Commentary: When the Easy Becomes Difficult: Factors Affecting the Acquisition of the English /iː/-/ɪ/ Contrast and On the Difficulty of Defining “Difficult” in Second-Language Vowel Acquisition (original) (raw)
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When the Easy Becomes Difficult: Factors Affecting the Acquisition of the English /iː/-/ɪ/ Contrast
Frontiers in Communication, 2021
The degree of similarity between the sounds of a speaker’s first and second language (L1 and L2) is believed to determine the likelihood of accurate perception and production of the L2 sounds. This paper explores the relationship between cross-linguistic similarity and the perception and production of a subset of English vowels, including the highly productive /iː/-/ɪ/ contrast (as in “beat” vs. “bit”), by a group of Spanish/Catalan native speakers learning English as an L2. The learners’ ability to identify, discriminate and produce the English vowels accurately was contrasted with their cross-linguistic perceived similarity judgements. The results showed that L2 perception and production accuracy was not always predicted from patterns of cross-language similarity, particularly regarding the difficulty distinguishing /iː/ and /ɪ/. Possible explanations may involve the way the L2 /iː/ and /ɪ/ categories interact, the effect of non-native acoustic cue reliance, and the roles of ortho...
Teachers College Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 2006
Although the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has largely advanced over the last few decades, the area of second language (L2) phonology has not been a focus of many studies. found that "of the nearly 200 articles published in Studies in SLA [from 1988SLA [from to 1998], only about a dozen focused on phonetics and phonology" (p. 131). Since then, the area has largely expanded, as discussed in Eckman , evolving from studies that cited first language (L1) influence as a main explanation for L2 phonology to research that has turned to universal principles driven by Universal Grammar (UG). Several crosslinguistic speech perception models have been developed as well, and many empirical studies have been undertaken to yield support. One of the most fertile domains for the investigation of L2 phonology has been the syllable (Eckman, 2004, p. 527). However, most of the studies have concentrated on the onset or the coda, while there is much yet to be explored for the acquisition of the nucleus of the syllable -the vowel. This paper is a literature review of the emerging area of L2 phonology, focusing on the perception of English vowels by adult L2 learners. First, the background will be presented by describing several theoretical models for L2 speech perception.
A longitudinal study of individual differences in the acquisition of new vowel contrasts
Journal of Phonetics, 2018
This study explores how individuals' second language cue weighting strategies change over time and across different contrasts. The study investigates the developmental changes in perceptual cue weighting of two English vowel contrasts (/i/-/ɪ/ and /ɛ/-/ae/) by adult and child Korean learners of English during their first year of immersion in Canada. Longitudinal results revealed that adult learners had an initial advantage in L2 perceptual acquisition over children at least for the /i/-/ɪ/ contrast, but after one year some children showed greater improvements especially on the more difficult /ɛ/-/ae/ contrast. Both groups of Korean learners showed different acquisition patterns between the two vowel contrasts: they used both spectral and duration cues to distinguish /i/-/ɪ/ but generally only duration to distinguish /ɛ/-/ae/. By examining cue weights over time, this study partially confirmed the hypothesized developmental stages for the acquisition of L2 vowels first proposed by Escudero (2000) for Spanish learners of English. However, some unpredicted patterns were also identified. Most importantly, the longitudinal results suggest that individual differences in cue weighting are not merely random variability in the learner's response patterns, but are systematically associated with the developmental trajectories of individual learners and those trajectories vary according to vowel contrast.
