Perceptual learning of phonation contrasts

This is an ongoing project.

The goal is to investigate whether non-native phonation contrasts, specifically, breathy and creaky voice, can be learned. Further, if non-native linguistic phonation contrasts are learned, how speakers of different language backgrounds, that is, speakers of Mandarin (a tone language) and English (an intonation language) become able to discriminate and categorize the phonation contrasts? Are they using common or different processing mechanisms? Can they achieve the level of native speakers of a language that has contrastive phonation types?

This study will inform the similar or different mechanisms of human cognition and learning of novel linguistic contrasts with different language and cultural backgrounds.