Markedness effects in the acquisition of voiced stop spirantization by Spanish–German bilinguals (original) (raw)
Related papers
On second-language acquisition of voiced stops
Journal of Phonetics, 1987
In this paper is described the acquisition of English voiced stops by native speakers of South American Spanish. Spanish is characterized by the use of lo ng lead "voiced" stops, while English uses primarily short-lag "voiced" stops. Although there would seem to be no communicative pressure to do so, over a period of 18 months in the U.S. , Spanish ESL students modified their English target voiced stops by reducing the length of voicing lead and adding a significant number of short-lag versions, although only for velar targets. Aerodynamics suggest an explanation for the limitation to the velar point of articulation while the traditional notion of " ease of articulation " may explain the reason for this change.
Learning to Stop: The Transfer of Spirantization into the ESL of Native Spanish Speakers
This paper investigates the transfer of spirantization into the English of native Spanish-speakers. Typologically, spirantization is a kind of lenition in which a stop is reduced to a fricative or an approximant (Kirchner, 2004: 313). In Spanish, spirantization refers to an allophonic process in which the voiced stops /b d g/ surface as approximants in certain linguistic environments (Harris, 1969). Previous studies (Zampini 1995 and Algara, González, & Boada 2004) have shown that native Spanish-speakers do exhibit the transfer of spirantization when speaking English, however, these studies relied on impressionistic transcription and were carried out under the assumption that native English-speakers do not lenite voiced stops. In this paper, I use intensity ratios and a qualitative ‘spirantization score’ to re-examine the spirantization of target English voiced stops by L1 Spanish speakers. This paper looks at a subset of data from a larger corpus: six female speakers of Mexican Spanish (3 intermediate and 3 advanced students of English) and a control group of three female speakers of American English. Subjects produced voiced stops in the intervocalic environment (both word-initially and word-medially) and in utterance-initial position. The former (e.g. the ball [ðəˈbɑl]) is an environment where Spanish-speakers are likely to spirantize target English voiced stops because this environment is known to condition more approximant-like phones across all dialects of Spanish (Piñeros 2001). The latter (e.g. ball [ˈbɑl]) is an environment where Spanish speakers are less likely to spirantize English stops because, as studies have shown (e.g. Eddington 2011), the utterance-initial environment is a significant predictor of stop-like pronunciations. The data were submitted to a linear mixed-effects statistical model. Results show that Spanish-speakers do exhibit the transfer of spirantization, however, the advanced learners of English improved significantly, signifying that they were able to suppress the transfer of this allophonic process to some degree. Furthermore, results suggest that the same factors that condition more lenited voiced stops by native Spanish-speakers (stress status, word-position, task formality), also, to a much lesser extent, condition more spirantized voiced stops by native English speakers.
The acquisition of L2 voiced stops by English learners of Spanish and Spanish learners of English
Speech Communication, 2023
Previous studies investigating the acquisition of L2 stops have found a positive effect of L2 experience, but few have focused on voiced stops, particularly on prevoicing. This study investigates the acquisition of /b/ and /g/ by two populations, English learners of Spanish and Spanish learners of English. Three groups varying in amount of L2 experience (mainly length of residence, but also L2 use and L2 instruction) were investigated for each L1 population. Participants completed a carrier sentence reading task in their L1 and L2. Results showed that amount of L2 experience had a positive effect on L2 stop production, as the least experienced groups were outperformed by the experienced ones. No clear effect of L2 experience was observed on the L1, as learners did not differ from monolingual controls, but some differences between learner groups emerged. Moreover, overall, L2 learners were able to produce L1 and L2 stops differently, which indicates that their L1 and L2 categories were not merged. Still, the L1-English L2-Spanish speakers produced L2 stops more accurately than the L1-Spanish L2-English groups, suggesting that learning to rely on an existing L1 cue may be easier than learning to use a cue associated with a different L1 category.
