discriminating certain segments that are contrastive in
non-native languages (L2), but are irrelevant to phonological
contrasts or socially meaningful variation in L1. Patterns of
L2 segment perception at initial stages of listener exposure
to an L2 have been explained in terms of perceived similarity
between L1 and L2 segments in the Perceptual Assimilation
Model (PAM, Best, 1995), universal vowel perception biases
in the Natural Referent Vowel framework (NRV, Polka &
Bohn, 2003, 2011), and the similarity between dialect-specific
L1 and L2 segments, as well as individual differences in acous-
tic cue weighting in the Second Language Linguistic Percep-
tion model (L2LP, Escudero & Boersma, 2004; Escudero,
Benders, & Lipski, 2009). The current study adopts PAM’s
methodology to address the question of how L2 phone
E-mail address: ishport@lsu.edu
contrastive in rounding in adult listeners whose native lan-
guage lacks this contrast.
Previous PAM-framed studies on vowels included pairs of
back vowels contrastive in height but not in rounding (Levy,
2009; Tyler, Best, Faber, & Levitt, 2014). To address this
gap, the present study examined the perception of Vietnamese
vowels [u o ɯ ɤ] by native speakers of Southern U.S. English
(SUSE). Vowel categorization and vowel discrimination exper-
iments were conducted, as both examinations are necessary
for generating predictions in the PAM (Best, 1995; Tyler
et al., 2014). In addition to testing PAM with a different vowel
set, the choice of [u o ɯ ɤ] extends the PAM in that it requires
consideration of factors that are typically examined in the L2LP
and NRV frameworks. While the present study was not
designed to directly test predictions of these other models, fac-
tors such as dialectal variation in the realization of English /u o/
(Labov, Ash, & Boberg, 2006), individual differences in percep-
tion (Tyler et al., 2014), and a universal perception bias involv-
ing /u o/ in comparison to unrounded non-low back vowels
(Lisker, 1988; Polka & Bohn, 2011; Schwartz, Abry, Boë,
Ménard, & Vallée, 2005; Stevens, 1972) were expected to

