Research in second language speech has often focused on listeners' accent judgment and factors that affect their perception. However, the topic of listeners' application of specific sound categories in their own perceptual judgments has not been widely investigated. The current study explored how listeners from diverse language backgrounds weighed…

Comprehensibility, a major concept in second language (L2) pronunciation research that denotes listeners' perceptions of how easily they understand L2 speech, is central to interlocutors' communicative success in real-world contexts. Although comprehensibility has been modeled in several L2 oral proficiency scales--for example, the Test of English…