Clinical linguistics & phonetics, 2015
The purpose of this study was to identify characteristics of typical acquisition of the Mexican Spanish stop-spirant alternation in bilingual Spanish-English speaking children and to shed light on the theoretical debate over which sound is the underlying form in the stop-spirant allophonic relationship. We predicted that bilingual children would acquire knowledge of this allophonic relationship by the time they reach age 5;0 (years;months) and would demonstrate higher accuracy on the spirants, indicating their role as the underlying phoneme. This quasi-longitudinal study examined children's single word samples in Spanish from ages 2;4-8;2. Samples were phonetically transcribed and analyzed for accuracy, substitution errors and acoustically for intensity ratios. Bilingual children demonstrated overall higher accuracy on the voiced stops as compared to the spirants. Differences in substitution errors across ages were found and acoustic analyses corroborated perceptual findings. The clinical implication of this research is that bilingual children may be in danger of overdiagnosis of speech sound disorders because acquisition of this allophonic rule in bilinguals appears to differ from what has been found in previous studies examining monolingual Spanish speakers.
A Spanish pilot investigation for a crosslinguistic study in protracted phonological development
Clinical linguistics & …, 2012
A crosslinguistic study is underway concerning children's protracted phonological development (PPD, i.e., speech sound disorders). The current paper reports pilot Spanish data for this study from two 4-year-old boys with PPD. The purposes of the pilot study were to (1) develop and evaluate a word list for elicitation that could be used across Spanish dialects and that sufficiently sampled Spanish word lengths, stress patterns, word shapes and phonemes, and (2) to derive hypotheses for the larger study, based on patterns found in these children's speech, and a review of the literature. The two speakers showed some developmental patterns reported for other languages (e.g. constraints on production of liquids and word-initial consonants in unstressed syllables) but also patterns that may reflect Spanish phonological inventories, allophony and frequencies. These data helped consolidate the Spanish word list for elicitation and led to questions for the ongoing study concerning word structure, multisyllabic words, liquids, fricatives and vowel sequences.
Strategies for the Production of Spanish Stop Consonants by Native Speakers of English
1998
A study examined patterns in production of Spanish voiced and voiceless stop consonants by native English speakers, focusing on the interaction between two 'acoustic cues of stops: voice closure interval and voice onset time (VOT). The study investigated whether learners acquire the appropriate phonetic categories with regard to these stops and if so, how they manipulate the different acoustic cues of the speech signal to achieve the necessary distinction. Subjects were 14 students in an advanced college-level Spanish phonetics course, recorded throughout the semester in a series of pronunciation tasks. Resulting sentences were digitized and both voiceless closure interval and VOT of each word-initial target stop were measured. Results indicate: (1) the short lag category of Spanish voiceless stops is acquired more readily than the prevoiced category of the voiced stops; (2) Spanish stops are not acquired equally at all points of articulation; (3) voiceless closure interval is an important cue used and manipulated by learners in Spanish L2 speech production; (4) learners may differentiate up to three kinds of short lag stops in production; and (5) phonetic training may positively affect acquisition of L2 speech sounds. Contains three references. (MSE)
International Journal of Bilingualism, 2002
A tendency to limit prosodic words (PW) to the size of a metrical foot has often been acknowledged in early stages of acquisition and truncation has been shown to accomplish this size constraint. Interestingly, after the onefoot stage, children acquiring English or Dutch tend to enlarge their productions by one foot, whereas at least for children acquiring Spanish, a stage, in which PWs comprise a foot preceded by an unfooted syllable, immediately follows the one-foot stage. Early productions (between 1;5 and 2;2/ 2;4) of children acquiring G erman and Spanish in monolingual and bilingual conditions constitute the empirical basis for this paper. The monolingual cross-linguistic results show quantitative differences between the truncation of the Spanishand German-speaking children and different ways in which these two groups of children overcome the size restriction and acquire complex words. These differences are accounted for within Optimality Theory, couched in M etrical Phonology, by means of two different grammars, that is, two different constraint hierarchies. The emergence of these different grammars is relevant for the analysis of the transition to complex prosodic structures in bilinguals and for the analysis of the relationships between their two phonological modules. An interaction of the two languages is found, the outcome of which is mainly attributed to markedness.
Selected Proceedings of the 16th Hispanic Linguistics Symposium Edited By Jennifer Cabrelli Amaro Gillian Lord Ana De Prada Perez and Jessi Elana Aaron 2013 Isbn 978 1 57473 459 1 Pags 118 127, 2013
Wesleyan University, dwcounse@owu.edu. We thank our informants for their time and willingness to participate in this study. We also thank Mirela Butnaru and Francisco López Martín for their help recruiting participants. We are indebted to Anna Hammersmith, who volunteered her time to test the stimuli. Last, we thank the audience at the Hispanic Linguistics Symposium and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. The usual disclaimers apply.