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wocn.2018.12.003
0095-4470/! 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
influence the perception of Vietnamese [u o ɯ ɤ]. These fac-
tors were considered here in relation to PAM predictions.
1.2. Assessing acoustic similarity in English and Vietnamese non-low
back vowels
All speech perception models emphasize the importance of
acoustic–phonetic detail in L2-to-L1 vowel mapping (for an
overview of major theories, see Bohn, 2018). Acoustic compar-
isons between L2 and L1 vowels must be dialect-specific,
because the acoustic realization of the same vowel may sub-
stantially differ across regional varieties of a language (Labov
et al., 2006). Regional differences in a native language and
the knowledge of a standard variety influence the perception
of non-native vowels (Chládková & Podlipský, 2011;
Escudero, Simon, & Mitterer, 2012; Williams & Escudero,
2015). In the present study, participants were recruited in the
Southern U.S., where SUSE is the predominant dialect. In
what follows, acoustic comparisons in terms of rounding, for-
mants, and duration are made between non-low back vowels
in SUSE and [u o ɯ ɤ] in Vietnamese.
Rounding in non-low back vowels makes it possible for the
second formant (F2) to achieve a minimum value in a region
where the first formant (F1) is relatively stable (Stevens,
1972). This proximity of the two formants has been described
as formant convergence or focalization, resulting in more
prominent spectral peaks in rounded vowels than in their
unrounded counterparts. This property of rounded non-low
back vowels may increase their psychoacoustical salience,
leading to their relatively high frequency of occurrence across
the world’s languages (Maddieson, 2013), and to a perception
bias of categorizing back vowels as rounded (Lisker, 1988),
and to a perception bias in their use as natural referents in
vowel discrimination (Polka & Bohn, 2003, 2011; Schwartz
et al., 2005).
Among English non-low back vowels, /u ʊ o ɔ/ are rounded
and only /ʌ/ is unrounded. Although unrounded realizations of
/ʊ/ have been reported (Cruttenden, 2014; Ladefoged &
Johnson, 2015), articulatory work on rounding in /ʊ/ has not
been conducted. In principle, rounding may be lost over time
as attested by the development of Middle English /ʊ/ into /ʌ/
(Cruttenden, 2014). However, in the absence of articulatory
data, it is not known whether the perception of unrounded /ʊ/
in some native listeners stems from a reduction in lip rounding
or from a reduction in lip pursing while lip protrusion is main-
tained. Importantly for this study, rounding in non-low back
vowels is not contrastive in any English variety. Therefore,
the question arises of how back vowels contrastive in rounding
are perceived by English listeners. Vietnamese is ideally suited
to address this question as it happens to have the typologically
rare, unrounded back vowels /ɯ ɤ/, along with rounded /u o/.
The degree of acoustic similarity between native and non-
native vowels is largely determined by spectral characteristics,
especially their F1 and F2 patterns. Many English vowels are
characterized by vowel-inherent spectral change, as demon-
strated by diphthongization and complex vowel trajectories
that distinguish regional varieties of English (Fridland,
Kendall, & Farrington, 2014; Jacewicz, Fox, & Salmons,
2011; Nearey & Assman, 1986). The formant dynamics of Viet-
namese vowels have not previously been investigated.
9
Because vowel-inherent spectral change may influence the
perception of non-native Vietnamese vowels, their F1/F2 tra-
jectories were examined here to inform the background for
the current study.
Productions of Vietnamese words containing the [u o ɯ ɤ]
vowels were recorded here by a female native speaker of
Central Vietnamese. Productions of English words containing
the SUSE vowels spoken by 27 female native speakers were
obtained from Chung and de Mahy (2017). Similar to the par-
ticipants in the current study, Chung and de Mahy’s partici-
pants were raised in the state of Louisiana and attended
Louisiana State University. In both studies, three monosyllabic
words with the same vowel were repeated by each speaker
three times; vowels were segmented in Praat (Boersma &
Weenink, 2017); formant measurements at the 20%, 50%,
and 80% temporal points in each vowel were extracted using
the same script; and the measurements were checked for
uncharacteristic values. In Fig. 1, the average F1/F2 trajecto-
ries of vowels are plotted together by language. The most
peripheral values of English vowels are connected by dotted
lines to delineate the average vowel space in the female SUSE
speakers. A dotted circle outlines the space occupied by the
[u o ɯ ɤ] vowels in the female Vietnamese speaker whose pro-
ductions were used to create the stimuli for the current study.
Fig. 1 shows that F1/F2 changes within each vowel are smaller
in Vietnamese than in English. Vietnamese rounded [u o] have
a lower F2 in comparison to substantially fronted /u o/ in SUSE.
Unrounded [ɯ ɤ] are acoustically close to the /o/, /ʊ/, and /ʌ/
categories in SUSE. Vietnamese [ɤ] occupies space close to
the endpoint of the English /ʌ/ trajectory — it can also be
described as having F1/F2 values intermediate between
English /ʊ/ and /ʌ/. Vietnamese [ɯ] occupies the F1/F2 space
close to the second part of the diphthongized English /o/ trajec-
tory (/oʊ/ hereafter). (These two vowels may be better differen-
tiated by F3.) Vietnamese [ɯ] is often mid-centralized in Hanoi
Vietnamese and transcribed as or [ɨ] (Kirby, 2011). How-
ever, in the recordings used in the current study, [ɯ] was not
that centralized.
Fig. 1. Mean F1 and F2 values of Vietnamese vowels produced by a female native
speaker of Central Vietnamese (in orange) and of English vowels produced by 27 adult
female speakers of Southern U.S. English (in blue, Chung & de Mahy, 2017). (For
interpretation of the references to colour in this figure legend, the reader is referred to the
web version of this article.)
10 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
Lastly, vowel duration must be considered in cross-
language comparisons. Relatively long L2 vowels may be per-
ceived as acoustically similar to L1 low vowels, tense vowels,
or diphthongs rather than to L1 high vowels, lax vowels, or
monophthongs. Note, however, that the duration difference
between tense and lax vowels is reduced in SUSE as com-
pared to other North American English dialects (Clopper,
Pisoni, & De Jong, 2005; Fridland et al., 2014). In Vietnamese,
vowel duration is not contrastive, with the exception of [ɤ] in
closed syllables (Kirby, 2011). In the present study, all Viet-
namese words had a consonant–vowel syllable structure.
Therefore, the variation in Vietnamese vowel length was
assumed not to be substantial enough to trigger a change in
L2 vowel categorizations provided by SUSE listeners.
1.3. Assessing perceived similarity through vowel categorizations
Determining degree of similarity on the basis of acoustic com-
parisons may be problematic because vowel categories are
defined along multiple acoustic dimensions, and individual lis-
teners may prioritize some dimensions over others in phonetic
categorization (Escudero et al., 2009, among others). Consider,
for example, Vietnamese [u]. It is rounded as are English /u/, /oʊ/,
/ɔ/, and /ʊ/. It is characterized by a relatively small vowel-
inherent spectral change, similar to English /u/, /ʊ/, and /ɔ/
(Fig. 1). It is less fronted, similar to English /ɔ/. Lastly, it is of a
height similar to the endpoint of English /oʊ/. These comparisons
along several acoustic dimensions do not lead to a simple
answer for which English category Vietnamese [u] is most sim-
ilar to. If we consider the vowel characteristics described in the
previous section collectively, Vietnamese rounded [u o] may
be perceived as similar to English /u/, /oʊ/, /ʊ/, or /ɔ/. Vietnamese
unrounded [ɯ] may be perceived as similar to English /ʊ/ or /oʊ/,
and Vietnamese [ɤ] as similar to English /ʊ/ or /ʌ/. Thus, acoustic
similarity between native and non-native vowels influences, but
does not solely determine, the perceived similarity between
them (Bohn, 2018). Furthermore, L2 vowel perception may also
be influenced by tone and segmental context (Gottfried, 1984;
Levy, 2009; Yu, 2010). Considerable variation in perceptual
assimilations should be expected within a listener and across
listeners of similar L1 background.
In the PAM framework, perceived similarity is measured
directly and holistically by asking listeners to judge the degree
of similarity between an L2 phone and different L1 phonemes
(for a review, see Levy, 2009). A criterion of 50–90% consis-
tency across listener judgments typically determines whether
L2 vowels are categorized (C) or uncategorized (U) in terms
of L1 categories (Harnsberger, 2001; Tyler et al., 2014). The
choice of the criterion threshold depends on categorization
patterns observed in a specific data set and on a researcher’s
approach (see the discussion in Harnsberger, 2001). For
example, when American English listeners perceive French
[y] as being similar to English /i/ and /u/ in 51% and 33% of tri-
als, respectively (Tyler et al., 2014), [y] is considered catego-
rized under the 50% threshold but uncategorized under the
70% threshold. A low-threshold criterion helps to capture pat-
terns in variable responses, which may be due to the complex-
ity of the L1 vowel’s acoustic structure, acoustic variation in L2
phones, or individual differences in acoustic cue weighting. In
the above example, two categorization patterns emerge: Thai
[y] may be perceived as a member of the /i/ category or the
/u/ category. A high-threshold criterion helps to minimize the
multiple category membership, but it also dramatically
increases the number of L2 vowels considered uncategorized.
If substantial variability in L2 vowel categorizations is
expected, then an adoption of a low-threshold criterion is war-
ranted. In the current study, the 50% consistency criterion was
adopted, and an even lower, above-chance threshold was
considered.
Perceived similarity is also influenced by universal percep-
tual biases which are rooted in phonetic processing. One such
bias is using focalized vowels (often peripheral in the articula-
tory/acoustic vowel space) as anchors for the perception of
other vowels in the system. In the NRV framework, evidence
for this bias is found in vowel discrimination tasks (Polka &
Bohn, 2003, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2005), but it may also man-
ifest itself in categorization tasks. For example, front vowels
tend to be perceived as unrounded and (non-low) back vowels
as rounded (Lisker, 1988), a bias supported by the typological
frequencies (Maddieson, 2013). Furthermore, listeners may
assimilate L2 vowels not to the spectrally most similar vowels
in their native language, but to peripheral vowels in a similar
articulatory/acoustic space. For example, Japanese [e] and
[a] are assimilated not to spectrally similar English /ɪ/ and /ʌ/,
but to peripheral /eɪ/ and /ɑː ɔ/ (Nishi, Strange, Akahane-
Yamada, Kubo, & Trent-Brown, 2008).
1.4. Predicting discrimination of back vowels
L2 vowel perception is often assessed in terms of
discrimination accuracy, that is, one’s ability to distinguish
two vowels. According to the PAM, discrimination accuracy
may be predicted from patterns of perceived similarity between
L2 phones and L1 categories observed in vowel categorization
(Best, 1995). Specifically, these patterns are classified as one
of five assimilation types, as illustrated below by examples
from Tyler et al. (2014, Table 2 and Table 3). To illustrate all five
assimilation types, the 60% categorization consistency crite-
rion is applied here to Tyler et al.’s data, which were originally
classified using the 70% criterion.
(1) Two-Category (TC) assimilation: Each L2 vowel in a pair is con-
sistently labeled as a different L1 vowel (e.g., Norwegian [i]-[ʉ]
labeled as English /i/-/u/).
(2) Uncategorized-Categorized (UC) assimilation: Each L2 vowel in
a pair is frequently labeled as a different L1 vowel; one label rep-
resents less than 60% of listener responses, whereas the other
label is consistently applied (e.g., French [œ]-[ø] labeled as
English /ʌ/-/u/).
(3) Uncategorized-Uncategorized (UU) assimilation: Two L2 vowels
are frequently labeled as the same or different L1 vowels, but
both labels represent less than 60% of listener responses
(e.g., Thai [ɯ]-[ɤ] labeled as English /ʌ/ or Thai [y]-[ø] labeled
as English /i/-/ɝ/).
(4) Category-Goodness (CG) assimilation: Two L2 vowels are con-
sistently labeled as the same L1 vowel, but their goodness-of-fit
ratings for that label differ (e.g., Norwegian [i]-[y] labeled as Eng-
lish /i/ by some listeners).
(5) Single-Category (SC) assimilation: Two L2 vowels are consis-
tently labeled as the same L1 vowel, and their goodness-of-fit
ratings for that label are similar (e.g., Norwegian [i]-[y] labeled
as English /i/ by certain other listeners).
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
These five types of assimilation capture perceived similarity
on a nominal scale. The following discrimination accuracy is
predicted, from easiest to most difficult: TC = UC > C-
G > UU > SC (Best, 1995; Bohn, 2018). Levy (2009) devel-
oped an alternative approach to capturing perceived
similarity by comparing the frequencies of French vowel cate-
gorizations in terms of English vowel categories and calculat-
ing an overlap score for each target French vowel pair (e.g.,
[y]-[œ], [y]-[e], [y]-[o]). The overlap is defined as the smaller
percentage of responses when two members of an L2 vowel
pair are labeled as similar to the same L1 vowel. Overlap
scores are used to rank non-native vowel contrasts in terms
of discrimination difficulty predicted from perceptual assimila-
tion patterns, but without a reference to goodness-of-fit ratings.
Levy’s method does not necessarily differentiate between the
PAM’s UC and TC assimilations (2009). Furthermore, this
method does not capture within-category differences indexed
by goodness-of-fit ratings, which are necessary to differentiate
between CG and SC assimilations. However, it does allow
researchers to quantify assimilation on an interval scale, inde-
pendently of the categorization consistency criterion chosen a
priori.
Because the current study examined back vowels con-
trastive in rounding, the PAM’s predictions of vowel discrimina-
tion accuracy might be modulated by the universal perceptual
bias discussed in Section 1.3. In the NRV framework, this bias
is used to explain why the discriminability of non-native vowels
varies depending on the order of vowel presentation (Bohn,
2018; Polka & Bohn, 2003, 2011). Specifically, when phonemic
categories have not been established in a listener (e.g., in an
infant’s L1 or in beginning learner’s L2), a change from a more
peripheral vowel to a less peripheral vowel is more difficult to
detect than a change in the opposite direction. For example,
Dutch L1 listeners exposed to Southern British English exhibit
less accurate discrimination in /ɒ/-/ʌ/ trials than in /ʌ/-/ɒ/ trials;
English L1 listeners exposed to Dutch are less accurate in
/u/-/y/ and /ʊ/-/ʏ/ trials than when the same vowels are pre-
sented in reverse order (Polka & Bohn, 2011). This phonetic
processing bias is reduced/absent when phonemic processing
is engaged (e.g., in listeners with substantial language
experience) or when general auditory processing is engaged
(e.g., in discrimination tasks with a short inter-stimulus interval
of 400–500 ms) (Polka & Bohn, 2011).
The more peripheral vowel must be determined for each
vowel contrast. For example, /e/ is more peripheral than /ɪ/
but less peripheral than /i/. Recall that the relative psychoa-
coustical salience of vowels such as /i/, /æ/, /a/, /u/, and /y/
is attributed to formant frequency convergence in a narrow
spectral region (Polka & Bohn, 2003, 2011; Schwartz et al.,
2005). Focalization may be a more accurate term to refer to
this formant convergence than peripherality because the latter
invokes an image of a two-dimensional F1/F2 space, as in
Fig. 1, which captures only two-formant frequency conversion.
Focalization, on the other hand, describes a multi-dimensional
space defined by at least three formants, which is essential for
vowels such as /y/ (Schwartz et al., 2005). In the current study,
these two terms are used interchangeably, but three-formant
acoustic characteristics are considered.
When the concept of referent vowels is applied to the PAM,
a perceptual bias would be expected in the discrimination of
11
vowel pairs that are likely to involve phonetic, within-category
processing, that is, SC, CG, or UU assimilations (Tyler et al.,
2014). In TC and UC assimilations, listeners are presumed to
rely more on phonological information as they consistently
associate vowels with different L1 categories. Tyler et al.
(2014) tested this cross-model prediction and found that the
less-to-more peripheral vowel order in a trial facilitated discrim-
ination accuracy only in SC assimilations shown by a slim
majority of English listeners for the Norwegian [i]-[y] contrast.
The researchers proposed that a relatively small number of
CG assimilations and an at-ceiling discrimination accuracy of
contrasts showing the UU assimilation might have obscured
the referent vowel bias in these two assimilation types which
involve phonetic processing.
1.5. Study rationale and hypotheses
The present study examined the perception of non-low back
vowels [u o ɯ ɤ] by English listeners in two types of tasks, with
the outcomes of the categorization experiment serving to gen-
erate predictions for the discrimination experiment. A combina-
tion of these two experiments allowed for direct testing of PAM
predictions (Best, 1995) and an examination of some NRV pre-
dictions (Polka & Bohn, 2003, 2011). These examinations have
not previously been done on back vowels contrasting in
rounding.
In the categorization experiment, the goal was to investigate
the perceptual assimilation patterns of Vietnamese vowels [u o
ɯ ɤ] by SUSE listeners naïve to the rounding contrast in back
vowels. Rounding was expected to play a crucial role in cross-
language associations due to focalization in rounded back
vowels (Lisker, 1988; Nishi et al., 2008; Polka & Bohn, 2011;
Schwartz et al., 2005; Stevens, 1972). SUSE listeners were
asked to categorize these four vowels in terms of their native
vowel categories /u oʊ ʊ ɔ ʌ ɝ ɑ/. Their responses were
expected to indicate the role of vowel rounding and height on
cross-language assimilations, given that English does not
have unrounded [ɯ ɤ], and that rounded [u o] are more fronted
in SUSE than in Vietnamese. Specifically, categorization
responses can show whether unrounded [ɯ] and [ɤ] are asso-
ciated with spectrally similar /ʊ/ and /ʌ/ (Fig. 1) or with natural
referent vowels /oʊ/ and /ɔ/. As for the SUSE /u/ category, it is
unclear whether /u/ may serve as a referent vowel. This vowel
is very fronted in SUSE (Fig. 1) and subsequently less focal-
ized, unless it is followed by /l/ (e.g., pool, tool), a phonological
environment in which fronting is blocked. If knowledge of this
phonologically conditioned variation or knowledge of an Eng-
lish dialect with less fronted /u/ influences L2 vowel perception
(Williams & Escudero, 2015), then SUSE listeners may use /u/
as a referent vowel.
In the discrimination experiment, the research questions
were whether vowel assimilation patterns established in the
categorization experiment can serve as accurate predictors
of vowel discrimination accuracy and whether rounded vowels
were perceptually more salient than other vowels. To address
these questions, English speakers made odd-man-out judg-
ments for words with [u o ɯ ɤ] presented in triads. These judg-
ments were used to classify cross-language assimilation
patterns (Best, 1995; Harnsberger, 2001; Tyler et al., 2014).
These classifications were used to test PAM predictions based
12 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23

