ASA 129th Meeting - Washington, DC - 1995 May 30 .. Jun 06

5pSC9. Visual feedback training for a nasal/non-nasal distinction.

Anna Marie Schmidt

School of Speech Pathol. & Audiol., Kent State Univ., P.O. Box 5190, Kent, OH 44242

Native speakers of some Chinese dialects do not make a distinction between /n/ and /l/. This lack of a phonemic distinction may be a problem when these speakers learn English and the distinction is often difficult to teach. Three native Chinese speakers from Shanghai who had been in the US less than 2 years participated in a training experiment using a nasometer to provide visual feedback. Production was trained in initial position in minimal pairs using initial /n/--/l/ and /sn/--/sl/ pairs. Subjects' perception of the distinction in English minimal pairs was tested prior to training and post-training using both same/different and categorization tasks.