The effect of experience on the acquisition of a non-native vowel contrast
Language Sciences, 2012
This study examines the effect of second language experience on the acquisition of the English vowel contrast /e/-/ae/ by native speakers of Dutch. It reports on the results of production and perception tasks performed by three groups of native Dutch learners of English in Belgium, differing in experience with English, as measured through study choice and progress. Whereas experience has often been defined in terms of 'Age of Acquisition' or 'Length of Residence' in studies on L2 immersion in, for instance, immigrant settings, in traditional foreign language contexts experience needs to be defined in terms of amount of instruction and (non-)naturalistic exposure. The results revealed an asymmetry in production and perception: all learners seemed to have created a new phonetic category for English /ae/, but failed to phonetically implement it in a native-like way. No new category for the vowel /e/ was created, but learners who had opted for English studies at tertiary level produced a clear contrast between the two English vowels. All learner groups performed well on a discrimination and identification task involving the vowels /e/ and /ae/. The results are discussed in light of currently used speech learning theories, such as Flege's Speech Learning Model (1987Model ( , 1995, Best's Perceptual Assimilation Model for naï ve listeners and its adaption for learners in an Second Language Acquisition context . It is argued that predictions formulated within these models also hold for learners in a Foreign Language Acquisition context. experience with native speakers'' (original italics). In the present study, 'experience' is therefore defined in terms of 'amount of formal instruction and (non-)naturalistic exposure' to the L2. Since in FLA contexts, the medium in which formal instruction in the target language is provided is usually the target language itself, i.e. English proficiency classes are taught in English, this double definition ('instruction and exposure') is inevitable: in FLA contexts, formal instruction goes hand in hand with exposure to either native or, perhaps more often, non-native exposure to the target language. The first aim of the study is to examine the effect of experience in an FLA context, measured in terms of amount of formal instruction and exposure to the target language, on the production and perception of a non-native vowel contrast. In order to examine this, production and perception data of three groups of native Dutch speakers in Flanders, differing in their experience with L2 English as a result of their study choice and study progress, will be examined.
Is Acquisition of L2 Phonemes Difficult? Production of English Stress by Japanese Speakers
2009
This study examined the production of English lexical stress by Japanese speakers to determine which acoustic features associated with English lexical stress are difficult for Japanese speakers to acquire. Realization of lexical accent differs between languages. English is a stress-accent language where the accent is expressed by a combination of pitch, duration, intensity and vowel quality (Fry 1955, Gay 1978, Kochanski et al. 2005 & Kochanski and Orphanidou, 2008). In contrast, Japanese is a pitch-accent language where the accent is dominantly realized by a fall in the fundamental frequency (F0) from an accented high pitched mora to the following mora, and there is very little use of intensity to mark accent (Fujisaki et al. 1986). Studies on non-native English learners have shown that problems on acquiring English stress vary depending on their first language (L1). For example, Arabic speakers show different use of F0 and formant frequencies in stressed and unstressed vowels compared with native English speakers (Zuraiq & Soreno 2007). Lee et al (2006) also reported that Japanese speakers found it difficult to achieve vowel centralization of English unstressed vowels. This study investigated the effect of Japanese (L1) prosody on English (L2). In particular, the study focused on how Japanese speakers who speak fluent English still show the influence of Japanese phonology, and also examined whether there are any characteristics notably different from native English speakers' utterances. Different factors influence L2 speech rhythm. For example, different languages use different phonological units to keep speech rhythm. Japanese uses the mora as the fundamental unit for its speech rhythm and many studies have reported mora-based timing control for Japanese. The duration of each mora is not necessarily equal, but the duration of a word or phrase is determined by the number of morae in it (Port et al., 1987). There is mora-based segmental elasticity and durational compensation between CV which constitutes a mora rather than between V-C across a mora boundary (Campbell and Sagisaka, 1991; Sato, 1993). The effect of the mora on L2 has been reported in English (Mochizuki-Sudo & Kiritani 1991) and in French (Kondo & Shinohara, 2003 & 2006). Vowel quality is also an important cue for stress in English. Everything being equal, vowels in unstressed syllables are shorter and have centralized quality. Although the order of importance among these acoustic cues of English stress varies from study to study, all these are important cues to differentiate stressed and unstressed syllables in English (Fear et al., 1995). Considering the prosodic differences between English and Japanese, various factors affect L2 speech rhythm. An earlier study (Kondo, 2007) found an L1 influence in English speakers' Japanese utterances. English speakers showed strong influence of lexical accent on vowel duration in their Japanese utterances. They showed two patterns: (i) large F0 increase but little durational increase, and (ii) durational increase instead of any F0 increase. In the present study most of the Japanese subjects spent some years in English speaking environments and spoke relatively good English. However, they still showed some influence of their L1, Japanese, in their English utterances. Among these acoustic features, i.e. vowel duration, F0, intensity and quality, some features are easier to acquire than others and some take longer to acquire during the process of L2 sound acquisition.