on expected qualitative ranking from easiest to most difficult,
namely TC = UC > CG > UU > SC (Best, 1995; Bohn, 2018),
and on quantitative difficulty ranking in terms of overlap scores
(Levy, 2009).
Several possible asymmetries in discrimination were addi-
tionally examined because the presence or absence and the
presentation order of a rounded vowel in a triad was expected
to influence the accuracy and speed of listeners’ responses.
First, although the rounding contrast does not exist in SUSE,
it may still be relatively easy to discriminate because rounded
back vowels are more perceptually salient than unrounded
back vowels, which may enhance the contrast for listeners
(Lisker, 1988; Stevens, 1972). Thus, the discrimination of vow-
els contrasting in rounding — [u]-[ɯ] and [o]-[ɤ] — was
expected to be more accurate than discrimination of vowels
contrasting in height — [u]-[o] and [ɯ]-[ɤ]. Second, discrimina-
tion has been found to be easier from a less focalized to a
more focalized vowel than in the other direction (Polka &
Bohn, 2003, 2011). Thus, a more accurate discrimination
was expected in [ɯ]-[u] and [ɤ]-[o] trials than in [u]-[ɯ] and
[o]-[ɤ] trials. (See, however, a caveat with regard to the
reduced focalization of English /u/ described above.) This
asymmetry was expected to be more prominent in SG assim-
ilations than in other assimilation types (Tyler et al., 2014).
Lastly, a listener’s previous experience with the rounding
contrast, even if the contrast is absent in L1, may influence
vowel categorization and discrimination. Therefore, any such
previous experience was taken into account in the analyses
of listener responses.
2. Experiment 1: Vowel categorization
2.1. Method
2.1.1. Participants
Fifty native American English speakers (31 females, 19
males; age 18–25) were recruited at Louisiana State Univer-
sity. The majority grew up in Southern U.S. states as defined
by the dialect regions in the Atlas of North American English
(Labov et al., 2006). Three participants grew up in non-
Southern states: in New York (PR, female), Florida (MZ, male),
and Arizona (BH, female). At the time of the study, PR had
resided in Louisiana for 2.4 years, MZ for 6 years, and BH for
10 years. It was assumed that all participants were highly
familiar with the Southern variety of U.S. English and that most
of them spoke SUSE on daily basis.
All participants had a minimal bilateral hearing range of
250–8000 Hz as tested at 25 dB on site. They were naïve to
Vietnamese but had studied other foreign languages. The data
of one participant were eliminated because she had been
exposed to unrounded back vowels through her language
studies (allophone [ɤ] in Mandarin and phoneme /ɯ/ in Kor-
ean). Exposure to a rounding contrast in front vowels through
learning French (seventeen participants) or German (one par-
ticipant) was not a data-eliminating criterion. Thus, data from
49 participants were included in the analyses and coded for
experience with a rounding contrast in vowels.
2.1.2. Materials
Twelve Vietnamese stimulus words, three words represent-
ing each of the vowels [u o ɯ ɤ], were selected in consultation
with a female native speaker of Vietnamese (Table 1). Each
word had a consonant–vowel structure, in which the initial con-
sonant was either [t] or [tʰ]. In each trio of words with the same
vowel, two words had a level tone and one word had a falling
tone. These words were spoken in modal voice, which is not
associated with durational differences across Vietnamese
tones (Kirby, 2011).
The consultant recorded three tokens of each word in a
sound-attenuated laboratory room at a sampling rate of
44,100 Hz with 16-bit resolution, on a mono channel. Record-
ings were normalized for amplitude and spliced into separate
audio files. Vowel formants, duration, and fundamental fre-
quency (f0) were examined in Praat (Boersma & Weenink,
2017). Given that duration may serve as an acoustic cue
(e.g., in tense/lax vowel contrasts) and thus influence L2
phone categorization (Chládková & Podlipský, 2011;
Escudero et al., 2009), vowel durations were compared across
words. Durations ranged from 290 to 366 ms, and were not

Table 1
Vowel characteristics in twelve Vietnamese stimulus words, averaged across three repetitions of each word. Formant values and fundamental frequency were recorded at vowel midpoints.
Only eight level-tone words were used in the discrimination experiment.

Vowel Word Tone F0 (Hz) Duration (ms) F1 (Hz) F2 (Hz) F3 (Hz)

