This study investigated the contribution of second-language (L2) phonetic categorization abilities and vocabulary size to the phonolexical encoding of challenging non-native phonological contrasts into the L2 lexicon. Two groups of German learners of English differing in L2 proficiency (advanced vs. intermediate) participated in an English lexical decision task including words and nonwords with /ɛ/ and /æ/ (/æ/ does not exist in German), an /ɛ/-/æ/ phonetic categorization task and an English vocabulary test. Results showed that the effects of phonetic categorization and vocabulary size on lexical decision performance were modulated by proficiency: categorization predicted /ɛ/-/æ/ nonword rejection accuracy for intermediate learners, whereas vocabulary did so for advanced learners. This suggests that sufficient phonetic identification ability is key for an accurate phonological representation of difficult L2 phones, but, for learners for whom robust phonetic identification is already in place, their ultimate success is tightly linked to their vocabulary size in the L2.

中文翻译：

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语音分类能力和词汇量有助于将困难的第二语言语音对比编码到词典中

本研究调查了第二语言 (L2) 语音分类能力和词汇量对将具有挑战性的非母语语音对比的语音编码转换为 L2 词典的贡献。两组在 L2 水平上不同的德语英语学习者（高级与中级）参与了一项英语词汇决策任务，包括带有 /ɛ/ 和 /æ/（/æ/ 在德语中不存在）的单词和非单词，一个 /ɛ ///æ/ 语音分类任务和英语词汇测试。结果表明，语音分类和词汇量对词汇决策性能的影响受到熟练程度的调节：分类预测/ɛ/-/æ/非单词拒绝准确性对于中级学习者，而词汇对于高级学习者则如此。