Japanese Listeners’ Perception of the French Versus American English /r/-/l/ Contrasts

Is the classic difficulty for Japanese listeners to perceive /r/-/l/ entirely attributable to the lack of a liquid contrast in the Japanese phonological system, or is it also due to phonetic factors? On the “phonology-only” view, the level of difficulty that Japanese listeners experience in perceiving /r/-/l/ should not depend on the language in which /r/-/l/ is produced. For instance, Japanese listeners should encounter comparable difficulties in perceiving the English and French /r/-/l/ contrasts. If phonetic factors play a role, however, the phonetic proximity between /r/s and /l/s, as perceived by Japanese listeners, may contribute to determine their discrimination and identification performance on the /r/-/l/ contrast. The treatment of the /r/-/l/ contrast according to stimulus-language has more general implications. The issue at hand indeed bears on the relative importance of the two main factors that can conceivably shape nonnative speech perception: the structural properties of the native versus nonnative phonological systems, and the phonetic properties of the nonnative speech sounds.