tu 'knockup' Level 266 327 483 775 3014
[u] thu 'autumn' Level 245 311 484 851 3089
tù 'prison' Falling 178 292 390 730 2868
Mean 310 452 785 2990
tư 'four' Level 271 327 515 1632 3148
[ɯ] thư 'letter' Level 248 306 492 1479 2790
từ 'word' Falling 185 335 464 1433 3112
Mean 323 490 1514 3017
tô 'bowl' Level 238 311 536 962 3071
[o] thô 'coarse' Level 247 290 563 963 3268
th 'to transport' Falling 186 366 490 820 3061
Mean 322 530 915 3133
tơ 'silk' Level 248 317 630 1562 3144
[ɤ] thơ 'poem' Level 250 281 694 1484 3173
thờ 'to worship' Falling 199 356 651 1397 3116
Mean 318 658 1481 3144
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
systematically influenced either by aspiration in a preceding
consonant or by the tone type (Table 1).
As expected, f0 decreased in all words, but at the vowel
midpoint, it was lower in words with a falling tone than in words
with a level tone (Kirby, 2011). The f0 difference between the
vowels' starting and ending points was 13–30 Hz in level-
tone words and 35–52 Hz in falling-tone words. Table 1 also
shows that, as expected, F2-F1 values were much closer in
rounded vowels (333 Hz difference in [u] tokens and 385 Hz
difference in [o] tokens) than in unrounded vowels (1024 Hz
difference in [ɯ] tokens and 823 Hz difference in [ɤ] tokens)
(Stevens, 1972). The relative convergence of F1 and F2 for-
mants in [u o] corresponds to vowel focalization as compared
to [ɯ ɤ] (Polka & Bohn, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2005). While
there was some overlap in F3 values and in F1 values, espe-
cially in vowels [u] and [ɯ], the vowel profiles defined by F2-F1
and F3-F1 were non-overlapping and distinct from each other.
2.1.3. Procedure
A total of thirty-six stimuli were used in the categorization
test: four vowels ! three words ! three tokens of each word.
The stimuli were presented in random order for two kinds of
auditory evaluation. First, participants were asked to catego-
rize a vowel in each stimulus as an instance of some English
vowel category in a seven-alternative forced-choice task. The
seven response categories were represented by keywords
GOOSE for /u/, GOAT for /oʊ/, HAWK for /ɔ/, PUT for /ʊ/,
BUS for /ʌ/, POT for /ɑ/, and NURSE for /ɝ/. In a pilot study,
a separate group of 21 participants was asked to categorize
native English vowels using these keywords. Their accuracy
was similar to previously reported results (Jacewicz & Fox,
2012): 93–99% accuracy for words with /u ʊ ɝ ʌ/ and 40–
58% accuracy for words with /ɔ ɑ/. The same group of pilot par-
ticipants was also asked to categorize the target Vietnamese
vowels by using a larger number of keywords, corresponding
to all SUSE vowel categories. Only seven of the aforemen-
tioned keywords were used at least once by the pilot group.
Therefore, only these seven were adopted in the current
experiment.
Each participant performed the test individually in the labo-
ratory. The test was preceded by a short training session con-
sisting of four trials with Vietnamese words different from the
ones used in the experiment. Experimental trials were pre-
sented through headphones via Praat interface (Boersma &
Weenink, 2017). Upon hearing a Vietnamese word, partici-
pants responded by clicking one of the seven keyword buttons
on a computer screen. Then, immediately after, they rated the
token for goodness-of-fit of the just-identified English category
Table 2
Vietnamese vowel categorizations, averaged over 343 individual scores per vowel. Responses above the chance level of 14.3% are in bold. Average goodness-of-fit ratings are in
parentheses (the higher the rating, the better the fit).
Vietnamese Vowel
ʊ
/u/ GOOSE /o / GOAT
[u] 25 (4.1) 58* (4.5)
[o] 1 (2.5) 59** (4.6)
[ɯ] 22 (3.7) 10 (4.0)
[ɤ] 0 (2.0) 1 (3.7)
Note. In each row, asterisks indicate significant difference in Mann-Whitney tests with Dunn-Bonferroni corrections between the above-chance proportions of responses at the p = 0.001
level (**) and at the p = 0.05 level (*).
13
on a scale from 1 (bad example) to 7 (very good example).
After the rating was selected, the ‘ok’ button appeared on the
screen, and the participant moved to the next trial by clicking
it. The inter-trial interval was one second, but the response
time was unlimited. In total, 1764 categorization responses
were collected: four vowels ! nine trials ! 49 listeners.
2.2. Results
To determine assimilation patterns that would serve as a
predictor for discrimination accuracy in Experiment 2, catego-
rization responses from Experiment 1 were analyzed by Viet-
namese vowel. All statistical analyses were conducted in
SPSS (IBM Corp., 2016); the p = 0.05 level of significance
was adopted. If the same keyword was chosen in 50% or more
of the vowel categorizations, the vowel was considered Cate-
gorized; otherwise it was considered Uncategorized. Based
on this approach, an assimilation type in a vowel pair was
labeled as TC, UC, or UU. If each vowel in a pair was catego-
rized 50% of the time as the same English vowel category,
then the goodness-of-fit ratings for each category responses
were examined in a Mann-Whitney test to determine whether
the assimilation type was SC or CG. In addition to the categor-
ical labeling of the assimilation patterns in the [u]-[o], [ɯ]-[ɤ],
[ɯ]-[u], and [o]-[ɤ] vowel pairs, interval-scale overlap scores
for these vowel pairs were computed.
2.2.1. Average categorization responses
Proportions of individual selections of English keywords
were calculated out of nine trials of a vowel categorization by
every listener. When compiled, these individual scores totaled
343 data points per vowel (seven response categories ! 49
listeners). Table 2 shows average categorization responses
by the listeners. Under the 50% consistency criteria, the
[u o ɤ] vowels were Categorized: both [u] and [o] were
perceived as similar to the English /oʊ/ category; [ɤ] was
perceived as similar to the English /ʌ/ category. In contrast,
the [ɯ] vowel was Uncategorized. For each of the Vietnamese
vowels, however, two or three English keywords were chosen
above the chance level of 14.3%. Considering all above-
chance categorizations, [u] was perceived as similar to
/u/ and /oʊ/; [o] was perceived as similar to /oʊ/and /ɔ/; [ɤ]
was perceived as similar to /ʌ/ and /ʊ/; and [ɯ] was perceived
as similar to /ʌ/, /ʊ/, and /u/.
The categorizations in each row of Table 2 were further
examined in four separate Kruskal-Wallis tests (one per vowel)
to provide a statistical analysis of observed patterns. Kruskal-
Wallis tests were used because they accommodate more than
two response categories as compared to other non-parametric
% Response
/ɔ/ HAWK /ʊ/ PUT /ʌ/ BUS /ɑ/ POT /ɝ/ NURSE
8 (4.2) 5 (2.9) 1 (3.5) 2 (3.3) 1 (3.0)
20 (4.8) 6 (3.3) 2 (2.8) 11 (4.3) 1 (3.0)
1 (1.8) 32 (3.4) 26 (3.3) 2 (2.6) 7 (2.9)
4 (2.8) 18 (4.6) 70** (5.1) 3 (3.3) 3 (3.9)
14 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
tests. Kruskal-Wallis tests on proportions of all response types
yielded significant outcomes: [H(6) = 201.51, p < 0.001] for [u],
[H(6) = 156.30, p < 0.001] for [o], [H(6) = 111.14, p < 0.001] for
[ɯ], and [H(6) = 216.49, p < 0.001] for [ɤ]. Listeners’ prefer-
ences in the above-chance responses only (see the asterisk
notations in Table 2) were examined in Mann-Whitney pairwise
comparison tests with the Dunn-Bonferroni corrections for mul-
tiple comparisons. These examinations showed that [u] was
categorized more frequently as GOAT than GOOSE
[U = 52.36, p = 0.047], [o] was categorized more frequently
as GOAT than HAWK [U = 88.44, c001], and [ɤ] was catego-
rized more frequently as BUS than PUT [U = 86.57,
p < 0.001]. Because both [u] and [o] were predominantly cate-
gorized as GOAT, their goodness-of-fit ratings for the GOAT
responses were compared in a Mann-Whitney test and found
to be not significantly different at the 0.05 level.
As for [ɯ] categorizations, the Kruskal-Wallis tests showed
that the differences between selections of PUT-BUS, PUT-
GOOSE, and BUS-GOOSE keywords were not significant at
the 0.05 level. Goodness-of-fit ratings were consequently exam-
ined and also found to be not significantly different at the 0.05
level in any of the PUT-BUS, PUT-GOOSE, and BUS-GOOSE
comparisons. These results confirmed that [ɯ] was not assimi-
lated to any English vowel category in terms of frequency of
selected responses and goodness-of-fit judgments.
Taken together, this set of analyses suggests the following
L2-to-L1 assimilation types for the Vietnamese vowel pairs: a
SC assimilation for [u]-[o], an UC assimilation for [ɯ]-[u] and
[ɯ]-[ɤ], and a TC assimilation for [o]-[ɤ] (Best, 1995). If discrim-
ination predictions are based on predominant associations (i.e.,
the SC < TC = UC discrimination accuracy ranking), then the
most challenging contrast for native English listeners should
be [u]-[o]. The other three contrasts should be equally easy to
distinguish. However, multiple category membership was
observed in above-chance keyword selections (see responses
in bold in each row of Table 2). Although [ɯ] was determined
to be Uncategorized, the PUT, BUS, and GOOSE keywords
were chosen at the above-chance level of 14.3%. Although,
[u o ɤ] were determined to be Categorized, each of these vowels
had a secondary, above-chance association with another cate-
gory as well. These observations suggest individual differences
in L2-to-L1 categorizations, which may influence the prediction
of discrimination accuracy in L2 vowels pairs.
To account for these secondary associations, Mann-
Whitney tests comparing same-category responses selected
at the above-chance level for pairs of Vietnamese vowels were
conducted with the following results. The BUS response was
selected more frequently for [ɤ] than for [ɯ] [U = 52.49,
p < 0.001], and the [ɤ]-[ɯ] goodness-of-fit ratings to BUS were
significantly different [U = 128.41, p < 0.001]. Neither the differ-
ence between categorizations of [u] and [ɯ] as GOOSE, nor
the difference between categorizations of [u] and [o] as GOAT
was significant at the 0.05 level. When goodness-of-fit ratings
for these vowel pairs were examined in Mann-Whitney tests,
neither of the tests yielded significant results.
Taken together, this set of analyses suggests that L2-to-L1
association patterns were not exactly the same for any of the
vowels, even in cases when the predominant associations were
similar, as in [u o] assimilating to /oʊ/. The assimilation type for
[ɯ]-[u] and [u]-[o] may be SC, associating with GOOSE and
GOAT, respectively. The assimilation type for [ɯ]-[ɤ] may be
CG, in which [ɤ] phones are perceived as more similar to BUS
than [ɯ] phones. The assimilation type for [o]-[ɤ] was still TC,
in which [ɤ] phones were associated with BUS and [o] phones
were associated with either GOATor HAWK above chance level.
Thus, if discrimination predictions are based on above-chance
associations (i.e., the SC < CG < TC discrimination accuracy
ranking), then the most challenging Vietnamese contrasts for
English listeners should be [u]-[o] and [ɯ]-[u]; the [ɯ]-[ɤ] con-
trast should be less challenging; and the [o]-[ɤ] contrast should
be the least challenging.
Lastly, to account for all categorization responses in a par-
ticular Vietnamese vowel pair, an overlap score was calculated
as the sum of per-category overlaps when two vowels were
categorized as similar to one or more English vowel category
(Levy, 2009). This approach has the advantage of accounting
for more than one pattern of responses on an interval scale,
which is particularly useful when the responses are distributed
in a bimodal (e.g., 25%–58% for GOOSE-GOAT categoriza-
tions of [u]) or multimodal (e.g., 22%–32%–26% for GOOSE-
PUT-BUS categorizations of [ɯ]) manner, which suggests a
multiple category membership. When the overlap score metric
was used for quantification of perceptual assimilation, Viet-
namese vowel pairs could be ordered along a continuum from
most to least similar. Refer to Table 2 for an illustration of the
overlap score calculation. Vietnamese [u] and [o] vowels were
assimilated to English /u/ in 25.3% and 1.4% of all responses,
respectively. The overlap here (i.e., the portion that overlaps
between 25.3% and 1.4%) was 1.4%, the smaller percentage
of the two. Next, the overlap in assimilations of the same two
vowels to English /oʊ/ was 57.8%. In this manner, the overlap
in assimilations of these two vowels was determined for each
of the available English categories. An overall overlap score
was calculated as the sum of per-category overlaps. Thus,
the overlap score for Vietnamese [u] and [o] was 75.5%: 1.4
+ 57.8 + 7.7 + 5.4 + 0.9 + 1.8 + 0.5.
The calculations showed that the overlap scores in
responses of 49 listeners were: 80% for [u]-[o]; 52% for
[ɯ]-[ɤ]; 41% for [ɯ]-[u]; and 17% for [o]-[ɤ]. The higher the
score, the higher the percentage of errors that was expected
in vowel discrimination (Levy, 2009). Thus, the discrimination
accuracy ranking based on the overlap scores was expected
to be [u]-[o] < [ɯ]-[ɤ] < [ɯ]-[u] < [o]-[ɤ].
2.2.2. Individual categorization responses
Multimodal distributions of categorization responses sug-
gested that listeners varied substantially in their categorization
strategies, and this individual variation could have been
obscured in group-level assimilation patterns. The total number
of individual responses per vowel was relatively small, only nine.
Under the 50% criterion, a Vietnamese vowel was considered
Categorized when it was judged to be similar to a particular Eng-
lish keyword in five trials or more; otherwise, it was considered
Uncategorized. Some individual responses had a bimodal distri-
bution of 5-4 judgments splits between two English keywords
(6% of all trials) and 4-4-1 splits among three English keywords
(1% of all trials). Bimodal categorization may be a strategy
adopted by some listeners. However, a larger number of individ-
ual responses than nine would be necessary to reliably confirm
the existence of this strategy within a listener.
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23 15

Table 3
Individual categorizations of Vietnamese vowels determined by a 50% consistency criterion ("5 responses in the same category out of nine trials). The last column of responses represents
an uncategorized (UC) assimilation type, in which responses were distributed over several English categories with no response frequency larger than five.

Vietnamese Vowel Categorized as English (Number of Listeners) UC

ʊ
/u/ /o / /ɔ/ /ʊ/ /ʌ/ /ɑ/ /ɝ/
[u] 7 30 4 1 – – – 7
[o] – 33 6 – – 4 – 6
[ɯ] 10 – – 14 7 – 3 15
[ɤ] – – 2 5 38 – – 4

