Vosprijatie klasterov s palatalʹnym soglasnym italʹjancami, izučajuščimi russkij kak inostrannyj: rolʹ kategorij rodnogo jazyka (Perception of clusters with a palatal consonant by Italian learners of Russian: the role of native language categories)

The paper presents the results of a phonetic experiment that aimed to test discrimination of nonce-words containing Russian [tja] — [tjja] contrast (a palatalized consonant vs. a cluster of this consonant and a palatal [j] followed by a vowel) by native Italian university students learning Russian at intermediate level. A hypothesis was tested that successful discrimination of this contrast can be facilitated by the presence of palatal sonorants in the native phonemic inventory of the participants. It was suggested that the use of these categories might help the respondents better discriminate minimal pairs containing Russian syllables with nasal and lateral dental/alveolar consonants, compared to other consonants. In the discrimination task, the nonce words were embedded in elementary Russian phrases. The results obtained from 31 participants show that Italian learners of Russian perform at chance level in discriminating the contrast regardless of the segmental composition of the syllable and the position of stress. A significant effect for the stimuli presentation order was found which was present only in target stimuli but was absent in fi llers. The data suggests that at least until the intermediate level Italian learners of Russian struggle to form perceptive categories that would allow them to successfully identify the members of [tja] — [tjja] opposition.