Home Linguistics & Semiotics Decrease of L1–L2 assimilation and its prediction on L2 discrimination: perception of English coronal fricatives by Mandarin speakers
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Decrease of L1–L2 assimilation and its prediction on L2 discrimination: perception of English coronal fricatives by Mandarin speakers

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Published/Copyright: January 21, 2026

Abstract

This study examined the perceptual assimilation and discrimination of English coronal fricatives /s, z, θ, ð/ by Mandarin speakers. The focus was on the effect of L2 experience on L1–L2 assimilation and the validity between assimilation patterns and assimilation overlaps in predicting L2 discrimination. The perceptual assimilation task showed that the more experienced group demonstrated weaker L1–L2 assimilation, corroborating the Revised Speech Learning Model (Flege, J. E. & O.-S. Bohn. 2021. The revised speech learning model. In R. Wayland (ed.), Second language speech learning: Theoretical and empirical progress, 3–83. Cambridge University Press). For the discrimination test, both more and less experienced groups performed comparably with moderate accuracy for the place contrasts /s–θ/ and /z–ð/ (assimilated as “Category-goodness”) and higher accuracy for the voice contrasts /s–z/ and /θ–ð/ (assimilated as “Two-category”). These results lent support to the predictions made by the Perceptual Assimilation Model-L2 (Best, C. T. & M. D. Tyler. 2007. Nonnative and second-language speech perception: Commonalities and complementarities. In O.-S. Bohn & M. J. Munro (eds.) Language learning & language teaching, vol. 17, 13–34. John Benjamins Publishing Company) based on the assimilation patterns (no group difference) rather than the assimilation overlaps (group difference). The current study suggested that the perceived L1–L2 similarities may decrease with the growth of L2 experience, and the place contrasts /s–θ/, /z–ð/ could render more challenges than the voice contrasts /s–z/, /θ–ð/ for Mandarin speakers. Theoretical implications were brought out through comparing controversial assimilation measurements and the effect of L2 experience on cross-language perception.


Corresponding author: Yuxiao Yang, Foreign Studies College, Hunan Normal University, 36 Lushan Road, 410081, Yuelu District, Changsha, China, E-mail:

Award Identifier / Grant number: 22YJC740093

Award Identifier / Grant number: 24BYY139

Acknowledgments

We would like to extend our gratitude to Ms. Dai Yuqi for her generous help in data collection.

  1. Research funding: This work was supported by the Humanities and Social Science Fund of the Ministry of Education of China (22YJC740093) and National Social Science Fund of China (24BYY139).

  2. Ethical statement: The experiments have been approved by the authors’ institutional ethics committee; written consent forms were obtained from all participants.

  3. Author contribution: Yuxiao Yang conceived and designed the study, collected, analyzed, and interpreted the data, and finished most of the writing; Fan Yang conceived and designed the study, collected and analyzed the data; David A. Porter and Jiaqiang Zhu provided technical support with data analyses and writing suggestions.

  4. Conflict of interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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Received: 2025-05-09
Accepted: 2026-01-08
Published Online: 2026-01-21
Published in Print: 2026-02-24

© 2026 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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