Table 4 selection of keywords. A multinomial logistic regression analy-

A summary of individual assimilation patterns in 49 listeners by Vietnamese vowel contrast
based on individual categorizations of Vietnamese vowels at the 50% consistency
criterion.
Assimilation Contrast
Type [o]-[ɤ] [ɯ]-[u]
TC 40 24
UC 8 15
UU 1 3
SC – 5
CG – 2
Note: TC = Two-Category, UC = Uncategorized-Categorized, UU = Uncategorized-
Uncategorized, SC = Single-Category, CG = Category Goodness.
Individual categorizations of Vietnamese vowels are shown
in Table 3. As expected, a great deal of inter-listener variability
was observed. Table 3 shows that, except for [ɯ], the majority
of listeners exhibited strong preferences in their categorization
of the target Vietnamese vowels: 61% of listeners categorized
Vietnamese [u] as most similar to English /oʊ/; 67% of listeners
also categorized [o] as /oʊ/; and 78% of listeners categorized
[ɤ] as most similar to /ʌ/. As for the Vietnamese [ɯ] vowel, it
was uncategorized by 31% of the listeners; categorized as /ʊ/
by 29%, as /u/ by 20%, and as /ʌ/ by 14% of the listeners. The
responses to [ɯ] were also more variable considering the round-
ing cue than the responses to the other vowels. An examination
of listeners' IDs showed that listeners who picked the less pop-
ular keywords were not the same across all four Vietnamese
vowel categorizations, suggesting that none of the listeners
was an outlier with an idiosyncratic categorization strategy.
A tally of individual assimilations is shown in Table 4. The
[o]-[ɤ] pair showed TC, UC, and UU patterns of assimilation
(compared to just the TC pattern in the group-level analysis).
Three other vowel pairs showed all five types of assimilation
in individual listeners. Both TC and UC assimilations were fre-
quent in the [ɯ]-[u] and [ɯ]-[ɤ] vowel pairs. This suggests that
the difference between TC and UC may be obscured in group-
level analyses. Furthermore, the UU assimilation type is also
obscured when only average data are considered.
In addition to determining individual categorization
responses and assimilation patterns, individual overlap scores
for each of the four contrasts were also calculated (see Appen-
dix). The overlap scores ranged from 0% to 56% for TC assim-
ilations, 0–78% for UC assimilations, 22–78% for UU
assimilations, 56–78% for CG assimilations, and 56–89% for
SC assimilations.
sis was conducted on individual categorization responses for
each Vietnamese vowel, in which seven English keywords
represented multiple levels of the dependent variable. Predic-
tor variables included four stimulus variables: vowel duration
[ɯ]-[ɤ] [u]-[o]
as well as F1, F2, and F3 measured at a vowel midpoint and
21 14
converted to the Bark scale using the formula proposed in
17 7
1 3 Traunmüller (1990). Predictor variables also included two lis-
2 22 tener variables: previous exposure to the rounding contrast
8 3
(a) in front vowels through learning L2 French or German
and (b) in back vowels through taking the discrimination task
first in the present study. Based on the expectation that rela-
tively more peripheral (but acoustically close) vowels may
serve as referent vowels in perception, GOAT was used as
a referent response category in multinomial regressions for
[u o ɯ], and HAWK in the regression for [ɤ]. Significant contri-
butions of predictor variables in each of the models are shown
in Table 5.
Overall, regression models with six predictor variables fitted
the response data better than intercept-only models: [v2 (36)
= 188.08, p < 0.001] for [u]; [v2 (36) = 86.93, p < 0.001] for [o];
[v2 (36) = 180.44, p < 0.001] for [ɯ]; and [v2 (36) = 98.29,
p < 0.001] for [ɤ]. Depending on the Vietnamese vowel pre-
sented to listeners, the significance of predictor contribution
in the model varied. For example, almost none of the predictors
had a significant contribution in differentiating listeners'
responses to [ɤ] with /ɔ/ as a reference category. On the other
hand, most predictors were significant in listeners' responses
to [u] with /oʊ/ as a reference category. These results show that
the listeners relied on different (and complex) sets of acoustic
cues while selecting their answers for each of the Vietnamese
vowels.
The results also show that both listener variables played a
role in the selection of some keywords. Listeners who had pre-
vious exposure to a rounding contrast in front or back vowels
categorized [u] more frequently as GOAT than GOOSE. This
means that [u] and [o] in these listeners were likely to show
a SC assimilation pattern to GOAT. They also categorized
[ɯ] more frequently as BUS than GOAT, which suggests that
they may be more sensitive to the rounding contrast in the
Vietnamese back vowels than listeners without such experi-
ence. This also means that [ɯ] and [ɤ] in these listeners were
likely to show a SC or a CG assimilation pattern to BUS,
whereas [ɯ]-[u] were likely to show a TC assimilation.

2.2.3. Factors influencing categorization 3. Experiment 2: Vowel discrimination

While the analyses above were used to derive predictions
for Experiment 2, the last set of analyses below was explora- In this experiment, discrimination was tested for four
tory in order to examine what factors might influence the Vietnamese vowel contrasts with regard to predictions based
16 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23

Table 5
Significant effects of predictor variables at the p # 0.05 level in four multinomial logistic regressions on listener responses by Vietnamese
vowel. The reference category (shaded in the table) was HAWK for [ɤ], and GOAT for [u o ɯ].

on the assimilation types and overlap scores for each of the
Vietnamese vowel pairs determined in Experiment 1.
3.1. Method
3.1.1. Participants
Out of 49 participants in the categorization task, 30 com-
pleted an additional discrimination task (17 females, 13 males;
age 18–25), including eight speakers who self-reported a
beginning or intermediate proficiency in French (see
Appendix).
3.1.2. Stimuli and task
Vowel discrimination in four minimal pairs — [u]-[o], [ɯ]-[ɤ],
[o]-[ɤ], and [u]-[ɯ] — was tested in an oddity task (Flege, 2003;
Macmillan & Creelman, 2005). Each of these pairs differed in
one phonological feature: [u]-[o] and [ɯ]-[ɤ] differed in vowel
height; [o]-[ɤ] and [u]-[ɯ] differed in rounding. To create the
test, eight Vietnamese words with level tones were selected:
two words with each of the [u], [ɯ], [o], and [ɤ] vowels (see
Table 1). Three tokens (productions) of each word were used
to construct test trials in the categorial discrimination format
in which stimuli were presented in triads to test a single con-
trast, but no two stimuli in a triad were exactly the same. In
each trial of the oddity task (e.g., [tu1]-[tɯ1]-[tu2]), the partici-
pant heard three stimuli, two of which were different tokens
of a word representing one vowel category (e.g., [tu]), and
one of which was a token of a word representing another vowel
category. In the example given, the second stimulus was an
oddball because it contained a vowel different from the first
and the third stimuli.
The serial position of the oddball was not fixed, which
increased the overall difficulty of the task (Flege, 2003). The
oddball stimulus occurred with equal frequency in all three pos-
sible positions in a triad, resulting in six trial types for each
vowel pair A-B: ABB and BAA (first stimulus was an oddball),
ABA and BAB (second stimulus was an oddball), AAB and
BBA (third stimulus was an oddball). The number of oddball tri-
als for each vowel pair was 24: two words per an oddball vowel
(e.g., [tɯ], [tʰɯ]) ! two tokens representing a different vowel
category (e.g., [tu1], [tu2]) ! six trial types. In these trials, if
the oddball was chosen, then the response was considered
correct. It was assumed that the listeners would minimize
within-category differences (e.g., [tu1] versus [tu2]) and
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23 17

Table 6
Discrimination accuracy in four Vietnamese contrasts predicted from (a) assimilation types under the 50% categorization consistency criterion (Best, 1995); (b) assimilation types under the
above-chance criterion of 14.3%; and (c) overlap scores (Levy, 2009). Discrimination accuracy ranking is expected to be TC = UC > CG > SC and to negatively correlate with the overlap
scores.

Vietnamese Contrast Assimilation Overlap Score %(c) Discrimination Accuracy % (SD)

(a) (b)
Predominant Above-Chance
[o]-[ɤ] TC /oʊ/-/ʌ/ TC /oʊ/-/ʌ/ 17 90 (11.5)
[ɯ]-[ɤ] UC /?/-/ʌ/ CG /ʌ/ 52 89 (12.8)
[ɯ]-[u] UC /?/-/oʊ/ SC /u/ 41 83 (19.1)
[u]-[o] SC /oʊ/ SC /oʊ/ 80 84 (13.3)

Note: TC = Two-Category, UC = Uncategorized-Categorized, SC = Single-Category, CG = Category Goodness. The symbol /?/ is used to indicate the lack of the predominant
assimilation pattern for Vietnamese [ɯ].

maximized between-category differences (e.g., [tu1] versus
[tɯ2]) by basing their decisions on contrastive acoustic cues.
Chance performance was 1/3.
In addition to the oddball trials, the test also included catch
trials which consisted of three physically different productions
of the same word. Catch trials were used to further encourage
participants' responses to phonetically relevant (and not only
auditorily detectable) differences between the stimuli (Flege,
2003). The participants were naïve to Vietnamese at the onset
of the study, but it was expected that they would start discern-
ing Vietnamese vowel contrasts as the experiment pro-
gressed. In other words, their sensitivity to the differences
between the words containing different vowels was expected
to increase, while their sensitivity to the variation among differ-
ent productions of the same word was expected to decrease. A
statistical method to assess individual participant’s response
bias in the oddity task is not currently available (Macmillan &
Creelman, 2005), but the inclusion of catch trials may reduce
potential response biases (Flege, 2003).
3.1.3. Procedure
The participants took the categorization test and discrimina-
tion test in counter-balanced order; that is, half of them com-
pleted Experiment 1 first. The discrimination test consisted of
144 trials (four vowel pairs ! 24 oddball trials + four vow-
els ! 12 catch trials), which were presented in a random order.
For each trial, participants were asked to select a stimulus that
they perceived as containing a different vowel from the other
two. They selected the ‘first,’ ‘second,’ or ‘third’ response but-
ton on a computer screen indicating the serial position of the
oddball stimulus. Participants were instructed to select the
'none' button if they thought that all three stimuli in a triad
had the same vowel, analogous to the English examples bat-
bat-bet versus bat-bat-bat. They were instructed to respond
as quickly and accurately as possible; however, the response
time (RT) was not limited. After a response button was
selected, the participant moved to the next trial by clicking an
‘ok’ button. The inter-stimulus and inter-trial intervals were
1.5 s. Relatively long intervals were used to decrease the like-
lihood of auditory-based judgments and increase demands
related to phonetic encoding (Flege, 2003; Polka & Bohn,
2011). Participants' responses and RTs were recorded. RT
was measured from the beginning of the first stimulus sound.
3.2. Results
3.2.1. Vowel discrimination in oddball trials
The first set of analyses was used to determine whether
there were accuracy and RT differences in discrimination of
four Vietnamese contrasts. Listeners’ responses in oddball tri-
als constituted 2880 data points (96 trials ! 30 listeners). Aver-
age discrimination accuracy by contrast is shown in the last
column of Table 6, where the predictions based on Experiment
1 results are summarized in columns 2–4 for convenience.
Binary accuracy data (correct or incorrect response in each
trial) were fitted to a generalized mixed-effects model with logit
link function and binomial distribution (IBM Corp., 2016).
Parameters included the following fixed factors and their inter-
actions: contrast (4), oddball vowel (4), position of an oddball
vowel in a triad (3), experience with the rounding contrast via
foreign language learning (2), experience with the rounding
contrast via taking the categorization test first (2). Random fac-
tors (with random slopes) included listener and trial number.
This analysis yielded significant effects of contrast [F
(3,2856) = 4.55, p = 0.003] and oddball vowel [F(3,2856)
= 3.47, p = 0.016], as well as an interaction between the odd-
ball vowel and its position in a triad [F(6,2856) = 3.98,
p = 0.001]. The effect of listener was also significant
[Z = 2.87, p = 0.004]; other effects and interactions were not.
The significant effect of contrast was further investigated in
pairwise comparisons with Bonferroni corrections for multiple
comparisons. All contrasts were compared to [u]-[o], which

Table 7
Discrimination accuracy (%) in four Vietnamese contrasts by trial type. Each contrast had 720 responses (six trial types ! 30 listeners).

