The perception of Georgian ejective stops by native English speakers.

The present study examined the perception of Georgian voiced, voiceless aspirated, and ejective stops by native speakers of English. It was motivated by the observation that languages with three stop‐manner series often borrow voiceless aspirated stops as ejectives in a systematic manner. This is likely due to the perceptual similarity between aspirated stops in source language and the ejective stops in the borrowing language. To test the hypothesized perceptual similarity between aspirated and ejective stops, five English speakers were asked to listen to stops which varied in manner of articulation (voiced, voiceless aspirated, ejective) that were produced by a speaker of Georgian. Participants heard three productions at the same place of articulation, one of which differed in manner, and were asked to identify the the oddball stop. The results indicated that the contrast between voiceless aspirated and ejective stops was correctly identified less often than the other two contrasts (voiced versus aspirat...