Contrast Trial Type Effect of Mean

[A], [B] ABB BAA BAB ABA BBA AAB Trial Type Accuracy
[o], [ɤ] 88 93 93 85 98 83 p = 0.002 90
[ɯ], [ɤ] 84 93 91 83 89 91 p = 0.089 89
[u], [ɯ] 77 82 80 85 92 83 p = 0.034 83
[u], [o] 78 84 87 83 77 93 p = 0.022 84

Note: Discrimination accuracy in triads where the vowel category changes from a less peripheral to a more peripheral ([ɤ] to [o], [ɯ] to [u]) are underlined.
18 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
had the highest overlap score and was predicted to be the
most challenging for listeners. As expected, the [u]-[o] contrast
was discriminated with lower accuracy than the [ɯ]-[ɤ] contrast
[t = 2.17, p = 0.030] or the [o]-[ɤ] contrast [t = 2.83, p = 0.005].
The difference between [u]-[o] and [ɯ]-[u], however, was not
significant. This result suggested that not all contrasts in
rounding such as [ɯ]-[u] were discriminated more accurately
than contrasts in height such as [u]-[o], although for the
[o]-[ɤ] and [ɯ]-[ɤ] contrasts this prediction was borne out.
The percentage of correct responses by contrast is shown in
Tables 6 and 7.
The significant effect of the oddball vowel was also further
examined in pairwise comparisons where all vowels were com-
pared to [u], which was the most peripheral among the target
Vietnamese vowels. The comparisons showed that when [u]
was an oddball, contrasts were discriminated with lower accu-
racy than when [o] and [ɤ] were oddballs, [t = 2.26, p = 0.024]
and [t = 2.86, p = 0.004], respectively. The difference between
[u] and [ɯ] was not significant.
A significant interaction between the oddball vowel and its
position in a triad was further examined in separate logistic
regression analyses by contrast. To utilize the task design
and simplify the model, trial type was used as a fixed factor
instead of the oddball vowel and position factors (Table 7).
Because listener experiential factors and trial number factor
were not significant in the omnibus regression analysis
described above, they were excluded from the analyses by
contrast. The outcomes of these analyses were as follows.
First, the analysis of discrimination accuracy for [o]-[ɤ]
yielded a significant effect of trial type [F(5,714) = 3.81,
p = 0.002] and listener [Z = 2.22, p = 0.026]. The [ɤ]-[ɤ]-[o] tri-
als were discriminated with the highest accuracy of 98%, which
was significantly different from the 88% accuracy in the
[o]-[ɤ]-[ɤ] trials [t = 2.72, p = 0.007]. The differences among
other trial types were not significant. Second, the analysis for
[ɯ]-[ɤ] did not show a significant effect of trial type; however,
the effect of listener was significant [Z = 2.22, p = 0.028]. Third,
the analysis for [ɯ]-[u] yielded a significant effect of trial type
[F(5,714) = 2.42, p = 0.034] and listener [Z = 2.81, p = 0.005].
The [ɯ]-[ɯ]-[u] trials were discriminated with the highest
accuracy of 92%, which was significantly different from the
77% accuracy in the [u]-[ɯ]-[ɯ] trials [t = 2.34, p = 0.001].
The differences among other trial types were not significant.
Fourth, the analysis for [u]-[o] yielded a significant effect of trial
type [F(5,714) = 2.65, p = 0.022] but not listener. The [u]-[u]-[o]
trials were discriminated with the highest accuracy of 93%,
which was significantly different from the 78% accuracy in
the [u]-[o]-[o] trials [t = 2.30, p = 0.003].
In Table 7, discrimination accuracy in triads where the vowel
category changes from less peripheral to more peripheral ([ɤ]
to [o] and [ɯ] to [u]) are underlined. In line with predictions from
the Natural Referent Vowel model (Polka & Bohn, 2011), Eng-
lish listeners performed slightly better in such triads where the
oddball vowel was in the last position (i.e., BBA trials types) as
compared to triads where the direction of the change was
reversed (ABB or AAB trial types).
In addition to discrimination accuracy, log-transformed RTs
were examined in similar analyses, except that the generalized
linear mixed model had identity link and normal distribution
(IBM Corp., 2016). Prior to statistical analyses, outliers that
did not fall into the M ± 2.5 SD distribution of log-transformed
RTs (5.1% of the data) were removed. A regression analysis
yielded one significant result, an effect of the position of an
oddball vowel in a triad, [F (2,2746) = 8.78, p < 0.001]. Specif-
ically, when the target vowel was in a triad-final position, its dis-
crimination was faster than when it was in the triad-initial or
triad-medial positions, [t = $2.46, p = 0.014] and [t = $3.98,
p < 0.001]. Not surprisingly, the effect of listener was also sig-
nificant [Z = 3.27, p = 0.001]. Because the effect of the oddball
vowel and its interaction with its position in a triad were not sig-
nificant, further analysis of RTs was not conducted.
3.2.2. The relationship between category overlap and discrimination
The next set of analyses was conducted to examine
whether assimilation patterns (a discrete variable with the five
levels of TC, UC, UU, SC, and CG) and overlap scores (a con-
tinuous variable) predict discrimination accuracy. The propor-
tions of correct discrimination answers were calculated for
each contrast and individual. These proportions were submit-
ted to two generalized mixed-effects models (identity link, nor-
mal distribution). In the first model, assimilation type was an
independent variable; in the second model, overlap score
was an independent variable. In both models, vowel pair (4)
was another fixed effect (an interaction with the independent
variable of interest included) and listener was a random effect
(slopes included).
A regression analysis on proportions of listeners' accuracy
in oddball trials with assimilation type as an independent vari-
able yielded a significant effect of assimilation type [F(4,99)
= 8.91, p < 0.001], vowel pair [F(3,99) = 4.99, p = 0.003], and
their interaction [F(9,99) = 3.23, p = 0.002]. The effect of lis-
tener was also significant [Z = 2.36, p = 0.018]. Pairwise com-
parisons showed that accuracy was lower in SC assimilations
than in TC [t = $6.42, p < 0.001], in UC [t = $4.97, p < 0.001],
and in UU assimilations [t = $3.85, p = 0.002]. Furthermore,
accuracy was lower in CG assimilations than in TC assimila-
tions [t = $3.12, p = 0.017]. Fig. 2 shows that the overall accu-
racy ranking by assimilation type from easiest to most difficult
was: TC = UC = UU > CG = SC. However, this ranking
reflected mostly the relationship between discrimination
accuracy and assimilation types in the [ɯ]-[u] vowel pair. In
the [u]-[o] pair, such a ranking was not observed. In the other
two pairs, SC and/or CG assimilations are missing, therefore,
a ranking among the five assimilation types cannot be
established.
Fig. 2. Mean discrimination accuracy in oddball trials by vowel pair and assimilation
type. Error bars indicate ± 1 standard error.
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
A regression analysis on proportions of listeners’ accuracy
in oddball trials with overlap score as an independent variable
yielded a significant effect of overlap only [F(1,108) = 17.24,
p < 0.001]. The effect of listener was also significant
[Z = 2.39, p = 0.017]. An unexpected finding was that there
was no effect of vowel pair on discrimination accuracy in this
model.
A two-tailed correlation analysis of discrimination accuracy
scores for each contrast in Experiment 2 and overlap scores
for each contrast in Experiment 1 yielded a significant correla-
tion of moderate strength [q = $0.386, p < 0.001]. This result
indicates a negative relationship trend between the two vari-
ables: namely, the higher the overlap score in the perception
of two non-native vowels, the less accurately the listeners dis-
criminated the vowels.
4. General discussion
The goal of the present study was to examine cross-
language perception of non-low back rounded and unrounded
vowels by listeners naïve to a rounding contrast in back vow-
els. Predictions of non-native phone categorization and dis-
crimination were based mainly on the PAM approach to
cross-language speech perception (Best, 1995). Predictions
arising from perception bias when rounded back vowels are
involved were also examined (Lisker, 1988; Polka & Bohn,
2003, 2011; Schwartz et al., 2005; Stevens, 1972).
4.1. Acoustic similarity as a predictor of cross-language associations
The findings in the current study were consistent with previ-
ous research in that acoustic similarity was one, but not the
only, factor determining perceived similarity between vowels.
Based on a comparison of acoustic characteristics of Central
Vietnamese [u o ɯ ɤ] vowels and vowel categories in Southern
U.S. English in terms of rounding and F1/F2 values (Fig. 1),
one might predict the following L2-to-L1 assimilation patterns:
[u] assimilated to /oʊ/; [o] to /oʊ/; [ɯ] to /ʊ/ or /oʊ/; and [ɤ] to
/ʌ/ or /ʊ/. Predominant categorization responses showed that
at the group level, three predicted L2-to-L1 assimilation pat-
terns were borne out: [u] assimilated to /oʊ/, [o] to /oʊ/, and
[ɤ] to /ʌ/. The [ɯ] vowel did not show a predominant assimila-
tion to any SUSE vowel category.
When above-chance responses were considered at the
group level, none of the Vietnamese vowels were perceived
in a similar way: [u] was assimilated to /oʊ/ and /u/, [o] was
assimilated to /oʊ/ and /ɔ/, [ɤ] was assimilated to /ʌ/ and /ʊ/;
and [ɯ] was assimilated to /ʊ/, /ʌ/, and /u/ (Table 2). Thus,
the multiple category membership effect describes the current
data well (see Harnsberger, 2001). This finding supports fur-
ther exploration of the acoustic similarity between L2 phones
and L1 categories in terms of acoustic cue weighting, beyond
determining the “closest” L2 phone – L1 category pairings.
Although the current study was not designed to investigate
acoustic cue weighting in vowel perception, acoustic charac-
teristics of the Vietnamese vowel stimuli were shown to have
different contributions in the perception of the [u o ɯ ɤ] vowels
(Table 5). The cue weighting approach is further supported by
individual variability in perception.
19
Both the Vietnamese [u] and [o] were predominantly associ-
ated with /oʊ/. This SC assimilation is not surprising because
these Vietnamese vowels are (a) acoustically close to each
other, and (b) acoustically closest to SUSE’s /oʊ/ (Fig. 1). In
particular, the perception of [u] as /oʊ/ may be driven by the
acoustic characteristics of /u/ in the listeners’ L1 dialect, SUSE,
in which it is fronted. This finding is consistent with previous
research showing that regional differences in L1 influence
the perception of L2 vowels, and thus cross-language compar-
isons need to be dialect-specific (Chládková & Podlipský,
2011; Escudero et al., 2012).
Even though Vietnamese [ɯ] is acoustically closest to Eng-
lish /ʊ/ and /oʊ/, it did not show a predominant association with
either of these vowels. One might posit that the difference in
rounding between [ɯ], on one hand, and /ʊ/ and /oʊ/ on the
other, limited such associations. However, F2 and F3, the
vowel formants that index rounding, were not significant pre-
dictors of listeners' choice of the keywords with English vowels
similar to [ɯ], except for the significant F2 effect in the GOOSE
versus GOAT choice. Both of these keywords, however, have
rounded vowels (Table 5). This result casts doubt on whether
the mapping of [ɯ] on to /ʊ/ or /oʊ/ was limited because of
the differences in rounding. An explanation of why [ɯ] was
not associated with the /oʊ/ category may be that differences
in formant trajectories, for example, the diphthongization of
/o/, set these vowels apart, a conclusion also supported by
the significant role of vowel duration in predicting listeners'
choice of BUS versus GOAT in [ɯ] categorizations (Table 5).
An explanation of why [ɯ] was not predominantly associated
with the /ʊ/ category may rely on the variability in the percep-
tion of /ʊ/-rounding (Cruttenden, 2014; Ladefoged &
Johnson, 2015), as related to the articulation of rounding
(i.e., the degree of lip pursing versus lip protrusion).
Above-chance but not predominant assimilations of [ɯ] did
include /ʊ/, /ʌ/, and /u/ categories. Possible explanations for
why these three SUSE vowel categories do not invoke consis-
tent (predominant) associations with the Vietnamese [ɯ]
include: (a) the quality of rounding in /ʊ/ and free /ʊ/-/u/ varia-
tion in some words, (b) a much lower vowel height in /ʌ/, and c)
the fronting of /u/ in SUSE. Thus, the uncategorized status of
Vietnamese [ɯ] in native SUSE listeners may be attributed
to acoustic–phonetic detail in the realization of English close
and close-mid back vowels. Acoustic comparisons between
L2 and L1, however, have limited explanatory power because
the relationship between segment acoustics and segment per-
ception by listeners is not straightforward (Bohn, 2018).
4.2. Perceived similarity in non-low back vowels
Unlike articulatory/acoustic similarity, perceived L2-to-L1
similarity has to be first established in categorization experi-
ments. The best example of the difference between acoustic
similarity and perceived similarity is the case of Vietnamese
[ɯ] perception described above. Other relevant results are
summarized in Tables 2 and 3.
Previous research suggested that back unrounded vowels
such as [ɯ] and [ɤ] may be perceptually less salient than their
rounded counterparts, and listeners may be biased to perceive
them as rounded (Lisker, 1988; Stevens, 1972). Results from
the current study did not provide strong evidence for this
20 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
hypothesis. The [ɤ] vowel was categorized most consistently
as similar to /ʌ/, which is not rounded or focalized. Only two lis-
teners categorized it predominantly as /ɔ/, a vowel that is
rounded and more focalized than /ʌ/ (Table 3). As for the [ɯ]
vowel, the inconsistency of categorizations at the group level
was described in the previous section. None of the /ʊ/, /ʌ/, or
/u/ vowels are focalized in SUSE.
In summary, SUSE listeners were not biased to associate
Vietnamese [ɯ] and [ɤ] with the more peripheral /oʊ ɔ/ cate-
gories rather than with the less peripheral /u/, /ʊ/, and /ʌ/ cate-
gories. An extension of the NRV approach to vowel
categorization, where peripheral/focalized vowels act as natu-
ral referent vowels and, perhaps, are categorized more consis-
tently (Polka & Bohn, 2003, 2011), was also not supported.
Vietnamese [u o] were categorized more consistently than
[ɯ]. However, the categorization of unrounded, non-
peripheral [ɤ] was the most consistent among the four vowels,
which does not go along with a possible extension of the NRV
model to categorization.
While a bias towards perceiving back vowels as rounded
was not observed, the majority of listeners appeared to use
rounding as a major acoustic cue in their judgments. For
example, except for one listener, the responses to [u] were
limited to the rounded /u oʊ ɔ/. Similarly, the responses to
[o] were limited to the rounded /oʊ ɔ/, except for four listen-
ers whose /ɑ/-responses arguably may be attributed to the
widespread /ɑ/-/ɔ/ merger in U.S. English. Except for two lis-
teners, the responses to [ɤ] were limited to unrounded /ʊ ʌ/.
Only, unrounded [ɯ] was perceived as similar to both
rounded and unrounded categories, since 24 listeners classi-
fied it as /u/ or /ʊ/, and seven listeners classified it as /ʌ/.
Vowel height appeared to play a modest role in categoriza-
tions. Close vowels [u ɯ] were categorized as similar to
English close /u/, close-mid /ʊ oʊ/, and open-mid /ʌ/.
Close-mid vowels [o ɤ] were categorized as similar to
close-mid /ʊ oʊ/ and open-mid /ɔ ʌ/.
Lastly, listeners’ responses showed that their previous
experience with an L2 that has a rounding contrast in front
vowels or previous short exposure to the target Vietnamese
vowels via the discrimination experiment influenced their per-
ception of back close vowels contrasting in rounding, that is,
[u] and [ɯ]. The eighteen SUSE listeners who had studied
French and German tended to associate [u] and [ɯ] with differ-
ent SUSE categories, /oʊ/ and /ʌ/. These associations maintain
the rounded/unrounded contrast, show a TC assimilation, and
thus are likely to be well discriminated by bilingual listeners.
This finding suggests that there may be a correlation between
previous experience with a given contrast in a language, for
example, rounded/unrounded front vowels in French, and
application of this generalized contrast experience to phones
in another language (e.g., rounded/unrounded back vowels
in Vietnamese). Similar findings have been reported with
regard to a cross-language application of another generalized
contrast experience, a manner of articulation distinction
between coronal stops and fricatives (de Jong, Silbert, &
Park, 2009). This generalized experience was shown to
explain the correlation between perceptual accuracy in differ-
ent L2 English segments that involve the same stop/fricative
contrast as in L1 Korean.
4.3. Discrimination of non-native back vowels
The PAM approach was used in the current study to
examine the relationship between L2 vowel categorization
and discrimination (Best, 1995; Harnsberger, 2001; Tyler
et al., 2014). Vietnamese vowel categorizations were used to
determine assimilation types in the Vietnamese vowel con-
trasts, which in turn were used to test the following ranking in
discrimination accuracy of vowel pairs, from easiest to most
difficult: TC = UC > CG > UU > SC (Best, 1995; Bohn, 2018).
As summarized in Table 6, under the 50% consistency
criterion, discrimination accuracy ranking was expected to be
[o]-[ɤ] = [ɯ]-[ɤ] = [ɯ]-[u] > [u]-[o]. Under the above-chance
criterion, the ranking was expected to be [o]-[ɤ] > [ɯ]-[ɤ] >
[ɯ]-[u] = [u]-[o]. The observed ranking was [o]-[ɤ] = [ɯ]-[ɤ] >
[ɯ]-[u] = [u]-[o].
The important difference between expected and observed
rankings concerns the [ɯ]-[u] contrast. The accuracy of this
contrast discrimination was not higher than in [u]-[o] and was
not similar to [ɯ]-[ɤ], as predominant assimilation patterns
would lead us to expect. The accuracy of this contrast discrim-
ination was predicted better with the above-chance categoriza-
tion criterion which classified both [ɯ]-[u] and [u]-[o] as SC
assimilations. This was likely because the above-chance
criterion accounts for both predominant and secondary
assimilations.
When overlap scores were used to examine the relationship
between L2 vowel categorization and discrimination (Levy,
2009), discrimination accuracy ranking was expected to be
[o]-[ɤ] > [ɯ]-[u] > [ɯ]-[ɤ] > [u]-[o]. This prediction was partially
supported, but the [ɯ]-[u] contrast did not fit the expected order
(Table 6). In summary, discrimination accuracy predictions
based on either assimilation patterns or overlap scores were
accurate for L2 vowel pairs in which each member of the pair
was predominantly associated with a different (TC) or the
same (SC) L1 category. When perceived similarity between
two L2 vowels was medium (as indexed by UC assimilations
or medium-range overlap scores), then not all predictions were
borne out.
It is difficult to compare assimilation patterns in the current
study with previous research because the choices of L2 con-
trasts and the L1 background of listeners vary across studies.
The only comparable study in the PAM framework is Tyler et al.
(2014), in which assimilation of the Thai [ɯ]-[ɤ] contrast was
examined in English listeners. Reported assimilation types
for this Thai contrast were TC (1 listener), UC (7 listeners),
CG (1 listener), and UU (4 listeners). Assimilation types for
the Vietnamese [ɯ]-[ɤ] contrast in the current were TC (21 lis-
teners), UC (17 listeners), CG (8 listeners), SC (2 listeners),
and UU (1 listener). Thus, the distribution of assimilation types
for the same contrast is different in these studies. Whether this
difference is better explained by different categorization con-
sistency criteria (70% in Tyler et al., 50% here), a difference
in the phonetic realization of [ɯ ɤ] in Thai and Vietnamese,
or a difference in the L1 dialects of listeners (Northeast U.S.
in Tyler et al., Southern U.S. here) is unclear. However, this
comparison shows that the same predominant assimilation
patterns for the same phonological contrast cannot be
assumed.
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23
Each of the target L2 vowels in this study was associated
with more than one L1 category. That is, they showed a multi-
ple category membership, for example, the overall tendency to
associate Vietnamese [o] either with /oʊ/, as 33 listeners did, or
with /ɔ/, as six listeners did. When individual assimilations were
tallied by vowel pair, each of the L2 contrasts showed multiple
assimilation patterns: all five assimilations occurred for the [u]-
[o], [ɯ]-[u], and [ɯ]-[ɤ] contrasts, and three assimilations
occurred for the [o]-[ɤ] contrast (Table 4). Thus, this report pro-
vides additional support for the suggestion that individuals vary
in their assimilation of vowels, and that individual assimilation
patterns should inform the PAM model (Tyler et al., 2014).
In addition to the relationship between L2 vowel categoriza-
tion and discrimination, three possible asymmetries in discrim-
ination were investigated in non-low back vowels. First, it was
hypothesized that the discrimination of vowels contrasting in
rounding – [u]-[ɯ] and [o]-[ɤ] – would be more accurate than
the discrimination of vowels contrasting in height – [u]-[o] and
[ɯ]-[ɤ] (Lisker, 1988; Stevens, 1972). Results showed that
the [u]-[o] contrast was discriminated with the lowest accuracy,
but it was not significantly different from the accuracy in [u]-[ɯ].
The [o]-[ɤ] contrast was discriminated with the highest accu-
racy, but it was not significantly different from the accuracy in
[ɯ]-[ɤ]. Collectively, these results suggest that vowel pairs con-
trasting in rounding are not easier to discriminate than vowel
pairs contrasting in height. Therefore, the absence of the
rounding contrast in L1 back vowels does not necessarily
impede listeners' ability to discriminate this contrast in L2.
Second, discrimination was hypothesized to be easier in the
direction from a less focalized to a more focalized vowel (Polka
& Bohn, 2003, 2011). Two vowel pairs were indeed discrimi-
nated in this manner: the discrimination accuracy was higher
in [ɤ]-[ɤ]-[o] than in [o]-[ɤ]-[ɤ] trials, and in [ɯ]-[ɯ]-[u] than in
[u]-[ɯ]-[ɯ] trials. These findings are in line with the predictions
of the NRV model (Polka & Bohn, 2003, 2011). Note that the
assimilation pattern in the [o]-[ɤ] vowel pair may be classified
as UC or SC at the group level (Table 6), and both [o]-[ɤ]
and [ɯ]-[u] vowel pairs exhibited TC assimilation in the major-
ity of listeners (Table 4). Thus, a less-to-more focalized vowel
asymmetry can be observed in TC assimilations. This result
suggests that NRV asymmetry is not limited to vowel pairs
exhibiting SC assimilations (and perhaps, CG and UU assimi-
lations), a proposal in Tyler et al. (2014). This asymmetry can
be observed in L2 vowel pairs that “cross a native phonological
boundary” such as the TC assimilation type.
Third, due to experience with [u o] vowels in L1 and a cor-
responding lack of experience with [ɯ ɤ], one might hypothe-
size that SUSE listeners may be more sensitive to
differences in the [u]-[ɯ] and [o]-[ɤ] pairs, which contain a “fa-
miliar” vowel, versus the difference in the [ɯ]-[ɤ] pair, where
both vowels are unfamiliar (Ettlinger & Johnson, 2009). In the
current study, however, the discrimination accuracy in the
[u]-[ɯ] vowel pair was among the lowest, while the [ɯ]-[ɤ] pair
was not. There was no interaction between the oddball vowel
and the contrast in which the vowel was presented. For exam-
ple, when [u] was the oddball vowel, discrimination accuracy
was relatively low, whether this vowel was presented alongside
[o] or alongside [ɯ]. When [ɤ] was an oddball vowel, discrimi-
nation accuracy was relatively high, whether this vowel was
presented alongside [o] or alongside [u]. No difference in reac-
21
tion times was observed for any contrasts and vowel presenta-
tion orders, whether the more “familiar” vowel, [u] or [o], was
presented first in a triad or not. Thus, the asymmetry reported
in Ettlinger and Johnson (2009) was not found here. Taken
together, these results suggest that the overall familiarity with
vowel categories in L1 does not increase listeners’ discrimina-
tion sensitivity when the phonetic realization differences are
substantial, for example, the difference between fronted /u/ in
SUSE and back /u/ in Vietnamese or the difference between
diphthongized /oʊ/ in SUSE and monophthongal /o/ in
Vietnamese. In naïve listeners, vowel discrimination may be
based on acoustic characteristics of tokens rather than on
the perceived phonetic category of tokens or their phonological
category.
One interesting outcome in the discrimination experiment
was that listeners made their decisions faster when an oddball
vowel was in the triad-final position than when it was in other
positions. The lack of interaction between vowel presentation
order and vowel identity suggests that listeners attended to
all three tokens in a triad faithfully. When they heard that the
last token was an oddball, they made their judgments immedi-
ately. When the last token was not perceived as an oddball,
they contemplated longer, perhaps “replaying” a triad in their
heads. Notice that accuracy and speed of decision-making
may not align because decisions made relatively fast are not
necessarily the most accurate.
5. Conclusions and limitations
The present study contributes to the research on cross-
language speech perception by investigating the perception
of non-low back vowels contrasting in rounding that have not
been examined before. The relationship between non-native
vowel categorization and discrimination was examined mainly
in the framework of the Perceptual Assimilation Model (Best,
1995). In addition, predictions specific to either vowel catego-
rization or discrimination in other theoretical frameworks were
also examined in this typologically rare set of [u o ɯ ɤ] vowels
(Maddieson, 2013). Based on the multiple lines of investigation
in the present study, we can conclude that the perception of
non-low back vowels is a subject of multiple category member-
ship: Each target vowel has its own “perceptual profile,” with no
profiles identical, even for Vietnamese [u o] vowels that have
very similar acoustic characteristics and are predominantly
perceived as most similar to /oʊ/ in Southern U.S. English
listeners. This multiple-category membership and the large
individual variability among listeners are important for describ-
ing and predicting vowel perception.
Naïve listeners’ perception seems to be more guided by
acoustic characteristics of vowels and phonetic processing
biases than by the influence of native phonological categories
or contrasts. In the current study, these guiding factors
included acoustic similarity between Vietnamese [u] and [o],
/u/-fronting in SUSE, assimilations between rounded non-
native vowels and rounded native vowels, and a bias towards
the less-to-more peripheral vowel order in discrimination tasks.
Listeners' attention to vowel rounding is evident in predominant
assimilation patterns between rounded non-native and native
vowels ([u]-/u oʊ/; [o]-/oʊ ɔ/) and between some unrounded
non-native and native vowels ([ɤ]-/ʌ ʊ/). However, some
22 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23

unrounded non-native vowels like [ɯ] may be associated with
both rounded and unrounded native categories, a pattern pos-
sibly attributable to variable (between dialects and among
speakers) phonetic realizations of those categories. Variation
in English /u/ has been suggested to influence cross-
language vowel perception (Levy, 2009). In general, it cannot
be concluded that naïve listeners are biased to perceive
unrounded non-native vowels as rounded or biased to discrim-
inate contrasts in rounding better than contrasts in other fea-
tures such as height, for example, [o]-[ɤ] versus [ɯ]-[ɤ].
This study has several limitations. First, in both experi-
ments, only one talker’s voice was used to record the Viet-
namese stimuli; therefore, the results may be specific to that
talker’s voice. Second, limited data were collected from each
participant — 36 responses in the categorization experiment
and 96 responses in the discrimination experiment. This lim-
ited data collection was partially ameliorated by a relatively
large number of participants — 49 in the first experiment and
30 in the second. The current data represent a wide range of
individual responses in vowel perception tasks. The design
and generalizability of results could be improved by including
multi-talker stimuli and a larger number of stimulus words
and or repetitions.
Additionally, the discrimination experiment was relatively
easy for participants to complete. Overall, discrimination accu-
racy was high in all four contrasts, although not quite at ceiling,
that is over 95% accuracy. This relative ease of task might be
related to the choice of target contrasts and the nature of the
task, where largely auditory processing is involved. It might
have obscured the effect of listener experience on non-native
vowel perception. Introducing a longer inter-stimulus interval
and thus encouraging phonetic processing (Flege, 2003) did
not make the task more difficult, but perhaps introducing
multi-talker stimuli or stimuli in noise bubbles could.
Lastly, conclusions with regard to the role of L2 experience
and the experiment order in L2 vowel categorization are tenta-
tive because the number of participants was different in the
experienced and inexperienced groups, preventing a more rig-
orous analyses. A detailed examination of acoustic cue weight-
ing and listener variables in categorizations of [u o ɯ ɤ] was
beyond the scope and methodology of the current study, but
is worth investigation in future research.
Acknowledgments
My gratitude is extended to Tâm Nguy n at the Vietnam
National University-HCMC and Nina Nguyen at Louisiana
State University for consultations in Vietnamese and stimulus
recording; Marybeth Lima for her comments and suggestions.
The author thanks the reviewers and the associate editor for
their constructive and detailed feedback.
Funding
This research was supported by a 2015 Manship Summer
Research Award from the College of Humanities & Social
Sciences Funding, Louisiana State University, United States.
Appendix

Individual assimilation patterns and overlap scores in Experiment 2 participants.

Listener Residence L2 Exp. Order Assimilation Type | Overlap Score (%)

[o]-[ɤ] [ɯ]-[u] [ɯ]-[ɤ] [u]-[o]
JD LA Categ. first TC | 0 SC | 90 TC | 11 TC | 0
MBD LA Categ. first TC| 0 UC | 60 UC | 44 TC | 22
MB TX, LA Discr. first TC | 0 CG | 60 TC | 0 TC | 33
TL LA Categ. first TC | 33 SC | 78 TC | 0 TC | 33
BA LA Categ. first TC | 0 UC | 56 UC | 22 TC | 44
BH AZ, LA Categ. first TC | 0 UC | 56 UC | 33 TC | 44
BS LA Categ. first TC | 11 UC | 11 UC | 44 TC | 44
HF TX, LA Categ. first TC | 0 TC | 22 TC | 22 TC | 44
JL LA Discr. first UU | 56 TC | 44 CU | 33 CU | 44
MP LA French Categ. first CU | 0 TC | 0 CU | 78 TC | 44
NW VA, LA Categ. first TC | 0 UU | 22 UC | 33 UC | 44
PR NY, LA Categ. first UC | 33 UU | 56 UC | 44 UU | 44
TC LA Categ. first TC | 11 SC | 56 TC | 22 TC | 44
VB LA Categ. first CU | 11 CG | 67 CU | 11 TC | 44
DC LA Categ. first UC | 44 CU | 56 CG | 78 UU | 56
EB LA French Categ. first TC | 0 CU | 33 TC | 33 UC | 56
EBD LA Discr. first UC | 33 CU | 56 TC | 11 UU | 56
KA LA French Discr. first TC | 0 UC | 22 UC | 56 TC | 56
KG LA French Discr. first CU | 44 UU | 56 UU | 78 UC | 56
MZ FL, LA Categ. first TC | 0 CU | 33 TC | 0 UC | 56
AHD LA French Categ. first TC | 22 TC | 0 CG | 78 SC | 56
CB LA Categ. first TC | 56 UC | 67 UC | 56 TC | 67
DCO LA Discr. first TC | 11 TC | 56 TC | 0 CG | 67
DG LA Discr. first TC | 0 TC | 33 TC | 33 SC | 67
BR LA French Discr. first TC | 0 UC | 33 UC | 44 SC | 78
GN LA Discr. first TC | 0 TC | 44 TC | 0 SC | 78
MBA LA French Discr. first TC | 0 TC | 11 TC | 11 SC | 78
MWO LA Categ. first TC | 0 TC | 0 TC | 22 SC | 78
LD LA French Discr. first TC | 0 TC | 0 TC | 11 SC | 89
LG VA Discr. first TC | 11 TC | 22 TC | 22 SC | 89
 I.A. Shport / Journal of Phonetics 73 (2019) 8–23 23

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